Oh... the DAYTIME...

Went to lunch with Amanda on 16th + Lawrence to a place called the Cheesecake Factory... which not only had cheesecake (which we didn't eat) but enormous, and i mean ENOOOOOOOOOOOOOORMOUS (or in polly's language MUHASSIVE) lunches.

Then I strutted the mall and bought the cutest pair of shoes (Fiona you are going to be sOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo jealous) and a Denver T-Shirt.

We then went to TWIST + SHOUT records and I bought:

MIA - Arular
RJD2 - The Horror
Verve - Unmixed 3 compilation (nothing to do with the British 'Verve')

some bandaids with pirate flags, monkey faces and some lip gloss that says 'making out is yucky' which i thought was funny....

that's about it.

Oh and I now own a Colorado Rockies visor and Pol's going to give me grief because I tease her about the fact she'll get a sunburnt head by wearing a visor... but it was just so cute I couldn't resist.

meow meow.
xJ

Colorado Rockies

Just went to my first American sporting event, the Colorado Rockies vs the Philadelphia Phillies (what an original name!)

Well I must say I kinda liked it. Saw a couple of home runs.

We saw the game at Corrs Stadium which is in Downtown Denver.

Ok and 'downtown' in this country, pretty much means CBD.

Off to New York tomorrow. Wooooooo! Sex + The City Bus Tour, here I come!!! YEH BABY! Yeh, heh!!

Stuff, things.
xJ

Breckenridge, CO + Sing Sing

Yesterday Mike and I trekked up to Breckenridge, about 11000 ft up into the Rocky Mountains. The original purpose of this trek was to make me take this toboggan thing down the hillside, but when i saw how bit it was, and that I would be controlling the brakes, i kind of poosed on it!!
So we took the 'super chair' up the mountain side to look at the view, and for me to take some happy snaps. We were practically on the Continental Divide, if that means anything to anyone...

Last night we met Amanda at SING SING and had a great time heckling and being heckled. With $2 beers, handsome bartenders and some hilarious renditions of different tunes, we had a ball. The basic idea is that these two guys sit opposite each other on stage, both with pianos and take requests from the audience... which they'll rock out or ham up depending how they feel about the song of course.

The piano players names were John and Ron, and I liked them. They didn't know my Smokey Robinson song though. bum to them! But they were very sweet so I gave them a squeeze when we left.

Oh, found a better link.... SING SING

Bye for now.
xJ

Black Hawk, Colorado

Due to the fact that we canned the Vegas idea, we went and spent the afternoon in (white-bred, hick... i'm kidding) mountain town BLACK HAWK to hit the casino's.

Because you can only gamble in certain states, or in certain areas we went up there.

Drove through Boulder to have a looksey as well, and it was pretty nice. Really green.

Pissed down with rain today so we avoided toboganning down the hills but will try for that tomorrow, as well as visiting the Stanley Hotel where they filmed the movie THE SHINING.

And off to a DUELLING PIANO bar called Sing Sing tomorrow night also.

Goodnight Australia!
Love your guts!
xJ

Parker, Colorado

Went up to Parker last night to Mike's folks place who had cooked an insane amount of steak for us (i think my stomach is still suffering).

Seems quite beautiful. Directly opposite their house was this enormous lake. There was a dear up in the back yard.

Then I made Mikey watch 'i heart huckabees' which I originally watched only a few weeks back with the lovely Jenn... but didn't write about it I don't think.

Anyway, I think it's one of my new favourite movies.

Trust the blanket!

We're off to Denver zoo shortly to see sum aMiNals. Then Amanda and jason are coming for dinner. Should be a nice day.

We canned the Vegas idea because it's just too far. :(
Leave for New York friday morning, my friend Annie is there at the moment too, so I called her last night, she freaked out, and we're going to mess things up, adelaide-style!!
xJ

first american drinking binge...

and possibly more to come.

hey it was jasons birthday, and he felt old. so we got him insanely drunk and made random girls in the bar give him kisses becos it was his birthday.

i met a nice chick called amanda. i think i'm cooking her dinner in a few days.

vodka is not my friend.
but white sambuca is.
cute little bar we went to but neither mike or i remember what it's called. it's probable we have brain damage or memory loss though.

even though i made a spectacular breakfast at 1:00 (pm that is)!

So we're mooching til we go to Mikes folks for dinner.
we might go see some baseball tomorrow or something.

meow meow.
xJ
ps. apparently when you say "Schapelle" (or rather Chapelle) in america, it means something totally different... it means "I'm Rick James, Bitch!"

note to self: fill in the blanks later

thoughts and observations...

first impression of LA... "check out this smog! i would really like to be able to SEE the mountains properly!"

Disneyland... "this place would cost a tonne if you brought your whole family..." - but ok let me actually write something about disneyland now that I finally have access to a computer...
I was unsure as to whether or not i was going to go because of how i feel about certain issues to do with the company, but it was right there... so I went. And I spent 12 hours there. Count them, twelve! They have a subsidiary park called Disneys California Adventure which is right across the walkway, and 'Downtown Disney' - free to anyone with cafe's, shops blah blah blah.

My favourite things:
California Adventure - Soarin' Over... (or something like that) - Anyway, this virtual plane flight where your lifted up in your seat and taken on this beautiful plane flight. If you fly over sea, you smell the ocean, if you fly over the Californian Orange Groves, you smell oranges. Amazing, and well worth the wait. Also, California Screamin' which was this sick rollercoaster. I (and the dude next to me) whooped our way through it, I wanted to go back again but kind of wanted to make sure I did as much as I could... the dude, however, jumped over the fence and rejoined the line!! hehe.
Oh and The Bugs Live 3D Movie and the Muppets one too.

Disneyland - Haunted Mansion was wicked... Indiana Jones was great too. It's a small world just weirded me out... and I am thinking 'wheres australia?' til we turn this corner and theres a large pink kangaroo with green flowers on it, two koala bears, one blue and one pink, and a little aboriginal boy with a sash around his waist (since when?) holding what SEEMED to resemble a kangaroo!! I mean most of the other countries had people playing traditional music or something. THey could have had a band with a dude with a box-bass thingy (you know, box at the bottom, broom stick coming out the middle, string attached) and someone else playing the bottle top broomstick thingo. Now I know these have technical names, but buggered if I can remember them right now.
Splash Mountain I think was the most overrated, all day there were HUGE lines to it, so I wandered past last thing... and though it was good, I'd rather the half-underground train rollercoaster that I went on!! Or the Buzz Lightyear interactive shoot em up ride, or the Star Wars based, Star Tours! I mean shit, OVER-RATED BABY!

random strange things:
dude on the highway in LA, in a maroon BUICK with the numberplate "Mr Disco" - go you good thing! HA HA HA (Still makes me laugh)

US customs wasnt quite as stressful as i'd expected to be honest... was weirder flying domestic yesterday when they put you in this weird cubicle thing like a phone booth and puff you with air, then electronically screen a sample of the 'dust' (i guess) inside your carry-ons to check for bombing. The guy was very friendly though.

Having a pilot smart enough to wait for an electrical storm to pass, whilst other planes took off right in that direction. Flying over clouds at night is beautiful by the way.

I'm in Denver now, mooching around at Mikey's waiting for him to return from San Francisco. Should be in a few hours time, it's so hot and we'll both be pretty tired, i might suggest a trip to the supermarket and a large bout of mooching, til we decided whether or not to drive to Vegas baby, ye-heh.

And no, Shazzy, Fiona, and everyone else expecting miracles... we're not marrying each other whilst we're there!!

Though I do like Mikey's folks.

xJ

land of the free, home of the brave?

in less than 72 hours I'll be on a muhassive (thanks pol) plane from Brisneyland to LA, via Auckland.

LA kind of freaks me out considering i'll be there on my own for a few days, but really, i'm not likely to walk down any dark alleys alone at night, and i'm not silly.

I've wanted to do this trip to the states for a while, and now it's finally here i'm not as butterflies in my stomach like as i thought i'd be (wait til tuesday night, i wont sleep when i need to and i'll feel like death for the flight).

I'll be travelling to LA, Vegas, Denver and New York. I've booked most of my internal flights and hotels n stuff, and the sex and the city bus tour in new york, but apart from that i'm kind of going to wing it. I mean I'd rather ask a random local on the street what the favourite thing about their city is... and go and have a look.
There are some things i've noted like a couple of Radio + TV museums (for those who know i was a veteran of community radio station three d in adelaide, clocking up 10 years on air in 2004).

Hmm, stuff. anyhoo i intend to blog my way thru the US, so watch this space.
xxJ

a strange thing happened to me last night...

i don't quite know what time it was... shortly after 9:30 i suppose, when there was a knock at the door.

i checked out the window to see who it was and a young aboriginal lady was standing on my front stoop. So i opened the door and said hello.

she said she had been to the local aboriginal health place to find a place to sleep, and they said they were only providing services for intoxicated people *weird*
I said I couldnt help her, because i was going out. Which wasn't entirely true, but I wasnt yet sure what she was asking me.

She said that she had found a place to sleep and maybe could she borrow a blanket, and she would return it in the morning, as she was going home to cairns. i asked her what made her come to brisbane, she said there'd been some trouble and that she thought she'd just get away for a bit, but it was a mistake and so she was going back home.
I dont really have much in the way of blankets and stuff, but i said hang on and gave her the big purple rug off of my loungeroom floor. she mentioned several times that she would put it on the door step this morning.
i was going to give her this other blanket that wasn't quite as sentimental, but it wouldnt have kept her warm at all.
thing is, this purple blanket with it's tattered corner and that's constantly sitting on my lounge floor, is a blanket my parents bought when they had their first apartment. It cost a lot of money back then, and it's kind of sentimental just cos we've had it forever.

But I gave up my purple blanket with the thought that it would keep someone else warm.

The girl asked if she could pinch a couple of cigarette butts out of my ashtray, i said dont be silly and went to get a few for her. So i sat on the step and had a chat with someone i'd never met for about 10 minutes or so.... til she said, thanks for this, my names deliah and again that she'd return the blanket, and went off into the darkness.

I felt... well I dont really know what i felt, but i felt í'd found out enough in those brief moments to trust there'd be a purple blanket on my front porch when i woke up... by 7:50 this morning when i left for work, she still hadn't returned.

I mean I kind of hope it's there when I get home, but even if it's not, I hope it kept her warm.

xJ