So I'm just driving down the road today and I come up alongside this trailer - with *people* on it. So I looked closer and it was actually a film crew! There was a cameraman filming someone inside an X5 that was sitting atop a flatbed trailer, with a lighting dude as well. It was the funniest thing to watch. But it was going a bit slower than normal, so I couldn't watch for long. Oh well.

Di has had a couple of posts recently about online dating. She personally doesn't like the idea. But she qualified her posts to note that she is not opposed to the idea of happening to meet people online, she just doesn't like the idea of pigeonholing people and thereby limiting the chances of finding love in an unexpected way.

I personally have never used an online dating agency (although I did browse through a Christian one once). Partly I didn't want to spend the money, partly I think it seems a little "desparate", partly meeting people is rather a tedious business - there's all the boring small talk of "where do you live" and "what do you do" which I hate having to go through over and over again. I can see their uses - it'd make it easier to find people that have similar interests and goals in life, but I'd still want to meet the person in real life pretty early on before taking anything too far.

So over the last couple of years I've been semi-actively looking for blogs of people that I could conceivably have an interest in. Mind you this wasn't a terribly effective method - I don't actually read any blogs of single guys in Sydney! heh. But blogging suits my style of meeting people. I can read all about what they have to say, without having to say anything myself. Sometimes I will respond to a post, and people may come and read my blog. Or vice versa, people start reading my blog. I figure if anyone is interested enough in my life to read my blog and comment on it, then what they say in their blogs must also have an interest to me. And so I read the blogs of quite a few students, and other people that I wouldn't necessarily have gone looking for. And I end up reading a very ecclectic collection of world views.

In April, a guy named Aurelius began leaving comments in my blog. I went over to have a look at his, and was intrigued by the location tag that said he was in Rome. But in the early posts I began reading he said he had just moved to Jerusalem. It didn't take me long to realise he was actually an Australian living in Brisbane, but his blog intrigued me enough to read it from the very beginning, something I rarely do. I also began to read the blogs of Pinky (his girlfriend at the time) and Stu (his best friend).

A few weeks later, my parents were planning a trip to Queensland and I was to tag along. So I left a message on Stu's blog that it would be cool to meet him and Aurelius. Several emails went back and forth, and on the way up a few smses. I thought for a while that I could end up meeting them without a word being spoken on the phone, but Aurelius called me from a landline because he had no credit on his phone, and plans were finalised for a Sunday night dinner at a cafe. And so we met. As the evening was drawing to a close, the plan was that Aurelius was to take me back to where I was staying, but Stu said "awwww". And I knew there was something there. Something that had potential. Not only did it tell me that he was interested in me, but it kindled a similar reaction in myself. I wanted to spend more time with Stu too. A couple of days later, when were staying on the Gold Coast, I wanted to go to Infinity, and was wondering whether my mum would want to come along. And then I had a thought - I wonder if Stu would be interested in coming down. So I smsed him, and he was. Several smses back and forth later and plans were finalised. And so we had a lovely night. I was starting to like this gentle man, but in my head I thought no, don't do it, bad idea, he lives a thousand kilometres away! But even as I was travelling home over the next couple of days, I was smsing him, and once home we began to spend a lot of time online chatting.

And so that's how it began. Completely and utterly unexpected. Something that would never have happened without the internet. Without Vic telling me I should write a blog two and a half years ago. Without Aurelius happening to find me and post here. And at a point in our lives where the both of us had resigned ourselves to being single forever. As Stu would say "it's a funny old life".

Another lovely day today. Took Stu to church with me, and as predicted, the first thing people asked was "where do you live" and "what do you do". Honestly, can't people think of more original questions than that?? Oh sure they're just being friendly and all that (even if a little in your face as in the case of Mike), but it gets old really quickly.

Came home and had some lunch and a generally relaxing afternoon, before wandering out to a luggage store to look for backpacks, and then I took Stu to work to show him my office and our servers. Wandered back home again and just hung out some more while I did a small lamb roast (which turned out quite well for a first time effort).

And then it was time to take Stu to the airport. Feeling quite flat now. My house feels quite empty without him :( Dreading the thought of going back to work tomorrow. Don't have the energy or inclination to clean up after dinner, the cockroaches can have a feast if they want :/

<puts the llama song on while getting ready for bed> (had that damned song in my head all weekend.. thanks arian .. not .. ;P )

Today was perfectly pleasant. Slept late and did a whole lotta nuthin. Stu gave me a cool birthday present - a Logitech webcam, which we tested successfully with Arian. In the afternoon we made a pilgrimage to the aquarium and then to the shops to buy meat and beer. Then onto James & George's for a bbq birthday dinner thing. Dinner was great, and Dave & Yvonne fairly successfully took over most of the conversation ;) although my brother could of course be trusted with dropping not-so-subtle hints.. ok *blatantly telling* some people about my new bed and my blog. Honestly, little brothers, who'd have em? ;) <Considers chmod 700ing my blog in case the parents really do decide to go do a google search on kazza> Although I did throw them off the scent slightly when they asked what my website address was, and I said kazza.cia.com.au. Dunno if that'll fool em :)

I felt strangely at peace today. Of course a solid 8.5 hours of sleep helped immensely. But unusually I wasn't stressed about being late for work or adding 15 minutes to my trip by crossing to the other side of the road to get petrol (a trip which involves crossing the highway twice and three sets of traffic lights), or crazy people on the roads, or the impending deadline for our new website (which Peter is much more stressed over than anyone else). I felt vaguely like there is much more to life than day-to-day trivialities. That Stu is probably the only thing of any real importance in my life at the moment, the only thing worth worrying/caring about. I had all these ideas about some sort of profound blog entry about it all, but two sentences was about as good as I could get it, heh.

I did get moderately stressed out when I spent most of the day trying to get one thing done that should have taken an hour or two, but blew out to four or five after interruption after interruption after interruption. I was getting ready to disconnect my phone and shut down icq just to get some peace.

Spent the evening catching up on blogs, chatting to Arian and half watching reruns of CSI and will wander off in the general direction of bed shortly.

.. oh I forgot.. I also spent a couple of hours after work today flying up and down the coast on Google Earth, marking out points where I took photos out of the plane. And only did about half of them too :)

I've been staring rather intently at my screen for the past few hours which I'm sure is doing terrible things to my eyesight. Was quite an emotional night, all told.

Ironically the thing that started it all was a question of whether to censor what goes into blogs. I've found myself in recent weeks having issues with posting days' events, simply because I now have real-life readers who care about what (or rather who) I am writing about. Complicated by the fact that some of these people don't get along with each other.

I'm almost 32, and have only recently learnt the value of keeping my mouth shut sometimes. It didn't help that for most of my life I was always the last one to find anything out, and so recently when I *haven't* been the last to know, I've assumed that I have been and gone blabbing, only to find out that I've upset people or spoken when I shouldn't - there's been a couple of cases at work in recent months. But I digress. While this blog was only about me I had no real issues saying whatever I wanted. But when friends are involved that read a blog, sometimes it is more appropriate to keep things private.

So I had a thoroughly sucky day today. After the success of yesterday's work, I thought I'd be able to continue at the office today. Wrong. I spent the entire day sitting staring at my screen trying to figure out an easy to do what I wanted to do. Got thoroughly frustrated with everything. Even going through and getting a list of users to disable and delete held no joy for me. So I'm going to have another go at working from home tomorrow.

Then I was dreading an owners meeting to discuss fire safteying the building, which is going to be *expensive* (probably $1500-$2000 per unit, ouch), and I was worried about two warring sets of neighbours going at each other. But the meeting got postponed due to lack of numbers, and the warring neighbours didn't show up anyway. So until next time.

And what's the deal with gravatar at the moment?? It's thoroughly flaky at the moment, only occasionally pulling up peoples' gravatars :( Is it just me or is their server not responding much?

Probable spoilers..

Woke up in a great mood this morning. Grinned stoopidly for most of the morning before heading to Berala for Nana's 77th birthday lunch. Lunch was ok. I think Nana had a good time too.

Being in love is sure having a calming affect on me. It's certainly increased my patience on the roads. I barely notice people pushing in and being stoopid at the moment. And I find I'm missing huge chunks of memory where I couldn't tell you how I got from A to B because my mind is off daydreaming about my boy. I'm sure that can't be a good thing! ;)

Came home with thoughts of getting my USA photos done, however felt quite lost without Stu, and wished I was doing something with him. In the end I just played recorder all afternoon, and patched a few servers.

So it seems I've been tagged by Delmer:

List five things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it to your journal, and then tag five friends and ask them to post it to theirs:

1. Watching DVDs. I have a steadily growing collection, but due to the amount of tv I watch, I really only get to sit down and watch one on Friday nights.
2. Tinkering on the internet. I feel utterly lost if I'm at home and the computer isn't on. I can't actually account for all the time that I spend online, it just disappears out there on the ether.
3. Playing with lego. Buying, cataloging, building, enjoying, selling. Using ebay for evil.
4. Reading a good book. I'm not a huge reader, but when I get into a book, I'll read it to the exclusion of almost all else.
5. Watching tv. I definitely watch far too much tv.

It seems to be the trend with memes these days to tag people you know to do them. Now the issue I have with this is that a decent chunk of the people whose blogs I read **all read each others blogs** !! Dave, Ben, Delmer, Gary, Neil, Karla, Richard, Dennis are all interconnected in at least one direction. Mushroom and Fiona also. If this trend in tagging continues, it's going to be a problem to tag people, because they will have probably already been tagged! Argh!! So on that note, I'm not going to play the tagging game. If I get tagged I'll happily do the meme (I'm always up for a good meme, and Fiona, I promise I'll do yours next!), but it's just going to be too complicated for me to find people that haven't already been tagged yet ;)