November 19, 2003 @ 10:34 p.m.
A more sober but no more coherent recapping of The Launch

Well. The launch. It went well; the few hiccups that occured went unnoticed (I think) by those not in the know. The guest speakers were good, particularly the lovely Mr Adam Ford; the head of the English school was entertainingly pissed as he gave his speech. It all flowed smoothly.

But the best bits were, of course, when it was all over.

In yet another huge Diaryland-related case of It's a Motherfucking Bitchass Small World After All (that's the P.Diddy version), Dutchy's group were hired at the last minute as musical entertainment after the masturbatory jazz band pulled out. He had decided not to tell me; he and Nous were planning to come anyway and he thought he'd surprise me. Unfortunately for him, I found out beforehand (turns out Bimbohead was useful for something after all) and rang him up and roundly abused him.

Before proceedings began, I was running around stressing about the last minute shit that kept cropping up. Ran past Nous without noticing her on my way out of Mayfields, saw her in my peripheral vision and doubled back. She helped me fix my lipstick, which despite my careful and completely sober application was already skiving off the surface of my lips. Fuck you, L'Oreal. I walked around apologising to people because I was stressed and crappy. As I mentioned in the previous entry, people I didn't actually know kept walking up to me and telling me to relax.

Three-quarters of my immediate family were in attendance. This is a much more amazing feat than you might believe. Not only that, but there were no arguments, because they were all determined to make it my night. Gotta love 'em. I introduced Nous to my dad. He wanted to know why I have cooler net friends than he does. I gave some fob-off as an answer and neglected to mention that little corner of the net where I bang on about my tits a lot.

During all the official stuff I was so tightly-wound that it occured to me at one point that I wasn't enjoying myself at all and was nearly in tears. After that I tried to relax a bit. It helped that Sonya, who'd been watch-dogging for me, found Stuart and dragged him from the back of the room up to where I was near the stage - no small feat considering there were a few hundred people in attendance - so I got some typically Stuart hugs, which relaxed me a lot. I say typically Stuart because I'm not sure when he perfected the art of giving me nice, supportive, happy-making hugs and feeling me up and ogling my cleavage all at the same time, but he's certainly the master of it.

Claire and Stu also appeared at my side at one point; we had a quick chat before they departed, only to return later on after all the official stuff was done in time to observe me getting well and truly shickered. In my defence all I can say is that Maz is a very, very bad influence on me. I gave her a lift into Fitzroy and she made me promise to get drunk with her. I don't think I've kept a promise so well in a really long time.

Managed to drag Stu (Diaryland Stu, not my fucking piker "I have to get up in a few hours to go be a professional geek!" boyfriend) to the Laundry with me and the rest of the English majory types after we all got kicked out of Mayfields at one. I seem to recall dancing in his presence, which I'm sure was entertaining for him because I dance like a retard at a special school social. A drunk retard, even. I tried to be a nice hostess and introduce him to new people but it backfired because I ended up introducing him to the same three people about six times each. Shut up. I also kept forgetting I'd met people I'd met earlier in the night ("Have we met?" "Well, I know who you are, so yes." "Oh. Hi! Sorry!").

There's other stuff I could crap on about, drunken D&Ms and hearing stuff I perhaps shouldn't. You've heard about the day after, or all there is to tell anyway. The collision of worlds - family, friends, 'net friends, went amazingly smoothly, so much so that it hardly felt like a collision at all. More of a friendly bump, or something. And the launch was a roaring success, and we've sold all the copies of the book and are about to start the second print run. Hooray for us!

I'm still adjusting to the idea that the last few months have, well, culminated. What I've been working on and stressing over has come and gone. I'd feel sad and empty, if it weren't for the fact that now I have a 21st and a holiday to organise/stress over (for me, the two are interchangable). And I've learned so much from this, and have met so many wonderful, wonderful people through it.

I'm so fucking tired. Me sleep now. Me just had conversation with Deirdre, spoken entirely in thick Strine. Me overtired.

<<|>>