awkwardly uncivilized

work was great - i got a lot of fun stuff done. sagirl put me in touch with a friend of hers, so i bailed early and made my way to a really nice bar / restaurant to meet her.

the entrance wasn't too obvious, or at least looked suspiciously like it wasn't one. as i entered, the handle of the door came off. i can't stop myself blushing when things like that happen - even though i know it wasn't my fault. there was a crowded table right next to the door, everyone stared as i calmly (aside from being beetroot-coloured) re-attached the handle and walked through to the bar.

i called, no answer. i ordered a guinness and sat down waiting for a callback. no dice, so i sent a silly message ("aww, i feel like i've been stood up :("), and soon afterwards got a response: "we're sitting at the entrance, table no. 5". so i asked the waitress if the tables were numbered (i hadn't seen any signs).

"yes - are you on a blind date?" she sounded way too amused
"erm - i'm just meeting someone here. where is table 5?"
"table 5 is the bar"

okay - i quickly check the others at the bar... no way. sod that, i called again, and turned around to see the girl closest to the door (that i'd incidented - is that a word? don't think so) pick up her phone.

*sigh*

anyway, it was a nice group to sit chatting with. i didn't do much chatting though - it's absolutely fantastic how serving in the army can shut your mouth. it doesn't matter how much i have to say, i always get stuck conversationally when i feel like it would be useful not to :(

and plus, as a quick flashback of sitting with sb and her acting buddies (i can't tell acting jokes. i'm not an actor.), i don't have many ship experiences to share - so i just sat listening to some very amusing stories about cruise life. sounds rather soap-opera-y... my life's more drama and pulp fiction.

so all-in-all, it's always nice to be reminded that there are such beautiful girls in south africa (and hey, i'll be there soon! another 25 days!), and it was a fun evening out compared to the usual weekday go-home-sleep-back-to-work, and it was nice meeting friends of friends (i'm seeing sagirl for the first time in years this holiday), and i hope i'll see them again in spite of my life being decidedly anti new friends at the moment.

on the way out, SxS called to inform me that he's back from cyprus and that i have no choice but to go to yogi's tomorrow night in order to see him before we meet in cape town... dammit. poker night in the middle of the week's gonna kill me.

in good spirits

by itself, that's an expression that doesn't make much sense.

i've noticed that my appeal to the "fairer" sex is directly proportional to my attitude, and sleep deprivation. the more wasted i am, and the better the mood i'm in, the more girls i find giving me looks and finding ways to keep my attention.

i need to sleep less, methinks.

after a couple of hours sleep, i got up quickly (and to the point) this morning. i even made my bus. my bus arrived a bit early, and i received a number of "well done!" comments during the day - apparently the second i unlock my pc everyone on my contact list gets an alert. that's worrying. it means my team leader can see exactly how much time i'm away from my computer. and i can't be bothered to disable / re-enable every time.

i spent a large part of the day moving around and getting bureaucratic things sorted out. which meant a LOT of stopping and chatting. and a lot of smoking too. i'm conscious of how much i smoke, uncomfortably so, but i still don't want to stop...

i also got a lot of work done today. aside from our team being hit by numerous bug reports throughout the day, i learned some rather neat java / oracle stuff. at one point i got hold of a 22-page document that explained how i've been doing everything wrong. not wanting to change anything, i double-checked the java api stuff, and it turns out i was in the right, and since then it's been smooth sailing ;)

lunch was REALLY bad today.

and i realized that there's no place in our offices for sb's punching bag. that really bites. we were really looking forward to that!

a new kid was assigned to our section today, and i ran into him during my missioning and found him agreeable. we then found out (from the horse's mouth) that the only reason that he hadn't arrived in our offices is because our section commander wants him to sweat a bit, so that he'll arrive with courtesy.

not only is that bloody cheeky, but i got an awkward look when i asked if that was the reason i wasted a day of my life on the induction base before coming through. BASTARD.

so, of course, we found the new guy and explained it to him. if we're not going to be allowed to "show him the ropes", we're going to make a point of messing him up completely (as far as our commander is concerned ;))

amusement: one of the guys in our prefab was saying ridiculous things loudly when some girl was in earshot. i made an arbitrary comment in her direction about us being disgusting, and when she turned to respond i did a visible double-take (for which the guys laughed at me afterwards), when i registered that she's actually extremely cute.

i worked until 18.20, then took the bus home. i know i'm fucked up because this is the first time in my entire life that i've spilled coffee on my keyboard - i'm most unimpressed with myself.

i've now spent an hour or so working on the hospital project - not too bad, and called my boss to update him. he's sent me a huge document in hebrew to read through, and we argued over whether or not he'll send me a rough transration for the important bits... otherwise it'll take me a month with a dictionary to get through it.

now i have to decide if it's worth dragging myself to the lizard for some live bands, and a dj afterwards who's a member of my favourite israeli metal group... maybe i'll just go to bed.

i mentioned the gay photographer story in the tag list, so here goes:

i went through a period where i was toying with the idea of modelling. a friend of a friend (extremely large, extremely camp ex-cameo stocking leg model) introduced me to a friend of his, who took a few photos just for kicks. he invited me to come to his rented penthouse apartment if i was interested in getting my portfolio done for free.

of course i was.

i arrived, a bit nervous, and he immediately began by telling me who he was. editor and photographer of new york's most well-known gay magazine. i wasn't bothered - i just wanted good photos.

he asked me to strip down to my underwear, so he could see what he was working with. not knowing the rules of the game (and still not knowing), i did. he saw how uncomfortable i was, and in a doomed-to-fail attempt to relax me, he told me a story about a model he'd once worked with.

the story basically goes as follows: homophobic model sitting in a sud-filled bath. he walks in. model is uncomfortable. he sits down and talks for a while, model eases up. he somehow (i don't remember the story so much as the horror of hearing it, and wondering what he was *implying*) ends up with his hand in the water... things happen... model turns out to have been in the closet.

i never have been in the closet. due to various incidents i'm 100% confident in my sexuality - if i was gay, i could have owned a porsche at age 18. and i would have enjoyed my only male-male kiss. *shudders in memory*

anyway, so we begin the shooting. at some point he gave me some oil to apply, and i did push-ups to give my muscles a sheen, and we continued.

almost at the end of the run, he asked me a favour. he wanted a photo of me bending over, pulling down my pants to expose half a butt-cheek... so he can use it for christmas cards. how twisted is that?!

i admit i thought about it, but at the time i didn't know where i was going in life, and i had this image of myself one day running for political office, and these christmas cards coming back to bite me in the... erm... yeah.

so i declined. but i'll tell you something for nothing - INCREDIBLE photos!

i've just discovered that there was a bombing today - i'm about to depress myself by watching the news.

ps. count the idioms. and cliches.