Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 59 - Pasta, Wine and Chilling

An uneventful, if busy Monday at work followed by a phonecall to my wonderful friend Sandra in Canada - I want to visit there so much! Maybe later in the year if I live on mung beans and tofu for the year - and an episode of Fringe season 2 with my housemate (I should have gone swimming but, um, didn't.....lol) before my gorgeous guy arrived for a pasta dinner, some delicious New Zealand white wine and snuggling on the couch watching Big Bang Theory....

I was planning to post a photo of the actual pasta I cooked but it was eaten before I remembered!

Not the real wine either.....OMG is anything real?! LOL

Pretty damn near perfect...

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 58 - Lazing Baby Lazing

What a lovely chill out day.

Unfortunately not with my gorgeous guy who had to work on a project - I always feel bad for him that his work necessitates weekend work - but I decided that with a day to myself, I'd do as little as possible. Once the grocery shopping was done, and put away at home, I busied myself with eating pancakes, and chicken with the skin on (a gay sin I know and one for which I should be punished!), watching endless, hilarious episodes of Big Bang Theory, and two episodes of Fringe season 2 (which just gets better and better), and finally finishing off a book I have bene reading The Evolutionary Void by one of my favourite authors, Peter F Hamilton. I didn't even exercise of do any cleaning or anything I should have done, and frankly it was just what I needed after an exhausting full-speed-ahead few months.

I could do weeks worth of days like that....if only....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 57 (Saturday 26 February) - Brunch and Kulcha

Finally back in Glebe today!

It's been months and months since my gorgeous guy and I just spent a lazy Saturday wandering through Glebe Markets and Sappho Books & Gleebooks (the latter being one of my favourite bookstores in the world) after a slow lingering brunch talking and chilling together at Badde Manors, a vegetarian cafe with great food and funky retro decor. But we did it today and it was WONDERFUL..... and yes I bought yet more books! Yikes! LOL

Following all meandering we hit the sheets for a nanna nap before heading out to the bright lights and um, skankiness of Kings Cross to see a play, Jane Austen's Guide to Pornography / Glorious Bastard, at the Darlinghurst Theatre (dinner beforehand at Fratelli Fresh - the food was delicious) which was a two play combo full of great characters and witty one liners but alas, not the leather guy that had been advertised on the flyers! Still we enjoyed our slice of kulcha, with the only downside of the night being the fruitless 1 hour trek to find a decent coffee shop in the swill that is Kings Cross. Honestly, it is so gross that it made Oxford Street, hardly a bastion of wholesome behaviour, look like a church picnic by comparison. I will be quite happy to never go there at night again, thank you very much.

My one regret was not being able to make it to the Midnigth Shift, a gay nigthclub on Oxford Street, to meet up with work buddies, Sammi, and Francisco, but by the time we'd hit the road it was too late to stop in (after midnight) given that my gorgeous guy had to work on his project at home the next day.

Ah well....next time!

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 56 - The Art of St Peters

No, not the art of St Petersburg, which is by all accounts glorious and beyond compare, but rather the street art in and around St Peters station. I have already featured the dearly departed Fire Zombie (now sadly painted over) and the Julian Assange/Wikileaks artwork, but now I give you some pop culture art stencils that have been placed on the brick wall, and lamp post leading uo the station entrance. Granted it would fundamentally alter the course of art history, or humanity's evolutionary trajectory, but it's whimsical and fun and makes me smile every time I arrive at the station.

...and in the midst of a busy work week, with not much to smile about, that's a very good thing.

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 55 - If Its Thursday, It Must Be....

Yes embarrassing as it is to admit it, I read MX, the free giveaway newspaper handed out with all the enthusiasm of a people handing out bags of dog poop by the devoted MX staff, and while I generally eschew ruts, getting MX on a Thursday is one rut I am happy to lie in, wallow in and enjoy.

Why, you ask, do you, week in week, out grab Thursday's copy of a newspaper known to make the village idiot feel stupid reading it? Well because it contains music reviews and articles on bands, and quite good ones too, much as I am loathe to admit it, and so my obsessive love of new music, new bands and the joyful sonic discoveries that await, propels me onward each week to read a newspaper I usually avoid.

...and yes I have ended up eith some great music as a result!

I Lived Through This Fashion.....Really? Yikes!

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 54 - The Road to Eurovision

I love Eurovision! Yes its kitsch, over the top, and verging on the ridiculous at times, but that just makes me, and my friend Kerry, who's passion for the event leaves me in the dust, love it all the more! It's only three months till Eurovision is on, and as part of the lead up, a charmingly eccentric guy in Germany has created the Euro bike which as the article suggests is kitsch indeed. Who doesn't love that?!

(This was featured in today's MX newspaper)

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 53 - Rise of the Printing Machines

What an awful day.

Stress piled upon stress as I struggled to get everything ready - packs printed, USB sticks loaded etc - for a major budget presentation my management team have tomorrow and as if they sensed the magnitude of events to come, and my need to get all my ducks in a row in pretty frilly jackets all smiling for the camera, the printers I use, en masses jammed paper. ran out of any and all consumables (toner, life units which are the reflective light tubes that transmit the image to paper), and extended what should have been a quick job into an all afternoon orgy of misery and exhaustion with several trips all across the campus thrown in for good sweaty measure.

I was so glad to leave here last night!

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 52 : Spray me a Picture

No it's nothing kinky boys and girls.

We were walking to dinner last night and I saw some graffiti on the wall of a house in the back blocks of Erskineville which was as creative, and colourful as anything I recently saw in Melbourne, and I just had to stop and photograph it. I am not sure where my interest in truly clever graffiti has sprung from, but I love the way these artists, and yes the really good ones are artists as much as anyone else (I abhor the snobbery of low and highbrow art), create bright, visual arresting images (many of which are sanctioned by the porperty owners, meaning the arresting part stays solely with the viewer of the creations!) that fill a public space so beautifully.

Very clever stuff.

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 51 (Sunday 20 February 2011) - The Fair-est Day of Them All

Ridiculously hot humid weather after a couple of weeks of reasonably cool temperatures?

It must be the weekend of Fair Day, held in Victoria Park, Chippendale (near Broadway), that is the official launch of the Mardi Gras festival (a day that attracts weird weather - extreme heat or rain - like it's going out of fashion). This year, like all years, it was packed to the brim with stalls showcasing gay sporting clubs, businesses, media and goods, hot looking men (especially the underwear model below - WOOF!!), lots of good friends that we caught up with, great entertainment, and an inclusive, warm, friendly vibe.

My gorgeous guy talking to Ian and Bill, with whom we usually decorate up a storm!

The gang - Ingo, Jonathan, Ian, myself and Warren (Peter unfortunately couldn't make it, home sick with a migraine, poor guy)

Close friends Ingo, Jonathan, my yummy guy, Ian and Warren

My gorgeous guy (far yummier than anyone there as far as I am concerned), Tuan, myself, Thai and Serafin (who I used to worth with)

With good friend, Luke, who sets up a blue tarp each year under the trees. (You can see the blue and white towel that was the only thing standing between me and being soaked in sweat.)

Our celebrity moment - Matthew Mitcham, gay diving Olympian at, of all stands, the Telstra stand.

YUM!

As usual, though I threatened to melt into the baking ground, we had a ball, although this year, due to all sorts of time constraints, we didn't decorate our tent in the campest manner possible, nor dress up to a theme like last year, when we were all dressed up as toys, or the year before when we masqueraded as characters from Alice in Wonderland. While I missed the fun of going all out, and camping it up with all the colour and glitz a pack of gay boys can manage (and the media attention this often brings us), I did enjoy just sitting back with good friends, eating some yummy food, staying in the shade, and chilling out with my gay brothers and sisters, before just getting up and walking out the gate to a very welcome cool shower, and a delicious dinner with close friend Fahmi and my guy at Stir Crazy Thai, Erskineville.

I am a great believer that a break from something you enjoy doing revitalises the activity, and so I have no doubt that next year we will back bigger, brighter and gayer than ever with an outrageously fabulous costumed Fair Day extravaganza.

Watch out Sydney - you have been warned!

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 50 : The World's a Stage etc etc...

One of the wonderful parts of life I have begun to truly appreciate in the last few years since I came out is the theatre, and especially some of the clever, 'off Broadway' plays that crop up as part of the Mardi Gras festival.

Tonight we went to see Canary at the New Theatre in Newtown, a play we thought was written by the writer of Beautiful People, a wonderful British sitcom about a gay man's passage through the turbulent teenage years, but which was in fact written by the writer of Beautiful Thing, among other things. But it didn't matter as the play was clever, thoughtful, emotionally intense and funny in equal measure, and acted brilliantly, as it navigated it's way through the changes in gay British life from the 1960s through to now.

We (Fahmi, Warren & Jonathan, my gorgeous guy and I) all enjoyed it a lot, and I am looking forward to next week's play which hopefully will be every bit as good.

Oh, and my lamb dish at Botany View Hotel, as always, was SUPERB! Man those guys can cook!

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 49 : A World Without BORDERS?

Fear not, this is not some treacle-laced Hallmark-cute 'It's a Small World After All' musing on a world where everyone is one and there are no divisions, heartaches, pain, or strife.... yes I think I hear Stevie Wonder itching to sing a song about it too.....

What it is a musing on the way this world is going when it comes to retail experiences. When I heard today that BORDERS USA and Australia, and Angus & Robertson (owned by REDgroup which also owns BORDERS), a 125 year old Australian bookstore chain, had gone into receivership, it horrified me nto just I love shopping in BORDERS but because it signalled the possible beginning of the end of bricks and mortar retailing for items like CDs, books and DVDs, all of which I consume in great quantity, and all of which I love buying after languidly browsing in a large or small bookstores, and music stores. The idea that those sorts of sorts may disappear is a bleak prospect since it would rob me of a wonderful environment to lose myself in.

Of course the less than exciting retail stores will soldier on like hardware stores and supermarkets, but I can't see myself being lots for hours in the middle of Bunnings. Some people love it true, but I am not one of those people.

One glimmer of hope was that many analysts and independent bookstore owners said that the BORDERS business model was the main reason the chain ran into trouble, and not the spin management cited currency exchange issues, and growth in online purchases, and that many stores are doing quite nicely thank you very much. I hope that is the case since while I know fun shopping is not the most important thing in the world, it is an enjoyable way to spend some time, and one that I enjoy.

Somehow the online world doesn't hold quite the same appeal, much as I love it....