Future proofing

My priorities in life have really started to crystalise over the past couple of years.
There are things I thought I wanted to do, which don't really hold that much excitement for me any more and there are things that used to regularly which just don't feature in my life.
Gin, for instance, is becoming more and more important. Night clubs never feature.
I occasionally get a little man-clucky. I don't try to wear the kinds of clothes people are wearing in video clips.
I was way too impatient to get an education. I just wanted to work. I thought I was going to be fabulous and I wanted to get on with it, rather than wait.
These days I have no desire to be fabulous. I value my anonymity above most things.
But I do have a desire to get the education I never got myself.
If you're reading this you probably know I have been studying Russian with a private tutor once a week for nearly 2 years. Well now my plan is to make that more of a formal thing.
Today I took a step beyond just thinking about it. I spoke to the senior lecturer and head of Russian Studies at Macquarie University. I'm going to do their certificate course, with a view to transferring to a degree after the first year.
And the great news is, I can start at the intermediate level, I don't have to start as a beginner.
They also offer $2000 grants for a month-long unit studying in Russia! It couldn't get more exciting if they could offer me a month as Marat Safin's personal gym towel holder.
My hope is that once I have the language down pat, my loves of politics and history and my background in journalism will combine into a really awesome career opportunity or two.

SMS alert

Very excited by this Text From Last Night.

(+61): yeah so this exboyfriend of yours reckons you're still together and he punched me in the face cos i slept with you last week. you might wanna have a word with him or at a minimum change your facebook status.

Not only was it piss funny I think "+61" is Australia, ladies and gentlemen.

The Onion are onto us

Conservatives Warn Quick Sex Change Only Barrier Between Gays, Marriage

Between you, me and the blog post

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I can't really explain it. I've just been a little down. Maybe it is winter? Maybe it is a bit of the ol' black dog? Maybe I'm coming down from gossip columnists' high? Who can say?
Whatever it is, I've been feeling a little blue.
I've also been getting exceedingly frustrated and angry with the level of racism in this country, but that's another story.
There are some things which have been cheering me up. Not as much as rolling home to find Wentworth Miller waiting for me in bed or finding Edward Cullen has renounced his heterosexuality, but they are little things which have brought me cheer.
For instance, I've started getting up an hour earlier and spending the extra time in a cafe studying my Russian. It's doing wonders for my Russian skills - which have been as neglected as a grampa in a kerosene bath.
Then there is Thom, who's every apologetic-please-don't-beat-me-again-Chris-Brown facial expression melts my hard-bastard heart.
Then there is the notion I can look forward in just a few short months to being back in Europe - where I always thought I'd spend my life but have, in fact, spent precious little of it - and seeing Dancing Daniel, Pennells, London, Paris, Berlin and Barcelona. I would marry any of them but four of them are cities.
Then there is www.textsfromlastnight.com, which can quite literally stop me from trying to slash my finger tips open on the cheaply serrated edge of my tape dispenser. Oh, drunken shame. How I love thee as applied to others.
And lastly, there is the chicken murder trial. I cannot get enough of this. I look forward to my daily instalment in the paper with the kind of relish teenage boys reserve for sexting. It's so salacious. Our reporter at work, who is a good chum, said the other day he is pretty much writing it with me in mind as his audience. Which is flattering but means he's probably leaving behind anyone who doesn't have my appreciation of the absurd.
Every twist and turn fascinates me. Consider the facts, really. One of two gay millionaires, made rich through a chicken meat franchise, kills the other and then goes shopping with his 19-year-old gay lover, known only to readers as Mr X because his identity has to be protected. There are bloodstains in the bed, an in conclusive post mortem, photos tucked under the bed of Mr X in a choir uniform... and it's all made all the more tantalising by the fact Pennells used to live in the same apartment block and I've been drunk just a couple of metres from the scene of the death. I can almost taste this case.
I don't know what I'm going to do when this trial is over. I hope to God there is an appeal.
Anyway, if you see me looking glum, kick me in the shins and give me something moan about.