too tired to be original, i'll begin by repeating my facebook status update... "[i] can't remember being warm". i am being quite literal.

i am in bed because i once watched a movie at school on the evils of tramping and the voiceover said that if you were getting hypothermic you should get in your sleeping bag. i figure getting in to bed with your electric blanket on full would be the same thing. but actually as i type i am wondering if i will get frostbite on my fingers. plus even with the trusty leckie blankie, and thermals, i wouldn't say that i was warm exactly.

you know who else has been cold? ernest henry shackleton.

hello, i'm sir ernest henry shackleton. trying to cross the antarctic on foot was COLD.

i know this because i've seen an episode of shackleton the tv show. he and i have another thing in common too - we are both explorers. for shackleton, it was polar exploration. for me, it is the following....

• board games. this week i played settlers with the ships and something or other extender pack. not all explorations are successful, but like shackleton it is how i recover that sets me apart from my peers. in other words, i lost big time. but i'll bounce back.
• parties. i went to the matariki ball at te papa on friday night. if you went to law school with me you were probably there. everyone else was. it was a bit lame though. so the big discovery was it isn't only in highschool where balls fail to deliver.
• baked potatoes at midnight espresso. friggen delicious, even if at the time i was disappointed because i wanted them to reopen the kitchen to make me a ham, cheese and onion toasted sandwich.
  
• dancing to interpol. so, yeah, i've done this before. but at 24 hour party people on saturday night i may have even beaten my own record of awesomeness in interpol dancing. also i co-discovered the new best male dancer at 24hrpp... yellow pants. that's our nickname for him anyway. as john travolta to disco, so yellow pants to brit pop. basically.
• pineapple fritters and red bean jelly at dragons yum char. both were too sweet. but both were new and exciting. dragons yum char was just so efficiently run too. apart from no mango jelly it was the near perfect 24hrpp recovery breakfast.
• bagladeshi cinema. i went to see bricklane tonight. so sure, it was from the UK, but you get what i mean. i needed to go to the bathroom from half way through. which may have reduced my enjoyment somewhat. pretty good. maybe 6/10. if slow moving pieces that make comment on the crazy times post 9-11 this could be your cup of tea so you'd probably rate it higher. what stopped me rating it higher was the weird flashbacks and arty shots and not enough screen time for the younger male lead REOW.
  

see, shackleton and me, not too dissimilar. and actually, after starting with my facebook status, i now might have to end by changing my facebook status line. because i'm starting to defrost and i no longer fear frost bite. i knew the leckie blanket wouldn't let me down. i'm sorry i ever doubted it.

i can remember exactly when i decided my life's ambition was dancing to interpol. i was standing on the dance floor at 24hr party people and heinrich maneuver came on and i realised at that exact moment that it was more than a good song. it was my FAVOURITE SONG OF ALL TIME. of course i have had about fifty 'favourite songs of all time' since then.

then i went to new york and discovered that i would miss seeing interpol play there by a matter of days. and i was heart broken. making my desire all the more intense etc...

and thursday night: dream came true.

they played the auckland town hall. and the line to get in (if you had tickets) was about a hundred metres down the street. due to the most inefficient wrist banding of all time. EVER.

anyway, the queue meant i got in about five mintues before interpol came on. ie perfect. (btw pre interpol snack: kura on queen st, recommended).

the man from world who sold me my new skirt (confession, i've been spending like money grows on trees) was there. i am madly in love with him obviously. so avoided his gaze. then i realised it might not have been the world guy. because auckland is full of attractive, tall, well dressed camp men.

anyway interpol came on. and they rocked my world. i sang along until at one point my throat felt raw. and i danced as much as i could, but was restricted by the making out couple to my right. bloody february 14. bloody st valentine. auckland goes for vd in a big way. it is one of auckland's less charming qualities.

at the door i lied and said i didn't have my camera. but just as well i did. here is the only photo i took.... f0r a beautiful moment the crowd parted and i could see paul banks.

the band are not really charasmatic crowd engagers in between songs. but they are awesome. and i would rather powerful music than witty banter from a band (pj harvey's banter was one of the low lights of her concert for me, for example). and they played nearly every one of my favourites. NYC may have made it into my top five interpol songs based on thursday's performance. and evil was awesome as you'd expect. and rest my chemistry... i don't have the words.

the review in the herald said they played no i in threesome. which is my actual FAVOURITE SONG OF ALL TIME. but i must have passed out from how good it was. cos i don't remember it.

but i remember every other moment. vividly. and will be reliving it for months to come. i just can't get enough of intepol right now.

where to begin? probably by saying that internet at the quadrant is not as good as internet at home which is a bit frustrating. but that is hardly the biggest news of the day.

last night i went to see pj harvey at the civic. there were fairy lights. I AM A SUCKER FOR FAIRY LIGHTS. but more important GUESS WHO SURPRISED ME OUTSIDE THE CIVIC THEATRE. only AL. only one of the funniest people alive. only someone i haven't seen for over eighteen months. she has been in japan. and i can't believe i haven't blogged about her more. i found some blog posts, like this, but given that my internet is so friggen slow at the mo' .... i am sure there is more.

anyway, after a joyful reunion and a few hiccoughs, including talking to some guy who had been in antarctica and was now looking to buy a pj harvey ticket, we had to part so that we could go to our seats. and i watched pj harvey be awesome. i am not her biggest fan or anything but by the end i was super in to her.

here is a clip of her singing when under ether, apparently. don't even begin to think that my internet can play this....



the guy next to me was there for the crowd surfing rocking numbers. he was disappointed. i felt it in his snarky clapping. the woman on the other side kept checking the time. but i sense she was in to it. probably just trying to get home for the babysitter. there were a lot of that type at the concert.

after the show we ran into alex again (mr antarctica) and ruined our chances of having a valentine by walking away from him and instead going to some dive of a cafe and drinking milkshakes (me) and hot chocolates (AL). and i took selfies. and it was like old times. only better because the boys in dorkland aren't the boys in wellington so there was new stuff to talk about.

today we might go to an aquarium. but first breakfast. maybe we'll test the french toast in dorkland. and then life ambition fulfilled. cos it is INTERPOL TONIGHT.

so today the salvation army saved me. from a life of clutter and hoarding. they came and collected my unwanted but "too good to throw away" crap. i had drawers, bookshelves, bric a brac and even the y2k novelty (oversized) eye glasses that i'd been saving in case mr snuffleupagas visited.

above is a pretty lazy version of a panoramic photograph of my room. goodluck finding clutter in my new shrine to organisation!

but now that i'm not cleaning my room 24/7 i need to find other things to fill my life. and you know what is doing the job right now? rampant consumerism and holiday planning. this is the outside of my wallet....



this is the inside....

(empty)

but honestly... i am going to have the best february on record. even if it does mean spending my life's savings and five days by myself in dorkland.

in summary:

13th feb

• fly to dorkland
• go to pj harvey

14th feb

• go to interpol and finally FINALLY finally get to achieve my life's ambition: dancing to interpol playing live

15th feb

• probably hook in to interpol

16th feb

• sonic youth

17th feb

• come home on qantas taking advantage of my new 'silver' status with the qantas club. which means i have spent too much on travel in the past 12 months, but also that my chances of being upgraded just get better and better.

my difficulty is that (1) this is turning out to be more expensive than vegas and (2) i am not that in to pj harvey's new stuff and (3) i only know one sonic youth song. but i figured that since they all fell so close to each other i'd be a fool to miss it. to counter (2) and (3) i'm frantically downloading sonic youth and pj harvey songs in an attempt to create familiarity if not adoration. to counter (1) i'm not checking internet banking and hoping that there is a bank error in my favour.

i'm so angry at new york city.

if you've read my blog even once before you will know i'm going to new york. for a wedding. and it will be awesome. but somehow the wedding is on at the worst possible time for me to see the bands i'm in love with.

yesterday i declared that my life's plan is to dance to interpol. life's ambition denied. because they play NYC about a week before i get there. arctic monkeys are the same. kaiser chiefs are there the same time as me. in fact so much the same time that they are playing the exact same time that my friends are getting married. i contemplated finding a way of doing both but i'm pretty sure it is not feasible. the biggest heart break was morrissey - who i miss by like days. then there are the bands that play hours after i leave (bloc party) or a couple of days after i leave (lcd soundsystem).

luckily though i'm there in time for genesis.

i hate new york.

despite this i'm saving for it. which is why i'm having my weekly to-dos. last week i set the bar low and still failed to deliver. mostly because i keep buying songs on itunes (spandau ballet's gold anyone?). hence my creditcard use. that plus the visit to the bendon outlet store in otaki which somehow is like introducing my wallet to the toilet (in that my money seems to get washed away). but i did everything else: dancing til dawn (or thereabouts), 90210 special features, and lots of toasted sandwich lunches.

this week i will try and raise the super low bar a little, just to inspire some kind of action or inaction on my part. i will know it is a good week if:

• i use my remaining student loan overpayment cheque to pay off some of my credit card debt
• i find some concerts to go to in the USA that do not involve phil collins
• i buy some awesome sunglasses to go with my new bathing suit
• i remember to charge my cellphone consistently
• i take my lunch to work at least one day and have zero berry yoghurt trios for breakfast
• i have a fabulous afternoon tea with hels.
  

my heart is full. basically because i've had the time of my life this weekend.

first i got to eat homemade and organic pancakes (well the blueberries were organic, not sure about the rest) and drink tonnes of coffee at the ex internet dater's love nest on saturday. best start to the weekend ever. over the coffee i realised i had no life plan. which was initially a bit shocking but then when i got home i watched three hours straight of gilmore season six instead of doing laundry and i noticed that rory gilmore also has no life plan but she's going about finding a life plan all wrong. ie with logan and not jess. so i felt like i wasn't so bad afterall.

then i spent like five years getting dressed to go to 24 hour party people. i am all about functional clothes but for some reason i decided to wear like a million layers. because that's what you need when you're dancing - to be dressed for sub zero conditions.

as a warm up for 24hrpp i went to hrc's house and we watched the special features on the 90210 (season 2) dvd if you recall i've already watched them but they were AT LEAST AS FUNNY the second time around. probably because nothing is funnier than how brandon thinks menial labour is righteous.

speaking of righteous: 24 hr pp. i don't even want to talk about it because it was so awesome. and i'm someone who basically passed in the middle missing my favourite song a design for life. i think it is hilarious how i spent the entire nineties avoiding manic street preachers and now when that song comes on - BLISS OUT.

and at the same time the song was playing and i was lying on a table on the balcony with my head next to a dirty ash tray i got hit on twice. that's right, i was looking so hot in my millions of layers that boys couldn't help themselves. which is super frustrating cos usually i put so much effort into looking kempt or whatnot but apparently all i need to do is look like i'm about to pass out. boys are an enigma. or simple. one or t'other.

after i'd upped my sugar levels and rested in the relative cool of midnight espresso i returned triumphantly to the dancefloor where i was basically given the eye a million times. but then it was also odd because i thought everyone thought hrc and i were lesbian lovers. due to the way she wore a tie and how every two seconds we had to whisper in eachothers ears. but the whispers were always about one of three things: how much we love whatever song was playing, how awesome the night was or how we could get into photos. there was another line of whispering, all about how one of our favourite dancers was talking to us like we were his new besties. but when i say us, i really mean me, because hello he didn't say a word to hrc.

anyway, danced, drank water, took off more than half of my clothes. and lasted til the end when i went home and started taking photos of myself so i could see what was so hot about me that boys couldn't resist themselves (and girls too actually, we were hit on by everyone).


i think it must have been the blue bow (which you can make out if you look hard). which was a gift from the ex internet dater. which is like how this post began. what a well rounded entry.