So while looking up who Matt Tyler was, I found this awesome page on A Country Practice. Have been sitting here reading all the character bios, it's certainly bringing back memories.

Almost cried at this part regarding Molly Jones:

She died at home in May 1985 while Brendan and Chloe were flying a kite -- she was lying on a couch in the yard watching them when death claimed her and the last thing you saw and heard was Brendan running toward her and yelling before the picture faded to black

Even though it was something like twenty years ago and I was only 12 or so at the time, I remember that scene *vividly* :(

Watching Fantasia 2000 tonight which I haven't seen in *ages*. I used to watch this a lot at Marrickville while slightly drunk, and being a Friday night I thought I'd have the odd shot of Drambuie, Cointreau and Vodka (not together ;) ) and watch it.

I first watched this with Cynthia in December 2000, just after I'd been to America, and the Rhapsody in Blue scene brought back memories and "been theres" of Grand Central Station, Rockerfeller Ice Rink, and Times Square. That, and the flamingo scene are my favourites on the video. It's starting to deteriorate though, I should probably invest in the dvd.

The cool thing about being slightly drunk is that you think of things on impulse, and suddenly I have a dinner party planned for tomorrow night :) Gonna need to go shopping for a few things tomorrow though.

It was my cousin's son's christening tonight, which was followed by a very Greek dinner function. It brought back quite a few memories from my childhood. My uncle married a Greek lady and so all the christenings of my cousins and other such functions were held in Greek Orthodox church, with lots of chanting and insense. Followed by big parties with lots of people, lots of food, and lots of line dancing. Tonight, for a new generation, was no exception.

It was a lot of fun, although the music got very loud towards the end of the night. It really kills opportunities for conversation.

I also noticed for the first time tonight that my aunty's brother (on the right in the pic, aunty is on the left, cousin in the middle) is kinda cute, for an old guy (he's bald which helps :) ). He was fully getting into the dancing, was pretty cool :)

My brain is starting to melt down at the moment, because all the things I need to get done are all dependant on each other, such that I don't know where to start. For example, I don't really have the time in one afternoon to find homes for all the crap I need to put away. So I pick somewhere to start, like putting away to boxes of Christmas decorations. But to do that I need to take down the fairy lights. To do that I need to clear space on the floor. But that will take more than an afternoon to do.

I also need to do a water change and move my black angels. But to do that I need to clear space in front of the fish tank. But to do that I need to spend a day or two putting away all the crap that's lying around the floor getting in the way. argghhh!

I think I'm just going to have to start piling everything up so that at least it doesn't cover my entire floor, then I will have the space for my brain to be able to cope with sorting everything out.

I went to a "Creative Memories" party last night.. kinda like a tupperware party for photos. Basically it's so they can sell their albums and other bits and pieces. It was $10 though which kinda sucked, since I really didn't get anything out of it except for a bit of useful information. Like, for photo albums, not only should the paper you mount your photos on be acid free, but it should also be lignin free and buffered. And if you're using plastic pockets, they should be PVC-free. Was that worth $10? No, since I'm sure I could have found that out on the web. We did make up some pages with photos on them that could ultimately be used in one of their albums, but since I don't even take ordinary photos anymore (I haven't developed a roll of film in 5 years), and the old photos I do have I just want to scan so that I can look at them on the computer, then there's not really a lot of point. I'm not going to spend hours creating individual pages with a few photos on them, it'd take me *decades* to go through all my old photos doing that. It's going to take me long enough to rescan everything as it is (I scanned many of my photos several years ago, but only at 100dpi, which makes for tiny photos on screen).

ok I have not heard that song in 13 years. In fact I didn't even remember it existed until just now, as I was cleaning out a drawer, and found the lyrics that my brother had written out for me :)

So I've rearranged my study yet again to fit in the filing cabinet. But in the process I decided not to put things back into the shelves/drawers unless I had a good reason for keeping them. All was going well until I got to all the letters I'd gotten from penpals, and then to a collection of "letters" that Jacqui and Chris and I used to write to each other on the outlines in church. I only read bits of a few of them, but they had all sorts of miscellaneous crap on them, including talk about boyfriends and people I might ask to the year 12 formal. I know I should just throw them out, but just think of all the memories I wouldn't be able to dredge up if I did that.. hehe

I also dug out my music books from when I had keyboard lessons in primary school, and worked pretty much all the way through it in a couple of hours! Then got totally frustrated because the chord keys listed were different to another book I have, so I have no idea which is correct. Must ask Sami.

Good grief, it's been 10 years since Jurassic Park was released. I saw it the day it was released. I was at uni at the time and saw it on the first morning. I'm now watching it again for the first time in years.

If it hadn't been for that movie, this web page very well may not exist. There's a whole story behind it here. The movie influenced the major I took at uni, which led me to the people I met and the career I ended up in.

It wasn't even that great a movie. I enjoyed the book more. I actually read the book in a day and a half the same day my mid-year 2nd year exams finished in 1993. But watching the movie has brought back all sorts of memories.

Another thing I did was write a review on all the reviews on the movie for a "general studies" subject. So I did all sorts of reading about the movie and all the associated stories on genetics, and taped and watched at least a dozen different documentaries and specials. Fun times :)

In preparation for tomorrow's office move, I was cleaning out my desk/drawers of crap so I could file stuff I hadn't filed in months. I started with a filing cabinet drawer that had been accumulating stuff since 1997. Plenty of memories were dredged up about the various projects I've done over the years, server info, schools support, project work, network diagrams, web design, etc etc. Had a lot of fun giggling over some of the earlier work I did and had completely forgotten about, like a complete audit I did of the computers in a couple of the units we support. Not too many of those computers would even exist anymore.

We've chucked out a lot of old computers, mostly pentiums, but the odd PII as well. We dumped a whole stack of dead stuff outside our door in the hopes that someone would steal it. Noone has.

So I guess I'm not *completely* hopeless - as in my last post on the topic of throwing things out where I just couldn't do it - I actually chucked out a pretty decent percentage of the stuff I had in that drawer.

Still not looking forward to moving tomorrow though :(

It was totally unreal in Sydney during the Olympics. The majority of people were on holidays, so there was noone on the roads. I chose to continue working, so had dream drives into work, and then spent half my time watching "ip tv" olympics coverage, as there wasn't really much work to do any way.

Everyone was in a party/holiday mood. There was stacks of free entertainment round the city. The public transport system performed absolutely flawlessly.

We went out to Olympic Park to see a few things, and while it was insanely crowded, it was all very organised, thanks in no small part to the army of volunteers, and there was hardly any queueing for anything.

My biggest regret was not getting to see the opening ceremony. When I saw the opening ceremony for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles I thought at the time that it would be a such a once in a lifetime event that if it ever came to Sydney I'd *have* to see it. My mother and I both applied for tickets, but we didn't get them. I didn't regret not having to pay $1345 *per ticket*, but I still really would love to have been there. I also wanted to go to one of the dress rehearsals, but you couldn't get tickets for that (you had to know people or be involved). My friend Liz was a volunteer, and her "beat" was Stadium Australia, so she got to see it for free.

Wow it's been 10 years (and a day) since the announcement of the winner of the bid to host the 2000 Olympics. That brings back a flood of memories. I can't believe it's been 10 years. I was at uni, and actually did a general studies project on the media coverage of the announcement. I taped a whole stack of the footage, and still have a bunch of it somewhere. The classic image of John Fahey jumping out of his seat is the first image that springs to mind.

Then there was Tanya Blencowe with her "My name is Tanya Blencowe. You may be wondering why an 11 year old girl is speaking to you to today. Well the reason is, I have a very important message for all of you, from the children of Sydney and Australia". Yikes I still remember the opening of that speech - they played it so often in the weeks afterwards. It was very sad a year later when she lost the whole top half of her house in a bushfire and lost most of her Olympics memorabilia.

ah what a classic. Must watch some of the footage again sometime.

1. What do you most want to be remembered for?
I aint going to be remembered for anything
2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?
Are we there yet?
3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?
Getting my fish tanks?
4. What about the past ten years?
urgh.. um..
5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?
Don't stress (it doesn't work for me, but the theory is there)