I can’t believe that the school ball is over. After months of planning and plotting of the annual school ball, I must say that I felt really, really proud that the ball committee this year far outdid last year’s. Since our school is one of the biggest secondary schools in the country, with well over two thousand students, one of the few venues that can hold about the thousand senior students and partners that attend the ball is Sky City. But one of the downsides to having such a large venue is the challenge of having to decorate it. Since the ball room itself is huge and therefore impossible to entirely decorate, we had to mainly focus on the foyer. My proudest feat has to be the 2x Thai Airlines’ cargo nets which I draped with white chiffon and wired up with fairylights, then hung from the balcony, dipping into the foyer. It took houuuurs. Now everything just seems like a denouement, there’s only grad dinner to look forward to in December, and then 7th form and college is over.

Anyway, the rest of the photos are up on facebook. I’m really ridiculously ill with the flu (don’t even say “swine”), but have to go into school tomorrow for rehearsals and a music concert tomorrow night… joy.

I can’t believe how much we’ve all grown up, us four have been in the same form class since 3rd form… 5 years ago, until now. Wowzers.

My handiwork in the foyer – draped chiffon with fairylights on two Thai Airlines’ cargo nets.

A week and a half ago I went and saw The Chills at the Monte Cristo Room. The Monday after that, I was at Deerhunter’s gig at the same venue. Then four days later I went to my mates’ gig at Kings Arms in Newton (Glass Owls, Artisan Guns, Teacups). It feels super weird because I’ve waited threeeee loooong years to finally be able to do this: get intro R18 gigs at pubs – Jono said to me that “it’s so much easier getting in now that you’re 18″, since I used to have to tag along with them – without having to rock up with my mates’ bands like 3-4 hours prior for soundchecks and set ups, and pretend I’m their roadie or something. As The Strokes put it best with their debut, Is this it?

And my favourite photo so far from Friday night:

In between the late nights, early trainings and other stressful shenanigans I’ve been up to, during study class in the library last week I started scribbling in my notebook again, jotting down ideas and tangents that come into my head, potential lyrics. I don’t want to spoil anything, because the wheels of musical/band projects are fiiinally beginning to turn, so here’s a semi relevant chunk, seeing as it was inspired by Deerhunter last week:

You called, you said, you came,
Hunter, you’re a dear,
I’m a hunter you’re a dear,
do you want to be chased/chaste again?

You walk, in this ethereal forest,
through smoke and rays.
Hunter, be my dear,
we’ll say they never saw us.

I only just realised that my supposedly published blog post from last Friday was never published at all. But seeing as it’s all irrelevant and silly now I can’t be bothered going back to publishing it. So now it’s become my 27th draft post.

Anyway, I’ve been procrastinating from catching up on my mountains of homework for ages and, in between my darting from various accounts – facebook, twitter, last.fm, etc… – I’ve just been reminded of how easy it is to net-stalk me (not that I’m implying that anyone would ever want to, but I’ve had friends that have done that to me before, so…). Afterall, like most people, I would think, I have a handful of usernames that I generally sign up to things under, so it’s quite easy to follow my trail on the internet. I’m not hugely bothered by this, although I’ve suddenly become quite paranoid that the slightly illegal, urhm, shenanigans that we get up to may someday come back to bite us in the arse.

For example – and I can’t believe I never got around to rambling about my 18th, but my little brothers* acquired me “Amanda Lane”. I should explain now that Amanda Lane is a street at a place called Snells Beach a few hours up north from Auckland (popular holiday area), and earlier this year during summer break I had a jazz gig up there at the local cafe/bar/restaurant, and it was then that some of my mates who had rented out a holiday house there informed me of Amanda Lane’s existence and I subsequently went and photographed the street sign. A little digging around on facebook will show you that some 16 year olds’ 5 hours’ illegal late-night drive later, it is now mine. I have to admit, touched and beaming from ear to ear is a far-fetched euphemism when I dug through an entire refrigerator box’s worth of more carboard boxes to unravel such a peculiar birthday present. Kudos guys… this is going to be hard to top.

Oh and I almost forgot my title reference – been listening to Deerhunter, after reading them all over the gig guide, internet and undertheradar… think I might go to their gig in a couple of weeks. $40 for a great Monday night. Hmm… weekday + sister’s 16th the next day though. Gah.

*little brothers being my best mate (Chris – basically my big brother, year older)’s little brother (Stu- year younger) & his mate (Ed).

Well, the highs of turning 18 rather ran out when I ended up in bed for a whole week with an awful cold – thus being “under the weather” – awful awful pun, I know. Only went to school on Thursday and Friday this week, and it’s sad that the only facepalm/headdesk – aka vaguely funny – moment of the week consists of the first ten minutes of 4th period American History. I think I summed up my week rather sadly when I wrote:

“Arrived at history class late today due to jazz combo at lunch time, only to discover Cara had taken my seat in the back row next to Joel. So I grumped and sat in Ben’s (empty) seat in front of Joel. Turns out Joel says he actually wants to sit next to me. So I tilted my head, gesturing at Cara’s seat next to Ben’s (in which I was seated), and he moved forward next to me. None of this was helped by Michael turning around from the front of class, observing, then laughing as he remarked “Ha, Cara you got ditched!”. Seriously.”

My week sucked. However, the only (ironically) redeeming feature is that it is now pouring with rain. Yay.