/karen/

In between

Monday, 01 January, 2007

It seems to me that the period between Christmas and New Year's feels like you're out of time—not limbo but in this space where there is no time and the whole world is still lazily festive. Lots of people are away on holidays but the ones who are still left in the city are strolling its streets, poking around the shops and having a nice time. Then we gear up for New Year's and the whole daily grind starts again.

On Boxing Day Ben and I picked up my friends and drove out to Campbelltown for our annual Boxing Day movie (which was Eragon and Adam was right: it was terrible). We had dinner at an Italian place afterwards, then went to Anita's house. Her family had a DVD of Aishwarya Rai music clips from her movies and we watched a few of them.

The day after Boxing Day Ben and I went into the city. We went to Darling Harbour because Ben wanted to check out the crazy CD, DVD and book sale. He went off to look at CDs and I walked up and down the tables of books feeling as if I was in some kind of nightmare—there were so many copies of so many bad books, it was rather depressing to think that you, a writer, could spend so many hours and weeks working on your masterpiece, only to have it not sell very well and be relegated to the bargain tables—first at Angus & Robertson and then here. Books were $5 each or $30 for 10 ($3 a book!). I surprised myself by managing to find more than 10—

1. A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle);
2. The Writer and the World: Essays (V.S. Naipaul);
3. The Confusion (Neal Stephenson): second book in the Baroque Cycle and no, I don't own the first one. I actually got two copies of this one—I messaged Guan to see if he had it and didn't get a reply but I thought I would get it anyway because if Guan didn't want it, I was sure someone else would;
4. Portraits in Fiction (A.S. Byatt);
5. Boy Meets Girl (Meg Cabot—author of The Princess Diaries which I haven't read);
6. The Other Side of Dawn (John Marsden—Book #7 of the Tomorrow, When the War Began series. I think I own the first five);
7. The Etched City (K.J. Bishop)—bought on Kathleen's recommendation;
8. Deep Water (Debi Gliori)—who can resist a book that's fuzzy?;
9. White Apples (Jonathan Carroll)—at Neil's recommendation (and oh look! There's a White Apples journal!);
10. The Kin: Ko's Story (Peter Dickinson); and
11. The Kin: Mana's Story (Peter Dickinson)—which means I own Books #2-4 of The Kin but not Book #1. Peter Dickinson, in case you didn't know, is married to Robin McKinley who is one of my favourite authors in the world.

The last two on that list were just $2 each. Not a bad haul. However, poor Ben had to carry my books all over the city for the rest of the day.

We had sushi for lunch under The Galeries Victoria and then went to JB Hi Fi where we had the very good fortune to run into Guan and I had the very good pleasure of giving him in his book in person (he didn't have it! How about that!) He said he was meeting Mary later and invited us to have dinner with them. We accepted and agreed to meet at Borders at 4:15. Then we went our separate ways—Ben to the cheap CD stores on Pitt St and me to Lincraft (I bought a whole stack of bead stuff!).

We met Guan in Borders as planned, then went to get coffee at Gloria Jean's (coffee = chai tea latte). It was still early so we made our way slowly down the street towards the restaurant, stopping off at King's Comics (which had a giant Jack and a giant Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas in the window and which also had other issues of Phonogram which sort of intrigues me and sort of repels me [it's a comic based on the premise that music is magic and it contains many many references to Brit pop that I don't understand. Plus the covers are rip-offs of Brit pop album covers]. Blame Fish for introducing it to me) and Red Eye Records.

Dinner was more Japanese. (It's funny—I get cravings for Japanese food and then can't get enough of it!) We had a lovely time with Guan and Mary, then caught the train home and spent the evening watching Le Bonheur est dans le pré.

The day after the day after Boxing Day, I went to take Elsie driving. She had been in the city yesterday too but we had been unable to meet up. Our plan was to drive to Wollongong and back to get Elsie's hours up, but after the first half hour of driving, I could tell that she wasn't really ready for it. Plus since it had been a month since she had last driven and she was a bit rusty. So we drove to Blakehurst instead and I made her practise gear changes up and down the quiet streets. It was my first time at instructing an L-Plater and I'm quite surprised at myself how little I freaked out. After about an hour, Elsie was getting tired so we drove to Miranda Fair to get lunch and do a little bit of shopping. Big mistake: the sales were still on and there was no parking in the center itself. But it was okay because we noticed signs directing us to more parking in the schools nearby.

Elsie and I spent a couple of hours wandering the shops. We had more sushi for lunch. I bought Ben a cover for his iPod (but when I got home, I discovered I had bought the wrong size!) I was also able to say hi to Sally who was working. Then I made us leave because the place was sending us a bit kooky. And then I coaxed Elsie into driving again—to Officeworks in Carlton so I could get a new extendable keyring, and then back to Kingsford (though I made her switch seats before we went up the hill).

And then I drove home, picked up Ben and we went to his parents' house for dinner. We watched Corpse Bride together because Cathy said she didn't like Tim Burton films (she liked this one). And then Tim, Ros, Lizz and I played Fluxx which we had given to the Beilharzs several Christmases ago but which had never been taken out and played.

The day after the day after the day after ... well, Friday, Ben and I went to have yum cha with my dad and stepmother. Then we drove home and I spent the rest of the day sorting out the stuff on my desk and making Google Calendars for us. Ben went to have dinner with Luke and I stayed home and watched The West Wing Series 6.

Saturday we went for a walk to Leichhardt where I exchanged the iPod case for something that would fit Ben's iPod. We went and sat in the park listening to music, then walked home, ate some dinner and watched Supersize Me.

And then on New Year's Eve I kept working on my Google Calendars, forged some dates for Word by Word, watched more West Wing and had some friends over for dinner. (Ben went with Josh to a party being held by friends at church but I was concerned about some of my school friends who would be spending New Year's Eve alone.) We watched the 9 pm fireworks (some of them could be seen through our windows) and then we watched Stick It (which I quite enjoyed—the gymnastic is simply breathtaking), an episode of He-Man (very amusing!), the 12 pm fireworks (during which we toasted each other with Maison) and Kung Fu Hustle (which wasn't my kind of movie but was amusing nonetheless).

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