Farewell

I am currently kicking myself for not getting this post up before Ez leaves.

So Ez is going to disappear for a long time, somewhere along the lines of 2.5yrs, while he's off to join the army. Someplace near Wagga for bootcamp, then a variety of places like Melbourne, or wherever the army sends him.

... =(
Marshall, Davo, Mel, Hayley (one of those is Dene's gf, the other is his sister), Owen (cousin), Tillius, me.
So he held a farewell party thing at his place. Basically, a lot of people got drunk, people had a good time, etc.
After dropping my sister off at the train station, I drove up to his place.
And ran into the curb while parking.
People were flying remote-controlled flying toys on the road when I arrived.

Cooked potatoes, sausages, hamburger patties and onions on the barbeque outside and chatted while people arrived. Burnt some food. Ez had been packing away everything, not just the stuff he wanted to bring with him, so there were bins full of stuff in the garage. His mum and her bf are thinking of moving in together, so they might sell the house. Or maybe Kris will get it, who knows.

Eventually, everyone 21 and younger headed downstairs to eat. The adults stayed upstairs.

Before the drinking started, everyone piled into the three Lancers, drove to the shops and took photos in the carpark. They are nifty. Unfortunately, they are also all on Ez's computer.
Also got some photos of the people who didn't have Lancers, all piled onto a trolley.
Using mspaint, Davo made a hilarious edit of a one way sign in a photo that involved the sign and the (deliberately insane-looking) driver of the pink Lancer - ingeniously turned the arrow around by snipping it into pieces, rotating them 180 degrees, then pasting them back together onto the sign. It's now Ez's desktop, and her father had a copy printed out.

Then we all went back to Ez's place, for the purpose of finishing off his alcohol. Some people handed their keys over to Ez's mum to make sure they didn't try to drive while inebriated.
At some point Tillius and Marshall started hitting a muesli bar around with the table tennis bats.

Jägerbombs are messy, and apparently taste foul. They smell sort of odd, that's for sure. They did end up finishing the Jägermeister by the time I left, and judging by the sms full of typos I received later, I assume Ez got everyone even drunker by finishing the vodka too.

Ez was wearing a pair of new joggers he'd bought for ~$137. He was getting used to them or something, he'd bought them because most of bootcamp was going to be PT - and lots of drill. Someone spilt (or almost spilt) a small amount of alcohol on them.

I left a bag of power cords and power boards at Ez's place. He gave them to me but when I went outside to see someone off, I decided not to go back in, for fear that I'd not want to leave again. I totally forgot about the bag of power stuff. It would have been very useful too, oh well! Ez asked me privately if Tillius and I were alright being around each other - I said we were, because apart from me feeling slightly awkward while around him, I still want to think that we are friends.

Halfway through, the two girls and Marshall went off to someone else's 21st. It got a bit quieter then. Listened to music on the couch near the computer for a while by sharing one of two in-ear earphones with Tillius. Practiced card tricks on him for a very short time too, and ended up making a mess by dropping all the cards on the floor when he tickled me for fooling him.

When they got back (or was it before they left?), they were outside by the pool for a few minutes. Someone (probably Ez) convinced one of the girls to sms "You have a small weener!" or something similar to Coleman. In typical Rog fashion, one day she'd just randomly added, "Oh, and Coleman has a small penis."
Glad he finally got together with Rog. Or maybe I wasn't all that observant back in HS and they'd actually been together for years. I can't remember their first names!! O_O

Spent quite some time downstairs alone with Tillius, mostly just talking about uni stuff. Alcohol makes him talk more than usual. I don't know why we didn't turn the stereo off the entire time, it was loud and the music was... odd - not enjoyable, but not really irritating enough to bother with either.
There's gym equipment down there - a walking machine, a mini trampoline, and a rowing machine, which Ez told us that we're not supposed to bend our backs while using it when he came downstairs to find out what had happened to us.

Tillius wandered off (in a wobbly fashion) shortly after Ez did, leaving me confused and somewhat lonely. I headed upstairs after that, where Ez and Marshall were seeing Hayley off at the top of the hill. That's when I left too, since it was around 00:30 by then.
At Marshall's suggestion, I let Ez back the car out for me - frankly, I didn't trust myself not to mangle someone else's car while doing it, even if I was sober and he was not.

Hugged Ez before I left. He is still as warm as he was back at NCO camp all those years ago, although not quite as skinny. Hope he doesn't freeze during bootcamp.

Got slightly lost on the way home, but got there eventually around 01:00 on Sunday 25 June 2007.