Growing up, I think most of us end up having a favourite relative. For most people it’ll be someone you gravitate to mostly cos you’re roughly the same age, and/or sex and the two of you are interested in the same things at the same time. So when your families get together at those time honoured obligatory family moments – birthdays, christenings, weddings etc, the two of you get along like a house on fire, and all the aunts etc get to comment on how ‘they’re like peas in a pod those two!’ Bit of a cliche, but there you have it.

For me, it was always my cousin, EtHaB. He’s about 6 years older than me, and he and I always got along famously, though for the life of my I don’t know why. It was probably thanks to the hours we used to spend together, that I became above averagely guy-lingual for a teenage girl! Though why I needed to know the difference between twin Webers and a Carter four barrel I’ll never know! (Totally couldn’t tell you know and feel much edified for having forgotten most of the crap we used to talk about!)

Anyway, he had his wedding anniversary on the weekend (20th apparently) and I went along, mostly cos I felt I had to. You see the sad thing about my friendship with EtHaB is that I have changed so much over the last 20 years, and he really hasn’t. I dont know if it is because I went to Uni, and travelled the world a bit, or maybe it is just cos I’ve grown up in the city and he still has country all over him. But when we went up to their place for the BBQ I felt so out of place. I found it hard to talk to most of the guests – quite a few of whom I am actually related to – as we have no common ground anymore.

So once all the polite questions about my fathers condition were out of the way, I had NOTHING to talk to them about and spent the rest of the night smiling and nodding at some truly outlandish comments, about frozen vegetables being soaked in caustic soda that cause your – wait for it – fingernails to go brown!?!? 😐 how curfews and peer restrictions for young drivers will do nothing to curb road fatalities (and this hours before 4 teenagers die in a hideous crash down in Byron Bay) and (my favourite) how if you sell your house for less than you paid for it, you don’t have to pay the bank back! What the???

You see, I know there is no point debating issues here, from past experience, I know I will just end up being yelled over, and there isn’t one open mind in the room willing to hear an opposing opinion on ANYTHING. It seems the most eloquent (and strangely socially accepted) way in which to make your point in that crowd is to reiterate your viewpoint, louder and louder until you have verbally beaten your opponent into accepting your opinions as gospel, when in fact your listener has merely succumbed in fear of permanent damage to their eardrums.

And then this goes on until the wee hour, followed by what must be the worst night sleep I have ever experience, only to be woken again by back pain at about 6.00am! Again!!!

I’ve had a great night, but that certainly wasn’t it.

Last night, I had a dinner party happening at Azerbaijan. I think I’ve only had one other dinner party all year, so thought it might be good time to have another one :S There’s been so much going on this year, I just haven’t had the motivation to make the effort and have people over. Maybe part of that is cos my favourite Dinner Monkey left town and I’ve not had the energy to try and break in a new one.

Anyway, I spent Friday afternoon as usual getting ready for everyone coming over – grocery shopping and tidying the house a bit, when you wouldn’t believe what happened… for the first time ever, I had nearly half our party cancel on us! In the hours preceeding dinner, our group went from 12 to 7. What a bugger! We’ll be eating leftovers for the next week! We had a great time anyway, six or seven is a pretty good number for mostly having one conversation at the table, so it was all good. I got to give HdM his damn passionfruit fudge, which means I now feel totally vindicated in continuing to harangue him about consuming all my damned Bourbon!

BTW – LuckyPhil if you’re reading this – BigSal was disappointed not to get a chance to get to know you better! So you’re not getting out of it that easy – we’ll have to reschedule!

Mr K, HdM and myself ended up staying up late, drinking and talking until about 2.30am which would have been fine except that I was woken rudely by back pain at about 6.30am! Grrrrr…. need more sleep!

.

Have been stupidly busy lately – I seem to have just had one of those weeks where I felt run off my feet running errands etc yet end up feeling like I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing!

Spent quite a bit of time chatting with Macca this week, am getting to know him a lot better – if you’re out there Mr Macca, you’ll be glad to know you’re growing on me! And that my originaly opinion of you has risen considerably from the intial impression of ‘drunken immature yobbo’! Yes, you know what I’m talking about….. Festival 2005, someone was waggling their naked arse (actually their naked everything) in the window of the DX pavillion one night, and I can tell you it wasn’t a pretty sight! Way to make a lasting first impression!

What else happened this week? Went Swingin’ on Mon and Thurs nights. There is a strange imbalance in the girl to guy ratio lately – through the 1st and 2nd level blocks, there was 2:1 girls to guys, and now I’ve hit Level 3 the ratios are absolutely reversed, with nearly twice as many leads to follows. Not that I’m complaining mind you – the more blokes the better! Big Bad John wasn’t there so things were a little more sedate this Thurs than we’ve become accustomed to.

Went to lunch with LuckyPhil on Friday, that was fun, we seem to get along like a house on fire these days, which is good – thankfully there appears to be no residual damage from character bashing I must have received from the PHB when he first came to Bris! We were going to go to a movie, but had childminding issues, so we’ve made a raincheck for Monday.

Last night went to the St Floz event, which was fun… had a great night catching up with everyone, and drinking those nasty over strength Smirnoff Double Black things. Miss CL put away an entire bottle of Card-onnay on her little ownsome, so she was in fine form…. I do believe I even saw her on her knees offering LuckyPhil ‘favours’ at one point!