I had a little bit of a magical Saturday this weekend. One of those first day of summer holidays days; you wake up and the possibilities of what could be done stretch before you in a landscape of gold and ruby prettiness.
And since Im one of those people who count sleeping in a gift from above, this Saturday I slept in. Gloriously snoozed as the birds woke up, had a shower, fed the kids. jumped into their trees and sang until I was gently awake.
The original plans for Saturday were built around the need for Phil to go into the city to fix up his car registration due to his laptop blowing up the night before. However on waking it was discovered that dates were read poorly and that the car would keep for one more week.
Being liberated from our original task put us on the spot, we were showered, dressed, but had no car rego to fix. So being the creative sparks we are and being tired of all our local breakfast haunts, we decided to bop into the city anyway.
This decision found us in the shiny, but mostly empty Docklands. It’s an area designed for huge crowds. But as huge crowds don’t inhabit the area on generic Saturday mornings, it was mostly ours.
We cruised the breakfast choices along the waterfront for a little while, marveling at the pretty architecture, ugly architecture, and general emptiness of the place until happening on a shiny place overhanging the water.
For this part of our journey, all there is to say is NOM NOM NOM. Phil had the big breakky, I had the BLT. Then we waddled out.
I let the universe know that a tram right about nowish would be really convenient, as over breakfast we had decided to go check out a fancy suit for phil in a fancy spot on the other side of town. And lo, I turned around, an a tram with a destination matching ours trundled into view, giving us just the right amount of time to get ourselves and our full stomachs to the tram stop.
We inspected the suit but decided that it would have looked much better with a pin stripe rather than a check. Meandering through various lane ways, I exclaimed ‘where are we’ and ‘I’ve never been here before’ so many times I may as well have been in another country.
The giant empty place, walking around the alley and the giant breakfast had made us weary, so we turned our sails from home and hopped on a train.
Hopping off a stop too soon so we could stroll in the sun. I spied a chalk arrow on the ground.
“I feel like playing follow the arrows”
To wit Phil spun me in the direction of the arrow and we walked heads down in search of the next one. We had found 5 when we saw the pub in the distance and Phil mused that if the arrows lead there we would just have to stop for a beer. One or two more arrows in the right direction and we were there, and yes, there were chalk arrows pointing into the pub door.
‘But they’re drawn in a different stye” I cried.
“Dosn’t matter, the arrows say beer”
I checked for more arrows in the right direction.
“Did you set this up?”
But Phil replied in the negative.
We sat outside in the sun watching the traffic, sipping beer and musing about nothing much. After letting the day and the beer soak in, we picked ourselves up and wandered home.
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It’s up! And it has Stuff™ on it! Stuff™ that I did! And that poor old domain was only a holding page for 1 year and 3 months! This is made more hilarious by the fact that I did this 1 week AFTER getting my new job; 5 weeks after the interviews and hoop jumping.
And look! Look up! It’s in my nav! So, ok yes. I did use someone else’s CMS to do it. But it was take the easy way out or have a permanent holding page. And permanent holding pages don’t exactly generat this much excitement.
And speaking of that new job. Someone should bug me to write about it.
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In polite conversation, folks often ask about your hobbies. Acceptable answers to such questions range from ‘Gaming’, ‘Painting’, ‘Stamp collecting’ to ‘Cars’, but tell someone you run for fun and more often than not, you’re going to get a few odd looks.
Apparently being into running means you’re also a teetotaling, fitness freak with a perchant for tofu. People tend to clutch their cigarettes at me like Romanians clutch garlic to keep the vampires at bay. Im not, really. I drink with the best of them and I have a cute tiny beer belly called Gary to prove it. If you want to smoke, thats fine. Im not about to make you run anywhere. It’s ok, calm down.
I run for fun. It’s something that has always come naturally to me. No complicated equipment, no instructions, no boats to drag into the water or bikes to fall off of or sweaty apes making disgusting grunting noises. Just you, and the air (I avoid running on treadmills as it makes me feel like a mouse). You want to stop, you stop. But it feels so great if you keep going.
I was in the athletics team in primary school, and wound up being vice sports captain for my team (Go red team, yeah!). I dabbled in hurdles, long-jump, high-jump, and triple-jump but was only good at such things because I was good at running. There was no training involved, I was 12, it was just my thing.
I tried out for the athletics team in high-school, but my overwhelming geekiness made it hard for me to feel accepted by my cliquey pop music loving, bleached blonde, luddite peers. However forced participation in school sports meant that there was still running to do and I enjoyed it despite myself. I made friends with a fellow running outcast and we would jog around after school.
In uni I drank beer. Then I broke my knee, kept drinking beer and got fat. Aesthetics being my speciality, it was hard looking in the mirror and not being pleased with the view. Sure, you aren’t what you look like, body image, blah blah. But its hard for someone who is so focused on how things look all day to suddenly turn that off and think ‘I am happy with my thighs jiggling like that’. So once the fake knee had been assimilated I got on with the running, only this time (possibly due to alien abduction) I was aiming for distance.
I remember struggling, 3ks seeming so so far. I’d have to stop and walk in the middle, breathing like someone about to give birth to a small moon and as red as an English tourist who has spent 3 days at the Gold Coast in January. I enjoyed it despite the moon puffing redness.
After a while if I didn’t run every now and again, I would get these nightmares of something chasing me and not being able to run fast enough to get the hell away from it. My subconscious’ guilt is powerful stuff. And now if I don’t run I get crabby and have trouble sleeping, occasionally eye gouging can result.
My favorite part of running right now is Mordialloc pier. I go fast to watch the water rush past me on either side and deliberately make it hard for myself to dodge the fishermen. I like to convince myself that once I get to the end Im not going to turn around but run out onto the water road-runner style and eventually find myself in Sorrento with wet shoes.
A few weeks ago, thanks to an email from Nike, I signed up for my first race. I feel like a debutant, being presented to the world, or a gay man coming out; “I run, and Im proud”. Im terrified, what happens if I can’t finish? This terror has manifested itself into a training schedule of 5:30am starts, intervals, fartleks and vigorous stretching. And for a little while, my fear also stopped me from telling anyone I plan on doing it because if no one knew, it’d be easier to chicken out.
So now we get to the point; on the 31st of August, I am going to run my little legs off around Melbourne. My goal is not only to finish the race, but to finish it in under an hour. My first 10k training run will be this Sunday and currently my 9k is sitting on 55:56. I am both excited and terrified. Wish me luck.
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I’ve met a few with this affliction. Those who step into office supply shops and suddenly flush with an excitement most reserve for the bedroom. Those who actually care very very much about which pen the write with, those who can debate lined over grid paper. Those who can quite happily drop $20 on a pack of pens from Japan because no one can quite make the ink flow smoothly like the Japanese.
I’ve shared these urges with the general public and am usually faced with a mix of disbelief and suggestions I see someone. But we all have our things that others find odd, like stamp collecting or being a Skunk enthusiast.
What brought this on was a visit to a local art supply shop. I didn’t need anything in particular but I went in anyway.
I caught myself with my hand on a Moleskine gridded reporters notebook. I didn’t actually need it, the first draft of this post is written in something almost exactly like it with three quarters of its pages free.
In this wide world there are many things that can corrupt the brain. There are people who snort stuff, drink stuff and take stuff. Then there are those who get their highs from new pens and paper.
Why do I have these raging notebook urges? What was wrong with my brain? Something that a few shared and the rest thought was insane.
I have always been this way. At age 4 mum only had to provide me with a packet of pencils and a new colouring book and I would sit there and fill the lot in. At 7 while my little brother got matchbox cars, I was quite happy with a set of unicorn shaped erasers. At 12 I made my own tiny envelopes and letter heads to send tiny letters to my tiny friends. And at 23 I’m reaching for a blank notebook I can barely afford and have no great need for.
I think I, and those like me see something that others see in things like children, race cars and Ikea. We have experienced it, the magic of a design so comfortable on the paper it was created on, it may as well have always been that way. Or a piece so perfectly written that even your messy handwriting can’t detract from it and may even enhance it’s charm.
Its about potential. All those empty sheets of paper, all those unused pens full of virginal ink, all that potential to create something great.
We’ve felt the joy of those materials, those humble little pens, help us create something we feel is great. And that is a great joy, one that urges us into art stores, lifts our hands and compels us to reach for things we don’t need and can barely afford but in which we see so much potential.
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