I once knew a funny story…

 

…but now I seem to have forgotten what that was, so let me tell you another one instead:

The brain really works in mysterious ways. Forget about any so-called deities working in mysterious ways – it’s your brain you ought to worry about. As late as this very evening on which I am writing this blog entry, I realised something very funny about the way my brain works. I had decided to make a very simple dinner, which I knew wasn’t going to fill me up, so I decided to have some ice cream before dinner (I know – I’m a Rebel with a capital R). The reason why I had what many people would correctly label as ‘dessert’ before my dinner is simply the fact that when I have ice cream I get so awfully cold (can’t possibly imagine why), and so I need to eat or drink something warm to heat up again. In this case, my dinner would restore me to a normal temperature. So I loaded up a bowl with yummy vanilla ice cream and ate it all up (it felt so good) whilst cooking dinner. When my dinner was all cooked I was just about to find a new bowl for it, when I changed my mind and cleaned the one I had just used for my ice cream, because otherwise I would have to clean two bowls. And I suppose you now see what makes this a funny story. No? Well, of course I had to clean the same bowl twice, anyway, so what’s the difference? But in my mind it was more work to clean two different bowls than it is to clean the same bowl twice. Also, when I went to sit down at the table with my dinner, I was just about to turn off the light in the kitchen when I realised that when I do that, my brain tends to think that the dishes I’ve used to prepare my dinner have magically vanished, which often makes me put off doing the dishes ‘till the next morning, and that is not a fun realisation to wake up to. So what did I do? I left the light on, of course. And you know what happened? I did the dishes the moment I had finished eating. I like to think that it was because of my awareness of the mysterious ways in which my brain works. I don’t think it had anything to do with me manipulating my own mind.

 

Guess what I’m doing tomorrow? Oooh I bet you are excited now. So am I, by the way. I am going to a pre-screening of the movie Going the Distance, which is a new romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, and is about the trials and tribulations of a long-distance relationship… I got free tickets from the very awesome Sony NZ (I don’t get paid to say that, honestly), and I am going to make it into a big night – that includes the 30 minutes it takes to travel (by train) to where the screening takes place, which is in Lower Hutt. I’ve never been there before, so that’ll be interesting. At least I’m going with someone who seems to know the place (better than I do, anyway). I’m also going to feast on unhealthy foods, so there will be no breakfast, lunch or dinner tomorrow.

What I’m loving this week: The weather. I spent an hour sitting in the sun down by the waterfront on Monday afternoon, and I got some colour on my arms as a result! Would you believe it – technically, if we go by the rule that the seasons are the complete opposite in New Zealand compared to Norway, it’s still only late winter here. Not approaching summer, or even early spring. Late winter. And it’s possible to get a tan from sitting in the sun for as little as one hour. I love it.

Another thing I love is the decaffeinated coffee I got from the supermarket today. Last weekend I consumed over a period of 72 hours more coffee and various other energy drinks than most coffee-drinking people probably consume over 2 weeks. It really messed me up, in more ways than one, so now I’ve put myself on a strict low-caffeine regime, and today I’ve only had one double-shot and one single-shot cup of coffee. Yesterday I had one triple- or quadruple-shot (is there such a thing?) and one double-shot. I am finding it really hard to cut back on coffee after the hard weekend, and suffered from a horrible headache most of yesterday. Today I really felt like just chewing on some coffee beans or something, and so when I went to the supermarket I spent about 10 minutes in the coffee section, trying to pick a decaffeinated coffee but always finding myself back in front of the normal ones. Eventually I picked up a bag of decaffeinated coffee and ran for the exit (well, not literally, but almost). Since I returned home I have had 3 cups of it. I love how it tricks my body into believing that it has got its caffeine kick, because it tastes like coffee, but I don’t have to suffer any of the side effects (plus, I can drink it all day and all night long – my life is complete!).

 

(There will be no more of this for a while.)

An anecdote

I just remembered something. I was sitting on my bed just now, with a bowl of Cadbury ice cream in one hand and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the other hand, listening to The All-American Rejects and thinking that I should close the curtains, because it’s dark outside now, and people can see in more easily. Realising this, I also realised that I often change clothes and/or get undressed in my room without closing the curtains first. My across-the-road neighbours must love me. But that’s not what I was planning on sharing. What I had in mind was something that just came back to me, which happened a couple of weeks ago.

Like some of you might know, I live at the top end of a long, steep road, and on the day I’m telling you about I was walking down the road to catch the bus into town. The road is lined by houses on both sides, which are mostly occupied by students. This day my walk down the road started out like any other day, I was listening to my iPod and minding my own business, when all of a sudden I looked up, turned my head to stare at the buildings on the right side of the road and saw, to my astonishment, about four people sitting on the roof of one of the highest houses. They were happily chatting away with each other, and when they saw me staring at them, they waved at me, and I waved back. To put it MLIA style: I still have no idea what they were doing sitting up on the roof, or how they got up there. I have not seem them up there since. Either way, it easily made my day.