Week in review: something old, new, borrowed, blue

I’ll tackle the week backwards, I think.

Friday morning: I like rain, I like waking up to it. I also like lying half awake for hours in the night listening to it – until I have to crawl out of bed half-slept and schlep into work on a late train full of wet people. Still, I was amused to be swaying to the train and listening to Oscar Peterson’s “Night Train”, I’m easily amused.

Thursday night: a Book Club member’s “quiet birthday drinks” and pizza. Lovely people, mostly professional writing students busy getting contract work or finishing novels. I had a lot of fun, but was suffering wage-slave fatigue by 11.

Wednesday: the great Blogger meet up! Damn I should have introduced myself to more people rather than just lurk in the “harem corner“ at the Gin Palace with the other early arrivals. Beth and I met for a quick drink and dinner before hand (dinner at the Dumpling restaurant on Tattersalls Lane – so good! So cheap!). On arrival I added a glass of Riesling straight into the mix, but the killer was drinking a Toblerone with missjenjen.

I sometimes get a little loud and take up a lot of conversational space after a drink. And a Toblerone is a drink: cream, Baileys, Kaluha, twist of honey, crushed ice - lethal. Goes down like lime cordial but sneaks back with a sledgehammer. Anyway, I was wearing my new jeans and casual-shirt-that-needs-cufflinks, so I was fine (see Saturday, below). Which compensated for being the guy who so often spoke immediately before a long, awkward silence. Fluke, surely.

So I met funky new people! Sqeeshee has a vibrant orange blog, and a story that shows not even illness was enough to escape last Friday’s protest march zeitgeist. Dee of viscerate has a funky head-to-head, coffee-stained two author blog. A fine addition to the Melbourne blog scene and the general Canberra diaspora down here. She also thought the night was full of witty conversation, and I hope I might just manage to crawl in under that banner. Daniel, blogger Methusula, one of the earliest and most written about was there – and a lovely guy to boot. Erin, the American expat (no not odalisk, another American expat Erin), who was a riot to chat with.

And of course everyone I met last time: missjenjen, Marcus (who’s technology all of those who understood it, wanted – and who better reviews the evening than me), Natalie(who took photos …), Andrew(a mainstay of the scene) and Michael( who I didn’t really say more than “hi” and “bye” to, sorry!). Heaps of people I didn’t really get to speak to, including Vlado.

Tuesday: relatively quiet, a couple of drinks after work with one of the guys visiting from the interestate offices this week at Troika, dropped him at his work dinner, home by 8.

Monday: I organised dinner for the inter-state visitors to the Melbourne office from Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney. Good turn out from my local workmates, too, so we had about nine for a good dinner. Drinks at the Mint, dinner at the Supper Inn, tea and coffee at Sarti near the Gin Palace. Karaoke was averted, to the relief of all.

Sunday: I went to yoga. I tried to be centred. I mostly succeeded. My instructor’s brother, though, is about to be deported ... and some days some of my classmates are distractingly pretty.

Otherwise, I wrote.

Saturday of rampant consumerism: In search of a decent wine shop (futile! doomed!) I went out to my nearest mega-mall Northlands shopping centre and wandered straight into the Myer menswear sale. One shirt was the cocktail hour in-betweener extravagance I wore to the meet-up. It’s allegedly a work-shirt, but has big blue and green candy-stripes on a white background, french cuffs and a collar too loose on me to really wear a tie. It needs cufflinks, but doesn’t support a tie. Too formal for casual, too casual for formal. Loved the colours, bought it anyway.

Two shirts and a woven tie later I was out in the mall. It’s been a while since I mall-surfed, dodging the packs of home-boy teenagers, and Brittany/Christina cast-off adolescent girls. Spooky.

Then I hit a jeans store and a run of good luck. Finally, I found new jeans that fit me without being ludicrously baggy or ludicrously tight. Big issue for a slim man, the answer: Levi 502s, boot-cut. Perfect. A smaller waist than usually fits me, but perfect. Sure, consumerism sucks – but sometimes, it’s just so fulfilling, and the rat race’s only payoff.

And I found a fun DIY carwash! (I've been good through water restrictions, only washing my car once in the last three months, so I kinda went crazy.)

Then Beth and her flatmate made me dinner, I got to drink wine and pay out “Grease“ on TV.

And be totally freaked out by the fact the Mrs. Bartlett of the “West Wing“, sexy-brained Stockard Channing herself, was Rizzo. Freaky.

God, no wonder I’m tired this morning. Maybe at 27 I'm just too prematurely middle-aged for a social life ...

Nah.