weekend away was excellent. it was particularly gratifying seeing all the traffic backed up on the way to the yarra valley when we had already spent some quality time there and were on our way back into melbourne on friday. we had the whole place to ourselves where we stayed, which was nice (if a little weird - i felt like we were trespassing on someone else's private property). we wandered around the property, round the vineyards and gardens, and in the evenings when we would come home from dinner, we'd scare groups of little rabbits that had come in to nibble on fallen grapes. we decided they were easter bunnies, and the grapes were their easter egg equivalents. then on on sunday we went to holi celebrations at the shiva vishnu temple in carrum downs. i had gone there with mark and dipu two years ago, but this year it was so different. it was huge! there would have been at least five thousand people there. the setup was the same, with the food stalls, dvd stalls, sweets and everything, but this time there were also several rides for the kiddies (dodgems and a jumping castle and a few others), stalls selling clothes and silly string and bangles and bindis. there were even people doing mendhi designs on people's hands - an indian version of face painting, i guess. the rangoli went off as usual - i think i stayed clean for about ten minutes - i got attacked as soon as i armed myself with pouches of coloured powder. it was excellent to see so many people there - mostly indian, though it was hard to pick the non-indians by the end of it because everyone was so covered in colour they ended up looking like teletubbies. that evening, after we all washed the colour away and vegged in front of the telly, we watched on the news how people around australia had celebrated easter. i was a little put out by that - after all, the weekend meant different things to different people, and it would have been nice to have seen even a tiny mention of the holi celebrations on the six o'clock news. oh well, who knows? maybe next year there'll be a news crew - maybe i can tip them off, even. but seeing as the anz bank actually had a stall at holi, trying brazenly to tout personal loans right next to the bhangra pit, maybe i won't have to do anything about getting the word out there. disturbing, but true.

well, the panel of glass thankfully did not fall out - i had nightmares about it slicing people's arms off as it shattered into the street below. happily, this has not been the case - so far. we currently have a temporary fix, which i am convincing myself, is better than no fix at all.
as an aside, let me say this - i love a good keyboard. i love a keyboard that makes nice clunking noises when i'm typing on it, which is the one thing i don't really like about the laoptop i generally do my work on. laptops are lean, mean and relatively quiet. the noises and feel of a real keyboard make writing seem more substantial somehow. is it just me, i wonder? hmm. anyhoo...
i want to get into writing some more short fiction. i have been thinking about characters. one seems to be taking shape in my head lately, i see flashes of this guy in between other thoughts, and i'm not quite sure where he's come from or what he's doing there. he's just sitting there minding his own business, and i think he would be quite happy to stay there till i decide it's time for me to go over to him and introduce myself. i have a clue that he's hiding something, or that he's itching to tell me something but he just hasn't go tthe nerve to get up and make the first move. weird. i'll leave him be till next week and talk to him then. if you're asking yourself (as a small part of me is) why i'm writing this here now, the answer is this: i don't want the other things in my head to bury this guy. if i write this here, i'm likely to read over it again at some stage and ask myself 'hey! did i ever end up finding out what the deal was with that guy in my head?'. a little weird, huh? you're telling me...
this friday it will be the fifth anniverasary of my entry into married life. i'm doing pretty good for a girl who swore she never would get married... at the risk of sounding a tad wanky, it's been a very fulfilling and enriching journey. i've found things out about myself i wouldn't have had the balls to face up to otherwise, i think. i also had the most excellent luck finding someone who i still consider a mate. we still have a whole heap to talk about and we like to chat, as long as it's not while he's playing x-box or i'm watching neighbours or desperate housewives. compromise is not a dirty word.

our street has been closed for the night - part of the joy of living near an irish pub - so they can have an extended outdoor area for their st patricks day party tonight. they've got a stage and a band out there, so you can barely hear the telly when they're in full swing (yes, literally - i live about five doors down from the pub). just before they were playing some lovely i-didley-i fiddley flutey jig music and my windows were actually vibrating. oh yeah i forgot to mention i live in an old shopfront, so that's a lot of window...
last night it was a bit gusty. at bedtime i was a little taken aback by how much the window was rattling - it never sounded like that before, and it's been a lot blowier in the past. it was also especially cold in the room last night... anyway this morning i decide to pull back the curtain and have a look-see and what do you think i find? the large panel of glass on the upper part of the window has *started coming away from the frame*. i kid you not. the whole right hand side is gaping, and it's halfway off along the top, too. no wonder it was rattly last night. the landlord's coming around tonight to fix it. i just hope all the amplified flute and fiddle coming from down the road doesn't make it fall clean out before he gets here.

went to a housewarming party on friday night and had an absolute ball, though it was sweltering hot most of the night. i love long weekends, but coming out of them confuses the hell out of me. i don't know what i'm talking about, seeing as i'm currently unemployed, so it's not as if i get mondayitis or anything. the extra time spent with the boy is an absolute bonus. it's nice to know that easter weekend is coming up - it's our fifth wedding anniversary on good friday. five years of marriage. sounds so important and boring-like, but it hasn't been like that at all. we still find it weird introducing each other as 'husband' and 'wife'. then after that the comedy festival starts. and here i am trying to quit smoking. good luck to me, huh? i thought and thought (read: over-thought) doing my own festival show this year but didn't in the end - i mean, it is a big deal, and i'm the original free-range chook. then i learn that craig mclachlan is doing a festival show and i think, hmmm. maybe i could have done something. ah, well. there's always next year. i have thought of a title for my show, so now all i have to do is write it. at the moment i am supposed to be writing the final edits of my novel, so i will put the comedy festival show creation off till later in the year. we had a bbc day yesterday - i bought a friend of mine the bbc 'pride and prejudice' 2 disk set and we watched the whole thing in one sitting. then last night i re-watched my favourite bits of 'the office' christmas specials. i love lucy davis - she's so cute (she plays mariah lucas in p&p and dawn tinsley in the office). i wish i could get 'goodness gracious me' on dvd. i love that show. i want to run away to bbc land and stow away on the goodness-gracious-me ship. bu then again i also want gurinder chadha and paul berges to adopt me. however i honestly do like my own parents, so that was more wishful thinking-like. i should go now.

today i received a very odd email from someone called maxwell knight. it's all very cloak-and-dagger, and thanks me for expressing my interest in neurocam. as you would expect, my first question was 'what the?'. i have never expressed any interest in neurocam. i went to their website and still found no answers. so, due to the whole matrix-like nature of the whole thing, i decided ot do some googling. turns out that it all started with some billboard that didn't really say anything - apart from directing people to a website that didn't really say anything, but asked people to sign up anyway. and what would you know? people did. anyway, apparently what happened if you were 'accepted' into neurocam-land after initial 'screening', you were givien a 'code name' and 'missions'. the things i read weren't really that inspirational. the whole 'secret society' idea doesn't appeal to me, and neither did this email's ability to 'make' me use too many quotation marks. has anyone else had any dealings/contact with this mob? hmm. anyway, the whole point of this rant is that at no point was i one of those people who expressed interest in neurocam, so i have asked gmail to treat any future correspondence from maxwell and his clan as spam. so there. this whole thing reminded me of an online thingie i participated in a while ago called 'useum'. does anyone else remember that? now that was good, clean fun.

feeling a tad under the weather the past couple of days, hope that passes soon... i have been a very busy girl lately, and will probably continue to be for a while now - edits are in, uni's starting, and verandah should start kicking along soon enough. in other news, my laptop died last week so i've just bought it a new hard disk, kinda like a heart transplant really. i forgot to make a copy of my favourites, so i'll have to start building that list again from scratch. my on-again, off-again relationship with my workplace is on-again (for the next fortnight at least), but i am still looking for something more fulfilling.
short entry i know, but must go now. salada!
***quick crap tv update (a hark-back to the blogposts of old...)***
i swear, where would the o.c. be without caleb nichol? i'm sure we're going to eventually find out that everyone resident in newport under the age of 19 is an illegitimate nichol. that's why they brought in whatsisname - what's his name? - ryan! because if he's not actually related to anyone, you can pretty much pair him up with anyone - cause then it wouldn't be wrong, would it? i, as you may know, am one of those sad 'neighbours' freaks. i will watch it whenever i can (which, i make sure, is most week-nights), and i used to always say that the only storyline they hadn't pursued was that of incest. but they took care of that with the whole serena/luka story line... well done, oh neighbours writers! if i had a head for hats, i'd take mine off to you.