Roll On 2010

Seriously, 2009, piss off. I've had enough of you.

Yesterday I went to my old church. Hamilton has one of the world's largest Mormon communities outside of Utah, and as such we have one of the Church's most beautiful places of worship. It is the eleventh operating temple that belongs to the Church.

While I'm sure my jandal-adorned feet raised some eyebrows, I remembered once I was there what attracted me to the Church in the first place, and that's their values. I used to feel proud to live by the Honour Code, and I feel like I'm in a place now which would not take that much adjustment to get me back there.

Last night was, of course, dramatic. Isn't every Saturday night in Hamilton? For one thing, Harjeet had to sneak out of her family home in order to come out. Sneak out! Harjeet is 24 years old. Is that, or is that not just pure, unadulterated madness? I've never had to sneak out in my life. At the same time, I've never wanted to. When I was at the age where it might have been considered normal to sneak out to parties and other such events, I was too busy with dreams of swimming at the Olympics to consider it. And after Athens, I was eighteen, so pretty much free to do as I pleased. That was six years ago. Last night, Harjeet climbed silently out of the bathroom window in her ensuite, and ran down the road to where I waited in my car. I was astounded. We made what was supposed to be a brief stop at Niharika's place to get some shoes, which resulted in us being ushered inside and ordered to do shots (unusually, I declined. I was determined to get into town sobre), everyone proceeded to get wasted, and then taxis were called and off we went. I drove, still determined.

I suspect the night would have gone off without a hitch had Donny not been brought up in conversation. And then it just went from fun-Saturday-night-in-Hamilton, to everyone-I-was-with-declaring-war-on-Donny. Not ideal. Apparently, based on a 4am text from Donny himself, it didn't end well.
"Having fun?" he asked. As a matter of fact, I wasn't - having just run over an already squashed cat on the road, nearly causing me to throw up all over my favourite dress. Have you ever driven over roadkill? It really eats at your soul. I still feel awful. I'm still yet to be informed of the damages (though apparently nothing was broken, which is a relief, because with my move to Dunedin in just six days, I'm hardly in a financial position to be throwing money at things caused by people I don't know), but at a guess, anything that happens to a sleeping family in the early hours of the day after Boxing Day is reasonable cause to be pissed off. Sorry, Darko family.

He's spent a large part of today sending me well thought-out text messages (I can tell, because of the amount of time it takes him to respond), which all in all seem fairly redundant considering our situation. Is this changing my stance on him? No way. I still love him. It's such a shame.

Anyway, with a new year just four days away, I'm beginning to look forward with much trepidation. I know, every new year begins with the best intentions, but I feel like 2009 has sufficiently kicked my ass into the shape it needs to be in to actually carry on in the manner in which I intend to start. Hello, Honour Code. I've missed you.