It's the New Year. I know you know, but can you believe it? It's the 21st Century man! Clean slate as far as the eye can see! I feel such tremendous optimism. I have new skills, potentially a new career. This year will see me moving into a new living arrangement, meeting new people. I plan to travel more, to Australia at least this year. I have more balance in my life, I actually feel confident quite often and when I don't I know that's just part of being me and that's okay too. I know I impact people's lives and I also know the most interesting people on the Planet. I am attracted to people who are attracted back. I have talents and I am able to learn, and I teach sometimes too. See? There's tons to be excited about! I spent the New Year time with Freya who made that time so special for me. I was planning on knowing her for a long time but after spending such an important date with her she will forever be in my memories and I am so pleased about that. She is a joy. ..shhh i stole this.. fray is the black bantam and I am the old white hen... ..this is from an email I wrote just hurtling over some of time spent with Frazzle... I didnt know what to do for New Years Eve. There was a big concert thingie on in the Auckland Domain so I thought, yeh, go there. So we drove into the city early to check out the population density. For some reason I thought there would be screes of people in town being new years and all and the place looked deserted. so Freya and I went on one of my tiki tours out to the large shopping complex called St Lukes to do a bit of ferreting. while we were there we bought feather wigs and freya bought a feather boa.. we also bought bubble blowing mix because, well, because. Then off again to the city and to the Domain, very very early i might add, but then I am extremely anal about time and being on time and not being late. It was raining. not just that misty foggy rain, actual real falling wet rain. I bought a programme and the helpful people gave us each a pink rubbish sack to sit on .. we found a small patch of grass and sat on our rubbish sacks huddled together under our umbrella. Freya looked at the programme. it was around 5pm. the concert started at 7:30pm with the first hour and a half being Handels Messiah. Then a concert of the entire world history. oi vey. we looked at each other. okay. we left for a warm pub. So in the pub we dried off and drank beer and played pool and fed the juke box coins and drew on the scoreboard until 7:30pm when the staff kicked us out because they were closing for the night. We popped into the bathroom and donned our wigs and boas.. and then upstairs to another bar, and Irish bar, where we spent the rest of the evening. The night was slow to start but the man who played the violin/fiddle in the Irish band adopted us and kept us company and played songs dedicated to 'those in hats' etc and we made friends with his friends and just all and all had a wonderful boozey dance filled night. bra-cark... chicken noises.. i seem to have done that a lot we wandered Queen Street for a while but it was still raining heavily. There were people but they were just wandering without purpose. We went home around 4am with sore feet. watched a bit of tv then fell into bed. though James wouldnt let me sleep cos she's mean like that. after sleeping for a while, we drove down to New Plymouth, to the Farm and spent a day and two halves there. It continued to rain, we didnt do anything apart from talk and eat and sleep and watch surfing videos. oh I did take her to the Supermarket. *nods* her last night here was lovely.. we went out to my favourite restaurant. and it was perfect as usual. the staff are very attentive and they took a shine to us. Made Freya a vodka and chocolate cocktail, sat us in a lovely window seat, then nearer the end of the evening one of the bar staff who had been serving us earlier sat outside our window and blew parafin from his mouth and ignited it with a lighter. Freya got to see me in all my vague glory.. forgetting where i was driving, not finding parking spaces, heh, i kept forgetting to feed her. but it was sooo lovely having her close. yesterday when I dropped her off at the airport, i got sick, well i had been having tummy cramps but they got so bad at the airport i was afraid i was going to toss my cookies in the departure lounge so i left her there and went home. she got home okay. and I feel better today. today I missed knowing she was asleep in the other room. already i miss not hearing 'mishmish'. --------

I wrote and saved this file as 36.html yesterday and yet it is gone. Go.. Geocities. I am not here much longer. So it's boxing day and this year is banging ahead splendidly. It's quiet and I am alone and will be until Freya gets here. I phoned my family yesterday. Even spoke to my mother, so see, I can be a good girl sometimes. My brother is going to stick around until New Year so we can visit and Christopher is there too and thats just very cool bananas. Kristy and Emma'll be around so its just gonna be a really nice couple of days. I wonder what Freya'll make of my family. I wonder if they will be normal for her.. i bet they will be cos they suck at being abnormally polite for any length of time. I feel the need to bang on about content again.. so I think I will go and shower instead. ..later.. I am clean, but it seems to have taken hours. I watched lame tv and plucked my eyebrows after finally locating my ever invisible tweezers. I have a message on my phone to return video rentals. Yah.. well.. I am always late. Online Diaries. I guess this is one on account there is a date at the top of each page. Diary suggests something secret and undermatressy. We who document our thoughts and daily events in this format online want our diaries to be read. So they are personal but not private. But all of a sudden, there seems to be a 'diary boom'. Last year, was it? yes.. last year Freya and I had a giggle over a few months putting up a page together, which still holds some good stuff. Part of that site was a diary. Each wrote seperately, sitting next to each other. Before that I had scooted around the web looking at a few of the 'diary' rings that had clustered together. Mostly they were pretty boring. Words and words and words about what they had had for breakfast and who was going out with who (whom) etc etc. With the advent of diaryland.com the interest in keeping a diary has seemed to have exploded to the point nearly everyone I know online has one. Some are good, some are personal, some are actually private. I wonder if it's a fad though. The hysteria of gathering net-real-estate. I have noticed on my little circuit of diaryland stops that some are being updated less often, some have stopped being updated at all. And no, I don't think it's just the time of the year. What are the good things about keeping your diary online? For a start it means you are updating your webspace regularly. Adding fresh content which is essential to the evolution of the web. It's great to have an audience. People who are attracted back again and again to see what you are up to, rewarded in doing so by new, fresh content. Because let's face it, its all about connections, isn't it? Writing things down is good for the soul too. Getting ideas on paper, so to speak, to sort thoughts out, and to revisit over time. As a person who is accused of spending far too much 'time on line' I have to say, internet addicts often have the most boring of diaries. Just like a website, it's author has to be receiving fresh updates and new content and stimulis constantly. We need to be getting up out of the chair and hurtling around the world bringing the interesting stuff back, filtering it to give it our own flavour then publishing it with pixels. Those on my diary circuit do that. Their content is freshened and perspectivised often, even if they too are accused of sitting around in front of that damned computer too often. heh, we are borderline.. but we pass. okay I lost my thread then. I want to add to my Parklife section with an hilarious story about my sister and the art of living in the moment. But I can't capture the images of the event in my head. It is by far the funniest thing I have ever heard out of her mouth. Maybe I should record her and put it up as a .ra or something. I doubt she would let me do that though, maybe i could bug her phone or something *thinks*. She was telling me all the ways I have ruined her life. I had no idea. She has at least five seperate "how shelley ruined my birthday" stories. I was amazed. (i am not going to beable to remember all five, and she's gone to the beach so I can't phone her and have her confirm, but I will give it a bash..) ...apparently at one of her birthday parties, I organised the games. I can vaguely remember spending a lot of time getting a treasure hunt arranged and supervising it and being chuffed that it was successful. Her version of events are the same as mine, except from her perspective I stole all her friends and she ran away from her birthday party. I didn't remember that part. She said no one had noticed. ...I had no idea, but according to Jo, every year each of us in turn received a 'big' present for christmas. Jo said it was her turn for a big present as I had got one the year before and Wayne the year before that. I am gonna have to get back to you on this one.. i can't remember the specific details.. I'll find out in the New Year and update this ... we were given a doll each for Christmas. Now the facts are fuzzy, I always believed I was given the brown haired doll and Jo the blonde. The neighbours stole the blonde haired doll on Boxing Day and shaved its head and poked it's eyes out and I found it in a box down in the creek about a week later. My dad punched their dad in the mouth. However, Joanne doesn't recall all the details as I do. Yes, she said, we each received a doll for Christmas, but she got the brown haired doll and me the blonde, which she said, was typical cos the blonde one was nicer. She maintains the neighbours did in fact take the blonde doll but I then took her doll cos I no longer had a doll. That actually doesn't sound like me, but then, truth never did have a lot to do with history. I can remember finding the hair in the neighbours play house, then finding the doll after searching and searching for it, cos i was so mad at them making my little sister so miserable. But Jo is adament, and her memory has always been superior to mine. ... and then their was the whole 'gifts from australia' thing. I think Jo got a few holidays merged into one. But I will tell it from her viewpoint. What she saw was my Uncle Peter and Aunty Jackie returning from a trip to Australia bearing gifts. She said she saw item after item being lifted from the boot of their car, all for me.. a tape recorder, a guitar, clothes, felt tipped pens, package after package. And all she got was a koala purse and a pen. I remember that, not the hauling of massive quantities of gifts for me, but being given the radio/tape recorder I had been aching for. I got the guitar that same Christmas. They were gifts from my father, who had asked Peter to buy them for me in Australia. I received the tape recorder before his death. The guitar after. So I am thinking this episode was around June/July of 1975. Poor Jo. She really did seem to get left behind in the scramble of being the third child. I had no idea, I am hopelessly blind at the best of times but as a teen I was worse. She shared all this with me on the phone, and yeh, obviously she is 'over' the feelings that used to boil inside her over them but the memories are still there. We laughed and laughed but there was an unpinning serious miscarriage of attention evident, that I am not saying is my fault exactly, but the adults in our lives sure could do with a good kick up the arse for letting her feel that way for so long. I of course was gloriously happily spoilt, and that's the main thing. Kinda puts her young teens in perspective for me now, though. --------

I have had a very rollercoastery week emotionwise. I'll tell you about that in a little bit. Right now, I am taking a timeout to drink a cold can of coke and sit in front of my MASSIVE new monitor before I blitz thru my house and make it nice for tomorrow. I love it when it's clean and I hate it all the rest of the time. I have just got home from the Supermarket. Of course, only a complete fool or idiot would shop on Christmas Eve, and as frantic and as crowded as it was, because I was just shopping for myself, I had a rather pleasent time of it. Wanna know what I bought? It's all just for me for my Christmas Lunch tomorrow. I bought a small crayfish. That's a bit like Lobster but lighter flesh and not as subtle of flavour. That said Crayfish is still flipping wonderful and its a complete luxury. Mostly cos a small Cray'll cost $40 and feed two people (one if its a man) so, to feed crayfish to people say at christmas, is an expensive affair. But Lunch-for-One and I am having Crayfish. I also bought a dozen oysters. I love oysters. Twelve is greedy but I don't care. I have two bottles of champagne, and salads, and dessert. My lunch is gonna rock PLUS.. I hired SouthPark and Ned Devine on video in case there isn't a Charlton Heston Movie on tv. And I just got to see Mike, after missing him so much lately. Just a little lovely Mike goes a long way with me. He won't be back until February, so I am extra glad he found the time in his hectic life to squeeze me in. He's such a lovely person. I love him dearly. And Freya, I love her too. She is gonna be here on the 29th of December. *just smiling* I know the best people. I really do. Sander is my darling sweet friend in Holland. I love him dearly. Look at me, I am not even making sense. It's because these three people are the most important people, outside of my family, in my life. They have supported me and loved me and kept me company and sometimes, I honestly don't know how I could have done anything, let alone what I have achieved in the last 12.. no.. 24 months, without them. I respect each of them with such great esteem. They make me laugh. They hold my hand. They are just, *wordless* .. god, i just hope they have some inkling as to how much their lives mean to me. How much they are part of who I am. *chuckles* Mike says no one can gush like me.. but it's cos its real, and its the truth. 24 December, 1999 9pm It's cooled down again. Brilliant sunshine, glaringly hot.. then rain..down it came around midday.. now its darkening quickly and it's cooler. So.. back to my emotional rollercoaster week. I finished School on Friday 17 December. And in case you missed a memo or I have been my usual dodgey self, you might not know that I had been on a 36 Electronic Multimedia course at the National College for Multimedia and Technology. On Friday, the course finished, and I graduated. I remember telling you that. So.. Saturday.. hungover. I still managed to cater a christmas party for 25 (turned out to be 36 plus their kids) in two hours. I did a grand job but quite how I managed it I will never know. Sunday and Monday and Tuesday I just stayed in the same clothes - ate, slept, was pretty quiet. I felt exhausted. To the marrow of my bones I was utterly exhausted. But then on Wednesday, I went into school. I still had to retrieve my files from my harddrive and burn them onto cdrom. I did that. I told you that too. That day I was hyper-happy. For no good reason, not even sugar I was bubbling over with happy feelings. Then Yesterday, Thursday, I decided to buy a larger monitor. I have been looking at them for a while and had decided on a 17" the same as I had had at school. When I got into the store though, that 19" just looked at me with those big puppy dog eyes and next thing you know I am leaving with it. It was so huge it hardly fitting into my car. I get it home, and plug it in, switch it on and wtf? its crap. really crappy. I fiddle and adjust but it will only give me 24bit colour and thats just not good enough. I tried to convince myself that I could stand having the lower number of colours but when I bumped it up to the bigger resolution to use Director, which of course was the entire reason for buying the monitor in the first place (Director needs room for the cast, stage and score.. and I couldnt navigate around the stage of my portfolio on the 15" screen) and I could only get 256 colours that was it, it had to go back. Seems I had in my haste forgotten that whole 'graphics card' lecture and mine was no where near good enough to cope with the higher resolutions of my new monitor. So this morning I took it back. They didn't want me to downgrade to the 17" and purchase a suitable graphics card. They wanted me to keep the 19". But, I said, I can't afford to purchase a new graphics card. The impulse purchase of the 19" had already stretched my budget. So, in exchange for my old graphics card, they gave me a new one that could handle the new monitor. How 'bout that!? Jolly nice people. And of course when this putz forgetful mish here left her purse in their store, they drove out this evening and delivered it to me, saved me a trip back into Newmarket. So that's the spirit of Christmas. Good will to men and big arse monitors and 4mb graphics cards on old systems like mine. ...don't forget to put out something for Santa to snack on and a glass of milk cos he gets so thirsty.. a couple of carrots for the raindeer won't go amiss... --------