Josh and Shell

… they might get a letter like this:

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Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet.

However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case..

written by Josh

Ha! This was pretty cool weekend.

After calling Coolum Beach Camping and confirming that we could infact camp there, when we arrived we were told that we couldnt as there were to many of us that are “young”. PFFFT! thats the most discriminating thing that I heard all year! Besides the fact we were all 18+ most of us are in our 20’s. Whats the point in becoming an adult when stupid places like that wont treat you like one?

After 3 hours of trying to find another spot, we managed to pull up at the BIG4 Park just on the maroochy river - IM GLAD WE DID. This was the nicest caravan/camping spot ive ever been too, and had no worries about having 9 guys rock up and camp. This place had; outdoor movies, pool, minigolf, tennis courts, gymnasium +more! and only 5min drive to the beach.

But hey when your at a Bucks Weekend theres bound to be trouble from your so called ‘friends’. Regretfully I’ll have to post up one particular image of me in a mankini Ill tell you what happened. Everyone was pushing for me to go have a shower at the same time they did, knowing something sus was going on I just went along with it… When I got into the shower, I sore Josh S. trying to open the door, seeing him fail I just turned the shower on and jumped in. In a few seconds later, he some how flung the door open really fast, took all my clothes, and had managed to shut the door! At the same time knowing what he was planning (me doing a nude run in daylight!) jumped out of the shower and grabbed him in a headlock naked! The funniest part about this was that out of the 7 guys that were in the shower, yelling and laughing there was this poor old man just washing his hands, wouldnt say a thing.. didnt look left, nor right, just straight ahead. As I was saying, naked guy got dude in headlock… oh yeah! I backed him into another shower. After Sam came to Josh’s rescue they managed to steal my clothes an run off… while I just turned the shower back on to keep warm. Everyone by this time is saying “give it to him”. They flung over the mankini from Borat! These crazy people wanted me to run out there to my tent (200m away) whilst in the pure daylight (5.30pm) infront of everyone, including little kids… I just thought, ‘man if I go out there with this on, those kids are gonna be scared for life’. I pleaded a little bit and got to freeball in Isaac’s boardies

Yeah so that would of been the highlight prank of the weekend. During this they did take photo’s (me not posing at all). Ill edit this post when I have it!

Thats the Bucks weekend in some detail!

Edit: And here is what you have been waiting for.

written by Josh

What a fantastic night! I had such a fun, embarrassing time with some of my closest friends.

My maid of honour, Ains, picked Jess and me up from home and we made our way to Carindale. We met the other girls (Katie, Kaylea, Kiarra, Sal, Leeana, Heidi, Nikki & Kim) at Sizzler and then we were to make our way to Hogs Breath. After everyone arrived we gathered around Ains’ car where she announced that I was not dressed properly and she had something better for me to wear…I had to get changed in the car.

She gave me a pair of pink tights, bright pink girl’s ballerina tutu, a hot pink skirt that I wore in Year 3 for a FAD dance, a ’sexy’ pink frilly garter, hot pink ‘Bride to Be’ sash, a ‘Bachelorette on the loose’ headband with veil, a pair of rainbow fairy wings, a bright pink feather boa, pink fluffy slippers, fairy wand and, last but by no means least, a ‘Bun Pincher!’ Now, a ‘Bun Pincher’ is a long stick with a clamp on the end - like what old people use to pick things up off the floor. I was under strict instructions that the ‘Bun Pincher’ was only to be used to pinch the buns of male strangers!

So we drove around to Hogs Breath for dinner - I think I had the attention of every diner in the restaurant. I was to wear the outfit for the entire night. I have to admit that it was probably slightly more flattering than Josh’s mankini!

After dinner, hosted by our very friendly/tolerant waiter, Lefty, Ains announced that the night was not over! We rushed to pay the bill and then ran to the bus stop down the street to catch a bus to the Queen Street mall of all places! Ains had prepared a list of dares for me to do.

The first of which was to convince a stranger that I used to be a man, then I had to go up and talk to someone in a funny accent - the people I chose were European tourists and their accent turned out to be a lot like mine! They started interviewing me with their video camera, asking what I was doing and was it common in Brisbane. During the interview Asian tourists started lining up to have their photo taken with me! After a few photos it was back down to business.

I had to find someone and convince them that they knew me from somewhere. So I found a guy and began, “Hey! How are you? Do you remember me?” He was drunk and looking to pick up so he remembered me very well…even though he had only been in Australia for a few days. His friends wanted lots of photos with us. Then we met a Stag on his Buck’s Night…I just remember thinking, ‘I hope Josh is not like him right now!’ - enough said.

I had to find a guy who’s name started with ‘P’ and get his phone number - that was a lot harder than it sounds. So many drunk guys tried to tell me their name was ‘Pee-pee’ or the other popular ‘p’ word. And they all just wanted a turn of my ‘Bun Pincher’! Finally I found someone, got his number and Ainsley called him to check that it was real.

Next, I had to ask a married couple for advice on marriage. I asked a couple who were not married but the man had been divorced twice. He gave me some pretty good advice about listening to your spouse and communicating well with each other.

The next dare was to sing a song at the top of my lungs in the big open space in front of Hungry Jacks’. There was another Hen on her Hen’s night. When she saw me she said, “Hey! How are you? Do you remember me?” - she must have had the same dare as me. The other hen and I sang a beautiful duet of ‘Going to the Chapel’…it’s a shame we only knew one line! Ains said I didn’t do that dare properly, it was meant to be a solo, so I’d have to sing again. I didn’t want to so I said I’d do one of the other back-up dares: convince someone to buy me a drink from Hungry Jacks’.

When I saw a young guy walk up to the counter at Hungry Jacks’ I went and stood next to him, waited for him to place his order and then I said, “and I’ll have small coke.” The guy was so shy and embarrassed. I tried to talk to him but he wouldn’t look at me. He just paid and I said, ‘thank you,’ got my free coke and we went and had some gelati ice cream.

So, that was my hen’s night. I’d like to thank Ains and Mum who were responsible for my outfit and all the other girls for such a crazy exciting night. I can’t wait until you girls get married!!!

written by Shell

Bring back the DickSmith Wizz Kidz!TV Commercial from 1982.

written by Josh

1. Don’t tell me you have abdominal pain as you eat Doritos’s in my triage room.

2. If you come to the ER by ambulance, the first thing that I will ask you is how you are getting home. No, we don’t have people on staff to drive you home, and don’t tell me you don’t want to ‘bother’ one of
your family members at this hour. You had no problem bothering 911 for the back pain you’ve had for 3 months.

3. You don’t get to pick your own IV site. This will irritate me and I will probably miss your IV on purpose and start your site in the place I wanted to initially to prove a point.

4. ‘Butterfly’ is not an IV size, this word signals me to put in a larger bore needle.

5. Nausea is not a reason to come to the ER. If you are not in severe pain, are not vomiting or pooping your pants in front of me, your butt goes back to the waiting room.

6. How can you have the worst migraine of your life, but be able to yell at me about the wait after you just put down a magazine you were reading?

7. Don’t ever say things like, ‘I usually get 4 mg of Dilaudid.’ Requesting your med and dosage will prompt me to squirt out half of the medication before I inject, and then lie about the dosage.

8. If you are allergic to Tylenol, Toradol, and Motrin, I have already assumed that you are a drug seeker.

9. If you came to the ER having a family doctor appointment that same day, I will make sure that you are still in the department well past the time of your original appointment.

10. I don’t care if you are a neighbour of the GI specialist. Unless he drove you to the ER himself, you can’t be that friendly.

11. Just because, ‘My Doctor sent me here,’ does not mean you get right back to a treatment room. This tells me you are a pain in the butt, and he’s pawning you off.

12. The louder you whine, the bigger size IV needle you get.

13. Foley catheters cure pseudo-seizures. They also cure intoxicated people.

14. If you are on more than 2 medications at home, bring a list. Don’t say, ‘You know, that little white pill.’ I’m not a pharmacist!

15. RN is not synonymous with waiter/waitress.

16. Don’t whine about missing breakfast when I’m on the ninth hour of my shift and haven’t peed yet.

17. What gives you the right to complain about your sore throat for a week while I have diarrhoea from the antibiotics I’ve been taking for pneumonia and I’m still at work.

18. Broken toes are not an emergency. We’ll make you feel stupid by putting a little piece of tape down there and kicking you out.

19. I am currently inventing a trap door system in triage to be triggered when you say the word ‘toothache.’

20. Cover your mouth when you cough/belch. This is common courtesy. When you neglect to do this, I am tempted to fart in your room, and then close the door.

21. If you tell me you have fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome, know that I’m rolling my eyes and thinking you are a loser.

22. If you list Haldol, geodon, Xanax, trazadone, and ativan as allergies, don’t tell me you have no psych history.

23. Never sign in with chest pain because you were too embarrassed to write ‘penile sores’ or ‘foul smelling discharge.’ This will tick me off that I bumped you ahead of other people and I’ll make your visit
horrific.

24. Although you’ve been in the ER four times this week, we cannot list the ER doctor as your family physician.

25. Do not talk to me while I’m trying to listen to your lungs.

26. Don’t tell me you have no money for medicine while you have a carton of cigarettes in your purse (next to your cell phone,) and each of your seven children are playing their own PSP’s.

written by Shell