When Parties Get Out of Hand...That's University For You...

Dear Fire Department,

Sorry about all of this. It was an accident. Well, not so much an accident as some unclearly thought out actions and behaviors that seemed like a good idea at the time. It started off with one room mate dragging the couch out on to the deck so he could have a few beers in the sun on a Saturday afternoon. As I'm sure you can understand, beers and sun make you tired so it makes sense that he wouldn't want to get up and use the bathroom. Why wouldn't you just sit on a plastic shopping bag in the hopes that it would absorb whatever you released? And then why wouldn't you want to refine a design flaw, upon finding yourself sitting in your own pee, by attaching an external catheter*? Those catheters can fill up pretty quick when you're just drinking beer and the release valve is quite close to your leg so you probably want to refine it even further by removing the long hose from the dryer and releasing the valve into the hose so that it can drip off the deck. Probably want to patent the design at this point.

Let's face it, at this point, everything is starting to seem like a great idea - I'm sure you can understand that. And with great ideas, comes great crowds of friends all wanting to see the design and to hold your room mate to his promise of not leaving the couch until the beer runs out. Happened sooner than you would think. So with that out of the way, he got on with some weekend chores like mowing the lawns. I mean what good is a lawn mowing business if you can't take care of your own flat on the weekends. Just get that lawn mower up on the roof and turn it on. Not a lot of grass up there but seemed worth a look. After a while, who wouldn't want to get down? I fully condoned his idea of diving off to try and hit the wooden bed that someone had dragged out on to the concrete**. And then off we went to the hospital! But not without some on the spot triage from yours truly. Duct tape has many uses and it will stop bleeding from the chin almost immediately when you wrap it around chin and head. Also, you won't be able to see the wound if you go around enough times so who really knows if the bleeding is stopped. Not your problem at that stage.

It can be quite difficult to fill out paperwork when you're intoxicated and injured from a gutter cleaning accident.  Well, NZ's Accident Compensation Corporation does require you to provide the circumstances surrounding your injury and your occupation and if you've just said that your occupation is that of a gutter cleaner, stands to reason that your injuries would result from cleaning gutters.

It's possible that you might not have even paid us a visit if we had just gone home and sent our room mate to bed to rest up.  Unfortunately that just didn't happen.  On our return, the party was in full swing, apparently we hadn't been missed at all which is a little disconcerting since it was our house.

It's possible that in an attempt to draw attention to ourselves, we might have started a small, insignificant fire on the concrete.  I don't recall if it was for a BBQ but that seems logical.  At some point things got a little out of hand and a lot of stuff was thrown on the fire.  A lot of our stuff since people weren't really donating their things.  Just ours.  Including our microwave.  Have you ever seen a microwave burn?  What am I talking about, you're the Fire Department, you've seen everything burn.

To be honest, before you showed up and showed us the error of our ways, I thought that riding a bike through the flames and then on down the street with flaming tires was genius.  It looked like a circus act although I noticed none of you thought it was very clever.  Which is a shame because people were lining up to ride through the flames, down the driveway and then off into the neighborhood.  

Speaking of neighborhood, I suspect one of them called you because we didn't have any interest in dampening down the flames at that point.  BTW, thanks for dampening down the flames, it was probably time.  Beer can make that difficult to recognize.


Kind regards,


One of the party attendees***.

*The origin of this is uncertain but seems like something that would be lying around a student flat, even if no one was studying Nursing.
**In hindsight, removing the mattress was a poor decision although I don't think it would have helped since he bounced off the bed and hit the concrete anyway.
***Call me...

Conversations Overheard By The Dumpster Outside My Bedroom Window

It's not as bad as it sounds.  On the plus side, very easy to get rid of trash.  If it weren't for the bars on the outside of my window, I could probably stand and throw my rubbish directly in the dumpster.  How many of you can do that? Also, when one can't sleep, one hears very interesting things.  On the downside, sometimes when one is sleeping, one gets woken up by conversations that might be interesting during the day, but lose their appeal at 3am.  Also on the downside, my bedroom is right by the dumpster.  So, that's nice.

Night time dumpster.  Cool spot to hang out.  Probably meet my next boyfriend here...

Just a couple of recent conversations to give you some flavor of the area I live in:

1. Shiiiittt bitch.  Actually a very short conversation.  Not a lot of substance.  Spent quite some time waiting for the second sentence, which never happened.
2. *"I can tell you're not from LA by the way you're squatting in your heels**". What? First of all, why is she squatting in heels? If I was doing that I'd never get back up, still be there in the morning.  Unless I'd tipped over.  Second of all, is he familiar with squatting styles?  Is there a squatting style city guide out there?  Third of all, is this a criticism or an observation?  Fourth of all, go away.
3. Dude, look at my bike?  What's wrong with it?  It's not there any more." Got myself a new bike...
4. I finished my beer.  Me too.  Let's go.  Happy that you're leaving, just not sure why you needed to stand by my dumpster in the first place to have your beer.  Also, umm, you're right next to a dumpster, can you please put your bottles in it?
5. Are you Jewish. Yeah, you? Yeah. Sweet.  Since I live in a very Jewish Hasidic neighborhood, it probably wasn't too much of a stretch to figure this out.  Just glad they got it right and there was no face-off due to religious differences.  Would have had to move my BBQ out of the way...

*I was tempted to go out and make sure they weren't stealing my BBQ. First sign of dragging metal and I would have popped my dressing gown on and high tailed it out there to have a BBQ tug of war.
**Better not be squatting by my BBQ.

A Day At The Beach

On Tuesday I played hooky* and went to the beach - Huntington Beach. It has some of the best surf** in SoCal and it was packed. I didn't want to get in the way so I stayed on shore. No point showing off my skills. Just makes people feel bad.

Surfers - looking an awful lot like shark fins.

So I wandered around the shops, had a beer, a burrito, made friends with the guy making flax roses and then got myself a nice red tan sitting on the beach. That tan will fade to brown in a week, shame about the shape of my necklace burnt into my skin. Still, no need for necklaces for the next couple of weeks.

This is the rose that the guy on the pier made me. He was in the army for 15 years. It was free but I gave him a pretty big tip because I'm pretty sure he can kill me 5 different ways with this rose.

Pretty nice place, this Huntington beach. A little busy and why are there so many teenage kids hanging out? If the truancy officers got bonuses for turning kids in, they'd have a field day there at the beach. Thought about faking being a truancy officer and getting the kids to pay me bribes but then my sense of right and wrong kicked in. It would be wrong to waste all my energy walking around so I sat back down.

Anyway, I've decided to build a shack under the pier, make wind chimes out of old cutlery*** and retire there. Tomorrow.

*And by hooky I mean, I scheduled a day off 3 weeks in advance. I'm very responsible but "hooky" makes me sound devil-may-care which is a new image I am working on cultivating. I have a spreadsheet listing out all the steps. So far I think I'm still coming off a little "devil-do-care" but that's because I haven't reached step 4 yet.
**I know this because there is a sign. Not because I was in the surf. 10cm waves are a little high to be going out in, methinks. Also I have started saying "methinks" to everything. Doesn't always work but methinks me sounds cool. And a bit Victorian.
***Don't want to encroach on Army guy's territory. He could easily kill me with one of my cutlery mobiles if I stole his clientele. Actually rethinking mobiles with sharp, pointy things in general. Doesn't really matter, just has to look handmade (check) and be useless (check).