mockturle06 | Jan. 2nd, 2003

I gotta remember to write the diary before I read my mail and get hit with all the bitchiness that infests my inbox like fleas on a dog. Don't have a sense of humour? Not my problem, bud, she says in her best Wolverine voice.

So, anyways, moments before reading my daily dose of email poison I was happy, blissfully and silly happy.

It all started last year, or two days ago, if you prefer. It was all so quiet. I had the entire floor to myself and the urge to do something incredibly childish was nearly irresistable. Resist I did though, bar my traditional 'I'm the phone bunny for the holidays' treat, that is, the reading of the slash, alone and undisturbed, in between phone calls and emails. Heaven, pure heaven. The fic was reasonably okay, too, ranging from the rather good to the having me groan out loud over some of the purple tumescent prose (a particulary heady Vin/Ezra). Nothing brilliant, but that's okay. I had some quiet me time and it was BLISS!

I really didn't want to go home, but go home I did, in time to catch a Young Indy tv movie (cheesy but charming and Sean, he's a cutie), followed by dBuffy. Then I had to go down the street to pick up some more groceries and managed to trot back with decent bubbly for a change and sparklers.

I was going in to the local fireworks display but there were to be no fireworks this year. Okay, I can just about understand it, I mean, who needs terrorists when you have the local council: last year the array tipped over and fired its load into the crowd instead of the sky, but hey, they were mostly Vietnamese spectators so you'd think they'd be used to incoming by now [efg]. Oh, that was evil, but I don't care. As I'm destined to offend everybody this year, why even bother trying to pretend at tact? (If it truly offends substitute English and the Blitz and the sentence will still retain its basic truth)

So, this year, no fireworks. Instead they promise an Elvis impersonator, which is hardly the same, in my books. I mean they banned fireworks but promised local displays instead so this is breach of contract in my book.

So, me, home with some bubbly, a couple of sparklers and Farscape. I was watching Moulin Rouge but Farescape started early when the 9pm fireworks were cancelled due to the storm gusts that had been so dramatic while I was grocery shopping, with those awful xmas banners flapping wildly in the wind like some old western.

We did have some illegal fireworks going off sporadically throughout the neighbourhood, though we only get to see the odd burst above the tiled roofs and trees. Then somebody lets off this enormous bunger and it goes off so loud everything shakes, all the windows rattle ominously and there's this weird high pitched hum in the air for about a minute afterward. Then...silence. We wait for sirens, or at least cars ferrying people discretely off to casualty, but there's nothing. Not even the dogs are barking anymore, and no more spradic pops from people's backyards. I keep imaginging a DIY crater ala Danger UXB.

By the time midnight rolls around mother is so away on the bubbly that I switch her from glass to plastic, which she objects to loudly, lurching about like Patsy from AbFab and nearly setting fire to my brother. Note to self: matches, alcohol and mother do not mix, you silly effing cow. Mind you, I was tiddly too so I was falling about laughing way too much making the only person who was really bothered the nearly ignited one.

Got the sparklers going finally after Aged Parent dropped all the matches on the floor (fek) - hey, you trying picking up matches in the dark off the floor when you're completly shitfaced - it's fun but not terribly productive, and not quite making the deadline but near enough, and the sparklers were much better than the usual bad washed out video coverage of the fireworks on Ch9. I swear they're using 30 year equipment and it's all blurry and white and red, it never picks up the greens, blues, golds, purples etc. Get better equipment, dammit. Cheapskates.

After that it was more bubbly, Buffy (forgot to switch over to CNN so see them purse lips over the Peace sign), the X Files (the goat sucker one), xmas lights and me staggering up to bed.

Woke up near 11am thinking it was only six or seven, as the neighbourhood was so dark and still and eerily quiet, which is not surprising after the ordinance went off last night. I've no idea but it was almost as loud as the officially denied blast at the naval base several years back, when there used to be a naval arms depot at the bottom of the street, at least, so I'm told by those who were around for that almighty ka-boom.

By now it's lunchtime, once I've had several cups of tea and spoilt some very bedraggled looking birdies begging for food at the door like characters from Dickens (though our little lame currawong is missing, presumed eaten - pout).

This time it's all fun, all the time. We're not in a rush to finish so we haven't forgotten anything and it's like Xmas lunch, take 2, with turkey, cranberry sauce (remembered), candied yams (remembered), peas and carrots and the last of the wine and for desert, well, I guess we were well away again by this point but it was a pudding made in Newcastle calling itself a chocolate log pudding but once served up on a plate, well, Mother started with "Hidey Ho!" and after that it was Mr Hankey, the Xmas Pud and much sniggering from us, if not out and out collapsed across the table crying with laughter as I remarked that it was mightier than anything I'd ever seen in the wild (I used to swim at the beach a lot as a littlie in the 70s back when it was so bad and 100% sewerage outfall that I used to forgoe the goggles just so I didn't have to see what I was swimming in.

Anyway, the pud was loverly, in spite of its Mr Hankey associations (really, you should have seen it), and it was the smuttiest lunch we'd had since that Xmas mother had set an array of white candles as a centrepiece only in the 40+C summer heat they'd all wilted and bent over to that illegal and highly suggestive 45 degree angle and we kept sniggering so much during the dinner we've never had Xmas candles since - mainly because I can't look at one these days without sniggering.

Could this pic be any more gay?? MB pic very wickedly nicked from www.adventureinc.net because I couldn't find it anywhere else. So it's wet, so there's no gardening, there's no way I'm going near the PC and there's nothing on tv which means: Videos! Yay! More Adventure Inc. This time it was Village of the Lost, from which the very flirty smile from the credits comes from. And guess who the recipient of said flirtiness is? Yep, young Gabe, the dear boy, and I do like this episode as it's mainly the two boys having adventures and it's all very slashy, even if the script is so bad Macgyver rejected it. It's Michael, I don't care, I'm having FUN. Next up is Fatal Error, which seems to have been rejected from the Stargate office (the scripts RDA rejects), and alas it's Mac with whom Judson has to get all naked with (fic fix, stat!) and poor Gabe fries his hand on some electrickery, though I sympathise because when my bedlight zapped me it stung for days. After that I indulge in some Magnificent Seven (Obsession and Serpents) then a bit of Profs and I finally, finally get to crack open my box of Band of Brothers and the dvd quality is brilliant and I watch three hours of it, bawling my eyes out because I get so involved with it, until the sun sets in a spectacular fashion over the last of the clouds, all red and gold then lavender and then I switch across to the military tattoo, laugh at the patronising announcer, cringe at the roar that goes up from the crowd when the Oz band plays Neighbours, and declare that this is how one films fireworks. Of course, it's not quite so magical now I know they film it in the castle's carpark. Okay, it was the parade ground, but you could see all the diesel oil stains from the tour buses and the gum of a thousand Yank tourists trodden underfoot.

Alec. Pic nicked from www.geocities.com/ebonycat2003/darkangel

After that it was set the vcr to tape Farscape whenever EC9 deigned to screen it (9.30-4.30 should just about do it) while I watched Dark Angel. I must have missed an episode while EC7 has been hiding it in the schedules because things have happened and I have no clue. So I just sit and drool over the pretty boys. I figure I'll watch it for the plot when Fox8 plays it. Hey, it works with every other show I watch.

Today woke up happy, watched Buffy, the hyena people episode, before trotting off to work. Blissfully left in solitude until 11am or thereabouts and I was so happy to have some quiet time. Didn't quite get to writing but there was note making and timelineing so I did something not work and I was so happy. That's the thing, people decide to leave me well alone and I actually like it that way for the most part. I was having fun with a capital F just daydreaming between tasks, calls and emails etc.

Mum showed up with my purse - stupidly left it in my other bag when I'd done the shopping and we had lunch together, after she'd duly admired my view. That was nice, very nice, as it's a lovely sunny day. Best Friend rang and we had a silly girly drooly talk about cute boys on tv and in film, mainly elves and aliens and the men who love them.

Then I read my mail. Ooops. My being cheeky just gets right up some people, especially on one of my lists. Too bad, they can't ban me, ha ha hee hee. Humourless uptight bunch of wizened crones who are no doubt puckered at both ends.

I shall go home and have chocolate and watch cute boys on telly. It's all good, all the time.