Still but now

I live out of home now, blog! And have done so for a few weeks shy of a year.

A lot has changed since I last posted. A whole lot. A hamburger with the lot.

I still love wordplay, I still love food, I still love community channel videos, I am still very quick to point out words that have my name in them, and I still pretend to be better at speaking Indonesian than I really am.

But now I live with James, or as I sometimes call him, James (slightly different pronunciation). We moved in together quickly, but that's because we knew it was right. He is the one who I love and the one with whom I'm going to be travelling to the UK and Europe with for a month from mid-May. So yes, I've done some growing up, but not too much of course. I drive a better car and I have a better job, and I have run two half marathons (and a 14km race too) and as I'm writing this I'm realising just how much has changed in the space of two years...

Snapchat exists now and so does Vine. Facebook bought Whatsapp and I went to Bali with Paul and lots of sad things happened in the news.

Last month I went on my first ever cruise, I fed a dolphin named Tinkerbell and I raced down ginormous sand dunes on a thin sheet of wood (and they were all experienced as part of conferences for work!). By the way the boat had one of those waterslides that you step into and wait for the floor to drop out from under you, sending you down and around the slide at huge speed. Yeah, that was good!

And like I said before, just next month I'll be flying to the UK, France, Italy, Slovenia and Croatia for my first ever holiday to the other side of the world - as part of which we'll be cycling along the Italian coast from Venice around to Porec in Croatia. After Porec we'll be heading South to Dubrovnik, to spy King's Landing.

I'm still playing tennis on Tuesday nights and now half of the team are engaged! I'm trying to be the best I can be (at tennis and in general). I cook more often, albeit far less often than James, I clean more often, and I'm generally more responsible. I live a very comfortable life.

We've filled a display book with business cards from all of the different restaurants and eateries we've eaten at since our very first date, but if you ask me for a recommendation for somewhere to go for dinner in Melbourne I'll still stare at you blankly. Why is that??

Sorry that this is just an upload of my life with very little personality injected - I'm working on dusting off my old tangent-happy brain that would always make writing such a fun experience for me (and hopefully semi-enjoyable for you).

More to come,

Dale.

Blurry Mardi Gras Memories - Saturday

The day of the parade! I'd say we slept in past midday again. We headed out for a breakfast wrap and coffee. I should mention Guy had joined us the afternoon before for the partying and the sleeping and now the breakfasting (the breakfast wraps were his excellent suggestion). I should also mention that the night before we ate a scorpion!! It had been soaking in Tequila (at the bottom of the Scorpion Tequila bottle) for a while and was squishier than I'd imagined it would be. We felt quite daring and manly eating the fearsome creature. Well I did anyway. :)

That afternoon we all spent some time in the gym - the previous days' eating and drinking playing on our minds. I ran on the treadmill for a while and then made a beeline to the pool to cool off. Scotty arrived that afternoon and joined us in the spa, where two very friendly older women walked past and took a group photo for us. Brad's housemate Billie arrived and injected some energy into the day as well.

Before we knew it the night was upon us and the parade fast approaching. Due to the fact the Marriott was in the middle of the action we needed to grab wristbands to

Blurry Mardi Gras Memories - Friday

I'm not entirely sure what the time was when we eventually got out of bed. I'd say somewhere in the vicinity of noon-ish. Up & Go's and coffees came to our rescue. Then the afternoon began with multiple quests. The hunt for RCA cables to try to get the blu-ray player working had priority. It just would not be a holiday without watching the latest seasons of Family Guy and Archer! We attempted to get a refund for the tickets to the underwear party from the night before from which we were unable to attend. And we sought out food in the form of Quadzillas...

It had rained almost constantly since we'd arrived and this quashed our plans to go to the Bondi Drag Races. I would have dearly loved to have seen a bunch of drag queens trying to maintain their glamourousness whilst getting drenched and running along a wet sandy beach, all the while praying to RuPaul that their waterproof makeup was really waterproof. But oh well. :) We had a visit from Cam and Chris and because we're excellent hosts we offered them drinks and started up again ourselves.

That night was the Foam Party at Arq. Another impressive club, complete with revolving doors!! (My favourite kind of door.) Oh but before that we briefly checked out the Beresford. Ingeniusly, I left my ID at the hotel so had to run back for it while Dean, Nick and Brad swigged Kahlua. I was wearing red shorts that night and the amount of times I heard "red shorts, red shorts" uttered while briskly walking down Oxford Street was quite something. I was unaccustomed to being ogled on such a scale! When I made it back to my trio of patient and forgiving friends I discovered they'd made a friend. A good-humoured fellow who was wearing a jacket that Nick also owned. We shared our Kahlua with him because it was becoming very hard to drink.

At Arq we stripped down to our shorts and cloaked our phones with our other clothes. This was my first foam party and first time walking around shirtless at such an event. It was awesome. And quite amusing watching the less inhibited gays grope their way around. There was one incidence of very vigorous arm movement that we kept an eye on from the balcony overlooking the foam pit. Getting under the foam itself (which was dispensed from the roof) was not amazing - not being able to see and doing everything in your power not to inhale/ingest said foam. We ran into Jeff & Steve(?) the former owners of Ice Cafe in South Yarra, and they miraculously had Quickeze on them, which Dean was about to go outside to buy. I love it when stuff like that happens! My shoes were ruined that night, but it was totally worth it.

Oporto was consumed for the second night/morning in a row then we squelched back to the hotel and collapsed into our respective beds. Another memorable and thoroughly enjoyable day.

Blurry Mardi Gras Memories - Thursday

Dean cooked me dinner on the Wednesday night before we left. An amazing cous cous. I felt spoiled and incredibly lucky to have such an all-rounder of a boyfriend.

The next morning we got to Brad's where we met him and Nick. Traffic was a bitch and we almost missed our check-in, but it only added to the excitement and energy with which I was abuzz.

I had a seat by myself, sitting in front of the other three. Dean was directly behind me and gave me one of the best head massages of my life. He also kicked my chair and teased me enough to make it a really fun flight. I bought a midget can of lemonade.

Nick ate some questionable taco mince at the airport while we waited for Dean to sort out the rental car. Meanwhile, I was in Sydney for the very first time in my life! It felt like Melbourne in a lot of ways initially, in terms of size and the way the buildings looked.

Swung in to the valet area of the Marriott and I ooh'ed and ahh'ed at the fancy foyer/lobby - still very much swept up in holiday-happiness. We dropped off our bags and I reluctantly agreed to wait to see the rooftop pool until after we'd been grocery and alcohol shopping. Amongst other things the groceries included fruit and the alcohol included... well, a lot!

We emptied the contents of the mini-fridge into the microwave and Brad stacked about twenty Up & Go's into the fridge door. It was quite precarious, but quite an achievement!

Dean's cousin Brendan met us at the hotel and soon I got my wish and we went upstairs and checked out the pool, spa, sauna and gym! I leant him my shorts to swim in because I have child-bearing sized hips. The pool was freezing and it was raining on us so we quickly hurried inside with our "water" bottles and jumped in the spa. I know, I know, drinking in the spa tisk tisk. I can't imagine that what we followed it up with was much better, but you never hear anyone say anything about not drinking in saunas... I did not care though, I was in Sydney with my boyfriend and great friends and I wanted to get a little messed up!

Out to Stonewall we went, dressed appropriately in singlets and shorts (it was raining). My first gay club experience in Sydney and I was pretty impressed. I think I only saw two of the three levels, but anyway. We danced, we drank, we met a guy called Jasper (I forgot to ask if he had a cousin named Brian, dammit!). Oporto's was the food of choice on the way back to the hotel. Those chips and nuggets now have my saliva glands in a frenzy. That night I didn't vomit but I did cry. Alcohol messed my emotions around a little towards the end of the night/early morning. Normally I'm smarter than that. So day one concluded and I'd experienced a lot of new things. An awesome day overall. :)