Ready for the Afterglow

So today I was thinking to myself, what's changed in the near three years I've been in Queenstown? The answer was simple.

Nothing. That's why I'm still here.

Shoulder season is just transitioning into a fully fledged, full grown, adult only summer. As per QT's usual form a bazillion people have left and a bazillion and one have arrived. I've made so many good new contacts/acquaintances/notches on my bedpost (the last one is obviously a lie), that I can't help but smile as I drive the van through town and see everybody chilling under the sun.  Work's becoming harder and harder simply because my home life is becoming more and more fun, the contrast just makes a day's solid slog for minimal remuneration seem less appealing. But if we all loved work then the world wouldn't have any emo's, and a world without emo's sounds terrible to me. So I keep my head down and graft away.

My weekends have been jam packed with Smashton tailored activities lately. Golfing for ole Andy Mac's birthday was probably one of my favourite Saturday's in a month, and races on Sunday the 1st of December was incredible as I managed to win $230 up on the horses. Let's not forget my umpteenth trip to Little Thailand for a big old jump in to the freezing lake to eradicate a nasty old hangover. Subsequent to that was an afternoon spent at Moke Lake playing footy, throwing Frisbee's, swimming and generally just having the best hangover day I've ever had in my life.

Townsville, I know I change my mind more than a pregnant woman in an argument, but it looks like QT has pulled a Bangkok. Queenstown has him now.

So I'll see ya when I see ya, which better be when your sorry bums come visit. I'll host the panties offa ya.

ILML

Legends to the left of me, rhombus to the right.

RIP Sydney Street residence. A whirlwind of two years in the same house has steadily dissipated and Saturday the 14th saw my two housemates and I elbow deep in grime. A good 8 hours of cleaning and booooooom, all our bond is back. 

The change of scenery is pleasant, I'm staying at some champs house temporarily. Getting put up until the room I'm moving in to is free. Legend to the left of me. 

The move was pretty poorly timed though, work has been fisting me furiously lately. Three of the staff are off on month long or longer holidays, and a nice old electrical storm decided to knock out a few of the main radios in town. Fixed those suckers like I was a vet and they were dogs testicles. Crisis neuteralized.

Was out again on Saturday night, hadn't been out in a little while. I think it was the busy work week that put me in a going out mind frame. Went down for some mean as steaks at Atlas, sunk a few pilsners and then checked out a few new bars that had opened up. The Powder Room had a lot less cocaine than its name implied, so Vinyl Underground was next on the hit list. A few shots later and the room which should have been square started to tilt. Rhombus to the right.

Other than that, I've been trying to keep things on the down low. Attempting to save money. Just being boring. Short old blog post tonight then.

"If I believe in Heaven I deny myself a death, dying keeps me conscious of the way I waste my breath." - Cosmo Jarvis

As the light spills out

Spotify has changed the way I live my life, every new day has a new soundtrack that matches my highs and lows. I fall asleep each night with a new song trickling in to my ears (and wake up soon after with the head phones wrapped around my throat.) So damn peaceful.

Hillman aka Chicken was over for a visit. Got some decent snowboarding done on the first day with him, sun shining, soft mushy snow. Beautiful weather for park riding.  The next day was a little more dreary, but still decent snow up Remarks. The third day we made the mistake of going to coronet, which was simply terrible. I got so bored with riding the concrete tracks they call snow that I went off hiking to find a jump.  That was about when James and I fell about fifty feet down a sheer icy slope that felt more like glass with some water and oil sprinkled over it. Poor old James went flying off down past the barrier which had massive warning signs on it saying, DANGER - NO SKI PATROL AREA. Somehow we managed to clamber back up by jumping up to grass patches and grabbing a hold of them until we got back to the path.  Once there we went and ate lunch in silence, brooding over our shared life experience.

Also recently in the life of Ashton was a pub crawl. Butt loads of fun, and loads of fun butt. First drink was at 2:30pm down the old courthouse, 1876. We took a photo in each pub to follow, with the pictures steadily containing more red eyes and drooping stances. After a few too many beersies, my usual drunken smile was frozen permanently on my stupid drunken face. When 5:30am rolled around it was time to leave the pubs, and where better to go next then with some random stranger up on to the rooftops to run around like crazy adolescents? Leaping around from roof to roof like intoxicated ninjas looking like ducks with no feathers trying to fly. Our misadventures finally leading us in to a backpacker through the top balcony, where we practised a guitar we found and then ran off into the rising sun to get some shut eye.

After my spontaneous inebriated parkour it was a pleasant change of pace to work down at Milford Sound for a couple of days.  With the boss flashing his credit card around paying for food, beverage and accommodation we headed off at 5:45am Wednesday morning, which saw us miles away from anywhere by the time the sun started to rise. The clouds hung in droves just above the jagged mountain peaks, creating a giant scar in the heavens through which the golden sun blared, spilling out like molten blood. As the fiery orb rose its light reached out and touched the clouds, turning them insane pinks and purples. Milford was a great little escape, but work took up most of the time and soon enough I was back in Queenstown. Back to my monotony. Back to routine. Man I need a tropical holiday...

Ears Bleeding Out

My life is a soundtrack and I wake up everyday with fresh vibes. My mind is packed full of erratic thoughts, and my cognitive process is starting to blur the lines between reality and the bizarre. Work is taking over my life, I dream about it and then have to live the real thing for 8 hours every day.

Off the subject of work, I've been trawling the less travelled recesses of the internet for a song I heard on George FM a few months back. Just came back to me randomly as I was walking to work yesterday morning, so I googled the lyrics. Only problem was the lyrics are, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da, do do do do do do do do do do do do do, ba ba ba ba.. yeah you get the point. Anyhow, I challenge any of you sons of anarchy to google those lyrics and find the song like I did. Took me a good three hours of listening to every shite song that has da's, do's, ba's, nyehs or anything like that in the lyrics. Once I did find it I listened to it once and that was me sick of it again. For any peops interested in a really random tune that reminds me of a few months back, here it is. I'm not even sure I really like it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOMe-8Tf1Y0 ) It's a pretty annoying tune when I think about it, but it was just something that past Ashton really wanted to listen to in his stubborness. Jerk. Wasted three hours of my life I could have been trawling through even darker recesses on the interwebs...

Anyboob, I just had a few mates from Townsville show up in QT a few weeks back and totally make my night. Had a few bevvies with them and then went home and passed out like I was shot by a cannon ball, in the face, from a yard away, by twelve cannons. This week I was meant to have another mate visit but seeing as he's from Townsville he waited to get to the airport before checking/finding out when his visa expired. WINNER WINNER, NO FRIENDS FOR WINTER.

In other news, I've been knocking in goals on the weekend playing soccer as well. 3 in 3. Pity I only ever manage to score on the pitch. AM I RIGHT?

Snowboarding is stalemating for me. I'm at that stage where I'm too chicken to push my limits. With self preservation in mind I've not been hitting any of the bigger features in the park. :( I will one day, I'm slowly getting back to that stage of just hating life every Sunday morning when I wake up and wonder why I thought it was a good idea to have 15 jager bombs and spend all my food shop money in one night. One day I'll loathe myself enough to chuck my body off a cliff with a board strapped to my feet. 

Also, got a black eye the other day. I looked hard as sin for a week, so I swaggered around town in a manner that almost got me a second black eye. Shitttchyeer. I'm tuff as m8. Don't wanna mess wiv me. xox, lolkthnxbi.  But sometimes that's just the way it goes, mother flipper I fight fire with volcanos. 

Well enough word vomit from a very bored Ashton, this really is not a good blog post but at least I know my mum will have read it.

LOVE CHOO MUMSIE. 

Peace errebody.

Rainbow Spawn

Autumn again. Schwing. Those Autumn colours that you've come to love from the movies, the dull golds and lightly burning oranges, or the faded street-light yellows and lady-beetle spotted reds, they're everywhere.  The leaves are dropping from the trees and carpeting pathways with a layer of debris that crunches underfoot when I meander my way to work in the chilled mornings.  The air has a winter bite to it now, and my breath mists when I exhale.  Sometimes I think I could amuse myself for hours watching my breath steam up in front of my eyes, forming ghostly shapes that dissipate into nothing and leave me staring at the fog wreathed mountains in the distance.  Although they do say small things amuse small minds. Which makes me believe that all my ex's have small minds, because something small used to amuse them regularly.

My new job is jizztastically fantastic, generating a firm platform to base my I.T. career on. I'm learning loads and enjoying my time in Queenstown, which is a balance that sometimes proves reasonably difficult to maintain.

Despite my cracking new job, my thoughts are still occupied by the grandeur of travel, however; it has been firmly established that I cannot save money in Queenstown. Too many distractions. The allure of inebriated backpacker bombshells has proven expensive. I have no idea how the New Zealand economy is so poor, I'm pretty sure it should be kept afloat by my contributions alone to businesses/bars around Queenstown. Maybe they should stop using monopoly money as the currency, they need to realise their notes are worth less than a kid's board game.

So with travel dominating my conscience, Australia is back on the cards for a stint. So that I can earn some of the world's wheel spinners and get myself back on the road. Melbourne looks like a likely destination, although with my elder brother getting a sick as, mean as, cool as, mint as job in Brisbane I wouldn't mind heading to Brisneyland either. Depending on how much this winter abuses my bank balance it may even have to be a trip home to bum off the folks for the first few weeks until I find my feet and start earning millions. In any case I'll be glad to have a break from people who say Chups and Sut. Didn't really bother me at first but now it's like sticking a drill in my ear and holding it on each time I have a conversation with a local. Thank god I predominantly hang around with European's, the have sexy as sin accents. They have voices like tiny little angels playing silk stringed harps in my ear holes. These angels must live in castles of ear wax and forests of fine white hair.  Dirty little sprites.

Long time since my last blog post. This one was simply due to being on call for work tonight, and having to sit in front of a computer to log calls and reset passwords and whatnot.  Who knows, being on call once a week might mean I post more.  Hope all you sexy daughters out there are flaunting what your mother gave you, and all you lads a gawking what they mothers gave them. Peace.