Oh. My. WooOord.

Happy new year everyone!

On Sunday I went over to Joey's house with a bunch of people from work, as well as Jana and Corne (aka the toothless wonder) who are friends of Lara's. It's kind of a work tradititon that every year the 'adult' employees who are all pretty good friends get together for new years. Last year was also at Joey's but it included Drew and Justin who are now out of the circle completely and acting like complete tools. I miss the old them.

It was a lot of fun! Before we were a bit worried because Chris was there and he can't drink so I hoped he wouldn't feel left out. La and I were also exhausted, but we got over it pretty quickly. We started off with a braai (Afrikaans people are amazing at braais, and as the only first-language English speaker there I got to experience "troo-Kultuur" in a BIG way!). The thing is, Jo and Lara had been working together and had decided that we each had to have 3 different cocktails before the countdown. The problem was we decided to eat first, so we sat drinking all kinds of other things while the men got all manly and poked the fire a lot, until we realised that it was already 11:30. Lets just say I hope the video we took gets burned. When Jo makes cocktails she always triples the ingredients for some reason. After all that we still had 15 minutes, so Corne went and made other stuff (called 'liquid cocaine') and then Jo made other cocktails and we had shots and...

After the countdown I was treated to real Kultuur when Jo revealed that she owned the entire collection of "Stamp" which is kinf of like sokkie-treffers except that a lot of it is English songs remixed with the sokkie beat. We all sang along in various stages of tunefulness (in one song all I knew was 'bokkie-bokkie!' and I missed it by half a line every time) and just sat around talking complete crap and dancing around. Chris was entirely shocked, didn't say a word all evening and then sat outside once the singing started. I felt really sorry for him, but every time I tried to talk to him he didn't respond at all, so we just left him.

Eventually we went to bed at around 4am, but I was so hyper I couldn't sleep too well and we were up again at 8. I had to rush home, shower, change and go to work for a double shift. I worked with Jo in the morning and Lara in the evening. Jo was really feeling horrible (for a short girl she can drink!) and I was all cheerful but unable to do anything very quickly. By the time Lara arrived I was exhausted. All of our customers were either tired or hung over or both, often accompanied by overtired toddlers who cried and screamed... And it turns out one customer who I always thought was a man, is actually a woman. She has muscles and a deep voice and a BEARD! apparently she's jo and Lara's personal trainer and she trains in a bikini. Scary stuff.

The worst was at about 8pm when a guy came in with his teenage sons. He was wearing shorts that even an ecologist would be embarassed by. They probably belonged to some poor Ken-doll at some stage and they were all stretched at the bottom so they curled up, making them even tinier. Plus he'd tucked his shirt in. We both packed out giggling but managed to hide at the back until he came to get his movies and somehow we managed to talk to the guy. I don't know how. After he left we both collapsed into giggling fits and then the phone rang. I think we left it for about 2 minutes before Lara managed to regain composure enough to semi-talk to the person, who thought she was sick and needed help. I just sat there laughing so hard I think I actually cried a bit.

Today was a lot harder, I'm still tired and I had a lot of stuff to do. I also found out that there is some big stuff going on with my family and my parents might move overseas, so I'd have to move into a flat or something. That means I'll have to find a home for my birds and my dogs and I don't know if I could manage it. It was really upsetting and I yelled at my mom and then sat sulking and watching Scrubs all afternoon. And then I drove around Joburg for a good hour to calm down. When I got home I sat and carried on with Scrubs when my dad came in and told me to pause it. I figured I'd be getting the typical talking-to for fighting with my mom when he made me close my eyes, and when I opened them there were these boxes. you see for Christmas I got a card and some money from my dad and it said that Ebay couldn't deliver an iguana in time. This was the 'iguana.'

My Dad just gave me a laptop! It's beautiful! Far better than anything I would have bought for myself! It's a Dell with a big screen and bluetooth and a DVD writer and everything! I named it 'The iguana' already and tomorrow i'm going to go and get the software for Office and go talk to the IT guy at wits about all the other stuff like antivirus and that.

It's so beautiful! I love it already and I can't even do anything with it yet. The lousy thing is it's cheaper to order the software online, but then I have to wait up to 10 days for the money to clear and delivery and by them I'm away on the field trip. I'm tempted to go spent the extra money just to get started right away.

I'm so excited!

Yay!

As soon as it's up and running I'll take a photo of it and post it. I'm going to bed now, I'm still so tired. And just for the record, Nagtmusiek is EVIL! At least I rain-checked the Jagermeister!