Jode´s Wedding Invites.

So I can finally blog about Jody´s wedding invites cause she has informed me that they have been sent and received and I won´t spoil the suprise for any of the guests. Jody is my sister for those who don´t know her, my twin to be exact & she is getting married in April 2008 in Las Vegas! Fun! So I designed and created her wedding invites, its not going to be a traditional wedding so a non traditional invite was called for. She is completely not a bridezilla and told me I could do whatever I wanted. (Although she was quite picky about the perspective of her name on the Vegas sign - what are you bride an engineer?!) They were really fun to do, that is, except for the part of actually putting them all together. Sometimes designers are more creative than they are smart, and although the layered look of the invites looked fab, the red, then black, then white printed squares of course all came in seperate pices and had to be glued together. This was obviously not thought through. So with 60 invites in total, I had to stick one square on another square, oh only 660 times!!! This was first attempted with double sided sticky tape, when during the first weekend of invite workshop 2007 I didn´t even make a dent on my pile, I tried standard glue, this too was risky as I wasn´t sure it would hold, I finally gave in and spent (well Jody gave in really cause she had to fit the bill!) 36 euros, yes thats right 36euros (18 each! highway robbery) on 2 cans of spray glue to finish the job. I spent countless hours over 8 days sicking sticking and more sticking. I had a sticky tape injury on my finger from when the tape gets stuck and you pull it off and after 100s of times doing this the skin decides to start to come with it. I had a spray glue nozzle tattoed into my finger from so much pressing that didn´t go away for days and the day after I finished I had to spend the day in bed cause my back was so sore from so much bending i could hardly walk!!!! Who´s idea was this???? Oh mine. Stupid Kristy.

Well they were received in NZ by Jody and Chris who loved them and that sweet sound of praise cured any pains I still felt and quitened the repeated voices in my head that said "that bitch owes me 1000s of Margaritas in Vegas" No - along with the praise thats great for the ego, I did it for love and I do not expect any Margaritas (OK maybe just 1?) And if any of you lucky guests are reading this IF YOU THROW THE INVITE IN THE BIN I WILL NOT TALK TO YOU AT THE WEDDING.

So... the fabulous wedding of Jody and Chris, Las Vegas.....

Christmas Lottery

No I didn´t win, OK, I went in the draw with people from work and I did win 6euros but that hardly counts as winning the lottery. Ok let me just say, the Christmas Lottery draw in Spain is SO SO SO bizarre and confusing. Its called El Gordo The Fat One. Its the biggest lottery in the world giving away up to 2 billion euros (though not all at once).
A whole ticket billete is very expensive, costing 200€. However, these tickets are split up into ten decimos (tenths/ten seperate tickets) costing 20€ each. When buying your tickets you have the choice of buying a single decimo, a whole ticket, or a fraction of your choice. If you don't buy the whole ticket, someone else will buy the rest of your ticket.
THEN on Dec 22, the draw is televised and it has been written to be "the most boring and monotonous TV show in the world" cause it goes for 5 hours non-stop, the balls drop, a number and then a prize amount, little kids who strangely are orphans of Madrid's San Ildefonso school take turns in chanting (yes chanting, not speaking, saying OR singing) the winning numbers into a microphone, they all chant the same way, in the same tone and believe me the tone is WEIRD! Its so weird I had to get this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJdpIXah6mE from you tube to show you an example of how it sounds, believe me I can´t undertsand what numbers they are chanting but they chant about 2000 different numbers and 2000 different prizes so it all turns into a big blur after a while. In the video the kids are walking over to the cameras to say the numbers for the last 3 times cause its a big prize, They say it 3 times when they draw it, but if its a big prize they also say it to the judges 3 times and the cameras 3 times. I mean you just want to shoot these poor orphans!!! They are so annoying!!!

Christmas Party. Spanish Style

Dang Christmas parties are fun! What could be more fun than free alcohol and seeing your boss and workmates make a fool of themselves. (as long as you are not the foolish workmate all is good). This trend transcends continents thats for sure. Our Christmas party was being held during the day, we have another HQ in Cádiz, 2 1/2 hours south of Seville, so our CP was held in Jerez, a town pretty much in the middle of Cádiz & Seville. They hired a coach to take us all there. We had to work in the morning until 12:30pm, but these hours were pretty much taken up with a bit of nail painting and JuanLu, the big bloke that sits next to me taking all the laptops out of the company laptop bags to fill them with bottles of beer for the trip to the party. The trip to the party was pretty rowdy and could have easily been mistaken for a year 6 trip to Canberra. There was lots of beer drinking, and screaming and some wannabee flamenco singers in the middle complete with tamborine. There was this one girl who didn´t stop singing flamenco songs that had everyone in stitches, I couldn´t understand what the fuck she was singing about it but if her porn type movements and the screams of outrage from the crowd had anything to do with it it must have been some risque flamenco. The trip was only 1 1/2 hours long but it ended up taking closer 2 1/2 cause we had to have a pee pee stop, with 60 people lining up for 1 toilet at the petrol station! So much beer consumed in such a short amount of time and the crowd had to break the seal ALREADY!

The party was held at a finca, a country house in the sherry country of Jerez de la Frontera. The grouds were quite pretty and really spanish looking.

The starters and glasses of sherry were taken in the "Patio de los Toros" unfortunately there were no real toros here, though everyone loves to see a crowd scramble when a bull is let lose. They actually do that in small villages, Stuff Pamplona, its for the weak! Get yourself to a small village during their party week and watch grandma run for her life as the a wild bull is let lose with no set track. That shiz is madness.

Everyone loves to have a bulls head looking down at you while you eat, these suckers were right behind me. Before coming to Spain I was quite against the whole bullfighting thing, don´t get me wrong I still kinda am, but now I undertsand a bit more about how big the culture is and how ingrained it is into said culture. Apart from the part where it gets killed, the bullfighting is quite beautiful, the bullfighter quite skillful & brave and who the hell doesn´t like to yell Olé when the bull almost stabs the bullfighter through the testicles?

And you just can´t say that this bullfighter isn´t an absolute hottie. Hello Fran Rivera, where do you think you´re going.....

A bullring was situated right next to our tables during the lunch, small of course, and after lunch there was a dancing horse show, complete El Caballo Blanco style, that is one clever horsey let me tell you.

And then after the horse show, a little bull fight, not with a bull, but a baby cow. There were rumours that we would be able to have a go doing it, but I was glad that it turned out to be a mere rumour when I saw that thing charge, it was small but it was an angry little bugger. Don´t worry, it didn´t get killed, they just played with it, the sword wasn´t even real, it was plastic and at one stage it snapped, the dodgy bullfighter dropped the cape and the bull rolled around in it. See no killing, fun times for little cow.

There was a prize ceremony and lots of great prizes were given out, including the one that I had my eye on, the trip to Istanbul, which was unfortunately (not for him, just for me) won by a guy that i work with Juan Carlos. Who by the way everyone cals Juanki or Juanka for short and its pronounced Wankey, or Wanka! Funny! I won a red scarf - yeah, great a red scarf... over the moon. During the prize ceremony, raunchy flamenco singer got up on stage and did an even raunchier rendition of one of her songs, including some strange moves that involved flashing her undies, this was done with the boss next to her on stage and the image of her undies and the boss´s tomato red face is forever etched in my mind.

After a few copitas (spirits at the open bar) I had a photoshoot inside the bullring, here we are, ana, reyes and me making like bulls in front one of the protected areas. Well they are making like a bull, I am actually doing the peace sign, spot the español.....

I don´t even remember taking this photo but isn´t this guys moustache cool, he was on the wall near the toilets, and they say his name is Cantinflas and he is an old mexian comedian. Cool mo Cantinflas.

Halloween

Photos a little bit after the fact but better late than never. I couldn´t bring the digi to the party cause Marcos had it in New York so I had to wait till the monkey monster sent me the pics. My friends Isabel & Domingo had a Halloween party at their place, I don´t have much imagination or budget for good Halloween outfits but I found this wig that I suppose made me Medusa. Wigs are funny.

Isabel witch, Medusa me, fake scary man (he is NOT real and I am NOT dirty dancing with him, photos are deceiving!) and Carlos monkey monster.

Pablo pirate, Medusa me, fake scary man (we´re just good friends) and Isabel witch.