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Friday 23rd September 2005

A day designated for doing as little as possible at work ... check, and getting ready for a big weekend away ... check, eventually.

I had a meeting scheduled with a client at 11:00am that, to my delight, he cancelled so I decided to take the rest of the day off. (In recent months I have done a bit of work related travel that always includes ridiculous hours; therefore I have no feelings of guilt when I steal some back).

Went to Dimo’s, and post coffee we went looking for beer together. When deciding what to purchase we had two things in mind:

- we require 2 slabs of high quality, premium beer and,
- we are tight-wads

We first checked out Liquor Land and found they only had one of the beers we wanted, so we decided to high-tail it to Safeway Liquor, which was no better - and in both instances the prices were not particularly tight-wad friendly. So we decided to head off to Dan Murphy’s in Vermont Sth and we found what we were looking for: a slab of Corona for under $50, a slab of Boags’ St George for under $45, plus a shit-load (1.5 ltrs) of vodka for his girlfriend Kylie - he must have wanted ‘some’ as well. It only took about 2 hours, but the beer was sorted, and when the beer is sorted the rest kinda looks after itself.

We parted ways and organised to meet back at his place for the big drive down to the coast for our annual Grand Final get together – this year being held at our friend’s parent’s holiday pad in Anglesea.

I went home and showered, got dressed, did my hair and make-up and then got a call from THE LAD’s mum to inform me he had somehow managed to contract head-louse and as they incubate for 7-10 days, it was likely he got it while he was in my care. Yay!! I’m not sure how he managed it as he has a shaved-noggin, but apparently the little blighters managed to jump on board and were making a home atop his head. She informed me I needed to make sure all his bed linen etc were washed and to also check my hair as there is a chance I may have them too. Great.

The only task more difficult than searching your own head for head-louse is doing so while you are wearing vast amounts of product, so before I could leave it was back in the shower again, followed by a thorough scalp check. I didn’t find anything, but you are advised to look at the back of your head which is difficult on your own, so I am still not 100% confident I am in the clear.

What I did find though was an alarming amount of grey hairs and, with that, further reason for a steady girlfriend - as in addition to providing love and affection, a steady girlfriend would:

- purchase my under-garments,
- check my possibly head-louse infested scalp and,
- colour my hair to hide the greys.

But no, I am on my lonesome, and thus am going to see if I can borrow Kylie for the scalp-check task. I haven’t asked her yet, but she and Dimo are coming over for dinner next Tuesday, so I will spring it on her then. Maybe on her way she can pick me up some Bonds Classic Cotton Boxers from the supermarket ?

Friday 16^th September 2005

Friday was the Annual St Leos Old Collegian Football Club Presentation Night at The Clarion Reception Centre in Nunawading. The penultimate club function, with only the footy trip remaining, was a night of glitz and glam for everyone - except unfortunately, for me. Being my 1^st year playing in quite a while meant I hadn’t recently been to a Presentation Night, and thus didn’t know what to wear, and the invitation wasn’t any help as it was devoid of any dress code information. On previous club functions, I have often felt a little overdressed, cause let’s face it – we suburban footballers aren’t known for our style. With this in mind I opted against wearing trousers, let alone a suit, and went for a black pair of jeans, white ‘dress sneakers’ and a nice shirt covering a T.

When my designated driver picked me up wearing smart trousers and a dress shirt I 1^st entertained the thought that I may be a little under dressed. But not to worry I thought, there will be others in jeans, and I was heartened when we drove past the venue and saw a player who was outside smoking (ever the athlete), wearing blue jeans and a shirt (black jeans are no doubt more formal then blue?!?) My relief was short lived though as upon entering I realised the function was, ahhhhhhhhhhh, Black Tie and the guest outside, I learned later, had come straight from a plane and therefore had a valid excuse for his under-dressedness. I have never felt as self conscious in my life – I was one of the two people out of about 80 guests that were clearly, and remarkably different than everyone else. What made it worse was I knew just 8 people there, so couldn’t easily broadcast my miscalculation of the dress code in the absence of guidelines on the invitation.

Oh well, I got quite drunk which lowered the care factor dramatically thus negating any self conscious thoughts. Also, not once did I feel the need to advertise the fact that I own a few quite expensive suits ……. as I’m doing now.

The night was a lot of fun, and I got to meet many of the people around the club, and talked some shit about how we will do better next year etc. The night wrapped at about 12, and everyone was going to head out to the Burvale to keep drinking long into the night. I had THE LAD at home being babysat so I declined repeated invitations go to the Burv – which was appealing as I instantly would have been part of the over-dressed club, as jeans are considered formal wear at the Burv.

So, I’m ready to go, and head to the front desk to organise a taxi. I’m told there will be an hour and a half wait as taxis are limited, and it seems none want to go to the Burv as there is no return fare. A driver came into the foyer and was looking for a person who had apparently booked one to St Kilda. There was no one claiming it as 79 people wanted the Burv, and 1, me, wanted Ringwood. A guy in the foyer asked to be taken to the Burv, which the driver refused, so I offered Ringwood and the cabbie motioned for me to follow him to his cab. I get outside and there are about 40 people from the 1’s (I’m in the 3's thus unknown in the 1’s) asking (read demanding) my cabbie to go to the Burv first, which he refused. Looking back I probably could have forced him to go via the Burv, and the minute I left - after the cabbie had his hat stolen, his cab kicked and punched, had been threatened to be bashed and had a bottle thrown at the car - did I think it would have probably been a good idea to play the mediator and broker a deal so that all parties were happy. But I didn’t – mainly because I was drunk, and a little shocked by the events that occurred – so wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be my normal conciliatory self. So now I’m worried that I will be thought of as a guy who shafted his ‘mates’ by telling the cabbie not to pick the others up, which is far from the truth. And what makes it worse is there is no chance the 1’s will forget who it was who was in the cab and refused all others... 'it was that dickhead who was wearing the jeans'!

The weekend just gone was my last with THE LAD before he went to his mum's for two weeks. He was reasonably well behaved considering he was still not 100% after being sick the previous week, but he came out with two of the funniest things I have ever heard him say. Both, not surprisingly, related to poo.

The 1st instance occurred when he was in the bath and I was in the next room getting his PJ’s ready when I heard something, as a parent, you don’t hope to hear while your child’s in the bath:

“Daddy, my poo’s getting me”

Yes, he had dropped a turd in the bath, and it was ‘trying to get him’.

Obviously I pulled him out straight away and considered re-bathing him in faeces free water (it wasn’t necessary as the turd was well compacted and solid, and I was pretty confident THE LAD was free of any residual ‘poo-juice’). I dried and PJ’d him, and emptied the tainted water and set about the task of turd removal.

When relaying this story to a number of people, the one thing I get asked most is: “so how did you get rid of it”? I ask them how they would have done it and the results vary, but are similar in nature. Here is a quick representation of how those I have told this story to would have removed the offending bowel-sausage:

58% would pick it up with tissues and flush
24% would pick it up with rubber gloves and flush
18% would pick it up with a plastic bag and flush

What strikes me with their responses is not one person thought squashing it down the drain was the way to go.

Well I did. I knew it was the way to go, but didn’t know what to use to squash it down with. In this situation an implement such as a fork or a spoon would be an ideal tool for the task, but there were obvious sanitary reasons why I couldn’t use the silver plated Grosvenors.

Enter the Chinese.

The Chinese are known for a number of things, two of which being:

- they squat over drain holes to poo
- they use chopsticks

Coincidence? I think not!

Chopsticks can be difficult to eat with, but come into their own when they are used to poke, flip, swirl and squash poo down a drain hole.

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His 2nd funny comment came that same night, when he was on the toilet doing his 2nd turd for the day. I was kneeling in front of him waiting for him to back it out so I could wipe his bum once he had finished.

He squeezed it out, and it was a gargantuan effort.

Me, surprised: “Wow, that was a big poo!”

THE LAD, very matter-of-factly: “Yeah, it’s got nuts in it!”

Me, pissing myself: “How do you know that, you haven’t even looked at it?”

THE LAD: “My friend told me”

Saturday 17^th September 2005

I planned to take THE LAD to Earthdance at Fed Sq. We went last year and this year there were heaps of kids activities planned, but atrocious weather dampened my enthusiasm. So I took him to Starbucks instead where they have an indoor play centre to keep him entertained while I sip their awful coffee (it is really bad coffee, but a bad coffee is better than no coffee, and the fact they have a playground means I get to have one in relative peace).

I didn’t note it at the time but it was a bit weird that rain (no doubt caused by the corporate world’s dodgy environmental practices) meant that instead of hangin’ out with the hippies, campaigning for world peace and sustainable living, I instead spent our time and money at Starbucks: the poster-child for everything that’s wrong with the corporate world. Bad hippie-empathiser….. bad hippie-empathiser!