Pierrot's Home Page

December 1999

1 Dec

Trivia Night!

Tonight being Trivia night at The Local, I wander up around 7:20 to get a table and some dinner. This is a very good move, as the place very quickly starts to fill up.

Myra is the first to arrive, sporting her bright yellow Radiohead t-shirt. Soon after, Barry (one of John's workmates who was part of our team last week) turned up. Once again we decided to be the Hot Clermont Action Team.

Then, in quick succession, others arrive: John, Mary, Lauren. We get off to a bad start, scoring 0 in the first round. We prepare ourselves for the worst...

More turn up: Durran and Christian, Jesse, Skippy Will and Amanda, Purple Brad, Ezra. At the end of the first half of the game, in spite of our disastrous start, we are in 2nd place. This comes as quite a shock to us. When Rick turns up, we ask him the questions we missed in first round - he knows the answers to two out of three. Aarrgghh!!!

The game progresses, and in the course of the second half we miss only two points. The tension is high. The pitchers are empty (but not for long thanks to Rebecca). And the scores are announced prior to the final question: we are in first place, Wicki's team is in second place - although 7 points behind us.

The question is given - put the following schools in order of their founding: Georgetown, Memphis, Auburn, Georgia Tech. I have no idea; Myra and Barry put together an answer. It is submitted. And the scores are tallied...

WE WIN!!!! We thought we had allotted 0 points to our answer (you get to assign up to 15 points - if you get it wrong you lose that many points), but the scorer decided we went the whole hog. So a $50 bar tab is won by the Hot Clermont Action Team. This will be used next week, as last week's winnings go toward this week's $120 tab. If things continue like this, we're going to need to win every week to keep the tab to a reasonable level.

With the game over, I headed home to get some sleep, in anticipation of being paged at some ungodly hour. Fortunately it doesn't happen, so I got a good night's rest. All in all a great night!

Many of the others headed over to Masquerade for Club Fetish. And I have it on good authority that Lauren didn't get to bed alone. And even when she did get to bed (not alone) she didn't get a lot of sleep... Hehe, nothing like a bit of scandal.

Today was cold as well.

2 Dec

As I am still on call, I'm having a quiet one tonight. I installed a 20GB hard drive (US$230) in my PC and updated these stories. Yay.

While online, I did a purity test with Bria.

This was the result...

Bria got:

You answered "yes" to 539 of 1000 questions, making you 46.1% sexually pure (53.9% sexually corrupt); that is, you are 46.1% pure in the sex domain. Your Weirdness Factor (AKA Uniqueness Factor) is 40%, based on a comparison of your test results with 14718 other submissions for this test.

The average purity for this test is 73.1%.

Hmm....

3 Dec

Lauren took last night's purity test today while she was at work - 37%. Deviant :-)

Yay - my first gift parcel from home for the holiday season arrived, from Celise.

I'm not really sure what I want to do tonight. I'm on call, so I obviously can't go out and get riotous, no matter how keen I am to do so.

So, I had a couple of beers while installing Linux on my old hard drive. Unfortunately it doesn't like my video card or monitor, so I say, "eh," and go to the pub for dinner and a beer (sound like a familiar story).

At The Local I catch up with Joel and one of his workmates, Devon. I also manage to catch up with Rebecca before she leaves. I had dinner (Barbeque sandwich and sweet corn) and a couple beers. Tim and Susan turned up a little later, but because I'm on call and have to work tomorrow, I take my leave early and come home.

Only to listen to the CD that my sister has sent me for my birthday (yeah, so I opened it early - I knew what it was [Bic Runga, "Drive"], and I wanted to listen to it...). I enjoyed that so much that I opened up the Xmas CD as well - JPS Experience "Bleeding Star".

4 Dec

Although it's a Saturday, I spend my day at work. Not very successfully, as most of what I want to do doesn't work out. Bugger.

So on my way home I stop in at Micro Center and pick up the Red Hat Linux 6.1 kit. This installs pretty sweetly on the second shot (for some reason it locked up during my first attempt).

Then I wander up to the pub for dinner (Barbeque chicken, slaw, cord) and a beer with John. After that we popped over to Green's Package Store to pick up some alcohol for next Friday's party...

After the alcohol excursion, John and I went back to my place and watched Apocolypse Now, which had arrived in the mail earlier in the week. That is one hell of a powerful film. If you haven't seen it, go out and rent it! Martin Sheen is outstanding, and Marlon Brando is nothing short of brilliantly disturbing.

5 Dec

As agreed with John last night, I gave him a call around 11am. Today we are going shopping for my birthday present. I already know what I am going to buy myself, it's just that I'm going to need assistance getting it to my apartment.

So I pick up John and we head up to HiFi Buys in Buckhead. I'm looking at a Sony 27" TV for about $600-$700. Well, as it turns out they have a 32" for $699, so I say "Eh, what the hell." Unfortunately they don't have any in stock (only the demo model) at the Buckhead store, but they do at Cobb Parkway. So I pay for it here, get it put to one side, and off John and I go.

We get there within twenty minutes and the TV gets delivered to the car. Um, we have a problem. The box is not going to fit in the back of the wagon. Bugger. Let's take it out of the box and see what happens. Aah, tricky, but we manage it. Yay!!

After a gentle ride back to my apartment, John and I wrestle the TV up to my living room. It's a heavy bastard, let me tell you. Anyway we get it in and pull apart my entertainment centre so I can get all my equipment in. We succeed, and now I have a kick-ass entertainment system:

Awwww yeah.....

6 Dec

It was a pig of a day at work, so I let Lauren convince me that I should go to HexensNacht for its final night at the Chamber. Granted, this was never going to be a hard sell, as this is birthday week. John kindly drove, which allowed me to start the week in style.

There was a reasonable showing of people, with Durran and Vlad Brad performing the DJ duties. Sick Rick poured me several kick-ass drinks, and a good time was had by all.

Bed finally arrived at around 2:30.

7 Dec

Another rotten day at work. I think that work-wise, this is going to be a crap week.

Tonight, the plan is to go to the Local for dinner, and then go to a Deathrockabilly show at the Somber Reptile.

Well, I made it to the Local. As did Joel. And Jesse. And Lauren. And Amanda. And Matt. And friends of Matt (one of whom has been to NZ).

Yes, it turned out to be a bigger night than planned, and we didn't even get to the Deathrockabilly show...

But that's okay, because we had a rockin' good time and then we went to Kroger to shop for Friday night. Yay Crack Kroger...

8 Dec

Trivia Night at the Local with Hot Clermont Action Team.

Another big night at the pub. Jesse and Amanda, Lauren, Christian, Maeve, and Andreas, Myra, Mary, Skippy Will, Purple Brad, Jen, and a bunch of other people whose names I can't recall.

We are lacking John (and hence last week's $50 tab), Barry and Rick, and it shows. At the end of the first half of the game, we're 5th on 20 points. First place is five points ahead of us. However, as in the past, the second half is well played, and we get a perfect score. Our standing at the final question is third place with 56 points.

So it's down to the final question. Tim is two points ahead of us. And the question: For the entirity of it's nine-year run on CBS, what night did the Walton's play. Well, I'm obviously going to know that. The discussions are long, and nobody is sure. So we call Myra's folks - her says it was on Wednesday and then switched to Thursdays. We go with 15 points for Thursday.

WRONG!!!! It was Wednesday. Damnit; we lose 15 points to put us on 41. But we still come third, and win a $25 tab. Which doesn't do much damage to the actual tab. No worries.

After the game, many people buggered off. Amanda and Will went off to do their radio show. The core Hot Clermont Action Team members (me, Christian, Myra, Jesse, Lauren, Brad, Jen) stick around for more drinks and chatting and generally mellowing out.

When Amanda and Will get back, Myra and I head over to MJQ and the others head down to the Masquerade for Club Fetish.

Britpop rocked! There was much bouncing. There was more drinking. There was a fair bit of spinning, too. Sherrod's boy, Josh, was there, as was Erika and Stephen. I wandered out a little before 4am, feeling tired but pretty damn good.

10 Dec

Party Party Party!!!

After a day at work I would rather forget, it was time go home and prepare for the night's entertainments. I stopped in at Green's to pick some Newcastle, and few other cocktail essentials.

I suppose I should list the bar. There were a few essentials that I missed, but that didn't matter, because according to Lauren, I had "more alcohol than God!"

And, of course, all the usual mixers: Coke, Sprite, orange juice, cranberry juice. And a selection of cheeses and snack foods (corn chips, etc).

First to arrive was Amber and Michelle. We chatted for ages and then John and Vanessa turned up. And then the rest of the partygoers began pouring in. There's a very good chance that I'm going to forget someone here, so please let me know if I've missed someone: Amanda, Bria, Brigid, Christian, Drew, Durran, Eileen, Erika, Herb, Jen (Doom Cookie), Jennifer, Jesse, Jonathan, Kary, Lauren, Mary, Mike C, Paula, RaeAnn, Russ, Ryan, Skippy Will, Stephen and chickie, and Warwick. Thanks everyone for coming over and making it a great night!

And I did get a few presents, too: Bria gave me a Badtz Maru cup. Brigid got me a book on Bettie Page (rockin'), RaeAnn gave me some candy covered cherries (yummy), John and Vanessa supplied me with the Austin Powers movies on DVD (shagadelic, baby!), Amber gave me a bottle of Stoli (aww yeah) and I also recieved a bottle of Oban from Ryan (my friends know me so well). Jesse and Amanda gave me barmans corkscrew/bottle opener and a board for chopping lemons and limes (an exceeding useful gift for a person like myself :-). Erica made me some damned tasty biscuits. And I also got Jimmy the Bartender's Guide to Life. Thanks to everyone concerned for these gifts.

So what happened? Well, lots of people got rather drunk. I took a number of photos of my guests, which I will scan and upload next week.

At some stage, Ryan put on Brazil. Later, Jesse put on Apocalypse Now. Lauren got exceedingly drunk and Bria took her home. Jennifer also got exceedingly drunk and had to empty her stomach, and then she passed out.

There are some pictures here.

11 Dec

The day after. Feeling exceedingly tired, but not too bad apart from that. I also have the pleasant sensationof waking up with someone beside me. Yay. It's been a while since that last happened.

Jennifer and I eventually got up the energy to get up and found that Warwick has done a pretty damn good job of cleaning the place up. Kudos to Warwick for that. Jenn went home, and Warwick and I chatted and watched the first Austin Powers movie. Later, Warwick too leaves and I decided that I might have a nap. This doesn't work so I called Lauren to catch up on the events of the evening.

John called to say that there was a party at his friend Sarah's house, but I was still feeling tired from the night before, so I pass on that. Later that evening, Jennifer came back and we watched some Comedy Central and the movie Heathers, and then Saturday Night Live.

12 Dec

Another slow and quiet day. In the evening I went to Spaghetti Factory (across the road) with Jennifer, Lauren, Bria, Sherrod, Josh, Heather, Nick and Jason. Absolutely fabbo meal that left us all rather full.

After dinner we wandered up to Insurrection to get a dose of porn in the form of adult novelties and videos. There are some rather disturbing adult 'novelties' out there.

Damn. It's 1:30am Monday and I can't sleep. I'm tired, but sleep is evading me. I hate that.

14 Dec

Dinner and drinks at the Local with Jesse, Bria, John, Eric, Lauren, Brad.

This ends up a later night than I intended.

15 Dec

Trivia at the Local with Hot Clermont Action Team.

This turns into our worst performance ever - fourth place at the end of the first half, fourth place at the end of the second half. Nowhere after the bonus question. Oh well

We had a good showing, with Durran's and Christian, John, Barry, Scott and Kalina, Andreas, Maeve.

After the Local, we bundled over to Nomenclature for the Reunion for Pandora's Box and Nocturnia. This was pretty fun, catching up with bunches of people.

After Nomenclature, Erica, Jesse, Amanda, and I went back to MJQ for Britpop dance action. This was most cool. Especially the DJ played "Vapour Trail" by Ride, and I spent the next three minutes spinning round in circles unti I was so dizzy I couldn't stand up. In that respect it was kinda embarrassing, but it was so much fun that I didn't really care.

Photos of tonight's Hot Clermont Action Team:

• Rebecca, our favourite Local waitress
• John and Barry
• Scott and Kalina
• Durran and Christian
• Christian, Maeve, Andreas
• Erika

17 Dec

Party at Joel and Tim's followed by Excitement at the Vault

Following dinner and a couple of beers at the Local (with Daniel, Rebecca and Wade), I wander over to Joel and Tim's place, where I am met at the door with a bottle of Newcastle. They've got a quite nice apartment, and I am quite impressed with Tim's CD collection.

Most of the guests at the party are from Joel's work; this is their Christmas party. I had met a couple of these people previously - Julie and Devon - both of whom are really cool people. In fact everyone I met there was really friendly. Stacy showed up for a while, which was really cool as I hadn't seen her in months.

Around 12:15, Lauren called me and we organised for her to pick me up and head on up to the Vault. The rest of the party people went on up to the Local; there was probably some options for me if I had stayed around, but I was now drunk and in the mood to shake my booty!

The Vault was going off in good style. Durran was mixing in the small room, and great 80's and Britpop (well, two early Britpop hits from The Charlatans and Blur) led to much bouncing and spinning. Yay!

I think around 3:30 Lauren decided it was time to go home, so we did. All in all, an excellent night's entertainment.

Earlier in the day, Lauren and Christian were discussing nugget names. What is a nugget name? Well to give you an idea, here is a list of nugget names. "Why?" you ask. How the hell should I know!

18 Dec

Waffle House action for breakfast with Lauren and Doom Cookie Jen. Following this we went to Little Five Points to do some shopping. I needed to finish my shopping of stuff to send back to NZ (although it will arrive late - sorry - but hopefully not as late as last year).

After wandering around Little Five for a couple of hours and not finding stuff (although I did pick up a gift for Secret Satan at Heather's on Christmas Day, and some Bis EPs), I dropped off Lauren, and then Jen and I went to Sam Flax art and design shop. This place rocks - lots of good supplies and cool gifts.

Then I came home and had some fun trying to get my Linux installation to talk to Mindspring. I'm not having much luck with this.

It's Snow's Christmas Party tonight, but I'm feeling rather tired after last night's adventures and the drive out to Kennesaw really is not appealing. SO I've decided to stay in. John might be coming over later to watch a movie.

Okay, so I went to Snow's. I guess I had a good time. I donated my book on the Salomé trials on the early part of the century to the gift game, and I came out with "Something at the Window is Scratching" by Roman Dirge. This, of course, rocks.

19 Dec

I had to go to work today. And after I left, I had to go back again, for reasons which left me very angry.

However, I went out later for dinner at Fellini's with Lauren and Doom Cookie Jen. Lauren and I also helped Jen on her resume. Jen needs a job. If you have something she can do and you pay lots of money, give her a call.

20 Dec

I was kept fairly busy at work today, primarily writing documentation on how all the servers in our system are configured. It's probably going to take me most of tomorrow to complete, but it really needs to be done before I go on leave.

When I got home, my mission for the night was to get ADSL working from my Linux partition. I downloaded a new driver, but my lack of a printer is causing me problems, because I can't read the instructions AND rebuild the kernel at the same time. Damn.

Lauren just told me that Thurston peed on Brad's jacket on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Oh well, that's what you get you give Lauren all the attention and Thurston none. :-)

Tonight is the reopening of HexensNacht at Riviera (formerly know as Club Anytime). I however, will not be attending, as I am on call, and should probably get some sleep...

21 Dec

I is full. Jesse and Eric took me to Bones for dinner tonight. I had the 20oz T-bone steak. Aww yeah! Cooked blue, of course. It was an excellent meal. We had asparagus and broccoli, and a nice wine (although the aroma suggested more than the wine actually delivered). And I finished the meal with a nice 1988 port.

Then I stopped back at the Local for a glass of Macallan, and then it was home to bed.

Or at least to the computer :-)

Anyway, today Christian got naked for the web cam - look here and here.

22 Dec

Trivia at the Local with Hot Clermont Action Team.

Team members: Christian, John, Maeve, Myra, Kevin and whatshername. Erika and a couple of her friends also came up towards the end.

Well, at the end of the first half we were in second place. And after a fairly rough second half we were still in second. Unfortunately, the final question we had no idea on, and so ended up out of the winnings. Again.

After the game, Christian headed over to Nomenclature and the rest of the bodies went their own ways. Myra and I went up to Cafe Diem for a coffee (well, Myra had a coffee and a tuna melt, while I had a glass of wine) and then we went to MJQ for a boogie. I went home around 2am, as I was on call, and losing the mood to dance.

23 Dec

Last day of work for the year. Yippee. Now for a rest; although I am still on call until Sunday.

After work I buggered around my apartment and wasted time IMing Lauren. Eventually I decided it was time to eat (around 9ish) and so headed over to the Local for a Pita Pizza Royale, and a Newcastle. The bar was pretty full, so Wade joined me at my table for a beer and a chat, and then after he left I went and hung out with Susan, Emily, Axel, Andrea, and person-who's-name-I've-forgotten. That was pretty cool.

After they went home I went over to Lauren's and we went up to the Chamber. There I caught up with Jill, Mary, Scott, Kalina, Maeve, Christian, and Kary, but spent most of my time talking with Lauren and Jennifer.

I'm not really a big fan of the Chamber, so after Lauren decided to go home and Jennifer's last request was played, I also headed home to bed. I suppose at some stage I should justify my dislike of the Chamber. But not now.

24 Dec

Christmas Eve

I had today off work. Not a lot happenned. I did some shopping (but forgot to buy washing powder, so I can't wash anything until Sunday). I rang the family in New Zealand. I updated my web page a little. I talked (via IM) with Jennifer and Lauren. My nose is cold.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do tonight. I might read some more of Rousseau and Revolution (I read a couple of chapters before getting up today, stopping at the chapter on Mozart). I might play a little CivII. I just don't know. I'm currently listening to The Darling Buds. Hmm, Lauren wants to know what I'm up to so I think I'll just upload this to my web page and tell her to look there.

It's that sort of day.

I did do something productive today. I added three new pages to my web site: Religious Thoughts, Political Thoughts, Morals and Ethics. These can be accessed from the main menu.

After Lauren finished work, I met her at Waffle House for food and conversation. Just on midnight, Jennie called from New Zealand and I did the Merry Xmas thing with her, her mum, her gran, her dad and her sister. I'll be picking Jennie up from the airport in something like 42 hours...

25 Dec

Christmas Day

Sleep. If there's anything that Christmas Day is good for when you live halfway arond the world from your family, then that is sleep. After a very pleasant sleep in, I was able to spend the next couple of hours reading. Bliss...

Christmas Dinner was held at Heather's apartment, along with the Secret Satan game. Heather supplied a turkey, and the rest of us supplied a dish (I brought asparagus in garlic butter and parmesan, and green beans for the philistines). Those involved in the Secret Satan game brought a present (receipients having been decided at SpagFac on the 11th).

Photographs of the Secret Satan players and their gifts:

• I scored a bottle of black vodka, which certainly impressed me.
• Jennifer
• Josh
• Nick
• Heather
• Jason
• Sherrod
• Lauren

Jason scored "Never Been Kissed", which we watched on Heather's kick-ass entertainment center.

26 Dec

Boxing Day

Another sleep-in, followed by more reading of "Rousseau and Revolution," this time covering Russia through the reign of Catherine the Great.

Jennie called at 1:30 to say that she was safe and sound at Los Angeles Airport and checked in for her flight to Atlanta. I suppose I should finish tidying the apartment...

Well, I went shopping and when I got back, Lauren had left a message; so I called her and we went up to the Local for a drink and (for Lauren) food.

I collected Jennie from the airport at 7pm and took her home. We spent the next three hours or so talking and drinking vodka.

27 Dec

Today I took Jennie for a drive around Northeast Atlanta - round I20 to I285 to I85 and then around various roads to Buckhead. We had lunch at Fado and then we went for a wander around Phipps Plaza.

We came home and Jennie took a nap. While she was napping, I quizzed Christian, Maeve and Lauren with all sorts of trivia questions. This was tres fun.

Later, Jennie wasn't feeling too good, so she had an early night and I went up to Cafe Diem for dinner and to catch up with Russ, Warwick and Erika, and Erika's friend, Cheryl (apologies if spelt incorrectly).

After Diem, we all went over to Riviera for HexensNacht. They've done an excellent job of doing up the former Club Anytime. The place is amazing.

Several of my favourite people were up at HexensNacht: Durran and Whitney were DJing, Sick Rick was behind the bar, Sherrod took my money at the door (and it was 11:30!!!). There was Jennifer, Christian and his new lady (Lesley), Amber, who brought Scott (former Pandora's Box at Sol DJ) and his wife Sharon, Lauren (of course) and Purple Brad, Heather and Nick, Amanda. Mary was there but I didn't get a chance to say hello - she was too busy shaking her booty on the dance floor.

Amusing story of the night - certain girl (that I quite like and was mildly flirting with) told me that she was interested in a certain friend of mine who I know (but she didn't) is sleeping with another good friend of mine. What a soap opera life we lead. Names available on request...

28 Dec

It appears that Jennie may be suffering from bronchitis. Damn. So we went to Kroger to get some medicine (and a few other things that I kept forgetting to collect over the weekend). Then we went to Zesty (Zesto? whatever) for lunch and came back for a quiet afternoon.

Once again, I played trivia question master to Lauren and Maeve while Jennie rested.

Jennie was still not up to going out that night, so I went and got some movies to watch - Pecker (very cool John Waters film with Christina Ricci), She's All That (eh, mildly entertaining), Home Fries (Drew Barrymore flick, not exceptional).

29 Dec

Jennie's still not feeling well, but hopefully it she rests appropriately today (which could be difficult to make her do as she is very stubborn) she should be able to come out to the Local tonight.

Today I signed up for the 2000 Atlanta Opera Season: $646 for two seats to the Thursday premiere of each of four operas.

• April 6 - RIGOLETTO, by Giuseppe Verdi
• June 8 - COSÌ FAN TUTTE, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• September 14 - LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, by Gaetano Donizetti
• Ocotber 26 - TURANDOT, by Giacomo Puccini

It shouldn't be too difficult to find someone to come along with me to these...

Did Trivia. Lost badly. Then Myra and I went over to Nomenclature for an hour before coming back to MJQ.

31 Dec

New Years Eve

I got sick. So I watched the new year come in wrapped in my sleeping bag in front of the TV.