A photoblog and other things

NOT! This has been the biggest weekend of nothing I’ve ever had. I was feeling like crap all of last week at work. I think it *may* have had something to do with my trip over to California. Hmmmm… So I spent the whole weekend recovering in bed. I also discovered cable TV this weekend. Normally, I’d only turn the TV on to watch “The Daily Show” on the Comedy channel (oh, and Reno 911 and Drawn Together). But this weekend I watched the History channel as well and I watched a 3-hour special on stealth technology in the armed forces. Fascinating stuff.

I also spent a lot of time mucking around with my new Razr V3 phone. I’ve completely Aussied it up. The background is the boxing kangaroo and my ring tone is an mp3 of “Land down under” by Men at Work. Americans just love that stuff, and since coming over here I’ve become more of a patriotic Aussie anyway. ESPECIALLY since Australia is donating all that money for relief in the Tsunami disaster. Oi! Oi! Oi! (believe it or not, once someone found I was from Australia that’s all they would say to me).

Goodnight!

This is where my journey started. Of course, I had the whole LA experience – touching down in the airplane and then being forced to wait on the tarmac for over 1/2 hour until a spot became free, leading to me being a total of 2 hours late.

Anyway, after meeting up with my touring crew we headed off to Venice beach. There was hardly anyone down there (it was the middle of winter after all) but it still had a pretty cool atmosphere. After checking out Venice beach we cruised down Santa Monica boulevard for a while and then went to Hollywood boulevard. Here I did the total tourist thing and got my pictures taken with whatever stars I could. I look back on it an think “what was I on?” – they were only names on the concrete after all, but anyway.

We then met one of the crew’s friends. This is what I had been looking forward to all day. She was a former chick from Baywatch – not one of the main characters, but a background fill-in. But she was in Baywatch! She also played a small part in Jerry McGuire. Nowadays she seems to be obsessed with peace and scented oils. She also didn’t look as young as I thought she would… but Baywatch was a while ago after all. We met up with her and her boyfried at a really cool bar in suburban LA. After that we went back to her place where we drank and where I attempted playing guitar whilst being drunk. Not advisable! Her boyfriend prepared us some appetizer that had Parmesan cheese and… cinnamon! What is it with Americans and cinnamon? They have it with everything! It actually tasted pretty good though. I spent a lot of the night trying to work out what the boyfriend actually did. He did a lot of things, but I think he was a cook but also trying to get into the acting scene. They (as in, actors trying to get a start) are apparently pretty secretive about that sort of stuff.

So anyway, the pictures from LA are here

There have been a few songs bugging me my whole life coz I like them a lot but I don’t know who the hell they’re by (and I don’t know enough of the lyrics to google them). One I don’t think I’m ever going to figure out until I actually hear it on some CD coz it’s some Spanish song from the mid 80’s or something like that. I’ve just solved the identity of one of the others however. I used to listen to this one when I was in Year 1. Yeah, a long time ago. There was a tape player out in the shed and I used to play this song over and over and then sing it at school. The name of the song is “Listen to the band” by the Monkees. I got it wrong at the time, I used to say “Listen to the fan.” It didn’t make much sense back at the time, and last week I thought about it again and determined that it must have been “band” instead of “fan”. A quick google and a download of the song and voila! Mystery solved.

Today is a good day.

With any trip, you get highlights and lowlights. Highlights from my trip to California included sightseeing LA, San Francisco, camping in Yosemite and snowboarding Lake Tahoe. The low part of my trip was a constant hum in the background. That fly that won’t let you get to sleep at night. The itch in the middle of your back that you just can’t reach. It was… a woman.

No, it wasn’t anyone I met people, but the one who was travelling with us. When I met up with my travelling group in LA it was all pot pourri. That sweet, sweet smell soon reeked of a sewage treatment plant. I have never met someone so neurotic in my life. I have never known anyone to take so long to get ready in my life (sometimes nearly 2 hours). Never have I met someone so insecure that they would blatently make their problem everyone else’s.

Ok, let’s set this straight: the girl was an ex of the other guy I was travelling with. But that relationship was over a long time ago. Actually, it was never even a serious relationship. He made it clear to her before she made her decision to come to the US: “we are all going to have a fun time, that is all. Don’t expect anything else.” This seemed all cool. We were all well into our 20’s. Grown-up adults and all. However, she played the defenseless girl.

“Can you go get [some particular item] out of the car?” If you didn’t, she’d be in a snoot for the next couple of hours.

When my mate and myself were having a laugh about something, and the attention was not directed at her: “This trip is supposed to be about me!” (I kid you not, she did say that)

Upon asking her if she’d like to do anything in particular, when no decision had been made: “I don’t know”

Upon asking her if she’d like to do anything else once a decision had been made (because she couldn’t make one): “Well you guys have made a decision already… what’s the point?”

Upon suggesting food at reasonable prices other than the McDonald’s which was always her first choice and was making me sick: “It’s too expensive”

Upon learning that we may get snowed in at Lake Tahoe, something that we could do nothing about: “Well I have a plane to catch back!”

We needed to be somewhere, and somewhere early to get some sightseeing done. Not so! She had to spend over an hour putting make up on and doing her hair.

Obviously, this girl needed to grow up big time. Here she was, on the other side of the world, with the potential to have a fantastic time but she blatently chose not to. Her mood was constantly flipping between two extremes, spending most of it’s time at the bad end of the scale. There is a major possibility that this will be the only time she’ll ever be in the US. What a way to waste it.

On the trip back to Phoenix, which was the last part of the holiday, she was complaining about the music we were listening to. She claimed that we’d listened to far too much of our music (we were the ones driving). I decided I’d had enough. In a service station that we stopped at I saw a Cheech and Chong CD that looked really, really bad. I bought it and played it. She hated it so much that she forced herself to go to sleep so she wouldn’t listen to it. Awesome.

The great thing is that I’m actually having difficultly remembering any more distinct examples of her being in a foul mood – let me say there were a LOT of them. I’m only really remembering the good stuff now… thank god the crap is being filtered out!