Post-thesis Update

I finished my thesis on Friday and since then I’ve been doing not much pretty intensely. Lots of talk and lots of pool.

There’s a few things I planned to buy once I’d turned my thesis in: clothes, a CD burner, a haircut and some music CDs. I did get the haircut yesterday, but until today I hadn’t been able to find any of the other stuff I want. (Yesterday, for example, I returned home with two pairs of socks, a bottle of whisky (Chivas Regal), and a rainbow trout, none of which I’d been looking for at the start of the day.) Today I got two of the CDs I wanted: Ted Hawkins’s The Next Hundred Years and The Velvet Underground’s, er, The Velvet Underground & Nico.

Tonight I went to see my brother’s indoor soccer team play. (He talks about it a lot, I thought I should see what the deal was.) When you’re, say, 18, and your brother is 14, there’s no fucking way you’d even think about dating any his friends, but there comes a time when that arrangement becomes vaguely feasible… (I’m not actually interested in any of his friends. It’s a hypothetical possibility though, which is weirding me out.) I discussed this question with Brad recently. His younger brother apparently had the gall to say (nonchalantly) that since he wasn’t interested in a particular female friend of his, Brad–his older brother–could “have her” if he wanted. Younger brothers of the world: please do not ever say anything like this.

I’m going to Phillip Island tomorrow. I called Christine (who rented the holiday house there) and she happily reported that all day she’d only said two words: “Not yet.” She did explain how she managed to get by with just these words but I forget what she said. But it seems you don’t get much “How much are those?”– “$1.60”– “Okay, one please” at Phillip Island, it’s more grunting and pointing.