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How good has the sky been lately? ALERT: RHETORICAL; IT'S BEEN AMAZING.
Admittedly this freaking heat wave has got me all bejiggedy, and so far I've managed to refrain from running around with my hands flailing above my head, screaming "We're all gonna die! We're all gonna die!".
But only just.
But I can forgive the world for a late April that has me dripping with sweat as I ride to work, because of the ridiculous Renaissance skies. They're all fierce blues and shards of glaring sunlight and clouds! Clouds like we haven't seen in 13 years of drought. Big, voluptous, bucolic clouds. Clouds in every single kind of grey, piled and heaped and teetering on top of one another. Clouds that streak across the sky like they have somewhere else to be. Clouds that pouffe about and mosey along as though they been blown from the hookah of Lewis Carroll's caterpillar.
And deep charcoal clouds, laden with rain and bombastic with lightening. My only sadness is that too few of the storms have unleashed themselves over central Melbourne. But it is wonderful to wake every day to these glorious, ever-changing, magnificent skies. Nice one, Autumn.
Hehem.
- Cooking. Notably, cooking for friends and loved ones.
- The weather. Particularly wind patterns, cloud movements and storm fronts.
- Caramel. Different ways of making it. Opportunities to consume it.
- Small cute things. Including children. *frets that life is following an all too stereotypical trajectory* *eats some caramel*
As a counterpoint, here are some things I am indifferent to, despite having obsessed over them in my youth.
- My nose.
- The size of my bum.
- Being a person of enormous significance in the world. Fame. Glory. etc
Throughout the course of my life thus far, my consistent obsession remains: Potatoes. Scrumptious potatoes. They never let you down.
About a month ago I moved in with Leith to an apartment in Parkville. There have been lots of good things about this move, and some adjustments to living in such close proximity to others, but one aspect I'm particularly enjoying is The Lobby Romance.
The Lobby Romance is between a young Asian woman and a young Asian man. They might be late teens or about 20 or so. Young Asian woman (let's call her YAW) clearly lives in the building, but I'm not sure where. I suspect she lives with her parents. YAM is her gentleman caller, and is pretty clearly not allowed upstairs or into her apartment.
To the casual observer they are incredibly sweet.
Before I moved in here I would sometimes arrive at around 10pm-ish and pass The Lobby Romance on my way up. It wouldn't happen often but it would usually consist of one of two scenes:
Scene 1 - YAW and YAM are sitting on the ground at the edge of the path leading to the door to the building, having one of those quiet, intense, couple-y conversations.
Scene 2 - YAM is outside the building up leaning against the glass and YAW is seated inside leaning against the lobby wall, and they are having a quiet, intense, couple-y conversation over their mobiles.
Once I came in and they were both seated on the ground inside the lobby, side by side, talking and I had to skirt around them to get to the stairs. But they are never slobbery and gropey, they just talk long into the night.
They are oblivious to the world around them and I try to be as unobtrusive as possible. Leith tells me that The Lobby Romance has been going on some two years now, and has its share of ups and downs.
Since I've moved in I've only seen them once or twice, but in the last few days there has definitely been drama afoot.
On Tuesday we got home from the gym, sweaty and sore, and came up to witness The Lobby Romance in a moment of crisis. YAW and YAM were in scenario 2, she inside and he out, talking on their phones. Only she had tears streaming down her face and he was literally pressed up to the glass, looking shattered. Despite it being quite awkward for Leith and I to barge into this in our sweaty shorts , I felt terribly rude just being there in the midst of this scene, since it's perfectly obvious they have nowhere else to go.
We executed a very quick change upstairs and headed back out in search of food. I had commented to Leith that it looked like they were breaking up, but he assured me that they just went through these phases from time to time. It was funny, because we'd never acknowledged The Lobby Romance to one another before, although we were both abreast of the latest details. At a glance it appeared that she was calling the whole situation off.
Anyway, we headed back downstairs and passed through the lobby as quickly as we could. The scene was basically the same but maybe a little bit worse and more heart-rending even than before.
And then tonight we came home at about 11:30 and YAW and YAM were embracing on the stairs, in one of those 'home from the war' embraces. Not bent over or tonguing or anything, just holding each other very close and stroking hair and nuzzling into necks and so on. And there was a few tears and a palpable air of relief. We just edged past them on the stairs as silently as we could.
And internally I did a little high five to the world, because I didn't want them to break up. These two people who I've never even made direct eye contact with, let alone spoken to - I really really want them to be happy! They are putting in the hard yards, let me tell you.
So it would appear that The Lobby Romance will continue, same time tomorrow (I hope)...
As promised, I am reporting back.
So I remained completely sober through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and most of Thursday (until about 7pm). And let's not forget that I didn't drink on the previous Saturday or Sunday either.
There were both positives and negatives, as follows:
Positives
Slept well
Exercised more
Saved some money
Negatives
Had a shocking headache all week that felt like dehydration despite guzzling water
Skin went berserko
On Thursday I had a couple of beers with dinner, and yesterday I had some decent Chianti with lunch, and beer and wine with dinner plus a post-comedy show whiskey. Didn't feel any different to the other days. I think I got a bit high on sichuan peppers, but that's another issue.
The only other comments I'd make are that not drinking didn't affect my enjoyment of being out at night with friends at all. No difference. I could note that I didn't stay out late so this wasn't really tested, but in fairness, I don't really stay out past midnight anyway these days. Now where did I put that blanket? My legs are getting a chill.
On a seperate note...
I've been getting some, er, interesting commenters in recent weeks, and so have decided to begin moderating the comments for purely pragmatic reasons. I don't intend to censor anything that is actually relating to the content of the posts, just the links to the porn sites.
Sorry about that folks.
