Float like a butterfly…

That’s right, after 6 long years, uni is finally over! It’s only slowly sinking in, but the more it does the happier I am. This has been without a doubt the most intense year of my life, so I’m looking forward to a couple of months of downtime before I start full-time work.

Having said that, my downtime is already shaping up to be, like most other things I get up to, ridiculous. Up until last year I’ve been pretty uncertain about what I want, and just sort of gone with the flow in everything I’ve done. But amidst the craziness of the last year and a half I have gradually been working out what I want to do with my little self; it probably started with “hmmm, this uni thing’s getting old, I wonder what a seriously disorganised trip around Europe would be like instead?”.

Now that I am so close to actually officially entering the real world and being able to do all these things, well let’s just say I am more than a little excited. It’s an amazing feeling, all of a sudden the stupidest little things are making me extremely happy, I have a list of things I want to get good at, and an absolutely burning desire to be the best there is at them (hence the psycho-paced run this evening and me still being awake now and learning Sigur Ros on the piano). And if the last few days are anything to go by, I’m going to be sore and tired when I wake up tomorrow morning but just as excited, and I’m going to do it all again.

The starting keeper for West Ham isn’t… starting this weekend after a “freak training-ground accident” (which I’m guessing is a nice way of saying he did something really stupid) involving him getting tangled in the net when fishing some balls out of the goals. Soccernet kindly provided a list of other bizarre injuries over the years, some of them are great:

* ALAN WRIGHT: The diminutive former Aston Villa full-back strained his knee by stretching to reach the accelerator in his new Ferrari. He subsequently swapped the sports car for a Rover 416.

* CHIC BRODIE: The Brentford goalkeeper’s career came to an abrupt end in October 1970 when he collided with a sheepdog which had run onto the pitch. Brodie shattered his kneecap while the dog got the ball. “The dog might have been a small one, but it just happened to be a solid one,'’ he reflected.

* SVEIN GRONDALEN: The Norway defender had to withdraw from an international during the 1970s after colliding with a moose while out jogging.

* DAVID BATTY: The former Leeds and Blackburn midfielder managed to re-injure his Achilles tendon when he was run over by his toddler on a tricycle.

Thesis done in: 10 days
Finished uni forever in: 15 days

C’MONNNN!

I dropped my sister in Fremantle on the way to uni this morning, and on the way we heard the new Shannon Noll song. I saw it my duty as an annoying big brother to wind down the windows and turned the stereo up as loud as it could go, and she wasn’t too happy (picture a cream-coloured 80’s Volvo with Shannon Noll blaring out of its pathetic speakers, you’d probably be pretty embarassed too :P), but when she heard the line of lyrics in the song that goes “Hey now, hey now, hey now, hey now sing your hymn /This is the new national anthem” she shouted “No it’s not! I’m outraged!”.

Looks like we have a new captain outrage in the making.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh… Alright, over it, back to work :)

Things that are awesome:

* Kiwifruit. Apparently no other fruit is a better source of antioxidants.
* One Giant Leap. Who would have thought Robbie Williams and Maxi Jazz would team up well together?
* The Sun. It’s back, get your double pluggers out everyone.

Despite losing 261 to 250, I have certainly enjoyed the game of online rude-word scrabble I have been playing over the last few weeks with a friend working in Dongara. Anyone fancy a game? :P

…and, what with things very slowly starting to make sense, thesis taking shape and my first two games of Friday night indoor in way too long to look forward to, I’m certainly not complaining. Dave in point form:

* After indoor tonight and squash last week my upper right leg looks like a shark has had a nibble on it.

* Bizarre Love Triangle is an awesome song.

* I have never listened to trance music before, but a friend gave me some to listen to and it is actually quite good for thesising. Can’t see myself going to a rave anytime soon tho :P think I’ll stick to concerts like COLDPLAY IN JUNE/JULY NEXT YEAR, hell yeah.

* I thought I was going to start work pretty much straight after finishing uni in November, but it turns out I won’t be needed until January next year. So if anyone needs me in December, I will be down south, feel free to join :)

* On the down side, it is now almost 6am and despite lying in bed for the last 5 hours this is now the second day this week I haven’t got a wink of sleep. Ah well, at least I’m motoring through Don Quixote!

Nobody ever calls the helpdesk after 4:45pm, which doesn’t leave me with much to do… apart from stuffing around with MS Paint of course :P

A nasty bum-sex bee

The box of boredom

D-FENCE!

E-shed at the Glory

Why it sucks to be a snail

Less than a month to go, c’monnnnn!! More random thoughts:

* I’ve always liked mucking around with MS Paint, but aside from being a nice procastination tool it is actually quite relaxing when your head is as much of a mess as mine is. For example:

* Speaking of therapeutic time-wasters, I had a song stuck in my head so bad the other day that I learnt to play it on the piano. I played for a few years when I was five, and so can still read sheet music, albiet at the speed of a five year old :P But as long as it took, it was very rewarding to finally get it down. Heh, add re-learning the piano to the increasingly long list of things to do next year.

* While sitting here bashing my head against a brick wall (a.k.a trying to write my thesis) I am going through a whole heap of music, and tonight I found a CD that I made for a friend when she went on a holiday a few years ago… it is absolutely wicked! Any CD that opens with Lucky Man by Richard Ashcroft and finishes with The Scientist by Coldplay is awesome as far as I’m concerned, and it is full of songs that I absolutely love but haven’t heard for ages. Music is keeping me sane and this lab in one piece right now, and the good thing about being stuck here is that I get to listen to all the old stuff I love as well as finding a whole lot of new music I like (big word-up to the people throwing me CDs!).

* Football (the real one) is the best sport ever, and the other thing preventing me from smashing up this computer lab. If I didn’t have a million games of futsal a week to look forward to I think I would definitely have cracked by now. It always takes me hours to actually fall asleep when I go to bed, and part of the reason is because I am thinking about something that happened in a game or something that I am going to try next time I play.

* The fact that I like football so much poses a bit of a problem, because I plan to start doing triathlons, half ironmans and eventually the Hawaiian Ironman once I get out of this gosh-forsaken heck hole, and I am almost excited about getting into that as I am about football - when Buddha told me she knows someone who is going in the Busselton half-ironman and she was told that after the event every competitor either goes to a recovery tent or a medical tent, that just made it all the more appealing. But somehow I don’t think I am going to be terribly effective on a football pitch after something like that, which one to choose?

Listening to: Don’t Worry Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin

I know I said I wouldn’t actually write anything on here anymore, but writing a thesis is so damn boring! Random thoughts for the day:

* The Black Eyed Peas concert was wicked last night. Not only were the Peas themselves great, but it’s easy to have a good time when you’re with other people who are pumped to be there (word up to my peeps in the newly formed spastic peas dancing crew :P). I love going to concerts with friends when I don’t know too much about the band, because 99% of the time at least one member of the group is a great performer and you end up having an awesome time, like last night. I also distinctly remember telling my parents I was going to see “a bunch of randoms” before going to the Coldplay concert when they were touring for Parachutes :P

* I have been talking to a lot of people about what a big change next year is going to be for me. But I feel like I have already done the changing, and now I’m just waiting for it to happen - I have always been so unsure of what I want to do and my ability to do it, but right now I have huge desire to get into work, soccer and a whole massive list of other things and be the greatest at all of them. I bumped into the guy I travelled with last year yesterday, and was talking about this with him - he said the only thing missing was a hot girlfriend and a Porsche, I said “yeah a Porsche would be good” :P. Still, as he said, whether I think I’m ready for it all and know what I’m going to do or not, who knows how it’s actually going to go? Only god I guess, and for all I know he/she doesn’t exist, but just cause I don’t know where I’m going doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the ride! And as for the hot girlfriend, well at least this way there won’t be anyone to grieve when I get eaten by a great white while training for the Hawaiian Ironman :P

I was at work #1 (2nd last shift!), but brought in a TV from home - nothing was going to stop me from watching the end of this game.

Hate Sydney.