Trysting Fields

Friday 2nd July.

Stuff I Did This Year

On previous December 31sts, I've posted a bullet-pointed list of things I did the preceding year.

In keeping with the strategy I adopted at the start of 2008 - which consisted of being lost but unconcerned (and liable for nothing), and then just, y'know, seeing what happened - I'm not going to do that this year. The resultant twelve months have been much too complex and chaotic for that.

Stuff certainly happened. That it all went spectacularly wrong in the final quarter makes it easy to forget what an eventful and, for the most part, legendary year it's been. I made some awesome friends, brutally lost a couple of others (in one significant case, re-made and then re-lost, which was.. a bit upsetting), and had all kinds of adventures along the way.

Being lost but unconcerned, I started out with only one very minor concrete Goal: to make a second Mishukis album. In a single day. Then my computer died and all my internet accounts got hacked, and I went to Rainbow Serpent and witnessed the apocalypse. The liberator who destroyed my property realigned my perceptions, and even that humble project was forgotten; life took over.

In awesomeness terms, the whole thing peaked at Easter. It was all about the Smart Party (RIP, sigh), the return of baby sis, and reconciling with J & Henley (sigh, redux).

That awesomeness carried me all the way through winter, which - although not without its trials and dramas - pretty much went off.

Then, on my birthday, as triggered by the mother of all braincaving interpersonal trainwrecks, I dropped my LBU-LFN ball and the world turned. The following three months were discombobulated, angstridden, choronzonic, and Generally Completely Sucked.

There always has to be a meltdown at some point, apparently. Oh well.

I'm feeling a bit better now.

2008 was, see above, very significantly about people. Most notably my three successive housemates Cel, this woman, and Gr*ms*y; the SP, being Sims, Liv, Ramm, Allan (nominally), Porter (all too briefly), and this chick; my colleagues Henry & Wielgosz, Kinkel, Harrie, The Major, fucking Wouters, Kav, Cross, Interviewer 2003 and Coburg; also: the two Robins (just because neither are talking to me anymore doesn't mean they don't both rate a mention), Thad, Fr**kl*y, Em and Toots. Finally (again, and especially): G.

People are good. We're problematic sometimes, but I like us.

Happy new year.

It's All Over

So long, the so-called Real World. It was nice knowing you. In some aspects.

ION: O. M. F. G. Why was I not told about this?! (That's what I get for not reading the news, I guess.)

B. C. E.

:)

Can't complain.

Although, y'know, in some ways it was almost too easy.

Hmm.

Rainbow Serpent (Part 2)

Okay.

It's a bit hard to to know where to start.

*thinks*

So my computer's sound recording facilities had been playing up, right. Had been for a while. It was no good. I wanted to make an album.

Thus on the morning of January 15th, I called a taxi and took the old gel into town to be serviced. They told me it would take four days. It wound up taking three weeks. But they did it.

In the meantime, I got totally hacked. First teigan@gmail.com, then [mylegalname]@gmail.com, my blog and my Facebook accounts all stopped accepting their passwords across the final week of January.

On Friday the 8th of February, I got my computer back. On Saturday, I threw a party. This is where we came in.

Upon getting reputered, I created some special email accounts and conducted a few experiments. Via these I established to a high degree of likelihood that my hacker was good old Henley. Somewhat predictably, I lost my shit at him.

On Tuesday 12th, I attempted to boot my newly restored digital handmaiden only to discover that - four days after returning home to me - she had totally, totally died.

I was 'puterless once more.

Then the following night - Valentine's Eve, no less - none other than Henley's girlfriend, a former close associate of mine, claimed responsibility for the hacking via SMS.

Leave the poor petal alone, she said. He's innocent.

I was skeptical at first, but when she told me that teigan@gmail was wide open for resetting (Quick! Jump up and find an open internet cafe at 2am etc), I realised she was probably telling at least some weird Lady-J-since-she-turned-feral version of the truth.

Why had the former love of my life done this to me? She'd written to me at another account, she said - one of the ones she hadn't violated and locked me out of - explaining everything.

Only problem was, I had (of course) been changing all my passwords like a demon - without having gotten around to making a backup or a hard copy of any of them. From my computer. Which had since - you will recall - dropped totally, totally dead.

In other words I was now not only 'puterless and locked out of my hacked accounts, but 'puterless and locked out of all my internet accounts.

Then in the early hours of Sunday 17th, Wouters dropped my last remaining link to civilisation phone in a full glass of bourbon & coke.

Oy.

Various people have eased my journey through this Durdenesque ordeal, and thanks are due.

Mishuki of Hagakure 419 fame was good enough to let me use hir Facebook profile. My colleague in social research, fellow FB tragic and soon-to-be-housemate Celestine has been extremely generous with her 3G handset, enabling me to update my status in something akin to the style to which I've become compulsively accustomed. Thad gave me a safe-haven email account on his server. And last Tuesday, having learned that my dead six-year-old eMac would cost $700 to reanimate, my long-suffering parents offered to buy me a MacBook. Which was very nice of them.

I picked it up this morning. I'm using it now. It's lovely.

(I'd take a picture but since the destruction of my phone I've got no working digital camera, except the one inside said MacBook. And its eye is not prehensile. But here's a picture of the box:

)

And now I have my accounts back.

Things are gradually returning to some semblance of what passes for 'normal' on Planet Teigan.

*flops exhaustedly*

Apart from all of that, I have mostly been going out a lot - having, y'know, not a whole lot else to do - and taking quite a lot of acid.

It's been.. awesome, actually. Can't complain.

Oh, and I got engaged on Saturday night. I think. But that's a whole other story.

Welcome back, blog.

Coming soon: the long, long-delayed multimediatastic Rainbow Serpent post.