international nut of pastry - I think this lines mostly filler.

For whatever reason, I don't have many memories from when I was a child. And the few that I do have are burned into my brain. One such memory, or group of memories, is music.

When I say music, I don't mean any one particular song or artist. More of a time period. You see, I used to listen to the radio station 2WS (first in the AM then FM bands) when I was going to sleep. This station also used to be on any radio that was around the house, and I used to get in trouble if I tried to change the station.

This story takes place back in the WakeOver days again - that's one story I should take the time to write up.

Once again, I'm not sure what year this actually took place in. But it was quite possibly 1995 as I had not yet acquired my PowerBook 190cs, and I know for sure that it was on or around my birthday. Like usual for my birthday, it fell during school holidays so once again Adam, Luke and I organised another WakeOver to be held at my place. Much fun was had, a lot of Pepsi was drunk and many network games were played.

I'm not sure who gave me the present, but it was certainly appreciated. After all, we'd been playing the same games for a few days straight so a change was welcomed.

The game I received was a little known title called Entomorph. Never heard of it? Told you it was little known.

I used to enjoy going to the cinemas when I was younger. There was a cinema near me that was owned by the same people that had a hardware store. They had a deal going where if you spent $30 at the hardware store, you would get two free tickets to any movie they had showing. For the 6-12 months that this deal ran for, we took advantage of this deal and I saw many movies that came out that year. A lot of things also got done around the house at this time too because of the money being spent at the hardware store.

This was back in 1993. I know this because Jurassic Park was one of the movies that I saw... Twice.

I took a sickie today. Not the "great Aussie tradition" one either. I was genuinely sick. Got a doctors certificate, prescription meds, the usual. But I digress (I what?)...

For a very long time, I didn't have a job and I got entirely too used to it in many ways. Today I realised how easy I had it when I got sick. What I mean by this is that when I got a bad cold, it wouldn't bother me to be out of action for days at a time. Sure, I'd get meds when needed and hate the feeling of being unwell. But now days, I've had about 3-4 individual sick days this year, each time I've gone back to work feeling better though not totally recovered.

I bring this up because despite my general feeling of unwell, I fully intend on going to work tomorrow. Even though I'll probably just want to sleep for most of the day, just like today - though I did force myself to go for a walk and not get as much sleep as I could/should have.

No real point to this post, I guess. Just a noticing a difference to "this time last year".

This isn't titled "My First Computer" as that would be a Commodore 64. But that was used as a game console, pretty much. Cartridges and tapes, woo! Of course, that's another story.

The Macintosh LC 475, 68LC040 25MHz, 4MB of RAM and a 160MB HD with a 640x480 14" monitor - this was my first Mac and my introduction into computers.

It's obviously not much now, but back in 1994-95 when I got it... It wasn't top of the line then either. But I had no clue what I was doing so it did me fine at the time and for many years. From school work, to games. Many games.

This story takes place around Halloween in 2003, the setting was my garage, some old couches, my TV and PS2, plenty of booze and some friends. I won't start at the beginning of the night, but jump in right around when the injury happened.

It was a common occurrence for me and Taylor go on for drunken walks around my neighbourhood. Actually, it was more of a tradition. Anyway, we'd been watching and laughing at many "scary" movies and having a great time, when Taylor, Rob and me decided to go for a walk. Three large drunk guys walking loudly around the streets probably made a few people locks their doors.

We eventually came to a major road near me, that has a retaining wall on both sides, that starts off small but eventually gets quite tall. We'd followed a footpath along this road until it ended at a lane way. Burto and Taylor stood at the end of this path waiting for me to catch up, and I had assumed we were going to cross the road.

We weren't.

We were actually about 1-to-1.5m above the road at that point, and I took a step off the retaining wall like it was a normal gutter.

I landed on my left leg hard enough for it to collapse under me, and I laid on the ground for only a few moments when Taylor landed on top of me. He had also taken the long step off the wall.

Now, my injury was nothing serious... Some grazed skin and ego and every so often my left hip will hurt enough for me to lip slightly as it's some what painful to walk. And Taylor's injuries? None. The bastard landed on me, so he felt no paint at all.

After this happened, and we'd rolled out of the way of oncoming traffic we walked (well, I limped) back home and we had many more drinks and laughed about it until early hours of the morning.

As years go by, friends will drift in and out of your life. It's inevitable. We're just not the same people we are during our younger years. This comes from growing out of your younger ways, and growing into the person you will be for some time to come. Or because you move on from old hobbies or ways of spending your time and come to realise you have little else in common. There's probably a third reason but someone smarter than me can mention it.