That’s Stella

It kills me when old work buddies in NY give me the latest run down of things over there. They’re oh so cruel and never skimp out on the details of what I’m missing out on and the amazing nights out they’re having and the crazy things they’ve seen. I always walk away from the conversation feeling a little dead, a little homesick, a little bitter and I always regret asking them, but damn me! I don’t have the discipline to refrain from asking, “What’s the goss?”

And this morning came the biggest doozy ever. I found out that Joaquin Phoenix is doing some work at my old workplace.
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!
I LOVE JOAQUIIN PHOENIX! Now I’m not talking the John Cusack or Mark Ruffallo kind of love (ie. not the kind of love where I would give up my childhood dream wedding and elope with him to Vegas and bare his offspring) but in my mind, I’ve always thought he’d be a damn awesome guy. So to think that if I was still working there and our paths would cross, well, it absolutely kills me!

I switched off my radio and put my iPod aside. I could hear rattling. It was excruciating. After work, I played a mean round of tennis with Boobs and Clayton and was on my way home. But I could sense my car was sick. I thought I was hallucinating when I saw steam escape out of the side of my bonnet. The temperature was at its extreme. Dad had just checked my car this morning for water and oil and all was fine and dandy. On the way home I found good excuse to make various stops at the shops and JB hi fi to let my car cool down. So much damage was done – to my credit card that is. But every time I got back into my car, it wasn’t any better and I knew I was treading a fine line. I decided that to be safe, I’d take the long way home through quiet suburbs rather than sticking on the main busy road. So I took a right into the turning lane to get off the highway and as you could guess, my car decides to die on me there and then, in one of the busiest turning lanes of the highway during PEAK HOUR. Luckily there were two turning lanes, but I’m right at the traffic light and I’m holding up traffic and I’m panicking and I’m yelling so many obscenities that it could give me a ticket to hell. I put my hazard lights on, ring mum and dad and sob on the phone like a baby “PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE COME AND GET ME. PLEASE HELP! PLEASE PLEASE HELP!” and after giving my parents a shock, I’m on the phone to the RAC….
“There may be a waiting period for up to an hour”
“I’m blocking traffic”
“You have now moved up the list and you’re top priority. They’ll be there soon”
All the while, people are honking their horns at me and flashing their lights and yelling abuse as they passed my car and I’m just thinking, what the fuck happened to chivalry? What happened to that whole Aussie spirit of helping one another out? Is that all just a PR stunt to lure internationals to our isolated country? Does chivalry and Aussie spirit only apply during business hours?

After attempting to start my car 15+ times, it finally got going and I managed to drive nearby to a quiet dead end street. Soon dad and our neighbour Stuart and the RAC man were all huddled around my car doing secret men’s business.
Turns out when dad was checking my car for water this morning, he didn’t screw on the cap properly and by the end of my running around in my car today, water was non existent.
HAH!
I didn’t give my dad too hard a time about it.
P.S. I could have really used Dooces lethal cookie fix after coming home last night.

I spent last night baking a cake to take to Sugars get together at her place this afternoon. Yesterday afternoon I was in Coles umming and ahhing deciding whether or not to buy chocolate Easter rabbits for everyone, but I decided to impress the panties off everyone with my culinary genius!
Fine, I am exaggerating, but the cake didn’t end up looking too shabby at all! In fact, it was quite hard to part with my piece of art, and Sugar had an even harder time cutting the cake. I love love love cooking, but to be honest I’m always a little wary (read: paranoid) about who I tell, especially when it comes to marketing and advertising boys because in my first year of uni in Consumer Behaviour class we learnt that women baking cakes and such was linked to their desire to have a baby!!!! I shit you not. I remember my gobsmacked reaction when our lecturer told us and decided from then on that my love of baking and cooking was to be discreet. I know it sounds ridiculous, but sometimes I do feel a little clucky…? WHATEVER! Don’t judge me!

Around 10 of us spent the afternoon eating lots of junk food whilst playing board games and card games like Uno and Boooby Slap. Great chilled out fun. Lately, I have been so over clubs and pubs. Every now and then I get the urge to go to The Flying Scotsman or The Velvet Room and Lux, but right now I’m really appreciating dinners at nice restaurants and late night visits to The Moon and walks and talks by the South Perth foreshore in the evening or my BED….


Sunset at Lions Lookout in the hills taken this afternoon on my way home. Whenever I drive up the hills to Sugars place it reminds me so much of LA. I reminise about driving up the hills in LA to go on the lookout to check out the Hollywood sign and seeing the LA skyscrapers surrounded by fog and still thinking it was one of the most beautiful sights ever…

I returned home from Adams place tonight to find a package sitting on my kitchen counter just waiting for my grubby little hands to grab hold of it! Ohhh how I love receiving packages in the mail. I even get a little dizzy with excitement when my BlackBook and Campaign Brief magazine subsciptions arrive in my box.

On first inspection I could see that it was a good one. Foreign stamps. ‘PAR AVION’ on the right hand side. Unrecognisable writing. Oh yeah… this was a beauty. And how right I was! One of my best buds Hinius all the way in London sent me a Music Care Package! Now my dear friend Hinius is a man of style and has fine tastes, so despite having never heard of half the music he sent me, I knew it was still a goldmine.

Ever heard of Explosions in the Sky? I hadn’t either till a year ago when Hinius introduced me to them and holy crap…! I was driving on a freeway when I first listened to their album and it was amazing stuff that made me want to pull aside into the emergency lane and turn off my car engine so I could fully absorb every single sound. Of course I didn’t - as per usual I was running AST (Asian Standard Time) and was about to get my ass kicked from a friend for being late again.

Hin’s Music Care Package contained Ambulance Ltd, every Broken Social Scene album, British Sea Power, The Bravery, The Wrens, And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, Sufjan Stevens, The Rapture, The Reindeer Section and SOOOO much more including Sigur Ros’ latest album from last year which is great to relive Sunday nights performance. (BTW -How average do Sigur Ros sound on CD, compared to their live shows? Pwoar…)

Lately… (every single freakin’ morning) it has been taking way too long to get motivated and get dressed for work and out of the door. So I have decided to test the theory that “If one expands their wardrobe, then one will get onto work on time”. Yes. This weekend will be spent on retail therapy. For a good cause of course.

Have a chocolatey easter.

X

The past few days week has been super busy with work matters. A few weeks ago I got a promotion which means 100x more responsibility, dealing with supposed important people, meetings, greetings and lunches, and this much $$$,$$$ at my disposal. Haha suckers!! I wouldn’t even trust myself with that much money - hello one way ticket to New York!

Anyway this is no dream job of mine - it’s Public Relations which is a little funny because I spent my uni years mocking stupid peroxide blonde PR girls who thought they knew a thing or two about advertising and thought Bart Simpson would be a good role model for an exercise campaign for children.

However, admittedly is it a good job (for someone who wishes to be in PR - certainly not I) and it is awesome to be saving money and getting some management experience whilst I wait for a dream position to open up at my favourite advertising agency or contemplate moving overseas… I’ve been pretty blessed with opportunities and travels landing at my feet, so I know that because I have this great desire to work for a particular agency, I’m being taught a great lesson in patience. So I am going to stick it out and play this game of patience that the man above is playing with me.

So as mentioned previously, this week has been crazy busy because along with having to deal with a few crisis’ on hand, I’ve been apartment hunting! Now, you’re going to hate me (it’s okay - I hate myself) but work is paying for an apartment for me to live on a short term basis! It was fun looking at apartments and being paid to do so, but it sucked knowing that back at the office I had a thousand people to ring.

At first I was looking for apartments in South Perth (right next to the foreshore) because selfishly I’ve always wanted to have the foreshore as my front yard and be able to go for daily jogs around the Swan River. That was till I decided to broaden my option and look in the city, and I found a beauty of a place!!!

Aww I fell in love with it as soon as I heard the tapping of my heels on the marble floor lobby. Then I saw the huge kitchen and entertaining area and marble dining room table and I had visions of dinner parties and a central location for all my friends to gather and a less than $10 cab ride from all my favourite drunken haunts in Mount Lawley. And the bedroom – pwoar! I thought I really needed to find a boyfriend to fully take advantage of the bedroom, and for all you girls, WALK IN ROBE! The balcony overlooks the city street. The location still allows me to take my daily jog around the river if I so wish, and I am 10 minutes walking distance from Hay street mall. There’s a gym, heated pool, and FREE PARKING! Ohhhh yeah! I decided to share the love and ended up getting the 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment in case other colleagues or friends wanted to stay. Boy, it’s going to be FUN…!

Did anyone else choke on their Cocoa Pops this morning when they read that Natalie Basingwigglethistlewaste was nominated for a Gold Logie? What exactly has she done to deserve a logie in the first place? Where do I sign up for one of these logie nominations because I reckon it’d look great on my resume.
Wow… I’m in awe at how the standards of Logies just seem to discover a whole new rock bottom low every single year.

Since Miss. 23 left Perth for the UK, the boys in our close possie have taken great care of me. A day after she left, the boys were calling me to make sure I was okay, and planning football games and movie nights and boozy nights out a couple weeks ahead. Now, you have to understand that this is highly unusual because throughout our friendship, these boys main form of communication has been cell messaging and their idea of commitment is committing to Tight Ass Tuesday movie on Monday night. To be honest, I thought Miss. 23 had to be behind all this extra care and attention. I thought she might’ve given the boys a talking to before she left, but imagine my surprise when I found out it was all their own initiative. Man, I make them sound a little incompetent, they’re really great friends, but boys will be boys. It’s all very sweet, but I do wonder how long they can keep this up for. They don’t quite compare to Miss. 23. I can’t take them on shopping trips or share beauty appointments with them or fully introduce them to the evil world of female thoughts (because they’re far too innocent).

Today I bought the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album Show Your Bones and I am LOVING it! I completely fell for Fever to Tell. The songs on Show Your Bones have already hooked me, but I’m not sure if it’ll rate as well as Fever to Tell which was top-notch gritty garage mod rock. And oh how I LOVE Karen O! LURVEEEE HER! She is definitely on my list of girl crushes (and she went out with one of my crushes – Spike Jonze – yummy). The amount of times that I turn up the volume in my car on my way to work, singing Rich and Cold Night at the top of my lungs, daydreaming about being a sexy rockstar chick and having the voice of Karen O is embarrassing (and time consuming). Boy if only I had the lungs of that girl…