We had gone out to get fabric so Nadia had something to iron her iron-on printer transfers to, and when we were done she had to go to the toilet so we went next door to the book store. BOOKS-A-MILLION. Or BAM. Gotta love America. Anyhow. While browsing I noticed the American translation for The Outsider - ‘The Stranger’. I first read The Outsider in year 12, 2002, and it had a big impact on my life, my thinking. It wasn’t until I finished the last paragraph of my essay for it in my VCE exam that I truely understood it, and even now, with access to another translation, I’m not sure if I do. So, since this book had such an impact on my thoughts I figured I’d give it another read in a more modern and apparently considerate translation, see if any of it has stuck.

The other book is The Plague, I meant to read it soon after finishing The Outsider but never went through with it. I liked The Outsider so much that I wasn’t sure if I’d like it.

Anyhow. That’s where I am today. I’ve got two new books and Nadia is printing skulls on iron-on transfers, and ironing them on bits of fabric. I think I’ll ask her to keep a sheet so I can make a t-shirt design. We’re going out to another craft store soon, to get more iron-on transfer stuffs.

–

The Stranger on Wikipedia
The Plague on Wikipedia

The significance of this will only be apparent to family members in on the joke.

(Nadia and I this morning - she’s a bit tired still ;p )

Yesterday Nadia had an appointment with an endocrinologist (a doctor that deals with hormones and glands.) It wasn’t anything urgent, but Nadia has had so many high dose steroid treatments that we thought it’d be a good idea for her to get checked out. I wasn’t feeling well enough to go out on a long drive with her insane parents in the cold, so I stayed at home.

It got pretty lonely, and after surfing the net for a bit, and then playing Mass Effect on the xbox 360 until it crashed again (I think there is something wrong with the disc drive, games that require a lot of streaming seem to crash now and then) I looked around the basement and realised we hadn’t cleaned it since before we left for home (Melbourne).

I still wasn’t feeling that well, but somewhere inside me I got a burst of motivation and I cleaned up a big section of the basement. We used to have a microwave down here, rescued from there furniture store (and vigorously cleaned) - but in the time we were gone it seems they broke the one upstairs, so they nabbed ours. And put the broken one downstairs with us for some reason. Odd people. Anyhow, I took the broken one up into the garage where there was more room.

There was the suitcases to move too, as we’d had those sprawled on the floor where we left them the day we got back. Random chairs and bits of furniture brought back from the other house. Basically I cleaned out the open area, which had accumulated months of junk and crap. Luckily there was only one bit of organic waste, a piece of orange peel.

When I was done I gave the place a vacuum, and now it’s looking much nicer. Well. Half the place is looking much nicer. Alright, about a third of the place is looking much nicer. Maybe today I’ll tackle another third.

I’ve gotten a growing feeling of apathy though, I haven’t felt like doing anything, and anything I could do doesn’t feel that appealing. I’m sure it’s just because of my current lazy state though. I’m still maintaining the blog, so that’s something… right?

I promise one of these days I’ll start uploading some fresh photos. Just got to find something to shoot… nothing interesting when you’re in bed all day ;p

Today Nadia and I went for a drive. We intended to go shopping, but after a few close calls in heavy traffic we decided to quit while we had our heads and go back home - before night fell and the full moon came out. One woman, at a t-intersection, cut us off and nearly had us  t-bone her. Okay. So she’s a bad driver perhaps? I dunno, but what makes it a great moment is the stupid expressions on their faces. I don’t mean rabbit in the headlights faces, I mean oblivious rabbit munching on a carrot in the middle of a NASCAR race.

Mmmm. Yummy carrot. hom nom nom nom nom.

We avoided at least three accidents - that I know of. The first one, the woman at the t-intersection, looked like she considered herself royalty. I’d imagine if we had hit her she’d have blamed us for it. Damn soccer moms.
Next, while trying to change lanes, the car behind us in the lane we wanted to change into sped up to close the gap - and I mean, really sped up, because the gap was quite generous. Then, when they nearly cause an accident and I shit my pants, they honk their horn at us. She changed lanes and overtook us, which was nice of her - let us know she was special enough to be talking on the phone while driving. It also gave us a good look at the damage on her front bumper bar, where it was apparent she’d done something like this before. And by that I mean speeding up, changing lanes, honking on horns, talking on phones and picking up plurals somewhere in that sentence.

…sometimes I wonder how people get their drivers licence. Or, to put it another way, sometimes I wish natural selection could work a little faster.

Gotta remember to start taking a camera out and about with us so I can document things.

Until next time!

Everything is just so damn far away. To be fair though, there’s a supermarket with it’s own pharmacy five minutes drive away - I wonder how much her antibiotics would have cost at full price? Might have been worth it to save us that freaking annoyingly long trip.

Clad is going back to New Orleans (where’s old Orleans?) tomorrow afternoon, I think we might be going out to lunch or something. All Yousef wants to do is play video games… reminds me of someone ;p - I’m glad we bought that deck of UNO though, because as soon as anyone mentions it he forgets all about his video games!

I woke up to Clad and the kids annoying the crap out of me to get out of bed and set up the Nintendo Wii because they wanted to play bowling and didn’t know how to set it up. Well. You plug the yellow cable into the yellow hole. The red cable into the red hole. And the white cable? That goes into the white hole. Then you press the ‘on’ button. It’s an IQ test you see…

I don’t like it when people try waking me up by yelling at me, telling me off… etc. It just puts me in a bad mood for the day.

I think I’ll play a bit more Halo 3 now ;p

Halo 3 has a special feature where you can replay previous games as videos. The cool thing is that they’re not normal video files, they’re game script files that replay the action exactly - meaning you can move the camera around, see the game from another player’s perspective, make the action unfold in slow motion as you move the camera around at normal speed (awesome for Matrix-like moments) etc.

It also allows you to take screenshots that you can then download to your computer. I took this one a while ago, that’s me dead on the floor, and if I remember correctly, that’s my grenade going off after my death that killed the player that killed me. Fun times.

We  started off playing with four of us, Nadia, Clad, Yasmeen, Yousef and myself (okay, that’s five. I can’t count), but then Clad’s boyfriend (Nich - yes, his name is Nick but he spells it Nich. No, he’s not German, he’s Brazillian) called, so it was just the four of us. When Yasmeen won, she left. Quit while you’re ahead eh? Then with the three of us, we would alternate between three players and one on one (me and Yousef) - and I one game after game, which drove him to keep playing one more game to try and beat me. It was fun - and no cockroaches! (but we bought a second deck just in case, lol)

These new cards are about half the thickness of our old ones, and they’re very shiny and slippery. I guess we have to play with them a bunch more to roughen them up, but the thickness (well, thin-ness really) is a bit annoying. Ho-hum, the game still works, so who’s complaining?

I’ve been looking for an online version so maybe we can play against eachother, I’ll let you know if I find anything.

Two (well, three if you include the photo) posts in one day! New record!