the passenger seat

If you haven’t noticed already, yesterday I made myself a new header for this blog. At least now I have a title. With that, I also made a new banner for people to stick in their blogrolls (Jason, Rex, etc.). Quick question though, can you tell that it has a kind of blue/grey background with diagonal white lines? If not, I should make it darker since it might not show up on some monitors and just look white.

Anyway, onto other news. Today was pretty full-on; I was out the whole day. I woke up just before 11am, and showered, changed, ate, packed wiimotes before being dropped off at Epping just before noon to meet Janet who had just finished tutoring. Taking advantage of the free train, we headed to Macquarie for a few hours, where we bought Ben a birthday present and ate and walked around. Then just before 4pm we headed back to Epping to get to Ben’s belated birthday party at his house, which unfortunately was not the surprise party that had been organised. Met up with Mindy then Carol and Annie (who disappeared soon after in search of a gift), Michael, Gabriel and Deva, before heading off towards Ben’s place. Ben’s house was really nice, and it was just nice to be with everyone there outside near the barbecue and playing with his dog, a big Border Collie named Joyce. About an hour in I left with Douglas and Deva (in the killing machine that is Doug’s car) to go back to my place to pick up my Wii, since everyone wanted to play Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It was a funy car trip, especially with Douglas’ precarious and often-joked-about driving combined with the wet road. After we arrive at my place and I had the Wii all packed up, I walked out of the house and there was no car in my driveway. Bugger. Fortunately, Douglas wasn’t smart enough to turn off his headlights, and I saw a house on the opposite side of my street illuminated and followed it to Douglas’ parked car on the side street. Suckers. I was too smart for them. So then we headed back to Ben’s place, where we ate, played Wii, watched MasterChef and had some of Ben’s Heineken keg bought by Carol and Annie earlier (which tasted bad, but I still beat Carol in a drinking contest). The party ended with most people leaving after 9pm.

Although it wasn’t the surprise party that was originally planned, everyone still had a great time and it was a good break from the monotony of school.

Onto other things, a movie that I want to watch in the near future (it’s already out in the US) is the new Pixar film Up. The animations and graphics in the film are spot on, and I love the style of the characters and scenery, in classic Pixar style. I’m sure many of you may have seen the movie poster at the Parramatta Greater Union and wondered what it was all about. Basically, the plot is that an old man fulfils his lifelong dream and attaches a lot of balloons to his house, and it flies away to distant places. The thing is, during lift-off there was a young boy scout on his porch, and he gets carried away with the house, too, and an epic adventure ensues. Sounds lame? I think not. Take a look at the pictures and trailer below.

Speaking of Pixar animations, I hear Toy Story 3 is coming out next year… Definitely a must-see. Watch the teaser trailer below.

And on the topic of children’s movies (which are not just for children), what better way to fix a hole in a wall than with Lego? Heck, now even a five-year-old can fix a wall. I used to love Lego as a kid; I still have a huge tub of Lego pieces. Pretty much for every occasion that required a present between 6 and 10 years old, I asked for Lego. I love to build things. I reckon if I was given a set now I would still love to build it.

Lego too complicated for you? Maybe Duplo is easier.

And speaking of childhood hobbies, I kind of miss the things I used to do as a kid. One of the most memorable times was when I would play Star Wars with Ringo in year 1 (or year 2?), using different coloured hula-hoops as lightsabers. That was mad fun. Actually, speaking of Ringo, there was this one time in primary when Ringo drank some water and held it in his mouth with puffed cheeks. I thought he was just joking that there was water in his mouth, so I went in front of him and clapped his cheeks. He wasn’t joking; we still joke about that incident with eachother today. Digressing, after our hula hoops Star Wars everyone moved on to the connector-pen guns. I was never really good at making those since I didn’t have the 50-packs of textas that some people had, but it was still heaps fun to have epic battles all over the playground. Then there were Pokemon cards, which got banned at school, followed by Tamagotchis and Digimon (I wonder where my old ones are?). Raising the little pets and having battles were fun, but then people found the cheat to create a tiny, super-powerful Digimon (involving inserting and removing the reset tab and pressing a combination of buttons). Ah, those were the times. I wish we could have little things like that nowadays, but all I see are Ben 10 watches and kids with mobile phones and iPods. Poor kids.

It’s coincidental how I somehow ended up talking about my childhood in this blog, because I just saw Jason’s blog which also mentioned his childhood, as well as the candy that I loved as a kid (basically sugar and flavouring in a packet): the Wizz Fizz. I remember my friends and I (and my brother, too) used to wish for a golden or silver spoon every time we opened the packet, since they were the rarest, but we would always end up with blue or red or yellow. That was some good stuff, though, I’m surprised there weren’t more hyperactive kids in classrooms- it worries me to think how unhealthy that stuff was.

Anyway, I think I will end there. I need to get up early tomorrow for Netball training. I’m not sure when the game will be on, but I hope everyone comes to watch a bunch of guys (who mostly usually play basketball) play netball against some more guys when the game is on. Who would’ve thought guys netball could be so intense and fast-paced; I’m usually spent after training. Okay, I will really end this blog now.

“Kids” is by MGMT, from their latest album Oracular Spectacular.

Goodnight, everyone (even though probably no-one will read this tonight- it’s 12:53am).