I was so stoked to hear that The Smashing Pumpkins were getting back together and recording a new album. I love the Pumpkins. The other night I heard Billy Corgan singing some lyrics I didn’t recognize and figured it must be new stuff. Went on-line the next morning and sure enough it’s the new stuff (Been very little build up to the release in South Africa). Searching a little further I found this article at pitchforkmedia.com.

It took me a while to process my reactions. The dude writing the article is a little rough about it, but the facts remain the same. To get all the tracks recorded for the album legally and soon, you’re gonna need to buy 3 copies of the album. In the states anyway.

Most of our SA music stores are franchises, the indie record store doesn’t really exist here, but we don’t have Target or Best Buy. This probably means we’ll only get the standard album. No bonus tracks. No title track. That sucks.

I still like Billy & crew, and chances are good I’ll buy the album (the actual CD, not the probably illegal outside of Russia legalsounds.com download) but I’m disappointed.

14 plates of prawns were sacrificed at our table at Jimmy’s Killer Prawns last night.

They have a ‘Eat all the Prawns you can’ special on Mondays and Tuesdays. It used to be Sundays, but I recon that was getting a bit expensive for them.

My Hunny gyms pretty hard. Recently he has upped his program, and along with that his eating, quite a bit. Gym folk call it bulking, I call it ‘Oh no, he’s hungry again’. So last night we got 2 mates and unleashed Hunny on Jimmy’s. Of the 14 plates of prawns consumed, 6.5 of those were my Hunny. I’m so proud…

Next time he wants to break the restaurant’s record of 9 plates …

I’ve been contemplating this post for 24 hours now. I wanted my blog to be a predominantly happy place, but today I need somewhere to release some sadness, and rather this than bringing down my family & co-workers down on a Friday.

On Wednesday night the son of Joe, the guy that looks after our horses, died. He was 15 and had been sick for a while, but we didn’t know he was that sick. If we had, we could have and would have done more to help. Yesterday someone else close to me was diagnosed with Epilepsy, and another close friend and mentor of my husband is battling cancer. I’m starting to realize the mortality of all the people around me and it fills me with dread and regret.

I’m not afraid of my own death, I have strong Christian beliefs that have helped me deal with that, but I’m burdened for the time that may be running out for those around me. Have I tried hard enough to be a good friend? Have I helped them as much as I could have? Have I tried enough to share the gospel with my non-Christian friends? I’ll never be able to say yes with conviction to any of those questions because the truth is we can almost always do more.

The end result of this should be more conviction on my part to do better, but today I just want to curl up on my bed and stay there. 

Sorry for the m0pe guys, next post should be better.

I great set of calves is probably as much genetics as it is exercise. My calves get quite a bit of exercise, but the genes are against me. I have tiny calves. Not sexy tiny. Tiny as in “where the heck are they?” I blame my mom. Hers are even smaller.

My feet aren’t a matching set of small though, which has made finding a pair of knee high boots (or mid calf, or anything above ankle) that fit well a bit of a never ending boot shopping mission of mine. If they fit my feet they leaving a huge gaping space between my calf and the boot edge, sorta like Wellington boots.

I had a bright idea this year though. I got boots with fluff. Particularly, I got boots with fluff around their tops! The fluff goes a long way towards filling the calf to boot edge gap, and I’m quite pleased with the result. See my chicken legs (knobbly knees & all) in their amazing gap minimizing boots below…

My sister-in-law sent me an invite earlier this week to join Facebook. I was quite surprised, she’s a neurologist, I’m a techie, and she got there first? ah well.

So I joined. (Search for me as ‘Alex van Niekerk’ if you’re on there, I could use some extra friends, my friends count is pretty dismal) Then I started browsing around, found my old high schools on there.

This shouldn’t surprise you: I was not popular in high school. I wasn’t unpopular either. Mostly I just wasn’t noticed. Skinny, pale, not rich, quite quiet & introverted, you know the type. Since then I’ve found my niche. I’m quite happy with who I turned out to be and the life I’ve made for myself.

But browsing through the photo’s and friends of the popular folk from high school was quite weird. They all still stick together. And they all still look to damn good. I’m quite sure that karma was supposed to make them fat & ugly by now. It took me back to that same place I was 10+ years ago. Again I felt like the pale, left out geek (I’m not that skinny anymore) and it was surprising how raw it can still feel.

Don’t get me wrong. I know who I am, what makes me me, and it’s not being a groupie. I don’t actually want to be a member of the ‘get-along gang’. I’m just annoyed to know that it still exists and it’s still beyond my reach.

*Sigh*

I have sent only one friend request to an ex school person, and I think I’ll keep it that way. Keep moving on, some issues are too old to redress.

Those two words just about sum up my blogging activity lately. I’m not even gonna bother with excuses. I’m putting the bike trip tale on hold until I can finish all the reaming posts in that series and will now blog the random stuff that’s been happing recently.

My horse & I finally made some tangible progress in our show-jumping career. Three weekends ago we tried our first C-grade (previously jumping D-grade) competition. Nothing spectacular to report from that, we took down a few poles. That said, ‘nothing spectacular’ is a pretty good way for us to make the transition up a grade, in the past upgrades have meant an almost complete loss of confidence and several shows hoping back and forth between the new grade and the previous one.

Much more exciting to report: this past weekend when we tried 2 more C grade competitions, we really got it right. My boy finally showed off some of the talent my instructor and I have been witness to in our training sessions over the last couple of months. Yay! My faith in us is restored!

In other news, last night saw the reunion of the three wise men. Vin, Jay and Claus once again brought down the house. Well not quite. The house is still standing, but they sure did try hard. Jay & Vin are loooong time buddies of my Hunny (aka Claus – it’s a long story), and they haven’t all three been in the same place at the same time for a good while. Jay now lives on a tiny island off the coast of Madagascar (even if I could spell it’s name correctly you wouldn’t know it) and is back in SA for a brief visit and Hunny thought it’d be good to get them & their other halves & progeny round for dinner. And drinks. And general horsing around, wrestling on the kitchen floor and attempting to footprint the ceiling of our study with foot still in shoe.

There are some advantages to having three rampaging hooligans in your home though. You know those bottles of weird spirits that sit in your liquor cabinet for years because they taste so awful that no-one in their right mind would drink them, but you can’t just toss them out because they were probably gifts? There are 2 less of those bottles in my cupboard. The bottle of Madagascan Rum, the bottle of cinnamon brandy liqueur called Hot Sex, both gone. Sizeable dents also made in the grappa and tequila bottles, neither of which I’m too sad about, though I could have made Margaritas with the Jose Quervo.

Boys will be boys, but eventually the girls decided that enough fun had been had and took their other halves home to begin nursing their hangovers. Funny that when you put three guys in their early thirties together you end up with an average age of 18