Happy Christmas Everyone! May Your Days Be Merry, Bright...... and Free From Tinsel-Related Choking Hazards!

So here we again, friends, family and country men and women (and urban based dwellers also!).... two days till Christmas explodes in all it's multi-coloured, bauble-strewn, tinsel-saturated Santa-clogging glory, and I am finally wrapping up my good old Christmas rave for yet another fabulous year.... and what a year it's been! Floods, pestilence, locust plagues.... wait no, that was Exodus in the Bible.... my life, by contrast, has been refreshingly free of all of the above, which is great on many levels (think of the money saved on Raid alone trying to kill all the locusts!), and instead has been marked by the love of a wonderful man, all sorts of social outings, time with special friends, a trip to Canada, great movies, music and food, and a massed choir of angels who... wait, no, also the Bible.....my bad....

Suffice to say I have whipped myself into a frenzy making sure the tree is all lit up, and covered in baubles and ornaments (including the fabbest silver-sequined balls this side of Mardi Gras!), I have wrapped and sticky taped all sorts of goodies and placed them under my tree, hosted a Christmas picnic in the park with a pink and brown bauble hanging centrepiece, created a Christmas blog which you're now (hopefully) reading, and I am getting ready to jump on a jet plane tomorrow to return once more to the Ancestral Estate in Alstonville for 6 days of time with my gorgeous family (including my darling new niece, Zara!), excessive eating, markets at Bangalow, brunch at Byron Bay, playing bowling on the Nintendo Wii, and lots of DVD box set watching....phew..... I may even get a few naps in too! Think I will need them!

All that to say, it's Christmas, my favourite time of the year, and I want to wish each and every one of you the best Christmas since someone invented sliced fruitcake, and the sort of year in 2010 that will have you pinching yourself to make sure you're not dreaming....unless, of course, you're naked, being chased through the woods by zombies in a post-apoclyptic wilderness.... in which case,  you are dreaming.. or possibly not, in which case I recommend getting a gun and locking yourself in a supermarket somewhere!

Given that the likelihood of zombies chasing anyone post-apocalypse is remote in 2010, may this Christmas and the new year bring you joy, peace, and the best eggnog you can brew! Have a fabulous time!

Surfin' Santa!

Found Him! No, Not Wally..... Mr Right!

After years spent bemoaning my singleness (while at the same time enjoying my life regardless, I should add!) and going on more dates than the sands of the Sahara - OK that may be a tad hyberbolic but it felt like that at times! - I found Mr Right this year.... at a New Year's Eve party.

The delightful part was it all a magnificent unexpected surprise. After trying hard to find someone via referrals from friends, and the internet (through which I made some brilliantly good friends!), I ended up meeting the guy I am now with, Stephen, via one of the good friends I made via a set-up date years ago, Fahmi. Stephen used to come to Sydney a lot from Bathurst on the weekends for the opera etc, and stayed with my friend Fahmi more often than he didn't. Since I saw Fahmi quite a bit on the weekends for brunch, movies etc, I used to see Stephen now and then, and we'd talk a little here and there. He came across as a lovely guy, and truth be told, I thought he was handsome from the moment I met him.

But nothing much progressed till last October when Fahmi was in Singapore for 12 days, and as is usually the case when Fahmi's away from home, I fed his cat. The final weekend of his trip, Stephen was due to stay and we arranged an exhange of the house keys at The Union hotel near Fahmi's. What I expected to be a quick 10 minute hand over of keys, ended up being a 3 hour epic, during which I drank some white wine, enjoyed Stephen's company immensely, and ended up accidentally on the best first date of my life! Trouble was he was still living in Bathurst, and after two long distance relationships that hadn't worked that year, I walked home thrilled to have spent the time with this beautiful man but not really thinking it would lead anywhere, much to my great regret.

But Stephen, as enamoured of me as I was of him, had other ideas, and after moving back to Sydney mid-December (not for me I must stress - his work contract had ended!), decided he would make one last play for my affections at Fahmi's New year's Eve party. (Fahmi, god bless him, had blithely not interpreted my constant questions of him about Stephen, and Stephen's to him about me, as actual romantic interest at all, so neither had any idea of the level of the other's interest! Hilarious....). I turned up with my friend, Peter and Stephen immediately said "Hi" and we got on as beautifully as before, but it wasn't till he said he couldn't let me leave the party early (he had me confused with another friend of Fahmi's, also Andrew, who was leaving early for another party) that I twigged that he was interested. I was thrilled, and we ended up spending much the whole party together, and even kissed at midnight. Awww.....

That amazing night has led to the loveliest year of my life, where Stephen and I have firmly become established as boyfriends, where he met my brother, Stephen, and Mum & Dad, where we participated in all sorts of fabulous things together like Fair Day, yachting with friends, countless dinners.... every second of our time has been delightful, and I have loved discovering more and more of what makes him the man of my dreams  - he's so warm, caring, down to earth, funny, intelligent, articulate, so easy to spend time with in any circumstance, my friend, and soul mate, and the sort of person I want to be with all the time. I have been truly blessed by his presence in my life this year, and I am looking forward to many years more.

Christmas Fun!

                                                                  

                                                                             

                                                                              

FINALLY Leaving on a Jet Plane.....

After lots of domestic flights this year, mostly to see my delightful new niece Zara, but also to celebrate my birthday, and sadly mourn my dear Auntie Liz's passing, I finally made it past immigration, got an Air NZ flight on October 25, and made it to San Francisco, USA, and then Vancouver, Canada.

I hadn't been back to North America in four years, and I really missed the place, and my very good friends in Vancouver, Sandra and Ken, and their gorgeous kids, Katie and Graham. There is something about Canada particularly that feels like home, and I love going back and doing a mix of tourist stuff and just chilling with my friends.... and oh, shopping....lots and lots of shopping! Needless to say VISA and Mastercard encouraged me to go...

First stop was a city I have visited 3 times before - San Francisco. Why visit a 4th time? Well for starters it's a beautiful city from the stunning harbour to the one-of-a-kind neighbourhoods (and the oyxgen tank required effort it takes to walk up and down...or bike.... the hills connecting them!) to the icons that dot the city like confetti from an exuberant wedding. My decision was made mainly because my friend Warren was going to be there on his way back to Australia after business there and a trip around the USA, and I thought it would be cool to catch up with him in a totally exotic locale (plus try as we might we hadn't found a time or place to catch up in Sydney for 2 months so why 10000 km away?!).

So I joined him and his wonderful friends, Warren & Leith, and Jason & Melinda, in SF, and hit the ground running visiting Alcatraz on the first day, which was amazing and had audio guided tours (with commentary provided by old guards and prisoners), and which also involved a boat trip across San Francisco Bay with the stunning views afforded by that of the skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge. Finished off the day with a wander through Pier 39 and Fisherman's harf, where we were staying, before dinner. Jet lag then claimed and I crashed for the night.

The next day was spectacular. We went bike riding around the Bay, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and via Vista Point down to lovely Sausilito, a cute village on the opposite side of the bay with great shopping and seafood. We caught the ferry back and then the four guys cycled up Hyde Street (SO steep!) before cycling down Lombard Street (the zigzaggy one you would have seen in countless shots of the City). We finished an exhausting but fun day in The Castro, SF's gay quarter with dinner at Nirvana, after dinner drinks at Blush Wine Bar and after-after-dinner drinks at Twin Peaks.

I left the SF the next morning after a quick trip to Ghiradelli Square near the hotel, and headed straight to Vancouver for 10 days with my lovely Canadian friends, Sandra and ken and their delightful kids. Since I have been to Vancouver 9-10 times before, I didn't have to overdo the tourist bits - although I did make it to Granville Island (artists market), Kitsilano (funky neighbourhood with a mix of unique shops and main line chains plus the delectable Sophie's Cosmic Cafe!) and Stanley Park (love the sea wall walk! Bliss!) again - and so concentrated on shopping, lazy cocktail-fueled lunches with Ken, hikes around local parks like Minnekhada (which looks so wild that you'd swear you were in The Rockies - awesomely beautiful!), and enjoying special family moments like celebrating Halloween where I even got to give out the candy dressed in a monster mask, long black haired wig and a pink cowboy hat! It was my firstv real Halloween and an absolute bundle of fun! The neighbourhood was decorated to within an inch of it's life, everyone dressed up, and the kids were having a ball!

I also got to do some very ordinary stuff like drop off and pick up the kids from school, run errands, chill and watch cable TV, and Ken and Sandra mangaged to get me totally hooked on Farmtown, this cool game you play on Facebook where you establish and run a farm. Sound boring? I only wish it was then I might be able to leave it alone!

The flights there and back were wonderful - Air NZ is great! - and I got to see some cool movies like Moon, The Time Traveller's Wife, and the whole holiday allowed me to wind back the stress from my highly stressed, full on job as an Executive Assistant to the MD of the Wholesale Division at Optus. I had such a good time that I have no intention of leaving it another four years to go again!

Christmas is Crazy! Some cartoon fun.....

                                   

                                                                             

Goodbye My Darling Auntie Lizzie

L-R : Me, Auntie Liz, My Aunt Helen and my Mum (opposite me)

One of the constant fixtures of my life growing up, in a family where we were very close to my Mum's family, was my Great Aunt Lizzie, my Nanna's sister, who was almost Aunt Mame like in the way she approached life. Granted she probably wasn't as flamboyant, but she wasn't far off it, at least to me. 


For a boy from the country, her life was amazingly exotic, larger than life, from the fact she lived in Sydney (and close to the City in Darling Point) to the large colourful Elton John-esque glasses she wore, the fact that she did her grocery shopping at David Jones, or travelled everywhere in hire cars. Every aspect of her life was so totally different to my world at that time that the special trips down to see her on Kirklands buses from the North Coast were like this journey into a Willy Wonka-type world and I used to adore the trips to go shopping in the City, dragging her across town in her 70s to buy exotic stationary at Grace Bros, traveling by hire car, eating at DJs, or sitting in her sunroom watching the inhabitants of Eastbourne Avenue come and go.


She was possessed of a hearty. ready laugh, a sense of the ridiculous (when a silly idea entered her head, or she said something not quite right, she would start with a low giggle, that she'd try to stifle before it built to a crescendo of endless full-bodied laughs that were infectious in the extreme!) and a sense of fun that led her to do things like hitching up her night gown when she was babysitting us in the early 80s in Alstonville, and dancing in our make believe disco in the kitchen.

She did have a propensity to express her opinion loudly at inopportune points - "Well this doesn't look like a nice restaurant does it?" as we entered the place - and repeat the same stories over and over (Australians in France waving Aussie flags by the side of the road anyone? LOL) but they were all part of her charm, and in the end what I loved was that she was FUN, bright, colourful and exuberant, and made sure that every moment of her life reflected that.

My dear Auntie Lizzie, whom I loved very much, died this year in August at 101,  and she will be greatly missed.