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It’s been pretty cold here lately. It was hailing frequently while we were down at White Beach, and when we got back to town we had a week of very chilly weather. Here’s a photo that Sammi took one morning.

I haven’t seen Mount Wellington looking like that for a while, and there’s been snow on the hills around Austins Ferry as well.

Well, here I am, back from my holiday. Life goes on as usual.

A quick summary:

Monday: - Spent the day with Kris playing GT3, Starfighter and Tekken Tag Tournament on his Playstation 2. We also went ten pin bowling. I was meant to play golf, but a couple of people couldn’t make it and Kris wasn’t keen as he’d thought I meant minigolf. So we went to play minigolf only to find that they’re not open on Mondays. We were on our way to go and see Planet of the Apes instead when we passed the bowling alley and thought that might be more fun, so we did a uy (yooie? how do you spell that anyway? A u-turn.) and went bowling instead. Fun was had.

Tuesday: - In the morning I broke my self-imposed computing retreat and checked my email. But I didn’t read or respond to most of it, and spent less than an hour online. Then I went round to Kris’s flat again. He’s just bought a flat in Newtown. It’s fairly modern (apart from some disturbingly seventies splashes of colour) and a nice size, as well as being very close to the city. I’m jealous. We played more with his PS2, and watched the original Shaft movie on DVD. I have no idea why this movie is considered a classic - I thought the remake was bad, but watchable, however the original is simply atrocious. Some of the worst acting and dialogue I’ve ever seen, and the action was pretty ordinary as well.

That evening I had a production meeting for this years Sydney to Hobart website. Things seem to be going well there, and we should be a bit more organised than last year.

Wednesday: - I slept in a bit, read for a bit, then caught a bus into town to meet Louise for lunch. I missed the bus by one minute, and then next one wasn’t due for half and hour and would get me there quarter of an hour late, so I decided to walk up the road until I got to a stop with more buses going past. I didn’t have any luck finding anpther bus though, so I kept walking for half an hour until the original bus turned up.

Wednesday Afternoon I went with Louise to her work, as her boss had been wanting to chat to me about getting some work programming done for him. So I broke the computing retreat again, but I might get some cash out of it.

Wednesday evening I got talked into going to see Regurgitator at the unibar with the boys from a house near you. There were two problems though - a) I was broke, and b) the concert had sold out. A frantic afternoon of phone calls and favour pulling amongst the Young Boys Network ensued, and finally I got a ticket.

It turned out that the boys had a pair of free tickets that they were giving away in a competition on their website, but they were unable to get in contact with the winner and he failed to contact them on his own. At the last minute (while Lou and I were on our way home) Matt called me and said I could have his ticket, so we changed course and I went over to their place.

I hadn’t been too keen on seeing Regurgitator, because I think they’ve sold out. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was on holiday and haven’t been out for a while, I wouldn’t have bothered. It’s not just that they’ve become successful and mainstream - a girl visiting AHNY for pre-concert festivities had a going at me for being such a snob - but that in going mainstream they’ve gone against everything they stood for previously.

Tu Plang (their first album) was brilliant. They had critical success with it, and lots of airtime on Triple J. I don’t understand how the band that could write songs like Social Disaster, Music is Sport and I sucked a lot of cock to get where I am could then come out and release an album like Unit. I guess it’s up to them what direction they move in artistically and all that, and a lot of Unit was very tongue in cheek, but still, I felt betrayed. Their music didn’t seem to get any better after that, and they had openly stated that they dislike Hobart and Hobart crowds, so I stopped paying attention to them.

Still, I had a great time at the concert. They played a fair bit of old stuff, and I was reasonably trashed - that may have had something to do with it.

I crashed at AHNY and got to bed late - I’m not sure exactly what time.

Thursday: - I woke up sometime just after nine feeling pretty dodgy. Louise had stopped by on her way to work to drop off some clean clothes for me (isn’t she nice?) and the world started spinning when I stood up. I drank a few glasses of water and fell back into bed. I got up again around midday, had a shower and went into town. There I stumbled around for a bit trying to find a copy of Twelve Monkeys on DVD (noone had it) before catching a bus home and watching Alien instead.

Thursday night Lou and I went shopping for stuff for our weekend away. We spent most of our fortnightly food budget on food for our three-day weekend, but what’s the point of a holiday if you don’t spoil yourselves?

Friday - Sunday: - Lou and I went down to Paul and Jo’s shack for the weekend. They were extremely kind in letting us go down there - we’d been planning to camp out but the weather was looking nasty, and in the end we probably would have cancelled if it wasn’t for the shack. It would have been about the third aborted camping attempt, too, which would have been a nasty finish to my holiday.

As it was, it rained almost constantly except for when it was hailing, and the wind blew a gale. We lost power for a couple of hours on Saturday as well. We had a great time, we spent most of it inside reading or playing games, but it was just great to get some time alone together.

Oh, and there’s no need to worry Jo - we didn’t shag on your pool table.

So, here it is, Monday afternoon, and it’s back to work as usual.. Oh well.

I’ve decided to share my gifts of astounding accuracy and formidable insight with the world by writing a horoscope column for A House Near You.

Actually, I’m no better at this than anybody else, but at least I don’t pretend otherwise.

Read the horoscopes now, then go on and read the rest of the site. My horoscopes are probably the least funny thing there.

I’m taking a week off work next week. Hopefully it’ll be a refreshing break. I’ve been getting a bit worn out.

I’ve got a week of fun non-computer-related stuff lined up, in an effort to make it feel a bit more like a holiday. I’m going to play tennis and golf, spend a day with an old mate off mine lounging around and playing with his PS2, and spend a few days somewhere on the east coast with Louise. This should be fun.

I’ll try and avoid playing Tropico (my game of the moment) or doing any work, because I usually end up spending my breaks at home in front of my computer, and seeing as that’s pretty much what I do at work it doesn’t feel like much of a holiday.

I’ll have to see if I can slot a night of wild partying in there as well.