Smoke and Mirrors

My cool friend, Pete, made this for our other cool friends from Grand Atlantic.



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Sweaty men in feathery masks...

Yesterday I spent most of the day working at the Queensland Multicultural Festival.

Actually, working could be too strong a word because the only work I really did all day was a 20min walk behind a samba school, some capoeira dudes, latin dancers and some Bolivian guys in HUGE feathered head dress for the "Road to Rio" Parade (I was making sure the crowd didn't get in the way). The rest of the time was spent wandering around checking out different performances and hanging out in the volunteer tent in case they needed someone to do something.

Man it was HOT!!!! I mean the festival was great, but the weather was stinkin'. Cloudless skies meant that the sun's searing rays were only hindered by the dust raised by thousands of pairs of feet as they tramped around the parklands. Surprisingly enough, I managed to make it through the day without my skin burning to a crisp like it usually does.

After my shift finished I headed up to the amphetheatre to get a good seat for Lior's set. The band before were called The Bird and just I have to say that they were freakin' A.W.E.S.O.M.E.!!

The whole place was pumping with the most sublime beats. If I wasn't so weary I would have been busting a move with the rest of the punters. Instead, I sat on the step and let my toes and head do the dancing for me.

Lior was pretty cool and worth the wait, but he changed guitars a little too often for my liking (pretty much every song). I found it really distracting, but otherwise his performance was great.

After a day of sensory overstimulation I was looked forward to getting home to try and get some sleep before Monday arrived, but before I headed towards the land of nod I went to do a quick check of emails and to see what had been happening in Flickrville during my absence.

To my horror, I discovered that the internet wasn't working!!!!!

Once I started to breath normally again and had gone through the rigmarol of off-ing and on-ing everything I possibly could, I remembered that weeks earlier I had received a letter from my provider asking for the new expiry date for the account I pay my bill from... The G-rated version of my next thought was "OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, THEY'VE CUT ME OFF!!!!".

The only thing to do was go to bed and try to sort it out in the morning.

After answering the multitude of voice prompts that stand between you and an actual person I proceeded to wait on hold for about 25mins.

Just when I thought I was about to go insane from the hideously cheery hold muzak, I finally I got through and proceded to try and explain the sad, sad story about no internet, letters and credit card expiry numbers in great detail without sounding like a total la-hooo-zer.

Halfway through my story the guy informs me that my internet has not been cut-off, but there had been a state-wide glitch that caused a temporary outage. PHEW!!!!!!!!!

You'll be pleased to know that I arrived home from work to find that my laptop was again full of electron goodness...

I must be due for a holiday

All I could think about at work today was how tired I felt. I tried to remember the last time I had a holiday and thought about when I could possibly take the next one.

Most of my actual "holidays" are spent working with high school kids on performing and visual arts camps, but there have been some really nice weekend trips away with friends that have been lovely.

Here are my top 5 faves:

1. Traviston

A last minute decision to spend a weekend away with friends turned out to be one of the most wonderful times I've ever had.

My friend Helen was living in a place called Traveston (which is on the outskirts of Gympie) on a small farm property with cows and stuff.

There were no neighbours in hearing or viewing distance so we could crank the tunes and run amok. We ate like royalty and generally had a lovely time chatting and watching movies.

The most exciting part of the trip was when the boys discovered a small cupboard without a handle. Curiosity got the better of them and after a few attempts at jiggling the door, it opened to reveal a small box. In it was a crossbow with quite a few bolts. The rest of the time was spent in the back yard shooting trees and making up newspaper headlines for if there was an accident and someone (or a cow) got shot.

It was only two days, but I was so refreshed when I came home, that I felt as though I'd been away for two weeks.

2. Caloundra

My friend's folks have a luxurious penthouse in Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast.

Johnny and Helen had the run of it for this past New Year's Eve and invited a heap of people to come for dinner and view the fireworks display. Great food, funky music, fabulous company and just plain old good times.

3. Toowoomba

Each Easter the Australian Gospel Music Festival is held in Toowoomba. I've been to quite a few, but 2003 was probably my favourite one of all. I was camping in the makeshift "village" that adjoined the festival with a couple of friends.

A lot of my friends' bands were playing throughout the long weekend and there were heaps of others that put on a good show. I caught up with LOTS of people from all different areas of my life and generally had a lot of fun.

4. Rainbow Beach

A couple of years ago one of my chick friends broke her engagement really close to the wedding day. We had alread booked a house by the beach for her Hen's Weekend and decided to take her away anyway.

Good food, board games, trashy chick flicks, facials, manicures, walks on the beach and all that good old fashioned girly stuff.

5. Appin

Blackstump is a music and arts festival that is held on the outskirts of Sydney each September.

A couple of years ago my friend's fire spinning troupe was invited to perform and they asked me to come along and be their fuel and safety person (I was unofficially known as the "Kero Bitch").

It's about a 14-16 hr drive from where we live to the festival site and we pretty much drove straight through the night to get there with some stops along the way (one truck stop was particularly scary, but I had to pee so bad that I didn't care).

We had a 2 days of checking out cool music and doing 2 shows a night. It was awesome, but then we had to leave really early on the Sunday because the others were students and had to be back in Queensland to go to lectures on the Monday. I was totally wrecked when I got home, but it was freakin amazing.

* sigh *

Only a few more months until my next hols...