The alcohol and the toilet - a fairy tale

Tara finished work today - woopee! - and we had a little leaving do for her at GPK, Takapuna. A few work collegues and friends, but more importantly, I was there. We started at twelve and left the place at three with the idea that I would meet Tara at her house once she was done packing her things at the office and saying goodbye to everyone. Which is exactly what we did.

So...
We're a few beers down the track and I'm at that stage where I have to go to the toilet between every beer. Which means I am doing a lot of thinking, because that's what you do on the toilet if there are no cartoons on the back of the door.

I've come up with an interesting question:
How much alcohol is actually absorbed if you are going to the toilet so frequently?

I googled it becasue I was ...
hold on, blue Castello and crackers first....
I googled it becasue I was sure this must have been investigated somewhere along the line. I'm not that intelligent you know.
Wikipedia - got bless it's little soul - has this to say about it:
"When urine is analyzed for alcohol, the assumption is that there are 1.3 parts of alcohol in the urine for every 1 part in the blood...

I was right, a lot more alcohol is lost through peeing (sorry, Tara says it is called mimi'ing) than is absorbed into your bloodstream.

Which leaves you with two choices:
1) If you want to get really pissed, don't go to the toilet.
2) If you want to drink, but stay sober. Drink on the toilet.

These wise words of wisdom are brought to you by MAC'S brewery and the International Women of Mayhem.

P.S. Not drinking is not an option.

two weeks til MAYHEM !

in 2 weeks time, nell and i will be on the plane on the first leg of our trip !

we are pretty damn organised. most of the list of things to organise has been all checked off.
kitten has been relocated to the pet motel in new plymouth. i have booked a truck to move next weekend.
we are vaccinated up, we are insured, we can speak at least 4 words of spanish in a row and we have our tickets and all our money.

we have little bits and pieces still to do but they no majors :

we need a flight from bogota to cartagena.

we need a flight from quito to the galapagos.

we need a hostel for 2 days in buenos aires.

we need to confirm the hotel in miami.

we need to let the dive centre in miami know that we are still coming.

i think i need some more socks.

nell needs to take some furniture up to whangarei.

both nell and i need to finish the last lot of packing !!!


i think thats it for now. we are organised. really we are.

not soooo much fun !!

nell and i went to the travel doctor this morning.

i had to have seven shots. yes 7 !!

i had to have tetanus and yellow fever and then we both needed hepatitis and rabies.

rabies was four shots in total - one in each arm and one in each groin muscle !

i dont really like needles but it was good to know that nell was about to go through the same thing as me - well 2 less shots - but needles all the same.

this is me making my sad face and showing off my plasters.

they look pretty normal under the plasters right now. but my right arm is pretty damn sore !

This is soooooo much fun!

I sent all of yesterday booking a whole lot of hostels for South America using the hostelworld site that Tara mentioned before.
The best thing about them is that they give you really good info about the hostels and some are even rated.
I can't believe how cheap some of them are.
The whole activity just made the trip seem so much more real. Now I am very excited and I just want to go NOW!

Also looking at travel insurance, which is not quite as exciting, and definitely not as cheap.
Southern Cross has quoted us $502 for the whole time we are there.
Flight Centre (Travelcare) has quoted us $600.

I'm thinking Southern Cross.
We've used them before and they are our medical insurance company anyway.

The short history of the IWM - Nell's perspective

Tara and I met when I started working at Vodafone in March 2004.
Somewhere around April I was seated in the cubicle opposite her, and didn't get a lot of work done, due to laughing at, and feeling sorry for, the people on the other end of her phone. This girl was trouble, I could tell even then.



We didn't really hang out much, apart from work parties, until early to mid 2005, when we both ended up without boyfriends and too much free time on our hands.
We realised we had a lot in common and cracked each other up. What more could you want?



And then after that corny birthday card I gave her, it was all over, there was no getting rid of her.
Our practice run holiday in Surfer's Paradise was loads of fun, and drama (but we're not allowed to talk about that..)
We pretty much immediately decided on the Fiji holiday. I needed a diving buddy and she was going to be it.
The first Fiji holiday was an absolute blast, we rocked the resort and the IWM was born!



The rest is now just a blur of fun, diving, drinking and mayhem!
We had an amazing summer and kept our tans long after everyone else's faded away.








The second Fiji trip really helped with the tan.




And now we're gong to take on the world...

Diving in Miami

I saw this on Tara's facebook page and just had to paste it in here...


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

the short history of the international women of mayhem - taras perspective

the international women of mayhem really began back in early 2005.

nell and i started hanging out a little more after dan and i broke up. she was with lindsay at the time, and after work drinks she came around to my place in ariki street, grey lynn.
we were working together at vodafone - and were probably two of the loudest and the most independent females in the building (ratio of men to women was about 15:1)

i decided to move out of the house that i had shared with dan and into a house in mt albert with sally.
sally and i had gone to camp together way back when we were 15. we had recently got back in touch and thought it was a brilliant idea to flat together.

anyway - nell and i started hanging out more. we were pretty much interested in the same kind of things - although she was a lot more athletic than i was. she also drank a lot more than me. but her friendship was what i needed.

i had a bbq at the mt albert road house for my birthday. nell gave me the cheesiest card and a lonely planet guide to central america. at that stage, we had just floated the idea of possibly going together.
the inside of the card reads ... " happy birthday! between is we now have enough literature to get us from the bottom of south america to the usa. lets have the courage to do it ! "

i know it sounds cheesy. but to me that was the very very very beginning.

the following year, we took a little trip to surfers paradise for her birthday. and fionas. but we wont talk about that anymore.

then we followed that up with fiji. fiji in october was when the international women of mayhem got their name.

then christmas, new year, whanarua bay and a whole summer of drinking and driving and diving happened.

then fiji again. this time we had business cards to take with us and a new slogan !

its now july. i have nearly $600.00 cash from selling my furniture.
my house is almost empty. and we're off to another spanish lesson.

i have one word for the lot of you .............

M A Y H E M ! ! ! !

nellV - the thinker

nell is being a good girl and doing her spanish homework.

actually shes not that good. she didnt go last week so shes a little behind.

she just said - shes not a little behind. she has a fat behind.
i didnt say it.

the people claim game

we have a vehicle claim game. i think my bro ewi started it.

dan and nell and i made up a people claim game. its to be played in a mall, pub, train - any social situation where there are a large amount of people coming and going.

here are the rules.

general rules :
1. you must say "i claim the ......"
2. no fucking pointing (with fingers) - elbows, knuckles, noses ok. no fingers.
3. all points must be validated by the other players
4. false accusations/claims mean you lose your points from that claim.
5. you cant claim the people you are playing with

specific point scoring :
inter-racial couple - 1 point
first date - 2 points
blind date - 2 points
mail order bride - 2 points
in it for the money (or the sex) - 2 points
daddys little girl - 2 points
gay or lesbian couple - 1 point
screwing the crew (flatmates or workmates) - 1 point
celebrity spotting - 1 point
slumming it - 1 point
cockblocker - 1 point
cone of silence (pre-breakup) - 1 point

the results of the inaugural people claim game :
well i was winning. then nell claimed a first date. but we needed it validated.
8 points were on offer for the person who would go over and validate the claim.
suffice to stay, dan strutted on over. found out they were actually married. but came away with the win.

Junior

Thought I would say hi to Junior (Andy)

Hi Junior

He has kindly offered to take time off work to show us around Boston when we're there.
We met Junior in Fiji in October last year.
He spent a lot of time recovering from hangovers like this one:



Let's hope he's got to do the same when we get there.

Titles

I thought it was time to give the IWM ladies some official titles.
Tara and I discussed this over breakfast and we have been sworn in as:

El Presidente
(because she is just so much more mayhem than me)



El Director
(director of social activities and ... services)

dont make me cry

i had a bad day yesterday.

i got myself all wound up over quite a few things and in the end it all spilled out in the form of free-flowing tears. what a bloody baby.

i was just feeling like the last couple of weeks were going to rush up on me and i wasnt going to be organised like i wanted to be. i have this thing about not planning too far in advance but being really organised. it doesnt make sense to me either.

i have 5 pretty big pieces of design work on at the moment - as well as all the conference calls and emails that i work through on a daily basis. some of the work is pretty urgent and i know i am not going to get it all done before i leave work on the 27th. i dont know if my work is starting to take the piss just a little but a lot of new items seem to have hit me all of a sudden.
i've been working from home this week. i concentrate better here and i dont want to disappear down to the cafe every few hours to have coffee with cossie (i'm not blaming you cossie - theres just something about that building that makes me not want to work).

after seeing suzanne the other week, we talked about going skiing the week after i finish work.
i didnt know how i was going to get all my house packed up.
nell was thinking about going away.
i needed help to move.
the weekend i was going to move is the same weekend as cossies birthday party.
my furniture is disappearing in bits and pieces.
i dont think my spanish is good enough.
i hadnt managed to speak to the pet motel people.
.. and oh ! .. it just opened the flood gates.

but i have to say - nell pulled me through in the end.
she called me up. said right - i'll be there at 3-ish.
she turned up. grabbed pen and paper. made a calendar of the 24 days til we leave. we got everything arranged into days. and now i'm sweet.

international women of mayhem unite. together anything is possible !

and just cos its about time ......

2 4 d a y s
2 h o u r s
4 2 m i n s
and counting .....

flashpackers celebrate with friends

so nell passed her diving instructors certificate.

so we had a dinner.

i cooked 2.9kg of lamb. and potatoes. and yams and carrots and capsicum and garlic. and made a gravy.

and cossie and maresa bought over poached pears. and jontie bought wine.

and it was good
(mike and pia - we missed you guys - but you missed out. nell and i will be waiting for the home cooked meal when we get to london. yes we have the wine!)

the internet is not just for porn

theres no arguing that the internet is great for porn .. but its good for getting bits of our trip organised too.

i dont want to be too anal and have everything arranged but i feel much better about arriving in a new place knowing that the first night or two is arranged and we have somewhere to stay. and i can even look at these places online and check them out first.

i have been using www.hostelworld.com.
the more i book - the cheaper it gets!

diving in miami

02 September 2007 15:40 - 06 September 2007 10:30

we basically have 2 days in which to cram as much diving in as possible.
we cant dive 24 hours before our next flight so depending on our dsat time we might be able to do one on the morning of the 5th - but thats a big maybe.

Dive Miami Alliance put me in touch with Valerie from Tarpoon Lagoon SCUBA Diving Center - one of the oldest and most reputable dive stores in Florida.

so we'll see what see comes back to me with and then i will update this post.

Miami - The Gateway of the Americas

we're going to miami !! we're going to hang out with the cruise liners and the latin american bands and the beach go-ers. we're also going to do some diving - yayyy !

i've sent a couple of emails off. there is a really good site for information on diving in miami - funnily enough its called Dive Miami.
they recommend loads of things to see and do and they seem to be centered around the Convention Center, Washington Avenue, Collins Avenue etc.

i have been using nz.hotels.com to find a hotel in a good area with all the things we might need but there is so much choice and the rates seem pretty reasonable.
so i'm putting a list up and nell and i can choose from that. i havent had enough coffee to make the decision myself!

The Wave Hotel - about $55.00 - $70.00 USD per night each
The Beacon Hotel - about $70.00 - $85.00 USD per night each
Starlite Hotel - about $50.00 USD per night each
Hotel Shelley - from $35.00 - $80.00 USD per night each
Royal South Beach Hotel - $40.00 - $50.00 USD per night each
New Clinton Hotel and Spa - $50.00 to $60.00 USD per night each

i really like the look of the Hotel Shelley or the New Clinton Hotel and Spa

things to remember though - we are going to be diving in miami so maybe a smaller cheaper room is better for the budget. or do we not really care about that. we are flashpackers after all !!

constructive comments and votes greatly appreciated !