I came, I saw, I got a swag box

Oh look another Blog event that I got drunk at! Well knock me down with a feather!

Apparently, I'm a small brown marsupial. Not following? Well, it's WOMBAT. Some people will have you believe it stands for Website and Online Media, Bloggers And Tweeps, but after meeting up I'm of the firm belief it actually stands for We Only Meet when Booze is On Tab. Because, well, it's true.

LOVED meeting Yvette and Karen

The Jive and I don't pass up an opportunity to go out, particularly when someone else is paying. For him it's  because he's a poor student and a night of not eating two minute noodles is quite glamourous. For me, it's because I'm a poor excuse for a once-was-party-er and a night of not changing nappies is as good as it gets these days.

Fabulous ladies: Georgia, Lani, Sarah, Catherine and Taryn

He headed to mine for the time honoured tradition of "getting ready together" which is really code for "I don't want to show up alone for fear of looking like a loser". It consisted of him standing in my bathroom drinking shoddy wine whilst watching me dry my hair and put on makeup.

Swag bags are sooo 2011, swag boxes are the next big thing

I applied a little extra oomph to the ensemble with false eyelashes in the hope that having sparkles around my eyes would leave people so entranced that they wouldn't notice my drunken shenanigans. Though as I've found out many a time, no matter how much effort you put in, after six glasses of champagne it's highly likely you'll turn in to a pumpkin with smudged makeup by midnight at a bar in Leederville trying really hard to figure out what the guy with the incredibly thick Irish accent is actually trying to say. Or *ahem* so I've heard.

It was awesome to catch up with old mates and I loved meeting the people I've been cyber-stalking following, and putting faces to names and Twitter handles. We ate, drank, got some freebies, met an incredibly drunk Ricky Gervais wannabe with an intense stare, drank a bit more, posed for shocking photos and left after being asked to go to Leederville with some lovely, random people that had become entranced by our swag boxes.

Artichoke love

I have two new Bloggy crushes in the form of Chantel from Bossy Mummy and Cie from Pathetic to Pin up (who rocks a cowgirl hat like nobody's business, let me tell you). I had fabulous conversations with them both, though they may think differently since they were of the cringe-worthy drunken confessional variety.

1. Screaming in Georgia's ear  2. Intense "Ricky" before he tried to steal a swag box
3. Gorgeous Cie  4. RJT, Chantel and I laughing it up

It was a fabulous night thanks to some fab organizing peeps and awesome sponsors Bubbler, DP and Nuffnang.

What did you get up to? Photos or it didn't happen.

This one time, I went to Sydney just to go to a party

It would appear that I'm making a little habit of whirlwind trips to other states. This weekend I threw off the confines of the SAHM title and partied like it was 1999. Well, actually, more like it was 2000 because I was 17 for all but two weeks of 1999 and sure as shit someone will send me an email saying I'm a terrible role model encouraging underage drinking if I don't spell out exactly what I mean.

My partner in crime (which is JUST A SAYING) was the inimitable Real Jive Turkey. The Jive and I had never traveled together before and I wasn't sure what to expect. It was suggested I vajazzle my vajayjay as one must be prepared for everything, including body cavity searches by airport officials, but I stopped short and just threw a handful of glitter at my crotch instead.

The red-eye flight over was uneventful, that is unless, of course, you consider inhaling other people's farts, singing along to our respective iPods and a dismal attempt to vlog at 35,000 feet to be a highlight.

We touched down in Sydney at 6am, having not slept, and decided, since we couldn't check in yet, to hit the ground running and do all the standard cliche touristy things like eat McDonalds for breakfast, take photos of a bridge and a building we'd both seen many times before and sit in Starbucks charging our phones like wankers.

Starbucks, nuts (!!!) and ironing RJT's shirt using a GHD - highlights in anyone's book

The delightful Mrs Woog offered to leave a key out at her house for us to go and crash but I became so overwhelmed with which room I would snoop through first I felt strange to visit someone's house for the first time when they weren't even home, so we declined. This was a huge mistake and the dark rings under my eyes grew two shades darker in protest. Though apparently if I say they grew fifty shades of grey darker all the mums reading this will spontaneously orgasm.

I hit the wall at about 11am, having been awake for 27 hours, and decided that a giant can of carbonated caffeine and paying someone to rub my body would be the only way forward. I sat in the massage chair at a place called Unwind in Erskine Street and had THE BEST massage of my life. I had to restrain myself from groaning in pleasure as she pummeled my muscles in to submission and when she was finished I felt like I should kneel down and worship her. I didn't because it would mean getting down and getting back up again and, really, who has time for that when free drinks are waiting for you?

We pressed on to Bungalow 8 for a fab, slightly liquid lunch with some Bloggy friends. The Jive's list of female blogger friends has just increased ten fold because despite the fact that the conversation veered towards vaginas for a while, he appreciates how dedicated we are at pretending we don't have kids and getting drunk partying.

Liz, Zoey, Kristie, Rah, Me, JJ, Fi, Salz, Alyce, Nicole, Denyse, The Jive, Lily & Cassie

We couldn't keep our eyes open any longer we headed to our "hotel" at the official check in time. I was in charge of booking the hotel and it's safe to say that that responsibility will never land in my lap again as it became glaringly obvious I had booked us in to a dingy backpackers with convent-like rooms. The shower screen was broken, the shower head was broken, the windows didn't close (and it was FREEZING) and the beds were actually lumps of concrete covered in a blanket so thin I've seen layers of dust that have been thicker. But it was clean, it was cheap and it was central.

I closed my eyes and laid there, in the cold, trying to will myself to sleep for two hours before I decided it was pointless and that Twitter would be much more interesting than the insides of my own eyelids. I was right. Y'all are very entertaining.

Fast forward through what seemed like hours of serious hair styling from The Jive and we rocked up at the party that we were in town for. StMurphy's 40th. The atmosphere was electric and it was so exciting to meet people I'd been chatting to on Twitter for ages (like McDimples!), a whole bunch of new people that I'm now actively stalking, catch up with my faves Mrs Woog and SawHole, and, of course, give the birthday boy a hug and an awesome (if I do say so myself) card.

Card created using MoonPig.com.au

Mrs Woog started introducing me as one of Australia's best mummy bloggers to all her celeb friends who were there and despite me telling her she was full of shit, she continued. So I did what any self respecting new media junkie would do and let her carry on safe in the knowledge that the darkened room would be enough to camouflage my flushed cheeks and the massive headswell that was occuring.

Celebrity whoring it up (with a super bright nose removing iPhone flash) with StMurphy, Julie Goodwin,
Mrs Woog, Saw Hole, McDimples, Charlotte Dawson, The Jive, Natarsha Belling and Jo Thornley

I managed to embarrass myself by discussing the pros and cons of female urinals with Jo Thornley, complete with actions, and reverted to very similar miming tactics when my voice, which had been failing all day, completely gave up around 1:00am (after over 40 hours awake). A development that left me with the rather unenviable moniker of *ahem* "cock throat" for the rest of the weekend shenanigans.

A sleep in a concrete bed, a walk around The Rocks and a meet up at the pub with some new friends topped off an amazing weekend in Sydney and I was home by 11:00pm on Sunday night. And much like The Jive's luggage, my voice still hasn't returned. But it was so worth it.

A week in tweets

The fabulous Emma from Mommy Has A Headache (and one half of Cocktails at Naptime) demanded I take part in let me know about the awesome meme created by Jo of Slummy Single Mummy - a week in tweets - complete with funky badge. I don't do anything these days unless I get a badge... I'm like a misguided Girl Scout or something.


Without further ado, this is what the last seven days would look like if I was restricted to one tweet a day. Can you imagine me only tweeting once a day? Yeah, me neither.
Tuesday:
In Sydney today for the #NortonOne shindig at Café Sydney. This blogging thing rocks my socks… in this case, anti DVT flight socks.

Wednesday:
Bought some Max Brenner pecans to take home for Map Guy… they didn’t make it. What can I say? The bald man has great nuts #DontTellMapGuy

Thursday:
Tricky is unwell and appears to be afraid of snot -cries whenever he wipes his nose. Is this what is meant by the boogie monster? #KillMeNow

Friday:
Sitting at home with wine, cheese, olives and a looming deadline. Boy do I know how to party! #AllWorkAndNoPlayMakesGlowUseLongHashtags

Saturday:
Just been to the BEST vintage/retro/rockabilly inspired wedding! Congratulations @WondersOfAllis! You looked divine #WonderWedding (yes, I gave my friends a wedding hashtag)

Sunday:
This getting up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday can go bite me. Meanwhile I will go bite the buttermilk pancakes, bacon and maple syrup I just made #NOMS

Monday:
Kinda chuffed with my first ever attempt at cake decorating #frangipanis #GlowMakesCakes #FondantOverload 
 

I could put a call to action question here about your week, but really, all I want to know is that you think my cake looks amazeballs

Of Twitter Haters and PR Fails

This post was going to be a standard Mummy Blogger post about how I got up at 5:30am the other day (alternatively known as the ass crack of the day, a time when no human should be awake) so Tricky could see the bus that Map Guy had hired for a bucks party. It was going to be warm and fuzzy and leave the females in the audience with aching ovaries at all the cuteness of an excited toddler's dreams coming true as a bus pulled in to our driveway and took him for a ride up and down the street.

But all that went flying out the window when I checked Twitter at our post-awesome-bus-trip breakfast on the edge of the Swan River and saw this:

Gee, tell me how you really feel.

So I had a look at Biker Vet's account, found out he followed fourteen people, had nine followers and tweeted mainly about bikes, the defense forces and bad PR. No other tweets anything like the one directed at me, so it obviously wasn't just a random hate account. Someone I know? An ex? A friend of a friend of a non-friend who's decided to be a super mature keyboard warrior, hiding behind a pseudonym?

I of course decided to take the moral high ground and not be caught up in it. Well, I would have, but it was much more fun to do this:

Which I think sorta upset him. Or perhaps it was the half dozen retweets of it? Or the tweets of others, like Super Daddy saying not only did he give a flying fuck but a rat's arse too. Love my tweeps!

He countered:

Riiight. So I'm a clueless, vacuous bimbo who needs to get a life, yet HE'S the one spending time sending hate tweets? The irony bubbled up around me and I went for a swim in it! Irony spa FTW!

But I'm thrilled to find out I apparently work in PR. Sending a few muesli bars and calling people Dear Blogger? I could totally do that, thanks Biker Vet for your encouragement to change careers!

By this stage a few people had noticed and were asking what I'd done to make this guy so cranky at me. I told them I had no idea and he was obviously watching my tweets because he replied:

And attached this photo with one name blocked out:

Yes, that's right. I did a reply all to @claytonwfu5y who had spammed us all (that account is now suspended because I always block and report spam) and for that, I am being called horrid names as if we're in a playground. And for the record, one of the others in the group, who understands what a reply all is, retweeted it.

Interestingly on Biker Vet's timeline he complains about clicking on a link that has now infected his email account... there is NO LINK in my tweet, I'm complaining about said link in my tweet, yet I'm the spammer?  Sheesh!

Just after that tweet I get an email from a newly created Biker Vet gmail account (a warning popped up that it was a new linked account) saying "This was posted to my business twitter account. It may not have come from you. Please confirm." with a copy of the same image with the name blocked out.

Ohhhh right, so he checked it was from me after calling me a clueless, vacuous bimbo? Way to jump the gun, Biker Vet.

So I assume (possibly making an "ass out of u and me", but hey, I'm gonna go with it) that the name blocked out is Biker Vet's business account that he mentions. I also assume that Biker Vet has no idea that I can find this out by a two second search of my own timeline. And voila, we have our answer.

Mr Biker Vet, you are unmasked... and I could spill the beans and tell the world (well a few thousand readers) who it was that was posting such crude comments about me, but I'm going to restrain myself for a few reasons, number one, because I don't want a barrage of readers to go to your website and give you traffic and number two, I won't be pulled in to a defamation lawsuit.

But I know who you are. So how about I click on over to your page and see what you do, shall we? Oh, look at that, you do personal training and... wait for it... PR! Can you say PR Fail?

I have replied to both tweet and email (cc-ing in his real email address that took a whole five seconds to find on his website), stating that it was a reply all to a spammer... and he's refusing to reply to me. Radio silence. Crickets chirping and tumbleweeds. Me thinks he's not so tough now that I know his real name?

So kudos, Biker Vet, for a massive PR Fail before your PR company is even off the ground.

What have we learned from this adventure? The internet is forever, everything is traceable, I'm now classed as Twitter Royalty for having a hater and my tweeps are awesome. The end.

I'm putting this to bed now. No Twitter flame wars on my behalf, thanks.

The Dreaded Unfollow

There's some rather childish stuff going on in the world of Facebook at the moment. Shock, horror! Facebookians being childish?! Well I never.

As a result I don't really go on my private account very much and have limited what most people can see. And yes, I'm aware of just how counter productive that sounds considering I put my whole life on a blog. But I reserve the right to be contradictory mmkay?

Instead I spend all my time on Twitter. It's way better. Don't ask me about Google+ just yet, I've only been on there twice.

Ding ding!

Yes it's confusing when you start, but right when you get over the whole "I'm talking to myself" thing is when someone will actually start talking back and, hey presto, you've got some new mates.

The difference between the two, for me, is that it all comes down to The Dreaded Unfollow! You Facebookians would know it as The Dreaded De-Friend! Dun dun duuuuuun.

You see, when you're on Facebook you go about your merry way and your friends list stays the same unless you go in and manually remove someone (or they remove you...). With Twitter though, there is random unfollows.

It's like Twitter goes premenstrual and just ditches some of your best mates without asking you and then demands a kilo block of chocolate and a Drew Barrymore flick.

Now even though everyone knows this happens, I still get that sinking feeling every time it's brought to my attention with a "I tried to DM you but you're not following me..." Always with the ellipses, like it's just hanging there waiting for the YOU BITCH I'M NEVER TALKING TO YOU AGAIN to be tacked on the end.

My head starts to spin: They'll think I don't like them! Will they now unfollow me now? Have I offended them? OMG they're gonna think I'm a snobby cow! Noooo!

Oh the shame! What happens next is a quick dance of re-following, public damning of twitter and assuring said person that it was definitely just a glitch in the matrix system.

All the time knowing that when it happens the other way around, yes I do wonder what happened, then shrug my shoulders and think mah, it's the internet, real life is what matters.

Do you panic when you've found yourself victim of The Dreaded Unfollow/De-Friend?

A thief, a dobber, a trouble maker and a whinger

On Thursday night I ditched parenting duties to go to a fancy pants wine and whiskey tasting "Twitterati Party". Say that three times fast. Go on, I'll wait... it's cool, right?

The party was hosted by Jason Jordan at the Inglewood Hotel to celebrate/commiserate the end of financial year. As someone with zero taxable income, EOFY means bugger all to me, but hey, if you're going to put on the wine and whiskey, I'll come to your party.

I got tickets to the event after getting a text message from Georgia of Parental Parody fame a few weeks ago which said "FREE WINE TASTING THING ON TWITTER... DO IT NOOOOOW!" or words to that affect. So it was only right that I picked her up on the way there. And by I, I of course mean Map Guy.

There was some slight stalling whilst getting my boobs out in the carpark to feed a rather vocal and cranky pants Tricky (what, like you've never gotten your boobs out in the poorly lit, slightly dingy back carpark of a pub), then it was time to make our entrance. We headed in and tried to find where the gig was; Georgia noticed people with their heads buried in their phones... I noticed the wine table.

We gravitated towards it and started sampling the massive range of four bottles. The guy doing the pouring was trying to tell me all about "this one which is a little bit older and little more full bodied" to which I replied "Well so am I, so I'll have that one". He gave me half a sip. Surely my predictable quip deserved at least half a glass?

It didn't taste like battery acid so of course, I wanted some more. He was busy serving and chatting to other people so I just helped myself.

Luckily the guy didn't see me do it because a few other guests told me (whilst I was half way through the drink) that apparently, only the taste was free, you had to pay for the drinks.

I went back and checked and there it was, written in chicken scratch on a scrap of paper "glass $8". Stingey bastards! I don't go to a free wine party to pay for my drinks, it's part of the zero income thing I've got going on.


So I guess I am a thief.

I planned to stand behind Georgia and Adam from TweetPerth if anyone said anything. Safety in numbers and all that jazz.

Screw it. On to the cocktails.

Then I met Jason, and being the fantastic, grateful and slightly drunk person that I am, I complained about mentioned my surprise at the lack of free drinks and offered myself up as the criminal tweep who stole a glass.


Now I'm a dobber, of both myself and the establishment.

He said he had no idea it wasn't free, and from the look of shock on his face, I'm inclined to believe him. When handing out the door prizes he announced to the room (jokingly) that I was a trouble maker... at least he didn't say what everyone else was thinking; that I was a lush who was just after free drinks (they were right, by the way).


Now I'm a thief, a dobber and a trouble maker, are you keeping up?

Anyway, there were some fab photos taken by this guy Karl, who I was eyeing off for a while doing that whole 'Do I know him? I think I know him? It's definitely him' dance in my head. Karl and I used to be friends, we got drunk once and got kicked out of a club together about eight years ago on Christmas Eve. Good times.

He took some nice photos, and I'm unsurprisingly holding a wine glass or cocktail glass in all of them.

Cocktail glass, hidden cocktail glass but peace sign, wine glass

'Twas a fun night of catching up with my Twitter pals and I was home by 10pm thanks to #1 Hubby giving me a lift home while I ranted in the back seat wondering just how much I could drunkenly say in front of a very worldly five year old.

Oh, and just quietly, there was no damn whiskey. Now I'm a thief, a dobber, a trouble maker and a whinger.

Do you celebrate/commiserate EOFY? Or not give a toss?