I think I may have let the dishes go for a bit too long… Ah, that’s better.

11am. I have declared Sunday to be Cleanout Daniel’s Flat Day. It really needs to happen - I need to get rid of the junk I don’t need, otherwise moving next month is going to be an absolute misery. In order that I may make some serious progress today, shortly I will do something I very rarely do: I will shut down the computer for the day. That should prevent distractions of the "Hey, my e-mail inbox needs a clearout - at counts as tidying, doesn’t it?" type.

So, the computer will remain off until at least 7pm. No doubt I’ll write an update then, bemoaning that I didn’t get more done.

"I’m going offline now. I may be some time."

7:30pm. Okay, some good progress - special thanks toCoralie who was the one who suggested turning off the computer! For me - a certified member of Netaholics Anonymous, that in itself was probably an achievement.

I cleared a lot of stuff out of my own room - a fair bit of stuff I don’t want or need anymore. Still a lot of work to do over the coming weeks, but off to a good start. I ended up with three piles: stuff to give to people I know, stuff to chuck in the bin, and clothes to give to charity.

This afternoon I took the third pile in bags to the charity bins by the railway station. Only to find that the charity bins have vanished, a consequence of too many morons dumping rubbish in them. D’oh. I’ll give them to an opp shop… preferably one not too close to home - I have no wish to see my old clothes walking the streets again. It might remind me of how shabby I looked in them.

I spent some time last night re-editing the VCR destruction video. It’s punchier, faster-paced, and with that oh-so-dull second scene with the washing-up liquid edited out. Yes, it’s How To Destroy Your Video: the Director’s Cut. Ah, it brings back some fond memories.

The agents for my current place haven’t got back to me, so I’m assuming from the no-nonsense font that I used on the fax cover sheet to fax them a copy of their own eviction notice that they’ve realised I won’t stand for any funny-business if they try and get me out early. No chance.

Meanwhile the other agent for the house I’m trying to buy
got back to me to say I should get an answer next week, which is good, because I’d like to work out what I’ll be doing, and start looking for rental properties if I need to. Either way, I should start clearing through the monumental amounts of junk I need to get rid of before I have to move.

11am. The real estate agent handling my current place just rang. They wanted to know when I’m moving out, and what date notice had been given. I didn’t have it in front of me, but I had written the due date in my diary.

"It was just after ANZAC Day, and it was 90 days, so I’m due out on July 25th."

"I thought it was 60 days."

"No, it was 90 days."

"I’m sure it was 60." For someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he sounds pretty forceful.

"I’ll double-check it and call you back."

Now look here, fucker, you might think you’re squeezing me out early, but it ain’t gonna happen. Ninety days is what I got, what I was entitled to by law (since the notice specified no reason), and at the rate I’m going is going to be pretty much what I’m taking. The new owners might be keen to cash in quick and get the place renovated and back out on the market pronto, but that’s their problem.

6pm. Well I rang back and quoted their own notice back at them. 90 days, just as I said. And get this, he asked me to fax a copy to them! They don’t know what their own office has sent! What a bunch of jokers. Remind me next time I need a real estate agent not to use these clowns.

Still, it clarifies one thing for me, if I wanted to ask for an extension, I doubt it would be forthcoming.

Last night I decided to check out the video shop down in South Caulfield, which according to legend will rent you out a video or DVD for no more than $2.50. In this day and age, when that
Blockbuster mob are charging closer to $7 or something ridiculous like that, that is a bargain which cannot be ignored. My own local video place is a tad cheaper than the Blockbusters of the world, and I generally prefer to patronise small local shops, managed by small, local people. But my local video place has proven time and time again that, especially in the range of DVDs, they’re crap.

So, to South Caulfield. And yes, the legends are true, they do rent out stuff for $2.50. Even less, some things. Their identity requirements are a little bit over the top, but nothing unmanageable - they waived the requirement to leave a urine deposit. The range seemed very good, and it took mere milliseconds to find my first choice of DVD to borrow: "8 Mile".

After hearing much talk of it recently, I decided I wanted to see it. Bit of light viewing on a Sunday night, you know. Actually it wasn’t as heavy and incomprehensible as I thought it might be. Apart from the dialogue, which I struggled a tad with. Perhaps I should have turned the subtitles on. It reminded me a little of Quadrophenia. That Eminem bloke can act, and I was left with the feeling that it was a vaguely accurate (and certainly interesting) portrayal of a particular bit of America.

I did a lot of driving on Saturday, probably more than I do in the typical month. One trip to Geelong, one across town, both into uncharted territory which had me - at some stages - continually checking the Melway on the passenger seat to verify where I was. Suddenly I can see the point of those high tech in-car navigation system things that treat you like a moron. "Turn left in 200 metres, or you will be forever lost in the bowels of North Geelong."

Actually the drive to Geelong went smoothly as far as navigation was concerned. The thing about the drive to Geelong is that while you can’t possibly get lost on the freeway - it has signs so huge pointing to Geelong that you can be in no doubt that you’re going in the right direction - it’s so damn BORING since the roadworks finished. Miles and miles of straight, flat road. At least when they were still fixing it, you might see the occasional bulldozer to break the monotony.

Being the first day of the long weekend, one might have expected a lot of people to be heading out of town, but in fact there wasn’t much traffic until getting into Geelong. Then I encountered congestion, and worse: the surfer dudes.

The surfer dudes had overtaken me earlier on the freeway. I’m not sure I believe thosecontinual e-mails that come around via friends of friends of friends supposedly listing the locations of speed cameras on the freeway to Geelong, but it does leave me being a tad more careful than usual about my speed. Anyway the surfer dudes were in a white station wagon, probably heading down to Torquay or somewhere for the weekend. They had one of those stickers on the back of their car which has some lame joke accompanied by an obscene hand gesture that most of us would look at in the shop and think maybe it was remotely clever or funny for a split second, but it is in no way good enough that one would actually part money for it, let alone slap it on the back of the car. I don’t even remember what it said now, but trust me on this: it was lame.

So when I got to Geelong, a proliferation of traffic lights and other traffic barred my way into the city. I was head of the queue in the middle lane at one such set of lights, and as the light turned green and we all started off again, I saw the surfer dudes waiting to turn out of a service station exit. The surfer dude who was driving paused for a little bit too long, thinking about whether he wanted to go or wait, then decided to go. He zoomed out onto the road, right across all three lanes of traffic, into the right hand lane, then swerved back into the middle lane. I had to brake sharply (and gave them a toot of the horn), then watched over the next couple of K as they drove along, drifting around in the lane, almost into the left hand lane several times. Hmmm. A car to avoid, which I managed to do for the rest of the drive.

Having the Melways handy didn’t stop me getting quite lost on the cross town trip later in the day - in my mind I confused two quite separate roads across the river that are 3 kilometres apart, and ended up waaaay off course. And when I got to the street I was headed for, the handily scrawled Post-It note with the street number on it went missing, and I spent several minutes scrabbling about the car trying to find it.

Many hours later I headed back, and thought I knew where I was going, until I found myself not on Princess Street as I expected but on Earl Street instead. Which was okay, I found my way home, though now I think about it, I wonder if the people who named the streets around there had an obsession with royalty. I finally arrived home about 2:20am, so tired I didn’t even brush my teeth before collapsing into bed. Though I did manage to quickly check my e-mail. Priorities, you know?

Okay so here’s where I’m at with the house. This is probably all too hard to explain without figures, but I’m not particularly keen to splash around details of my economic position. For one thing, it would only take the curious real estate agent seconds to look up my name on Google, find my diary, and know exactly how much I can afford. So instead I’ll use X, Y and Z.

A while back I asked the bank if I could spend X. They said yes. Atthe auction, the bidding was faster and furiouser than I expected, and it went up over X. Oh dear. And it was passed-in. Negotiations began between the highest bidder and the vendor, but no agreement was reached, so it’s still for sale.

I realised that I had been a very silly Daniel, and had asked the bank to lend me X, which was the amount I thought the house would go for. This was a mistake. I should have asked the bank how much I could afford. So I asked them on Monday, and the bank lady came up with a figure which was a good deal higher: Z. But due to complicated bank red tape reasons, I couldn’t be given authorisation on the spot, it had to go to a special team of crack bank advisers to decide if I could really have Z.

On Wednesday they replied and said…. No, no you can’t have Z. You can still have X, but not Z. Argh. Okay. So I said to the bank lady if I could apply again, this time for an amount somewhere between X and Z, but still more than the previous highest bid on the house. How about Y? Okay she said, let you know on Friday.

Shortly afterwards, the agent rang me up to tell me she was showing someone else through the property. Was this true? I’m generally a trusting person, so it could be true, but Josh and others have told me that real estate agents are evil nasty people, so I suppose it’s possible it might have just been a ploy to get me to make another offer. Which I did - not because of her call, but because I was just going to anyway. I offered an amount higher than the other bids, between X and Y, but on condition of getting finance approved. Are you still following all of this? The agent said she’d pass it on, but that because I didn’t have finance approved, she wasn’t sure if it would be accepted. She implied that it stood more of a chance if I actually had finance, or (more likely) that a higher offer might be accepted. But I wasn’t going to bite and pledge more money.

Tonight (earlier than expected) the bank replied and said yes, you can have Y. Excellent, I’m very pleased.

So (and I wouldn’t blame you if your eyes have glazed over and you’ve skimmed down to this bit to skip the detail and get to the bloody point) the house game is not over yet, I still have a chance of getting it. I will ring the agent tomorrow and see what’s going on with it.

Last night I was heading into the city in a hurry. I left the car at Caulfield Station (cuts on the waiting time when coming home late at night). As I got out of the car I looked over my shoulder at the platform. A city-bound train was just coming in. I locked the door, sprinted to the platform, and
even made it in time to validate my ticket. Then I settled down to read the Agenda section of the paper, worrying only momentarily that I might not have locked the car door properly.

Over to Crown to see the Matrix Reloaded with Doug. It’s certainly one of those "wowee how did they film that?" movies… the multiple Hugo Weavings (or should that be Hugos Weaving?)… the whole freeway chase thing… it really blurred the line between live action and computer graphics quite well.

I spent a bit of time trying to spot Sydney landmarks, but I’m not really familiar enough with Sydney. No blatant placement of Commonwealth Bank ATMs this time, though there was a fairly prominent National Australia Bank red star logo on one building in the closing scenes.

And the plot? Did it need one? Did it have one? Yeah, it kinda did. Mostly we just continued on the merry Matrix chase, lots of martial arts, lots of thrills and spills, with a thumping dance scene (combined with a sex scene to keep the teenage boys interested) and a few dialogue-heavy bits with technical terms and some philosophical gobbledygook thrown in for good measure. Maybe the dialogue was just so deep I didn’t understand it, though with my computing background the use of terms such as "source" and "architect" did make me chuckle. But mostly it was a thrill-ride leading shamelessly into the next movie. Which I fell for, of course now I feel obligated to see it when it comes out.

So overall? An enjoyable movie.

As the credits rolled, almost everyone walked out. Either they didn’t know at the very end was a preview for the third movie… or they didn’t care. At least it was better than the trailers before the film, which apart from one exception, showed the forthcoming features out of Hollywood to be complete pap. And the one that looked like it wasn’t pap wasn’t out of Hollywood.

Over the years, my taste in clothing (as well as other things such as food) has improved immeasurably. Various influences - in particular certain girlfriends - have led me to try and take a little more care of my appearance. I’m not quite up to the standard proffered by The Age recently ofthe "Metrosexual", but I don’t enjoy looking like a slob. Even if I still do look like a slob sometimes. It’s a gradual progression, as the clothes budget becomes available, and more importantly, as I get inspiration and figure out what it is I want.

I decided during the week that I was in dire need of a new jacket for work. The old ones aren’t exactly falling to bits, but they’ve started to take on that kind of scruffy look that means I don’t feel very comfortable wearing them. I don’t want to look like a scruff. I want to be under the delusion that I’m well-dressed. Particularly at work. I’m meant to be a successful urban IT professional, and I should look it, too.

I am the world’s worst clothes shopper. If I don’t have inspiration, the sheer stamina required to put up with my endless umming and ahhing is monumental. It’s a trip I should do alone. After looking all week for inspiration from the people at work, the people on the train, the people walking around the city, but not finding anything, I had taken a look around some city shops on Friday after work. Nothing had grabbed me, but inspiration came later from watching The Sopranos
that night (I’d taped it on Monday). I found myself watching and thinking - hey, you know that’s a nice jacket that (sadistic maniac) Ralph is wearing. Something like that might be good.

So with that little nugget of inspiration, I went shopping on Saturday afternoon. A little retail therapy after the auction to get over the minor disappointment about notgetting the house.

Where should I go? Some of the jackets I had seen inDJs in the city had been quite good, if a trifle on the expensive side. But I couldn’t be bothered going to the city, could I? Instead I got in the car and drove toChadstone. Ah, Chadstone, a hundred thousand square metres of shops, and never a parking spot free, and buses only every hour on Saturdays. I drove around and around for what seemed an age, but was probably about five minutes, and eventually found a spot. But could I find a jacket that I liked? No. Hmmm. 2:30pm. Remembering that I wouldn’t have time the next day to go shopping, I drove toSouthland.

Ah, Southland. Not quite as big as Chadstone, but just as annoying to find a parking spot in. No, more annoying. I tried on the eastern half initially. I drove around and around, watching as the other cars I saw started to look more and more familiar. They were driving around in much the same circles as I was. Ah! A spot! There! No, damn, it’s for parents with prams. I wish I still had that old pram in the back of the car.

Also on the train into the city - two blokes and a washing machine.

I drove out of the car park and considered looking for somewhere to park in a nearby street. But instead I drove over to the newer western part of the centre. Up the ramp to the top, and I immediately found a spot. The last spot, it appeared, as other cars continued to circle up there. Then I looked around the shops. Saw various jackets, and almost considered thinking about buying one in DJs, but decided No. It really wouldn’t do. It was not quite what I wanted. Fussy bastard, aren’t I?

It was 3:30pm. Hey, what about the ones I had seen in the city at DJs? On sale until tomorrow? They didn’t seem to have the same ones at Southland and Chadstone. Yeah, they’re nice. What time do they close? I drove home, and checked. 6pm. Plenty of time. So I jumped on the train, and half an hour later, with no parking hassles whatsoever, I was in DJs in the city looking at their jackets, and miracle of miracles, I found one I liked. No, really liked. On sale, though still almost stupidly expensive. No matter, I bought it anyway. It’s totally lovely, and I’ll feel and look great (well, apart from the recurring acne, why am I still getting that at 32 years old?!) tomorrow morning when I go to work. Retail therapy works!

I came home, then headed out to the supermarket looking for food. I settled on the ingredients for enchiladas for dinner. Good stuff. And as I was leaving through the checkout, the bloke behind me saw my cloth bag and by golly decided he’d ask the checkout chick to put his groceries into his backpack. Obviously with recent debate, the whole plastic bag thing is increasing in peoples’ consciousness.

I ate enchiladas and dug out a video ofEarthshock to watch. Ahhhh… relaxation.

So the lesson for me in all of this? In clothes, look for inspiration everywhere. Once it’s found, go shop. Make sure the credit card is cleared and ready for action. And don’t bother looking in the suburban shopping centres - go for the city - it’s got it all and more.

Hey… you know… I need some new ties…