Pfangirl Through the Looking Glass

Well, the weekend was a quiet one. Paul and myself joined Kate and Warren on Friday evening to watch Fun With Dick and Jane at the Pavillion. The film was pretty entertaining- utterly forgettable, but a pleasant evening’s amusement none the less. Saturday was spent doing basic admin chores like installing the pool light and erecting a 30 year old canvas tent in preparation for the drunks sleeping over this Saturday after my sister’s 21st. Although a thunderstorm hit in the evening, the weather in Durban on Saturday was good enough to plan an impromptu braai. Of the eight invites sent out, only one person, Warren, responded positively. Honestly, that left me fuming at the time in a social outcast kind of way. I sat plotting a snotty blog post, though didn’t get around to posting it at the height of my temper. The braai did happen though, although we were too lazy to play Settlers of Catan afterwards, preferring to veg on the couch afterwards and watch Robocop 1. Sunday was so uneventful...

It’s been a pretty busy, relatively productive week so far. Mostly it involved accompanying Paul on his errands, but I also finished returning all my favourite programmes and settings to my PC (after a pointless Windows re-install), wrote three drafts of my next column for GEAR (due on Monday), looked briefly at Paul’s company’s big website project, and am on my second bigamous marriage in Fable. Oh, and I still have to edit together my sister’s photo-video montage tribute for next Saturday, 4 Feb. Sitting in the sun on Wednesday morning helping Paul with the installation of the new pool light, the revelation hit me how nice it was to be busy but not trapped in an office. That truly is soul-destroying; life-wasting. Instead of wistfully staring out of the window, hoping that the good weather will last until the weekend, 2 days of genuine freedom, I can go out and enjoy it. Sitting around doing nothing really is a waste, and it strangely makes me feel very edgy and anxious. Especially w...

I am so hungry right now. I'm sitting at Paul's company right now forum browsing and downloading the updated versions of YIM and MSN Messenger for my PC (Ah, the joys of ADSL). I suppose I should be doing some work while I'm here, and I suppose if Paul doesn't come back from his technical support mission upstairs soon, I may as well do something constructive until we head off for breakfast, and all the errands we were supposed to be doing this morning before the emergency call. Anyway, the weekend was one long exercise in frustration. Since Thursday we've been buying computer parts, swapping and installing new parts, installing and de-installing programmes, and basically problem-solving for 4 days. We became the bloody House team for PC 'medical' mysteries. After initially thinking the new motherboard (that I was receiving in turn for giving Paul my old one for his mother's office PC) was faulty, we discovered that the start-up problems were due to a RAM...

Alright, I haven’t updated this blog since last week, so here’s what has been happening in my life since the weekend. On Friday evening, we went to The Butcher Block in Glenwood for Peter’s surprise birthday party. It was a pleasant evening despite not knowing a good many people at the table, and, after sitting in the smoking section all night, coming home reeking almost as badly as if we had spent the night at Burn. Saturday evening was my fondue. I hope people enjoyed it because it’s the first and last time I’ll be hosting one of that scale, for a couple of reasons. A) Fondues are not cheap. B) Paul and I spent 2 hours on Sunday morning scrubbing oily pots crusted with crumbs and nauseating meaty ‘floaters’ that had fallen off forks the evening before, and turned into snacks from Supersize Me. C) Saturday was probably the hottest day of the Durban summer so far, which made party preparations a pain. The humidity was quite literally paralysing. A couple of people at my party had bad h...

My birthday was Tuesday and it was a pleasant day. It is true though that once you pass 21, your birthday isn’t nearly as exciting or important until you start reaching those milestone ages like 30 and 40. And who really looks forward to those? Anyway, in terms of a present run-down, I received a brown jacket (bought back in June) and money from my parents, money from my grandmother, a CD pouch, black strappy top and Hang Ten beach mat from my sister and her boyfriend, and a fragrance from my uncle and aunt. Paul bought me flowers and is going to be transferring some money into my bank account as a contribution towards my iPod Nano. His parents bought me waps, the short flippers for boyboarding... I mean bodyboarding- damn that’s a funny type-o. Now I have to go through the shlepp of buying my iPod. ZAStore has the black 4GB for R2000, but they’ve been sold out since before Christmas, and I’m a bit wary of buying something that expensive and delicate online. I printed the list of appro...

There hasn’t been any major news since the beginning of 2006. After feeling neglected towards the end of 2005, Paul and I have spent a lot of time together so far in 2006 (running errands, being around town etc, but I’d still classify that as quality together-time). With Paul’s parents away until the 5th, it was great having his place essentially to ourselves. No parental nagging to have things done the way parents like it at that specific moment in time. How relaxing. Anyway, the weekend was a good one. We spent Friday evening at Jackie’s place for what was essentially a going-back-to-Joburg braai / party. Of the people I know, Bronwyn and John were there, as were Warren, Natasha and Matt, and Gareth and Denbeigh. We were having such a good time chatting (about 80’s cartoons, old games and thin-skinned, ready to bleed senior citizens) and snacking that time itself turned out to be pretty irrelevant. We were in the pool playing volleyball with an inflatable globe way past midnight. Mys...

The 2nd of January was a really beautiful day in Durban- sunny, not too humid, with a light breeze. Paul and I headed down to Brighton Beach early in the morning to snorkel around in the rock pools revealed at low tide. There were plenty of zebrafish, some angelfish, hermit crabs, and even a large crayfish hiding deep under an overhang. I did however succeed in slicing open the side of my wrist, when the rock I was holding myself up with over a deep pool, crumbled in my hands, and I grated my palm down the sharp surface. More painful though was the revelation, when we got home, that my back was badly sunburnt. I put suntan lotion everywhere but my back (it had been overcast and in the water I didn’t feel the burning at all). Right now my back is that beautiful shade of crispy bacon meets Eskort polony pink. I also made the mistake in the evening of accepting Paul’s suggestion that in order for me to improve at Warcraft III, I need to play against non-computer opponents, namely him. Now...

New Years this year was celebrated at Mark’s place where the party was a School dress-up theme (clearly a product of Mark’s nostalgia for the School Discos that are so popular in London clubs these days). Basically everyone had to don their school uniforms or at least one item of school clothing. Needless to say that there were a number of white shirt and tie combos, as well as a many short black skirts and blazers (which are an absolute bitch to wear in the muggy Durban summer). G was definitely the evening’s dress-up stand out, coming in drag as ‘Melissa’ so that he and Shirley could pass as lesbian school girls. Meanwhile, Paul combined a blazer and school tie with nothing but a swimming cap and his speedo. The speedo was fortunately covered for most of the evening by baggies. There ended up being quite a large number of people there; a combination of Mark’s friends, his sister Diane’s and his other sister Lauren’s. Even my school friend Hayley, and her husband Greg were there, alth...