In Australia people go away for awhile during Christmas and New Year's. Many go away somewhere for all or at least half of January. It's summer here, so it is a nice opportunity for people to go to the beach, have barbecues, and get skin cancer.
The city has become so quiet. On Christmas Day, we rode our bikes to West End, the busy funky neighborhood nearby, to visit an English couple who recently moved here and don't have friends or family in Brisbane. I worked with the woman on the Vampire movie, and she's really cool. Darcy has a project due mid-January, so we aren't going anywhere until then, so they said "come over". Riding through West End was very quiet. There were NO people around, and EVERYTHING was closed. I was waiting for a zombie monkey to jump out of a bush. No, not really, I haven't seen that movie but I was told about it.
The days between Christmas and New Year's picked up slightly, but most shops were closed. I had to go into the CBD if I wanted to buy a book or stare at gadgets. In addition, the weather has been CRAZY. The winds have been blowing erratically and strongly and the clouds have whipped by, giving sunny patches mixed with foreboding dark skies, and light to heavy rain taking turns almost the entire time. It's good because here we have a serious drought and have water restrictions, and all that was brown is now a luscious green. But it makes it difficult to get around, especially because we are sans car. An umbrella is a joke - the rain gets blown around and manages to get you everywhere. We are going to have this crazy weather for another week, meteorologists predict. Darcy hates it, because it makes working very hard. He works partially outside.
His birthday is a couple of days before Christmas, so I made him a banana cake. It was OK; I used a different recipe than I do to make banana bread, because Darcy requested banana cake. For Christmas I made banana bread. It was way better, so I made Darcy banana bread yesterday. I have made more banana bread/cake in the past week than in the past 3 years. It turned out really good though. It's almost gone.
A couple of days after Christmas we went to the Woodford Folk Festival, an hour north of Brisbane. It is very famous. They say world famous, but I'd never heard of it until Darcy told me about it. Everyone I've met in Australia who has been to it said great things. We drove to the place, which is on the side of a hill by a pretty field, but it was raining like crazy, so the festival was very wet and muddy. There were LOTS of people, like 130,000, and everyone was in granola gear. Darcy advised me to wear my boots, and I'm really glad he did, because there were paths and puddles in which my foot just disappeared into the mud. Wellies would have been good, but I don't own them. We saw some good musicians, and we ate some good vegetarian food and had a couple of beers. I get freaked out sometimes by large gatherings of people, and here it was freaky because the discomfort makes you notice more things. I thought about all the toilets, and the mud and the 20-somethings in their crocs, and My first impulse was "let's get out of here! AHHH!" But then I relaxed a bit, and it was fine. Actually, it was pretty good. Maybe I'll go again next year.
I was supposed to go to Sydney for a 4 month job, to work on another movie, but it was postponed indefinitely because of the Writers' Strike in the US. So, one day, after signing the contract and everything, I got a call saying it's off, no 4 month job. So now I have nothing on the horizon. I've been hanging around, trying to keep busy, because everyone is closed for holidays so I couldn't look for work. But now I can get started. I need to get some of my work materials so I can update my reel.
For New Year's we went to the home of some friends who are married and have a baby. We drank wine and ate a nice meal and laughed and listened to Prince and talked about plans for next year and played a dice game called Zilch, which I may have played once in the past as it felt vaguely familiar. It was fun. I lost by a lot of points.
The next day was hot and sticky and everything felt damp and gross. I sat at my steaming computer, bathed in sweat, trying to come up with goals, as Darcy and company made me feel like a bit of a loser for not having yearly goals. I have goals! Just because I don't make them on December 31st! But, whatevs. It's a good idea. I came up with some goals. It's good to write stuff down. That way it stares you in the face, pushing you forward. So, I wrote these goals in a notebook that is for my general scribbling of ideas and whatnot, and I discovered that I had
already written goals down earlier in the year, and they
were almost identical to the ones I wrote down on New Year's Day. The significance? I guess I am
better than Darcy and company, because I had goals
way before they did. Maybe I'll write down my goals for
2009, so I am that
much further ahead of everyone. Then they'll be really impressed, and I will have achieved a goal - get people to not give me a hard time about writing down goals on New Year's Eve.
I'm just kidding. That's not a goal of mine. Darcy just wants for me to live my life to the fullest, which I appreciate.
One of my goals this year is to be less grumpy and more happy.
