The low rent end of town...

Mighty - a blast from the past

2011-10-19T22:11:00.000+11:00

Back in 2003, a bardic competition was being run for Spring War - a patriotic piece about your Barony or Canton (or Kingdom!). Points would be deducted for gratuitous overuse of the word "mighty". Needless to say, this provided all the inspiration I needed to aim for minimum points. The poem kept evolving, but this is probably it at it's best. I thought I would preserve it here, so that I don't lose it. It's awfully silly, but is still worth preserving...

Mighty are the men from Stowe
by Hunydd

Mighty are the men from Stowe
In mighty chests pride mightily grows

Mighty are the things they wear
from mighty foot to mighty hair
Mighty are the things they know
from mighty head to mighty toe

Mighty are the men from Stowe
Mighty men in mighty hose

Mighty are the things they eat
mighty plates of mighty meat
Mighty are the things they say
"I was most mighty, the other day"

Mighty are the men from Stowe
With mighty ears and mighty nose

Mighty are their women folk
with mighty laughs at mighty jokes
Yes, mighty are these women, too
with all the mighty things they do

Mighty are the men from Stowe
and mighty are the girls they know

To mighty Torg, a toast with mead
and mighty Alfar, a friend indeed
These mighty knights we aim to please
and mighty Corin, Mightecles!

Mighty are the men from Stowe
And mighty are the knights they know

Mighty are our fighters all
mighty broad and mighty tall
Mighty heavies, mighty lights
mighty men in mighty tights

Mighty are the men from Stowe
putting on a mighty show

Mighty archers heft their bows
Fire mighty rains of mighty arrows
Mighty men with rapier foils
to mighty Stowe are mighty loyal

Mighty are the men from Stowe
(place mighty bets, win mighty dough)

With mighty swords to cleave the helmets
of mighty opponents who are well met
on mighty list fields at mighty tourneys
(making many a maiden mighty horny)

Mighty are the men from Stowe
with mighty manhoods down below

Mightily they march to battle
with mighty foes to test their mettle
Each mighty foeman met with ease
force mighty foes to mighty knees

Mighty are the men from Stowe
to mighty knees they force their foes

Mighty are the songs they sing
of mighty war and mighty things
mighty are the beers they brew
in mighty mugs for me and you

Mighty are the men from Stowe
and mighty beers wet mighty throats

Here concludes my mighty tale
of mighty men and mighty ale
of mighty women and mighty war
and mighty things we're fighting for

Mighty are the men of Stowe
But I'm mighty tired now, and I'm going to go.

2011-02-16T19:01:00.001+11:00

I went last Wednesday, but forgot to record the details. Needless to say, it was only slightly less painful than pulling teeth...

This week's stats:

Didn't go on Monday, on account of the chundering done on Sunday night...

Today:

20 mins of walking on the treadmill - between 5 and 5.8kph
1 minute of running - 9.5kph
30 mins on the eliptical runner - varying between fast, slow, and high resistance
26 push-ups
26 tricep dips

Woogly now... oh so very woogly.

2011-02-07T18:14:00.000+11:00

I didn't go at all last week - the gym isn't air conditioned, and it was just too darn hot.

So, todays gym stats:

Walked for 30 mins (approx 3 kms)
Ran for 1 minute at 9km/h (don't laugh - that's a good effort for me)
15 mins on the elliptical runner, some really fast, some a bit slow
20 push ups
20 tricep dips

Everything is a little bit shaky now, must have worked hard enough!

See yoo Jimmeh!

2011-01-27T18:32:00.000+11:00

That really needs a Glaswegian font...

So, been going to the gym, to try to offload some of the fat and unfit. Progress reports have been requested, so here goes!

Session 1: (Monday fortnight ago) Gangbusters! Did 1/2 an hour on the treadmill, moderate walk, and 15 mins on the elliptical runner.

Session 2: (the following Wednesday) Even more gangbusters! Same as above, faster walk, much faster on the runner. Pushed out 20 each of push-ups and tricep dips. Not many, but they were all good ones.

Session 3: Last Wed. Oh. My. God. Kill me now... Did half an hour in total. Struggled for every second.

Session 4: Tuesday just gone - 1/2 an hour, 15 mins each, fast walk and high speed runner. Thank goodness the dire wah wah is over!

Session 5: This arvo. Not so good as Tues. Half an hour. Fast walk, high speed runner. Ankle was hurting, and I think it was just a bit too hot (yup, I picked a cheap gym with no aircon...)

So I think that my body is getting over the initial shock of the unaccustomed exercise, and my endurance should start to improve a bit. I'm not too fussed about short sessions at this point - better to do 20 mins of intense, and work up a sweat, that 40 mins of lacklustre.

Starving! Chooky and salad wraps, here I come!

Made from Fail...

2010-12-15T17:53:00.000+11:00

Today I...

Left the air-conditioner on in the bedroom
Left the fridge door slightly ajar
Left the back door open, and the screen unlocked

Apparently, I was trying to keep the house cool for the kitties, or something. I'm not looking forward to the next electricity bill.

Hey! I'm walkin' here!

2010-10-21T18:22:00.000+11:00

The walking seems to be helping. At least it's starting to hurt later into the walk and less all told. I haven't had the urge to drive home all week...

In other news - I thought I owned two cats, but apparently I own one cat and one pig in a cat costume. And it's not the cat you'd expect who is the food-a-holic. She must have hollow legs, or an enormous stomach that exists in another dimension. I really hate people, even small furry ones, who can eat and eat and eat and are still skinny. Hah! A pox on you all! Unless of course I actually like you, in which case I only hate you a little bit. I don't care that this doesn't make sense - it's my blog, it doesn't have to!

Unfit

2010-10-14T18:30:00.002+11:00

I went for a walk this afternoon. I'm fairly sure that all this accomplished was to drive home just how horribly unfit I am at the moment. I can see that there's going to need to be a lot more walking in the immediate future to remedy this sorry state of affairs.

Weird...

2010-10-01T16:47:00.000+10:00

It’s a “mystery”!

Some of you will have heard me grizzle earlier this week about the little turds from across the street coming onto our property when we weren’t there, playing silly-buggers in the pool area and chicken coop, and allegedly stealing the eggs. Well, it got worse before it got better.

On Wednesday night, when Rusty went to lock the chookies in for the night, he came back to the house for a torch, because he couldn’t find one of the girls. She has been really broody, a side-effect of which is that she is very docile, and easy to pick up. We feared then that she had been stolen (chooknapped?), but unfortunately had no proof. This didn’t stop R from marching over the road in a contained fury and confronting the turds about Monday’s trespass, to which they blithely claimed that that they were not guilty. This was, of course, patently untrue, because they had been seen and identified by our next-door-neighbour (who we like), and they shut up pretty quickly when presented with this information. So, without resorting to trespass ourselves in search of evidence, we assumed the inevitable – we had lost another chook.

When I got home from work on Thursday night, however, R tells me that the broody chook is back. Apparently, she had been found next door, in the garden of the Nice Neighbour. Now, there’s no way on god’s green earth that she could have got over there under her own steam, and given that she rarely ventures out of the chook house these days, there’s no way she would have tried. This is interesting, though, because we had locked or wired shut the gates down the side and along the front of the carport, so there’s no way that anyone could get into our backyard without a) making a lot of noise and b) being really obvious about it. So, we are thinking that the Great Chicken Bandits (aka turds) took the next best option of returning our property (now that they knew they were under extreme suspicion) was to sneak it into the unlocked backyard of the people next-door.

So, in the end, no real harm was done. Nonetheless, this is still a real betrayal. We have been pretty good to those kids – we have lent them tools and household articles pretty much whenever they have asked, I gave them a bicycle that was given to me that I was never going to ride, R has helped them with projects on occasion – and our repayment was trespass and petty theft (it makes me wonder about a bunch of other things that seem to have gone “missing”, including one of the new passionfruit seedlings that was at the bottom of the driveway). It’s pretty sad, isn’t it? You think you’re building trust and respect, but instead you’re just making yourself into a chump to be taken advantage of. Fucking people.

On an interesting note - I wrote the text of this blog at work using Outlook (it was a ghost town there today) and I was a bit surprised at what spellcheck picked up, as well as what it didn’t. Turds, which is a word in use in pretty much all of the English speaking countries in the world, got a squiggly red underline. Chooks, on the other hand, which I’m pretty sure is an Australianism* unrecognised anywhere offshore (with perhaps the exception of New Zealand) did not. Weird.

*Australianism, which is a real word, in the same way that Americanism is a real and recognised word, also fails the MS spellcheck test. The first suggested alternative is Australianise, which, as far as I am concerned, is not a real word, and is something that someone in the spellcheck office merely pulled out of their arse...

2010-09-30T18:51:00.000+10:00

see more Very Demotivational

That's all.

Four weddings...

2010-09-08T21:16:00.000+10:00

... and a trainwreck.

I watched that new show on channel 7, where four brides go to each others weddings, and rate things like the dress, the reception, the ceremony, and the food. I knew it would be awful, and I wasn't disappointed!

So, what happens when you stick three bogan chicks and a LARPer into the above formula? Trainwreck, with added saucers of milk. Yup - meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, snark, snark, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, Rowr! Phttt, meow, meow, meow, meow. Nary a nice word was spoken by any of them (actually, the LARP chick was probably the nicest, but she was perfectly prepared to dish the dirt when she felt it was required). The $8,000 wedding dress was deemed to look like a Barbie dress (I hate to say it, but this comment wasn't too far off the mark), the second-hand dress was deemed to be "cheap and tacky", even though it was probably the nicest, the fireworks were sneered at, the "historical re-enactment" wedding selfishly made the guests stand (stand! oh the humanity!) outside in a beautiful garden for a whole hour, and the Lebanese wedding with the drums and the extended wedding party introductions got more than it's fair share of extravagant eye-rolling.

When it all comes down to it, all of the weddings looked to be fairly well within the realms of the average wedding, really. They all had aspects that were OTT, they all had things that were lovely and well done, and things that were a bit on the nose. The important thing - all the girls seemed to have a wonderful time at their own wedding, which is the only real important thing when it comes down to it.

Oh, and to top it all off - the meanest and nastiest girl, who said not a positive word about anybody's wedding but her own? She was the one who got the free holiday.

All in all, I found it to be quite entertaining, mostly because it lived up (or rather down) to my expectations. I only wish that the most outstanding bitchiness of the day wasn't so lavishly rewarded. Just goes to show - it really does pay to trample everyone else's hopes and dreams to get to the prize.

:-(

2010-08-30T18:11:00.000+10:00

Serious sad face.

Something killed one of our chooks today (and not the one that was left slightly broken after the last attack, more's the pity). Apparently, just because it could. She doesn't look like she's been particularly nommed on, it just appears that one of her wings and her neck were broken. If I find out what did it, I will rip its fucking head off and stick it up its arse.

In other grumbles - Channel 7, can you go and get a big black dog up you, please? I might have appalling taste in television, but if you promise me that I can watch Bones and Criminal Minds, I would actually like to be able to watch them. Instead, my shows are pushed waaaaay out of their time-slots by mutha-humping reality programmes. Dancing with the Stars? Stars?!? Who are you kidding? D-Grade minor lifestyle-show hosts and footballer's ex-wives are not stars. I'm not even going to touch on X-Factor, mostly due to the fact that it has Kyle Sandilands in it, and then I would need to take a shower...

And to top it all off, I ran out of petrol on Friday arvo, despite the fact that the petrol light had only just come on, which usually means another 20kms. Not this time, apparently.

Sigh. I must have pushed Murphy's granny down the stairs. Moral of this story? Always check who's granny it is that you're elbowing out of the way...*

*This is a JOKE. I only push little kids down the stairs... (also a joke)

Hooray!

2010-08-21T11:51:00.000+10:00

Voting is over. Now my letterbox and evening television watching hours can remain untainted by the misery and unadulterated muck-raking that is political advertising.

Oh, and the best bit? Putting an 11 in the little green box next to the Fred Nile Group.

So true!

2010-08-15T18:15:00.000+10:00

Quote from Scrubs, which generally don't watch, but since it comes on straight after something I do watch, sometimes some of it filters through...

"People are bastard covered bastards with bastard filling."

So true.

Crappy telly... and ducklings!

2010-08-11T19:03:00.000+10:00

Whether you loved it, or just didn't hate it, the end of Masterchef at 7.30 on weeknights has left an enormous black hole in prime-time programming. Now, there is the fine choice of The Simpsons (urgh), World's Strictest Parents (watching belligerent teens carrying on like pork chops? I don't think so), or Two and a Half Men (kill me, kill me now). Yes, yes, there is the 7.30 Report, but I want light entertainment, not thinking! Please can we have something worth watching?

On a more pleasant note, on Saturday morning, R called from the front door in an urgent kind of voice for me to come quickly. I did so, to see a pair of native ducks, like this one:

herding a gaggle of fluffy little baby ducklings, like these:

Down the street. Awwww, the cute, it makes my head asplode! It was a moment of great squee.

Stuff

2010-08-02T17:45:00.000+10:00

I've been sick. Again. This is the fourth time in 8 months, and the second time that I've needed nearly 4 days off work. This actually makes me REALLY CRANKY. I don't like being sick, and I don't like being sick so often. So, I went home from work early on Tuesday, and today, six days later, I am still not back to full health, and am getting very puffed and tired very easily. Grr.

In more positive news, I am now officially a permanent employee at my place of work, and have a new title - Tender Co-ordinator, which comes with a small pay increase (I was hoping for a large pay increase, but working for a US-based company can have some drawbacks). Hooray! I work with a pretty awesome team, and the office is only a ten minute drive away. All good.

I think I ate close to my own bodyweight in cakes and finger sandwiches yesterday afternoon. It was lovely. I like proper afternoon teas. I think I might have one for my birthday, too. Oh, and a night out at a posh restaurant. I'd like to have a big flash thing to celebrate the big number, but I don't think I can be bothered at this point...

Rusty is making dinner tonight. I swear, buying him a Jamie Oliver cookbook for Chrissy a couple of years back was a really good idea!

2010-07-23T18:22:00.000+10:00

Thanks for the messages of chicken solidarity, the girls appreciate them greatly... :-D

So - ChickenMissing turned up. She was just hiding, or so it appears. ChickenInjured is doing much better, she's eating and drinking, at least a bit, so she should get better pretty quickly.

We are almost certain it's a cat - there are zillions of them around here, and we've never seen or heard anything that would suggest foxes in the area. Rusty-the-ex-chicken-farmer has seen the aftermath of plenty of fox attacks, and he reckons it's quite a different M.O. This is good, cos I reckon a fox would be more likely to come back and try again.

Anyways, we think that it will all come good in the end.

Chicken troubles

2010-07-22T17:39:00.000+10:00

They've been doing so well up until now...

Last night seems to have become a turning point, though. At about 10 or so, Rusty went down to the garage to get something, and discovered that one of the girls was out of the enclosed portion of the yard, and couldn't get back in. It was dark, and she was cold and alone (awww), so R put her in the coop, admonishing her that if she had stayed where she was supposed to, she wouldn't be in this predicament.

In the wee small hours, R was woken up by the sound of the chickens being attacked by something. He was sleeping in the spare room at the back of the house (he wanted to get up at 5am, and he knows how grumpy I am at being woken at oh-god o'clock, only to have the snooze button used 15 times...) which is just as well. He opened the back door, at which the @$%&*!ing offender scarpered, fortunately not taking one of our chooks with it. The morning showed the coop full of feathers, and one of the girls injured and in shock. She seems to be a lot better this arvo, though, so she should be ok. We haven't been locking them in the coop, because we haven't needed to - they take themselves to bed at bed time, and no-one has bothered them in all the time we've had them. The effing cats in this neighbourhood, who wander all over the effing place, into my effing house to eat my cats' effiing food, and now trying to eat my effing chickens as well... Not happy, Jan.

Rusty got home this arvo, and went out to check on the chooks. I got home, had a look at Injured Chook, and then realised there were only 3. "They were all here when I got home!" Rusty exclaimed, "That was only half an hour ago!"

So the tally stands at one injured (although on the mend) and one missing. They all seem to have been through enough trauma that they are not laying.

Sigh. Obviously a sacrifice needs to be made to the Chicken Gods, or something. Good thing we're having lamb for dinner, eh?

We're shifting into high gear with this totally ass rapingly awesome hyper ball gargling Spiderman stick shift knob modification

2010-07-12T22:16:00.000+10:00

I laughed so hard I nearly passed out. Regrets y is bad, bad, bad for my ability to not spend my whole life on the interwebs, laughing at the amazing lack of talent so many "crafters" possess.

The totally awesome Spiderman Shite-Mobile takes, not just the cake, but the whole goddamn patisserie.

What's wrong with this picture?

2010-06-25T18:12:00.000+10:00

I went to an all-day finance meeting today that didn't suck.

No, I don't really believe it either.

There were also team building exercises that also did not suck. No really, I'm not lying!

The actual financial part of the meeting was actually relatively brief, and against all the laws of accountancy, our financial controller is a very good public speaker - he is engaging, well spoken and interesting. At least, my eyes don't slide instantly shut upon hearing the words "forecast", "budget" or "projected growth".

The team building exercises were very simple, and surprisingly effective. The first one had everyone standing up, and ready to move about the room. You shook the hand of the person next to you, and you told them your name, and they told you theirs. Then you said their name, and they said yours. And then you moved on to the next person, and so on around the room. It was all over in 5 minutes, pushed no-one too far out of their comfort zone, and actually got us to meet other people in the greater department.

We were divided into teams for the next team building exercise (which involved building a tower out of spaghetti, masking tape and string, and putting a marshmallow on the top (ours sagged gracefully over until it deposited the marshmallow onto the table - the idea was to build the highest one. And no, before you ask, I don't know what this has to do with finance...), and the method of choosing the teams was kinda nifty. Everyone picked a piece of puzzle out of a box - there were 6 pieces to each puzzle, and about 6 puzzles - and you had to find the people with the other pieces to your puzzle. The teams not only found all of their members, but all put their puzzles together to see the picture, completely spontaneously. It actually made a fantastic ice breaker, and provided a really good rallying point, if you will, for interaction.

I know that i am starting to sound like I have got religion - don't fret, I'm still the same old miserable cynic that I've always been! I am, however, very pleasantly surprised to discover that it is possible to have a positive experience at an all-day, team building finance event.

Who knew?

I like my entertainment to be light and fluffy...

2010-06-10T22:37:00.001+10:00

That's not so much of what I got tonight, though. (Warning: once you get to the bit about SVU, I start talking about rape.)

Some of it was, of course. It's not possible to watch Glee when they are doing a Lady Gaga special, and not get a lot of fluff. But the writers are really good at addressing some interesting social issues.

The part that I found most touching was the way that Kurt's dad really stood up for him, his sexuality, and his lifestyle choice. That he was prepared to risk his own happiness with a woman that he cares about in order to protect his gay son. Now this guy is a mechanic, the kind who wears a trucker's cap and one of those sleeveless puffer jackets. He's a man's man. But whoo baby, don't fuck with his family. It's one of the things that Glee does really well - it really portrays "alternative" lifestyle choices as being perfectly valid, even desirable, which is seven kinds of awesome in my opinion.

What I really struggled with tonight was SVU. I used to watch it a lot, and then kinda got over it a bit, and have been watching it a bit recently, mostly because there's nothing else on. The case on tonight's show was a rape, as many of them are. One of the characters was a witness to the rape, and was reluctant to testify because she was in the US illegally. Her story came out in rather dramatic detail during the trail, and it was all I could do to keep it together.

She was a refugee from the Congo, an area rife with conflict. Rebels had forced her way into her home, and raped her and her five year old daughter, who then dies. Her husband then throws her out, because he can't stand the shame. She is later picked up and taken to one of the camps of the rebel militia, where she, and many other women, are beaten, tortured and raped, over and over again. She tells of how she was penetrated with guns, and that once one of the men doing this pulled the trigger.

I know that this is a TV drama, and is a fictional story. But really, we all know that none of this shit is made up. We all know that anything that happens on shows like this has happened, many times, to many people. It does my head in, big time. Honestly, what the fuck is wrong with human beings?

Argh - sorry for the major downer. It was just one of those things I had to share, y'know?

Anyways, I'm off to bed now. I might need some brainless fluff to read to clear my head... hmm, pity I only have book number two of the Twilight series (and that was a joke present, and all), that would certainly fit the bill.

Blergh

2010-06-08T14:47:00.000+10:00

I'z sick. Thanks to the snot monster who has appropriated my form and is now residing in my dressing gown and fluffy slippers. Thanks a lot.

On the plus side, I got a lot of sleep today...

Because Snuggies are, like, sooo five minutes ago...

2010-05-01T20:06:00.000+10:00

Think Snuggies are stupid? Yeah, me too.

But these... these would be so totally... well, stupid too.

Meet the Lazypatch Duvet Suit. Yup, that's a doona that you wear like a pair of jammies. Apparently, they are the perfect Mother's Day gift, according to the ad that played late at night on Go, which goes to show what their advertising budget is. They will cost you, however, around $150, which makes them about 10 times the cost of your regular KMart flannelette pjs. And you get to look like a huge twonk in the process! Hooray!

Mmm, duvet suit - for when you just don't feel Michelin Man enough in your regular jimmy-jams.

Timing is paramount...

2010-04-27T21:35:00.000+10:00

Apparently, I have not only been kicking Murphy's dog, but this time I pushed his granny down the stairs as well, because that bastard has it in for me.

Our hot water heater has gone the way of the dodo. Dead as a doornail. Pushing up daisies. Etc, et-bloody-cetera.

It chose to sing it's swan song the day after the weather finally realised that it's not summer any more, right at the time when a cold shower becomes actively unbearable. See what I mean? Murphy, you bastard, bugger off and bother someone else for a while, will you?

On the plus side, this has precipitated our prospective plan to give the old and expensive-to-run electric storage system the ole heave-ho, and get LPG shipped in. Oh yeah, we don't have a natural gas main up our street, or this would have been done years ago... On the less than plus side, this is a two-and-a-half grand spend we hadn't counted on. Poo. Still, I am looking forward to instantaneous gas hot water, coming from a heater that is no more than two metres away from the taps, rather than ten (yup, the person who designed our house was an idiot).

In the meantime, it's a good thing I got in all that practice bathing in a bucket at Festival. I'm really hoping that this week will not end with me in a miasma of my own unwashedness. Ew.

Festival wrap up

2010-04-06T20:54:00.001+10:00

Things to remember from this year, and things to remember for next year...

The weather was gorgeous. The days weren't anywhere near as hot as they could have been, and the only real rain was Saturday and Monday nights. The coffee shop did quite well - all the cakes went, with a day and a half to spare. I went through 2 1/2 kilos of coffee, about 4 tea bags (out of 400, I guess I will be drinking a lot of tea in the coming weeks) and a moderate amount of hot chocolate. I'm pretty sure my costs were covered, and it paid for Rusty and my festival fees, with a bit left over. I think the prices were about right, but I would make the tea cheaper for next year. I would like to have had more staff, as I felt like I was a bit nailed down, and really didn't get to spend much time in the campsite at all. Rusty did seem to really enjoy working the coffee shop though, so maybe getting him more involved would be a good idea. At least next year he won't need to leave site for half of Saturday to go and pick up his new motorbike like he did this year.

Things to remember and take note of:

3 kilos of coffee might be enough. Depends on whether I think it will do a lot better next year.
I ran out of orange & almond cakes with time to spare. There were 6 dozen of them...
I ran out of Gateau Breton with time to spare. There were 3, and I think they were cut into twelfths.
The Prince biscuits with ginger in them are a much better idea than Prince biscuits with caraway seeds in them. Went through very nearly 2 batches.
The Digby's didn't do so well. I reckon 2 batches would be enough.
Only buy small packets of tea, and not boxes of 100.
The double burner and 2 coffee pots worked well. Seemed like a good plan.

On a personal note - I MUST make myself a comfy throw-on garment. I'm thinking that a waffenrock would work well. I just need something that doesn't need a bunch of lacing and primping and kirtling and fidgeting with. Something non binding for when the tight bodices get to be too much and for standing around the campsite in the morning in.

I might add some more to this - it's more as a reminder for me than anything else. I can type faster than I can write longhand, and this way it won't get "put into a safe place" never to be seen again...

Odd

2010-03-23T22:01:00.000+11:00

You know how sometimes things just strike you as a bit odd? Yeah, well here's one:

I was trolling through my favourite sites on the (or should that be teh) Cheezeburger network, and I found something that piqued my interest. I think it was on Very Demotivational (but I'm not entirely sure now), that I saw a post that was of Ash from the Evil Dead movies* who is played by Bruce Campbell . I was sooooo in lurve with Bruce when I was in my very early twenties, and with the advent of the interwebs and Wikipedia, I can look him up and remember the glory days.

The odd bit? When I typed "bruce" into Google, the first line on the autocomplete bit was, in fact, Bruce Campbell! Now, of all of the famous Bruce's in the history of the world, I would not have thought that Mr. Campbell would rate quite that high on an internet search. Surely Bruce Lee would be the one that would spring to mind straight off the bat. Odd.

* My all time favourite quote, and I mean ALL TIME, is from Evil Dead 2, which is a classic in the genre. Ash, our hero, has just made mincemeat of his girlfriend with a petrol powered gardening tool after she became totally possessed, and he is looking into the mirror in an attempt to save his dwindling sanity. "I'm... fine" he says to his reflection. His reflection then leaps from the mirror and grabs him by the throat. "I don't think so. We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw. Does that sound 'fine'?" You can see it here if you are interested in taking a peek into my psyche...

Bloody bugger shit poo bum...

2010-03-11T01:03:00.000+11:00

You know what really makes me cranky? The fact that I am writing this at one o'clock on Thursday morning. Not awake to do the writing by choice, you understand, just awake. All week I have fallen asleep with a book in my hand, but as soon as I put the bloody thing down and turn off the light... Ping! Eyes go open and I am wide awake. For hours. Tonight is worse than usual.

This will mean that I am tired and out of sorts again tomorrow, which is really not what one needs when one is facing a killer week at work.

I've had enough of the bloody sleep issues - you can bugger off now please!

Blergh! Moisture Infused Pork Is Crap!

2010-02-19T18:10:00.000+11:00

Am I the only one who thinks that "moisture infused pork" is smeg? I bought a couple of pork steaks a couple of months back, and allowed myself to be talked into the moisture infused version, on the info provided that they were "tastier, juicier, more succulent and easier to cook". Sounds great - although in the back of my mind a little voice was saying "it's just soaked in water, you moron! Don't you rant about how meat is being soaked in water to make it heavier, and therefore better value for the supplier? Don't you? Huh?!?"

I cooked it up that night, and served it forth with veggies and gravy or sauce of some kind, and I was very, very disappointed. The meat was, as promised, juicy and succulent. It was also really salty (that would be on account of the brine), really lacking in any other flavour, and the texture... well, the texture is a whole 'nother story. Have you ever had reconstituted meat? When they have taken "genuine pig parts" (or other animal) ground it up and reformed it into a meat-like product? Yup, I think everyone has. You know how it's a little bit... spongy? Yup, well that's what the "moisture infused pork" was like. Obviously the brine is forced into the meat under pressure, or it would just cook out. This high pressure "infusion" makes the meat spongy. In hindsight, it seems pretty obvious to me. Pity I wasted a perfectly good meal on it.

The reason I bring this up now is that I popped into the shopping centre at Winston Hills on the way home from work, and they have a nice butcher there. Not one of the really high-end ones, but they seem to have a good quality of product. I was going to buy some pork, until I realised that (in small, hard to read writing) all of the little plastic signs with the cut of pork and the price on them were labelled "moisture infused". So I asked the chap if all of their pork was so. Yes, says he. Ugh, says I. He tried rather half-heartedly to tell me that he has tried it and it's very nice, but I think he could see that I wasn't going to be convinced. So I sold my soul and went and bought some at Coles (for which I will no doubt burn in the fiery pits of hell for all eternity)

What really worries me is that this is the "future" for all pork. I did a Google search on the subject, and nearly all of it was industry stuff, and overwhelmingly positive, or blogs, and overwhelmingly positive. I did find one blog that panned the whole idea a bit, but only one site in ten pages of entries. That's really worrisome. Funnily enough, Speedy, if you read this, there were comments from you on this blog. Even on the interwebz, it's a small world.

I know that some of you are prolly thinking "SERVE YOU RIGHT, YOU HEINOUS BITCH! DON'T YOU KNOW HOW PIGS ARE REARED FOR MEAT PRODUCTION THESE DAYS?!?". And you would be right again. I just haven't been able to wean myself off the meat of the magical pig just yet, and haven't found a free-range pork supplier anywhere in the area.

Why do they keep fucking with our food? Can't it just be food again? Why does it have to be science?

Anyone?

Anyone?!?

Eek!

2010-02-12T22:38:00.000+11:00

I went to sit on the couch in front of the telly (and the fan, more importantly) and trim up some boning and slide it into the freshly sewn channels. It's not the boning I wanted to use, of course, but that standard plastic bridal boning that we all used to use before we discovered the good stuff. I'm just using more of it than the good stuff. I wandered into the living room, but had not even rounded the telly yet when I heard the distinctive, sexed up saxaphone sounds of Lethal Weapon. "Aargh!" I said loudly, "what's this shit doing on again?" Yep, one of the other 400 movies made in this franchise had been on last week, and Rusty had watched that too.

I couldn't even bear to be in the same rooms as such visual garbage. Even from here (the land of Spar-Oom) I can hear the endless screaming and carrying on like pork-chops. Gag.

I might call mine Larry...

2010-02-12T17:25:00.002+11:00

A couple of weeks ago on afternoon radio on Triple J, there was some discussion, including sound bites, about Jennifer Love Hewitt getting Vagazzled. According the partial interview with her that they played on the Js, a friend of hers put Swarovski crystals on her "precious lady" (her ghastly terminology, not mine) and that it was "like a disco ball down there". Please, please don't ask me any questions about how or which er... specific area - I pondered this briefly until I realised that I was actually taking time to think about JLH's vagina, and I changed my train of thought very quickly. (Aaargh! Ponies! Rainbows! Pretty butterflies!) Overall it was mildly interesting in that "why on earth would you bother" kind of way, and had a reasonable amusement factor.

It must have sparked further discussion on the Jays that I missed, as they were playing a bunch of soundbites this arvo, generally of people saying various euphemisms for the female genitalia, including a reference to having it made all sparkly - gemitalia. There was one that made me laugh out loud though, which is still making me a bit giggly...

... Lawrence of Alabia.

*guffaw*

Yep, it's lame, but it's still funny.

Grump

2010-02-10T22:23:00.000+11:00

Hmph! I was going to do some frocking tonight, but instead I got to do the reeve report. Woo-hoo.

Oh, and I've lost my good plastic boning, which is making frockage more difficult than it needs to be.

All in all, pretty grumpy.

Bugger

2010-02-08T18:56:00.000+11:00

Guess who had to change a tyre in a white linen top today?

Fortunately, I was at the shops when I realised that the tyre was flat, which meant that there were an assortment of random helpful gentlemen to give me a hand. One helped to get one of the wheel nuts undone, I managed another, and then a chap came along who had amazing wheel nut technique who got the other two in about 10 seconds. I fart-arsed about with the jack for a while (it's the one that came with the car, so it is designed to go in a very specific spot, which means (of course) that it was really hard to find), before another chap came along to help with that. Between the two of us, we got it all sorted in good time. No thanks to the twit who commented "hur hur hur, you can teach her how it's done", which earned him my very best "eat shit and die" look as I told him that I have known how to change a tyre since I was sixteen. The helpful chap agreed rather wholeheartedly with my opinion, and made a rude gesture on my behalf to the twit once his back was turned. Aw shucks, how sweet!

So, boo hiss to flat tyres and random twits, but hoorah for random helpful people. I must admit, I had completely forgotten that a chick changing a tyre will attract help pretty quickly, which is generally handy for the wheel nuts if nothing else (those little fuckers are almost impossible for humans to get off...)

Not really the way I wanted to end the day - hot and sticky and covered in skunge. I managed to keep my shirt pretty clean though - and I didn't have to take it off*...

*Thank goodness for small mercies!

The awesomeness of Paddle Pops

2010-02-02T17:35:00.000+11:00

No really, they are Teh Awesome.

I haven't had a PP in years, and after helping a bit with Feral Cheryl's moving on Sunday (on a day that was no less than 247% humidity) I was in need of an icy treat. I am happy to report that not only are they still reasonably priced, but they really do taste as good as they did when I was ten. I had thought that they would be a bit like all nostalgia - better in your memory than in actuality, but I was pleasantly surprised.

So, whilst I was slurping down my yummy ice confection*, I read the nutritional and ingredients info (like you do when you are thirtysomething, but not something that worries you when you are ten), and was even more pleasantly surprised. They are not actually an ice-cream, they are more of a milk ice. Made mostly out of food ingredients, rather than numbers, and involving quite a lot of skim milk, they are also only about 5% fat, and about 5% of the RDI of kilojoules. Pwah!

So I enjoyed my almost entirely guilt-free Paddle Pop very much (and bought a box of them at the supermarket yesterday - they worked out to be abut 55 cents each, which is barely more than double what we paid for them from the corner shop in 1979). It's nice when sometimes the good things from your childhood are still roxor when you are nearly....erm, I mean years and years away from being forty.

I know this sounds a bit like blatant advertising for ice-cream manufacturers, but in this case I am prepared to tip my hat to the continued awesomeness that is the humble Paddle Pop, and may they still be awesome in another thirty years.

*OK, ok, I actually had two, because I couldn't decide between banana and chocolate. They both tasted exactly as I remember them. They were yummy. I enjoyed eating them a lot.

but I wanted to keep that money...!

2010-01-28T18:23:00.000+11:00

Took the car for it's annual rego check today. It's quite handy - the shopping centre down the road has an Ultra-Tune which does the e-checks (and then emails your pink slip to the RTA, so you can do all the rest online. Hooray!). So I took the car in, thinking it would cost me $35, plus a little more for new headlight globe.

Hah!

Put a one on the front and a zero on the back and you'd be a bit closer to the truth. Needed new front shocks, shock capping thingies, two new tyres and about six globes, and then $35 for the rego check. Bugger. Still, the car is seven years old and has done over 100 000kms, and I really haven't had to spend a lot of serious money on it yet. Compare this with the Hyundai Excel that I bought mumblemumbletwentymumble years ago, that needed a new clutch at 3 years and all of the gearbox bearings replaced at 60 000kms (it had a 3 year/60 000km warranty, but you could see that coming, couldn't you?), both of which were quite pricey. It was nine years old when I sold it, and in much, much worse condition than the Astra, even taking another two years into consideration.

So, in summaary, I spend 1300 bucks today, and didn't even get something shiny for it (the car doesn't count - currently, it's really not so much with the shiny...)

Pout.

Of fail and win

2010-01-26T09:15:00.000+11:00

So, it seems that I suck at Hollandaise sauce. Tried a couple of times - fairly epic fail. Poo.

However, I did manage to poach a couple of nice googies to perfection*, with lots of oozy egg yolk. Nom. Just a pity they didn't have lovely home-made Hollandaise on them...

* You may be wondering why this is blog worthy - I haven't actually poached an egg in more years than I can remember, so it is an achievement, albeit a smallish one.

2010-01-24T09:57:00.000+11:00

I'm having trouble with my digestive processes - again. Hoo-bloody-ray. Some biting stomach pains and last night a bout of rapid expulsion of everything that wasn't nailed down. (sorry - TMI I know).

So, fast forward to this morning - a reasonable nights sleep and not having whatever it was that was poisoning me in my system any more putting me mostly to rights - and I am feeling a lot better. I was sitting here on the 'puter looking up times for the days activities, (and watching R wrestling with the cat, who seems determined to "help" R play Warcrack), and I got one of my tummy hurts.

"Are your pains hurting you" himself asks with concern...

Yes honey, that's what pains do best. We had a good giggle over it though.

2010-01-23T15:35:00.000+11:00

Ugh. Bit over the heat. Over 40 degrees is boring. I was interested to note, however, that according to the BOM , at ~3pm this arvo the temp in Sydney City was 41 deg, and the temp in Penriff was 41.7 deg. That is actually quite unusual - poor old far western Sydney is usually 3 or 4 degrees hotter (on a hot day). Nice to see that the suffering is being a bit more evenly distributed today!

Still, bring on the cool change!

*In case you haven't noticed, I am really not a hot weather person. The higher the temp, the more whinging. It's a hard life being a cold climate girl in Sydney. Really need to move back to England...

I want to move now please...

2010-01-15T17:28:00.000+11:00

I am starting to get really tired of hearing the Bogan Queen across the street screaming "Fucken fuck fark, fucken fucken wanker fucken" at her kids all the bloody time. It's really, really distasteful, and I just don't want to hear it. I'm not a prude about "fruity" language, and goodness knows I can turn the air blue at times, but there is a time and a place, and the whole street doesn't have to listen to me swearing.

I think we are going to have to move. I wish we could do it now, but I think we are still going to have to wait a couple of years.

All I want is a quiet neighbourhood, is that too much to ask?

The week that wasn't

2010-01-10T20:13:00.000+11:00

This has not been a good week for me. In fact, I would be so inclined to say it was one of the most god-awful weeks I have endured in a long time.

Why? Simple answer: stomach flu.

I woke up on Tuesday morning not feeling myself at all - nauseous, grumbly tummy, feverish. I had a very small, plain breaky to see if that would calm things down a bit, and debated long and hard as to whether I should go to work. In the end, I did, and part of me is glad that I went, because everyone got a good look at how well I wasn't, before I proceeded to take the rest of the week off.

So I came home and crawled into bed. I know I had a fever by this time, because I was freezing, even though it was hitting the high twenties outside. I think I slept most of the rest of the day. At about 8pm I realised I was burning with fever, and asked R to take me to the doctor. Over an hour later (and $75 - my Medicare card had expired, and I hadn't realised this.Bugger.) I finally got to see the doctor. Money not well spent, I am sorry to say. He talked over the top of me, asked the same questions 3 times, really didn't listen to what I was saying. My symptoms were pretty simple - temperature, nausea and vomiting and ... er ... other gastric symptoms. He looked at my throat (no inflamation) and took my temperature. It was 39.4, which is pretty high, but not alarming. He basically gave up on me then and there - high temperature is out of his league, and he would write me a referral to Westmead Hospital. Oh, after he told me it might be Swine Flu. WTF? Since when are gastric symptoms part of H1N1, huh? And I had a distinct lack of a sore throat, (which is a SF symptom). It's a good thing I am not a panic merchant or hypochondriac. What a moron. So, we tootle off to Westmead, where the triage nurse takes my temperature again (39.3) gives me two Neurofen, and tells me to see her again in an hour. So we went home. And came back in an hour. She took my temp again (38.7) and told me to wait for the doctor. After another hour, I overhear someone else being told that there is a minimum FOUR HOUR WAIT. Again with the WTF. So we went home. And stayed there. I wasn't going to sit for 4 hours (it was nearly midnight by now, and R had work the next day) to be told it is a stomach virus, go home and keep my fluids up, which is all that they could have told me, and what I did anyway.

So Tuesday was bad, but I think Wednesday was worse.

My fever waxed and waned, but never came down far enough to give me any real relief. And now was when the really heavy duty nausea and vomiting kicked in. All day, and well into the evening. I have a ring around my midsection where my diaphram joins my trunk, which HURTS! Like fire. Ow. But far worse is the misery of feeling constantly like being sick. I don't know how women who get morning sickness that lasts all day cope - I would go mad in a millisecond. Also by this stage I am starting to get thoroughly sick of rice crackers, even though I have only eaten about nine - but that is all I have eaten. Make it stop, Mummy!

Thursday - my temp came down! Hooray! So not feeling like a miserable, sweaty space cadet any more. Now about those stomach cramps...and the continuing vomiting and diarrhoea. Can stop any time. Any time, now. Aaaaaany time...

Friday - almost feeling like a human being. Almost. REALLY sick of crackers. I went down to Parramatta to go to the Medicare office and renew my card. There were a couple of moments where I thought I was going to crash into people, fall over or pass out. Or perhaps crash into people, fall over and pass out. Not out of the woods yet. I ate my first food at 3.30pm (and that was only a couple of mouthfuls). I have completely lost interest in it. I really only ate because I know that I have to. You know I'm really sick when I have so little interest in food...

Saturday - I ate real food! A whole cheese sandwich and a couple of peaches. And one piece of pizza.

Today - almost back to normal. Almost. Still eating bland food, and not a lot of it. But getting better.

The silver lining to all this (cos there's got to be one, or I would be VERY CRANKY) - I have lost 6 kilos! It's not all fluid - I never actually got all that dehydrated, but i will have to be careful to not pile it back on again.

So, that was my week. Hope the next one doesn't suck so badly...

Note to spambots

2009-12-24T14:57:00.000+11:00

Dear Spammers,

Piss off.

This is a private and personal blog, and is not to be used as a vehicle for you to plug your product and/or service. Offenders will be (and have now been) removed.

Sigh.

2009-12-19T09:08:00.002+11:00

My husband has discovered the delights of World of Warcraft.

I'm only ever going to see him briefly and in passing from now on.

Oh well, it was good while it lasted...! He is watching me write this, and seems to think that this is some kind of joke...

On the plus side, he is getting in plenty of quality time with the cat (who gets squished between lap and keyboard a lot of the time), as he is a captive audience. I think that this means that sometimes the "bad guys" don't end up the the sword in the head as they are supposed to, and instead "Hamcrusher" (Oh. My. God.) hares off in totally the wrong direction as Mysterious Forces (conveniently covered in fur and with pointy ears) interfere with the workings of the keyboard.

On a slightly different note, I had to (I can't believe I'm about to say this) slap a chicken in the head this morning, for attempting to defend the cat food bowl against, you guessed it, the cat. Grrr. The level of out of bounds-ness here is astonishing.

Cats who try to play WoW and chickens who think they are cats - that's what keeps life interesting around here.

Erg.

2009-12-17T20:50:00.000+11:00

Teh hot, it buuuurrrns.

Stupid 40+ degree days.

"Gift" ideas...

2009-12-10T18:27:00.002+11:00

I think Sunbeam and Kambrook (and Breville, to a lesser extent) must have teams on the payroll who brainstorm ideas for the most useless, crappiest small appliances known to humankind so that they can corner the market at christmas. There was a large spread in the latest round of junk mail devoted to "Gift Ideas". Some of them were reasonably useful - personal grooming products like hair dryers and straighteners, but the rest...

Sunbeam have got such gems as the "Slush Magic" slushy machine, "Moooooon Shaker" (give or take a couple of os) milkshake maker, "Avalanche" ice shaver, the "Sprinkles" doughnut maker (oh, for crying out loud), the "Cornelius" popcorn maker (I also know a Cornelius that blows hot air, and I wouldn't pay 45 bucks for him, either), the feckin' chocolate fountain (for which there are no words), and my personal favourite, the "Pattie" cupcake maker. What the...? I am at a complete loss as to how I have managed to make cupcakes on so many occasions before this without this wonder of modern technology. Buy a fucking patty tin, fer chrissakes, and donate the difference (which should be substantial, as "Pattie" is $90) to some starving kids in Africa. Geez.

Kambrook don't seem to have taken the crazy stick and run so far with it, but they do have a "Snacks and Fun" category, which includes another doughnut maker, a cookie press (why does this need to be an appliance?), and a Rotating Stone Pizza Oven. There was also a picture of a hot dog centre, but it doesn't seem to be available - I am desperately disappointed by this.

Breville is not quite as ridiculous either, but still have pancake and omelette makers (surely, surely, a frying pan would do an admirable job here!)

I know that all of these brands also produce many useful, labour saving devices. I am eternally grateful for my food processor and stand mixer, toaster and kettle. I would have thought, though, that consumers living in the rich, industialised nations of the West would have leaned their lesson after the bread maker debacle. Alas, it seems that we are devoted to spending $90 on a dozen cupcakes (and remember, you still have to make the batter!) or $45 for 5 slushies.

Well honestly, do you really think any of these will get used more than twice?

No, me neither.

So tired...

2009-12-06T17:07:00.002+11:00

I really don't know why, but it's all I can do to keep my eyes open today. Didn't go to bed too late last night, slept well, was up at a reasonable hour this morning, did some stuff, then had a huge three hour nap, and I'm still really tired. I'm coming to appreciate how precious weekends are again, and yet all I want to do is go back to bed.

Maybe it's the weather.

Attention deficit ... ooh, shiny!

2009-12-02T21:52:00.002+11:00

see more Funny Graphs

Giggle!

The new job

2009-12-01T21:44:00.002+11:00

I was going to post this at the end of last week, but, you know, didn't...

The job so far:

The Good

The people there are really nice. I have been made to feel very welcome.
It's less than 4kms from home. Gotta love 10 mins to work.
It's also really close to a shopping centre, which is handy for groceries and lunches.
The little things, like a decent coffee machine in the lunch room, and actual morning and afternoon tea breaks.

The Bad

As of Monday afternoon, I still didn't have a computer, which is going to make doing any actual work difficult. I have been doing a fair bit of filing.
It's a six month contract, so there's a real chance that there will be no place for me after that.

The Ugly

I am as sick as a dog. I had to go home at lunchtime on the first day of my second week, and was off today. Just a cold, but a bit of a doozy.

Creepy

2009-11-26T19:00:00.002+11:00

This is what I was talking about the other night...

Creepy, fake, plastic and very two-dimensional. The world is a bit fucked up when the primping and preening and hair and make-up isn't enough for the child pageant entrants, and they have to get photoshopped to within an inch of their lives.

Yuck.
It's a good thing they've all got different hats on, or I wouldn't be able to tell them apart!

What am I going to do now?

2009-11-26T17:15:00.002+11:00

Not so long ago I would never have dreamed that I would utter the following:

"No! Bad chicken!"

Needless to say, they didn't listen. I got up this morning and was walking through the dining/kitchen area, when I realised that the creature at the cat's dish was saying "bock, bock, bock" and not "meow". Yep, the chooks have discovered that they do fit through the cat hole in the back door, and seem to think that since the food people are in the house, they should be as well.

They don't seem to have done too much exploring, and I only had to clean up a couple of chicken poos on the kitchen floor...

I really don't want to have to think of new ways of chicken control.*

*Yes, we could keep them shut in the coop all day, but I think that's a bit mean. I just never expected the chooks would want to come inside.

Come on in, the water's fine

2009-11-21T12:41:00.002+11:00

It's going to be hot again tomorrow (Sunday). If you are at a loose end, feel free to come over for a jump in the pool. The water temp is juuuuust right for lounging in for many hours at a time. Bring your Aeroguard and sunscreen, something to drink and something for the barbie. Give me a hoy if you need the address.

Orange - a rant.

2009-11-19T17:50:00.004+11:00

What is it with all the orange, fashion designers? Eh?

Have you not realised that not everyone has the yellow-toned skin that allows them to wear this colour? No?

Wake up to yourselves, morons! Significant numbers of people will not be able to buy clothes this season, because you fuckers have decided that all the clothes need to be orange, goddamn you! I have no desire to look sallow and ill because there is a worldwide special on orange dye. Even the pinks are orange. I don't care if you call it mango, paprika, coral, melon, spice or euphemism - it's still bloody orange.

Oh, and while you're at it; no, I don't think that $80 is a reasonable price for a nylon top with four lines of stitching in it. All of those floaty, deconstructed tops that you are churning out by the truckload* - they look good on angular people. On girls with a healthy appetite they just make the wearer look softer and rounder. How about some nice tailored tops, please? At least that way I feel a little more like I'm getting my money's worth (not, but getting closer). I'm not paying up to a day's wage for something that you've folded in half and cut a hole for the head**.

Fashion - it's completely broken***. The sad thing is that it's getting harder to shop for style, because everything seems to be following the god-awful trends.

* in orange

** and also made in orange

*** and much too orange

Today I ...

2009-11-19T17:38:00.004+11:00

had a moment of panic where I thought all the chooks had got out. Turns out they had just gone back to bed. Stupid chooks.
spent far too long reading blogs and emails.
had impromptu and nommy noodles with JD.
discovered that Castle Towers shopping centre is MUCH better than Parra Westifield. Much.
stayed in the air-con nearly all day. Ahhhh.
actually found some tops that I like and that don't make me look like a sallow doughnut. Score! I now do not need to go to work naked. Wins all 'round.
had a look in two pet shops at the puppies and the kitties. The kitties in the CT pet shop were awake - so I watched the cutest wittle fwuffy kitties SAVAGING each other. Much nomming on each others tails and ears.
wished this stupid hot weather would bugger off. It's not even summer yet!

Hooraaaaaay!

2009-11-16T21:30:00.002+11:00

And about bloody time too...

I have a job! It's only a six month contract, rather than an ongoing job, but it's a good start. It's also less than 5km away from home. Gotta love that.

Mind you, I am still a bit nervous - it's been more than seven years since I started a new job. It's going to be weird being the new person and having to get used to a whole new bunch of people and systems.

Wish me luck!

Laugh? I almost shat...

2009-11-09T17:12:00.002+11:00

If you haven't seen it on the telly, you've got to have a look at the new ad for Baby Love nappies, designed to handle a "poo explosion". You will have to click on the "view our new ad" button.

Ow. Teh laughing, it hurts.

2009-11-04T18:37:00.002+11:00

Note to self: yes, a fine dice of onion, carrot and celery does have a name (I knew it!). It's called a mirepoix. I am writing it here so that the next time I forget what's it's called (and start getting twitchy because I hate knowing that there is an answer and not being able to remember what it is) I will be able to come here and find out.

Hopefully I won't forget that it's here...

Green grows my bogling fork! Part... forgot where I'm up to.

2009-11-04T10:30:00.009+11:00

Ok, I know I broke my promise of chook pictures in spectacular fashion, sorry. I've been a bit distracted with job interviews and anxiety on account of the same. That, coupled with the laptop moving with the speed of frozen treacle (a defrag fixed that), made me less than inclined to do much posting recently.

But, here are my girls!Now you can see why they are just "the chooks". Except for the chick on the front right - she is a bit of a stand-out. This photo is maybe a couple of weeks old now, they are starting to get their combs and wattles. They might just be real chooks soon. I just need to give the magpie who has been monstering them a boot up the date... cheeky bugger.

The veggie garden is going absolutely great guns:

We are eating quite a lot of spinach (silver beet), much to Rusty's great disappointment, the zucchinis are coming along apace, the beetroots are all going to need to be dug out soon or they will end up the size of footballs. We have also eaten:

nummy snow peas,my very first broccoli (there are now two more itty bitty baby ones on the way), as well as lettuce, radish, tomatoes, pumpkin, rocket, carrots, capsicum and cucumbers! Whew!

I am an auntie!

2009-11-01T09:03:00.003+11:00

Hooray!

Little Lawson was born yesterday at about 2pm, weighing 3.3kg. He shares his birthday with his dad. I get to meet him today. I am very excited!

Just in case more people ask...

2009-10-28T22:55:00.002+11:00

... the chickens don't have names as this point, and are probably unlikely to get them. This isn't mean, no matter what you might think, it's just a bit pointless. Only one of the chickens shows any difference in appearance to any of the others, the other three look pretty much exactly the same. Really. If they do get named they will quite possibly get lumbered with really horrible names like "Cacciatore" and "Parmigiana". No, we are not very nice people, are we?

They haven't started laying yet, but have overcome their fear of us, to the point that they come a-running, and then follow us around the yard. They are also very good at taking themselves off to bed when it starts getting dark, so we just lock them in the coop. Very helpful. The cats pretty much ignore the chickens completely, and vice-vera. They are kinda cute, except when the little bastards are digging holes in my herb garden...

I will take some photos tomorrow. Promise.

2009-10-28T20:18:00.002+11:00

Was just reading through some of my old posts - it really is a good way of looking at your life in retrospect, and seeing how other people react to things that you write about.

Well, it would be, if you posted more than 8 times in a year. I was looking at the list of archives, and last year (2008) I only posted 8 times. I think I have posted more often in a month this year. Shows what being unemployed does for my ability to sit down and share my thoughts and feelings!

The despondency dog

2009-10-28T19:19:00.003+11:00

The past few days have seen a big dog sniffing around, looks black, but is actually just dark blue in the sunlight. He wanted to let me know (in the nicest possible way, of course) that despite years of experience, and quite good skills, no-one wanted to give me a job. I have been for a couple of interviews, only to be told that I am overqualified for the position. A couple of agencies that I would have thought would have something on their books are proving to be dead-ends. I sent numerous applications off via Seek on Friday, and got only one response this week, despite this tactic working quite well last week. I still have an interview lined up for this Friday, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

Anyhoo, today was shaping up to be a lovely day, so I kicked the DD in the nuts and told him to bugger off. A bit of gardening, a bit of tidying, a bit of washing, a bit of being followed all over the yard by the chickens, and all is right with the world again. In a rather exciting fashion, the veggie patch delivered all the veggies for dinner tonight, and most of my salad for lunch. I am still needing to think of interesting ways to serve silverbeet though - I like it, but R thinks it tastes like sick, so there has been a lot of disguising it with bacon...

I still wish someone would just give me money to stay at home.

Jobs, jobs, jobs...

2009-10-20T15:00:00.003+11:00

Starting to feel a little bit better about the whole job search thing.

I had started a couple of weeks back, by checking Seek, and finding two jobs that I thought would work really well for me. One was with a tapware supplier that I had dealt with whilst at Reece, and the other was with one of Reece's bigger customers. I thought I would have a good chance at one or both of these jobs, as I had relevant industry experience, as well as the skills that the job required. Buh-bow. Not only have I not heard back from either, but one of them (the supplier) I had been for an interview and been told "we'll be in touch"... That's just a bit rude, in my opinion. Both of them I have sent follow-up emails to as well. Bah.

So I sent my resume off to a bunch more job ads on Friday, and the responses have been pouring in! I have had two interviews today (one with the workplace and one with an agent) that were both very positive, one tomorrow and one on Thursday. This is good - for a couple of days there I was starting to think that I was going to have some real trouble.

All that remains now is to actually land one of these jobs (which is where this house of cards may come crashing down around my ears). Wish me luck!

Mind you, I would still rather be lazy layabout stay-at-home type...Can't someone pay me for that?

2009-10-18T22:51:00.002+11:00

Ok, now I have really seen everything. You can buy a fog machine at Aldi...

Prattfalls and rip-offs

2009-10-15T19:14:00.004+11:00

It turns out that you can't trust what you see in the cartoons. I went to the supermarket this afternoon, and as I opened my car door, there happened to be a banana skin convenienntly placed right where I would step on it. Which I, of course, did - completely by accident. What I didn't do was fall onto my arse in a humorous fashion. I feel somehow ripped off.

Speaking of ripped off, how's this for a doozie - We have received permission from the council to cut down the hideous cyprus pine right at the very front of the property (hooray!), and the other pine that is far too close to the house. So, the next step was to get a couple of quotes for having them removed. The first quote we got was a quite reasonable, although still a fair amount of cash at $1300. The second one, on the other hand, was not quite so reasonable. The minute the guy turned up he started to tell Rusty that there were two other trees in the front yard that could be removed without council permission, then started talking about how espensive tip fees are, and that he'd have to go all the way to Windsor to dispose of the cut trees. Claimed that it would be $800 bucks in tip fees, and then quoted $3500, but he would do the other two that weren't part of the original quote for an extra $1800. Ouch, and gee, I REALLY DON'T THINK SO! The minute tradies start justifying their costs you start getting a feel that they're not entirely on the level.

Things that make you go hmmm....

Piss poor advertising

2009-10-12T18:29:00.004+11:00

A while ago I saw posters for a new anti-wrinkle cream in Myer. The posters didn't exactly get the expected reaction from me - it was all I could do to not burst out laughing.

This is it...
It's for an "instant Botox" cream called Freeze Frame. Supposedly it "freezes" wrinkles, so that they appear minimised. One article I saw (on tv) claimed that you could see the effects instantly, and another that I read (product reviews found on the interwebs) says that it needs to be used for a month before you get the best results.

What a load of shit. I don't care whether the product works or not, or whether any of the conflicting info out there is right, it's the poster that really gets me. It's not quite as clear in this small pic, but in a headshot poster that is 3 feet high you can see it quite clearly - her "wrinkles" are drawn on, or emphasised with makeup. It's reeeeeaally obvious on the crows feet - they are just drawn on with brown eyebrow pencil.

Really, if you are going to try to sell me a product with before and after shots, don't insult my intelligence by trying to pull the wool over my eyes with makeup or photoshop. I'm just not that stupid, and advertisers shouldn't assume that anyone else is either.

Taties!

2009-10-02T11:35:00.005+10:00

We grew these on our very own!

Yes, many of them are a level of tiny more closely associated with grapes, but still. It's amazing what happens when you stick some dud spuds in the ground and forget about them for 4 months...

This is my god...

2009-09-30T15:35:00.003+10:00

There is a song that I like, that really speaks to me, that I would like to share. Anyone out there who listens to Triple J might have heard of Scroobius Pip & Dan le Sac, as "Thou shalt always kill" got quite a bit of airplay there. The one that really works for me, though, is "Letter from God to Man". The film clip is pretty cute, too. It's certainly not my intention to offend anyone with this, so if you do have very strong religious views that you don't like being challenged, navigate away now...

Here are the lyrics, if you have trouble making them out, or don't want to watch YouTube:

This is a letter, from God to Man, it says:

Hey There, how, how’s it going?
Long time no see.
I know I haven't been around much lately
But…it didn't seem like you wanted me to be
The last time I sent down a message you nailed it to the cross
So I figured I'd just leave you to it, let you be your own boss

But I've been keeping an eye on you, I have, and it's amazing how you've grown.
With your technological advances and the problems you’ve overthrown,
And all the beautiful art you’ve created with such grace and such finesse,
But I admit there are a few things I'm afraid have impressed me less.

So I'm writing to apologize for all the horrors committed in my name,
Although that was never what I intended, I feel I should take my share of the blame.
All the good I tried to do was corrupted when all the religion got into full swing,
What I thought were quite clear messages were taken to unusual extremes.
My teachings taken out of context to meet the agendas of others,
Interpretations taken to many different ways and hidden meanings discovered

Religion became a tool, for the weak to control the strong
With all these new morals and ethics, survival of the fittest was gone
No longer could the biggest man simply take whatever he needed
'Cause damnation was the price if certain rules were not heeded

Some of the deeds committed in my name just made me wonder were I went wrong.
Back at the start when I created this, the foundation seemed so strong.
See all the elements were already here, long before I began, I just kind of put it all together
I didn't really think out a long-term plan.

I made the sun an appropriate distance and laid the stars across the sky
So you could navigate the globe or simply watch the sun rise
I covered the earth with plants and fruits,
Some for sustenance and some for beauty
I made the sun shine and the clouds rain so their maintenance wasn’t your duty
I tried to give each creature its own attributes without making them enveloped
I gave you all you all your own space to grow and in your own way space to develop

I didn't know such development would cause rifts and jealousy
Cause you to war against each other and leave marks on this planet indelibly
You see, I wasn’t really the creator, I was just the curator of nature
I want to get something straight with homosexuals right now: I don’t hate ya
I was a simple being that happened to be the first to wield such powers
I just laid the ground, it was You that built the towers

It was You that invented bombs, and the fear that comes with them
And it was You that invented money, and the corrupt economic systems
You invented terms like just-war and terms like friendly fire
And it was You that didn't know when to stop digging deeper, when to stop building higher
It was You that exhausted the resources I carefully laid out on this earth,
And it was You that even saw these problems coming but accredited them little worth
It was You that used my teachings for your own personal gain
And it was You that committed such tragedies, even though they were in my name

So I apologize for any mistakes I made, and when my words misconstrued
But this apology's to mother nature, cause I created YOU

Quote of the week... nah, make that decade

2009-09-30T15:16:00.005+10:00

"An iPhone is like a penis - fun to play with when you're on your own, but it's rude to pull it out at the dinner table."

Tom Gleeson - Good News Week, Channel Ten, Monday 28th Sept, 2009.

2009-09-29T11:55:00.003+10:00

It's all different!

For some reason my beloved Firefox has crashed on my laptop, and even uninstalling and reinstalling it hasn't fixed the problem. I have been doing a bunch of my web surfing on the Mac as of late, so as not to expose myself to the ickyness (and very low level of internet safety) that is IE, but all of the camera software is on the laptop, so to upload pics... blah, blah, blah, you get the drift.

One thing I have noticed is how different the blog looks on different browsers. The mac doesn't seem to recognise the colours that I have chosen for hyperlinks, and puts the little search bar floating into the text. IE, on the other hand, has been chopping off the post titles.

What's to bet that on beloved Firefox, none of these stupid issues would happen? If anyone has any idea why it won't run on my machine, please let me know!

Punching Rusty

2009-09-29T11:33:00.008+10:00

When I said a few days ago that I would feel better if I punched Rusty for a bit, this isn't exactly what I meant...
The Rusty I have been punching looks more like this one, with the preparedness and stuff:
And the me that's doing the punching is all girded of fist, and guarding her chin:

All this training appears to be doing nothing other than making me really stiff and sore all the time, but maybe time will tell, and I will get fit and strong and skinny...

The slow death of sound quality.

2009-09-25T14:36:00.003+10:00

Buy CDs where you can. Really, unless there is no other option, don't buy albums online as mp3s.

Why? Good question.

I was over at my dad's the other day, and we were talking about music and the amazingness of technology that allows us to store a thousand songs on a device not much bigger than a credit card. There is, of course, a trade off, my dad tells me, and he generally knows these things. The technology behind sound has been pretty much his life's work.

The main problem is file size. A track taken from a CD is fairly substantial. To transfer that file to mp3, it is compressed considerably. Anyone who thinks that there is no loss of sound quality is deluding themselves. That extra information has got to go somewhere... A zipped document is compressed by taking out the white bits; something in the program remembers where they should be and puts them back when you unzip the file. There aren't any "white bits" in music, so when a music file is compressed, the program takes out what it considers to be extraneous material - most of it is not obvious to the casual observer, but it is there for a reason. That reason is something called soundstage. I can see your WTF expression from here, so let me explain:

If you have ever listened to a really good stereo recording, on a good stereo, through good headphones, you can "hear" where the instruments are around you. You can close your eyes and think "the drums are behind me, the bassist is off to the left and slightly in front, the lead guitarist is to the right, and the singer is straight ahead". I remember this happened to me for the first time when I was 12, and I was so astounded by it that I've never forgotten. This all goes away in mp3s - if you listen for directionality, all you will be able to work out is 'inside your head'. There is still stereo, so you get a bit of left and right action, but the rest of it gets lost in the ether.

Don't despair, it doesn't mean that you are never going to enjoy listening to your iPod again! When dad told me about this, I thought "oh yeah, you're right!", but I hadn't realised it until he told me. I did an experiment, listening to the same couple of songs from a cd on a cd player, and then via Media Player (which is the same as listening to them through iTunes or similar). The difference is definitely there, but you do need to do a comparison to really hear it.

So why bother? If the difference is not that great, why worry about it? Trouble is, the vast majority of people are never going to know that the music they are listening to is slightly inferior in quality - they are listening to the song, not the minute nuances in the music (and considering some of the crap that the kids consider to be "music" these days... Kanye West and pals, I'm looking at you guys here), so they are never going to know. But, if everyone buys music online, then eventually that will be the only way to buy music, and then the opportunity to buy good quality sound will be gone for good. The saddest part about this is that, for the most part, no-one will even know.

Of course the other thing about cds - if your hard drive crashes, you still have all your music, you just have to go through the rather tedious process of uploading it again.

Mp3s are great - I have bought many of them, but if I want more than a single song by a particular artist, I will always buy the cd. Music makes life better, why should we try to make music worse?

Day of the triffids

2009-09-23T09:21:00.002+10:00

Or at least that's what it felt like.

How weird was the weather this morning? I got up early to sort out a dispute between the kitties, and discovered the whole sky a vivid orange. Really creepy - feels like being on Mars.

Now, of course, everything is covered in red dust. Yech.

Word of the day

2009-09-22T16:25:00.001+10:00

According to Rusty is "fucking thingy big shit".

This is some kind of soccer trophy, or so I am led to believe.

No, don't ask me - I really don't know either...

Home again!

2009-09-21T12:22:00.005+10:00

Loving the home action. Or non-action, as it probably should be called.

Had a really lovely weekend Down South. Started with catching the train to the airport on Friday morning (I do think that $16 is a bit of overkill to get off at the airport station, but it's better than getting a cab), and even getting a seat! Easy flight to Melbourne, and flying with Qantas (the wings stayed on, which is good) we actually got coffee and a snack. Bus into Spencer St Station (I know it's called Southern Cross, but that is such a boring, overly Australiana kinda name) and then walk 2 blocks to our hotel.

We stayed at the Intercontinental, which was really lovely - and thanks to Wotif for reasonable rates. I do like a flash hotel every now and then - the crisp bed linen, the quality haircare products in the bathroom, the really good shower, and sniggering at the mini-bar price list, and wondering who would be stupid enough to pay $9 for a can of Red Bull. Yes, I am easily amused. We were going to be catching the train to Ballarat the next day, so being conveniently located to the station worked really well. We wandered about the city a bit, went to the Queen Vic markets, found the stall/s that sell the really pretty paper toile cards and bought a bunch, found the jammy doughnut cart and bought a bunch, went back to the hotel for a sleep. I wandered back to the station to buy train tickets and find a timetable, and "accidentally" found my way into DFO. Needless to say, DFO in Melbourne is about eleventy-billion times better than the one in Sydney. This one had a Sportscraft branch, which is my favourite, and I bought a silk dress for $99 instead of $269, which made me very happy, and provides me with a job-hunting outfit, for when I start looking (which will have to be soon, I'm afraid).

Rather than spend a mortgage payment on dinner at the hotel, we went in search of the little alley ways that have some lovely food and fabulous atmosphere. We made a good choice - the food was delicious, the waiters were bouncing with enthusiasm and joie de vie, without being overly familiar, and a little jazz combo set up a little way down, so we had an evening with all the good things that I wanted from a night in a different city with my husband. It rocked.

The rain to Ballarat was on-time, clean, quiet and cheap, in comparison to hiring a car. I really need to make better use of public transport - it's just a bit dire in Sydney. The lovely JD picked us up from the station, and we tootled off to the motel, which was also lovely. The food at the adjoining pub was... edible, but I wouldn't say much better than that.

After some mad roast-chicken wrangling experiences, we got to the park where the wedding of the delightful H & A was being held. The ceremony was beautiful, the rain held off, and all involved looked radiantly happy. It was great to have a chance to catch up with friends from all over, even if it was very briefly in some cases.

Sunday morning was going to see a trip to Sovereign Hill, the gold mining park, but we discovered from the helpful chap at the hotel reception that it was nearly $40 to get in, and 4 hours really was needed to get the most out of the trip. We baulked at the price a bit, and then consulted a map of the city and surrounds, which told us about "Australia's Unique Attraction", the unequalled cheeziness of Kryal Castle. So we went there, instead. It was unsurpassed in its cheese factor, but the layout and design of the castle part itself was not so bad. JD and I amused ourselves by making plans for how we could make it "heaps better". We poked around for nearly 2 hours, feeling somewhat superior in both knowledge and taste, and then it was time to hit the road.

The trip home was event free, although a bit boring once it got dark, thus removing the view. We hit our place at about 11.30, and considering we left Ballarat at about 12.30, and stopped 3 times on the way, we made pretty good time. The kitties were still alive, and didn't seem too put out that we had left them all alone, more of my veggies are sprouting (who out there likes silverbeet? I'm going to have lots soon) and we got to sleep in our own bed again.

All in all, an ace-tops weekend.

Meh

2009-09-15T11:04:00.002+10:00

Feeling very flat today. I really don't know why. I have no energy, no motivation, no desire to do anything but sit and stare at the TV.

That's when you know things are really grim.

Erg. Probably need to do some exercise, but don't want to do that, either. I hope this goes away soon, I hate feeling like this. I'm designed for cheerfulness, not grumpiness, and I want to be cheerful and energetic, goddammit!

Maybe if I punch Rusty for a bit...

Meh.

Wanna go to England!

2009-09-07T14:06:00.004+10:00

It seems that right now is a very good time to go to England. The GBP will currently cost $1.92AUD.

Oh My God!

I can never remember it being less than $2 before (I'm sure that it has, I just can't remember it).

Wanna go now!

Woo hoo!

2009-09-03T10:14:00.002+10:00

Finally got a new template to work! Hooray! No more stinky, boring Blogger templates for me!

Yippee!

That's all. Nothing to see here.

Farmer Joe and the wankers

2009-08-28T13:52:00.003+10:00

More as a remider to myself than anything else:

Yesterday I planted seeds for radishes, zucchini, carrotses, and peas, both sugar snap and regular. Now just need to wait 6-10 weeks to reap the fruits (or vegetables) of my labour.

As for the wankers... I had dropped R off at Homebush for his farewell thingy and huge piss-up, and then continued on to Rhodes. I wandered around aimlessly for a bit, and then left. On the way out of the carpark, I was stuck behind a couple of youfs in a phully sic, electric blue WRX with spoiler and enormous exhaust outlet. Or so I thought. As I got a bit closer, I realised that what the youfs were alctually driving was a Kia, just made to look like a WRX. Oh dear. Really, if you can't afford to drive a phully sic car with the phat subwoofers, don't try to make your poxy Korean el-cheapo look like one. It will just make you look like an idiot. Young people of today, eh?

2009-08-17T09:00:00.002+10:00

It really is a different world.

Thanks heaps to everyone who commented on the different world post from a few days ago, and to the gels that I've chatted with about this. It has given me a very different perspective on The Way Things Are.

Logically, I know that everyone's upbringing is a little bit different, and that everyone's life experiences are not the same. I think that maybe in my emotional side, that knowledge gets a bit lost, and I can be a bit surprised when I realise that other people weren't brought up with the same love and care that I was.

It's a good thing to have your perceptions shaken up a bit, if they are a bit skewed, and I'm glad* that I have gained some new knowledge of the world outside my own head.

Thanks again guys.

*Well, kinda. Finding out that the world is just a little bit more horrible than you already knew is not exactly glad tidings...

Green grows my bogling fork! Part II

2009-08-16T16:49:00.004+10:00

I don't think it quite got up to the 28 degrees that the BoM was promising for Parramatta today, but I am wearing a singlet top as we speak, so it's still quite pleasantly warm.

I have had a very productive day. I have spent a portion of the last few days preparing the garden beds - shifting soil, digging up weeds, digging in fertiliser, etc - and today I got to put things in them! Things that got planted:

tomatoes - 3 different kinds
lettuces
snow peas
beetroots
silverbeet (Rusty reckons he's going to try to poison them when I'm not looking)
broccoli
rhubarb
rasberry cane
gooseberry bush
two apple trees (granny smith and pink lady. You have to have at least 2 for cross pollination)
thyme - lemon and regular
oregano

I've got a bunch of seeds to plant in the next couple of days too.

I finally went to the little nursery on the corner of Great Western and Cumberland highways, opposite the F1 hotel. I always thought it was a bit small and pointless, so never managed to go. I am really glad that I finally gave it a shot. They are a bit small, but have the most amazing range of fruit trees/bushes and herbs that I have ever seen! Lots of really olde-worlde and European herbs that I have never seen at commercial nurseries - lovage, tansy, feverfew, rue, mustard greens, curry plant, fuzzy thyme, pyrethrum, and a whole lot more that I can't remember. Really cool stuff. They also have rasperries, gooseberries (that were only $12, hence me buying some to give them a go), blueberries, red and blackcurrants, and miniature peaches and pears. Not regular dwarfing, but miniature - tiny, tiny peach trees. So cute.

All in all, a very productive day. Now, just have to maintain this level of productive...

I can haz sleeps nao?

Wanna new frock NOW!

2009-08-15T08:55:00.005+10:00

So, I need a new middle class summer frock. We have Yule coming up, and then 12th night. I have a good dress length of black linen, and, despite a complete lack of evidence to support it, I think I will trim it in pink. Black and pink is a very popular German combination, just not in the way I am planning on using it. I'm not going to bother justifying it too much - black frocks trimmed with contrast are documentatble, pink and black together are documentable, and I want to make this frock in these colours, so I am choosing to make an intuitave leap (even if it's quite possibly very wrong). So there!

It is very tempting to use the tried and true bodice shape, with the deep U shaped front neckine, but I think that I should expand my repertoir a little and do this one as a square neck. I really like the neckline on this painting:I might have to adjust the shoulders just a little bit - these are a bit too "right on the point of the shoulder" for me, and would end up giving me the rabid shits.

As it will be a summer frock, I will do some fidgeting with the sleeves, too. I will make them two-part, so that in very hot weather I can take off the forearms part of the sleeve and make myself a bit cooler. Speaking of which, yes, the dress will be made of black linen. This is not really a period choice of fabric - linen, yes; black linen, not so much; black linen as shell fabric, again with the not so much. However... I do not live in 16thC Germany, I live in 21stC Australia. Really, I have to make choices that are not going to cause me to die.

I am thinking that to tart the sleeves up a little, I might put some fake slashies on them. Puff and slash is a decorative element that could be used quite differently, depending on the effect sought, and the style of frock it was going on. So, some slashing is integral with the sleeve, and will show the hemd (chemise) sleeve underneath:
Whereas others a quite clearly false, and would be sewn down onto a supporting underlayer of straight, fitted sleeve:
So, my design choices are mostly made, now all that remains is for me to actually make the damn thing. Do you think if I just pile all the fabric together in a big heap I will come back in the morning and it will have magically turned into a dress? Or is it more likely to have magically turned into a cat bed... Hmmm, tough call.

Is it a whole different world?

2009-08-09T16:14:00.003+10:00

Ok. I like to read Attack Laurel's blog - she is witty and intelligent, and sometimes writes interesting posts, and, of course, does some fabulous embroidery and costuming.

Sometimes what she writes about, and other blogs she links to, make me... confused?...uncomfortable? I'm not sure exactly, but it does make me wonder if I live in a totally different world to some other people.

I'm talking about rape, and the blogs out there that talk about this subject often. In some cases, almost exclusively, it seems. One such blog post talks about certain behavioural patterns that women are taught, and expected by society to follow. These include not raising your voice, not appearing to be emotional or distraught, not setting personal boundaries and dramatically enforcing them, not using your physical strength to enforce your personal boundaries, and others of a similar nature. This is the bit that I don't get. My life has taught me that many of these things are not only acceptable but expected. I have never been ostracised for being forceful to a man who's attention was unwanted. I have never had intercourse, whether social or sexual, with a man I couldn't stand, simply because I was too worried about what people would say if I turned him down. I was once told that I had "a head like a bull terrier" by a man that I turned down - I was extremely rude to him, on very little provocation - and no-one told me that I was being harsh or unfair. I have generally found that telling someone that I'm sorry, but I'm really not interested, is usually sufficient to stop further attention. I have never found myself screaming GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME to someone at the bus stop, simply for striking up a conversation that I wasn't interested in. Generally speaking, I will use this approach as a last resort, rather than a first one. I'm not surprised that a woman using the screaming approach will be labled as a crazy bitch, and that no-one will come to her aid. I'm pretty sure that quite a lot of people will come to the aid of a woman who has made her disinterest known in a polite and forceful manner, and yet is still experiencing harrassment.

What this has made me wonder is whether I live in a world completely removed from the one lived in by the women in these blogs. Was my upbringing so different that the thought of not expressing myself is completely alien? Are most of the men I have ever met been odd in that they generally will back down after a polite refusal? Do I have a lot of weird friends who are also quite good at not being doormats? Or is it simply that Australian culture is so completely different to American, and that gender caste just doesn't seem to be that much of an issue here?

I'm not trying to say that women shouldn't use forcefullness or even violence to defend themselves should they see fit. I am pretty uncomfortable with women being given the advice that they should react in this manner immediately. Politeness is king. Not only will your point be made without injuring the pride of your potential harrasser, (and therefore not leaving yourself open to abusive retaliation) but you are far more likely to be taken seriously. There is little to no reason to resort to rudeness or hysteria straight up - but absolutely every reason to resort to them in the face of continued unwanted attention.

I will never argue with a woman's right to campaign against sexual violence, particularly if she has been a victim of that violence - I may question her methods, but never her motives. No woman ever deserves to be raped. Ever. I think that women should take an active role in preventing violence against themselves. Always remain in the company of trusted friends when out on the town, moderate your intake of alcohol (I do feel a bit like the pot calling the kettle black here, but even at my drunkest, I could always articulate what I did or didn't want) and don't dress like a slapper. Now, in case this sentiment were to be read by more that the 3 people who visit this blog, I would like to defend this statement. I'm sure that there are many out there who will cry "A woman should be able to wear whatever she wants! Wearing a miniskirt should not be an invitation to rape!" and they would be quite correct. Neither should my leaving my front door unlocked be an invitation to be robbed. But if I robbed, and told you that I had left the front door unlocked, you would think "well, what did you expect?", wouldn't you? Human beings have been doing unspeakable things to each other for time out of mind. They probably always will. Protecting yourself by not putting yourself in harm's way only makes sense, surely.

I hope that the blogs that talk about rape provide help and comfort to those who have been hurt, and open the eyes and minds of their readers.

A woman I once knew who was pack raped when in her teens once told me that she once had an unusual opportunity to face one of her attackers. She actually bumped into him in her home town, and had a coffee with him. He apologised profusely for what he had done to her, and she said that his remorse was quite genuine. He told her that he had changed his life around, got out of the gang, and was now married with a little one on the way. She told him that she forgave him, that she wished him and his family well, and that she fervently hoped that the baby would be a girl. "I hope you worry every day of your life, that what happened to me might happen to her" she told him. Revenge indeed.

2009-08-06T22:42:00.003+10:00

I looked out the back door this arvo, at around about 5.30ish. It was dusk, and the sun had dipped below the horizon. The sky was streaked with pink. Not some woosy, pale watercolour pink, but bright, almost fushia, pink. Seriously - it was almost day-glo. I had to stop for a minute and just take it in. Beautiful.

Then, on my way to St Peters to go to the Rowany meeting, the moon was an enormous yellow disk in the sky, slightly shrouded by mist. Enormous. You could actually see some of the shading from the craters and whatnot on it. And this whlist I was driving on the M4 at 90kms, so pretty obvious. Amazing.

Nature - you rock.

Bugger

2009-07-23T12:40:00.003+10:00

I had noticed when I went to see Butterfly Effect with JD last weekend, that The Specials were going to be playing at the Enmore Theatre on the 27th and 28th July. I kinda hummed and haaed, cos I wasn't sure whether I really wanted to go. I looked it up this morning, and both shows are sold out.

Sold out!

I didn't think they were that popular here even when they were popular! Most of my current peer group would say "huh? who?", and it's generally not until "Message to you Rudy" is mentioned that people these days even have a glimmer of recognition.

Of course now that I cant' go, I really, really want to...

Figures.

Walking, walking, walking

2009-07-23T12:02:00.005+10:00

I've been really good the last couple of weeks, and have been walking. No, not just around the shops, thank you very much! The past few days have been just glorious, almost springlike, and it's been perfect for walking. So I have. Where I am is actually a lovely place to walk. As it's deepest, darkest suburbia, it's quiet, a little off the beaten track. Most of the houses in the area are modest, single story weatherboard or brick cottages. For the most part, they are quite well maintained, and the gardens are generally neat and pleasant. I think a fair number of the local population are retirees, but then there are quiet a lot of people with young kids, too. The land is gently undulating (I know that sounds really wanky, but I can't think of a more apt description), so there are gentle hills to get one's heart rate up a little, without me needing to feel like an ambulance might be in my immediate future. Some spots have quite a good view to the east, and there are even places where you can see the city. Really!

I've been really enjoying my walks, which is good, as it means that I'm more likely to keep it up. I'd like to drop a little bit of weight, and get fitter and healthier. The more I walk, the more energy I have, which is great. My walks have been around 4kms or so, or a bit under an hour. Winter tends to bring out the hibernater (say that in a Terminator voice for best effect) in me, and really, nothing gets done. There's only one problem with all this walking - my feet. Or more to the point, my son-of-a-motherless goat, monkey-loving, gods-forsaked SHOES!

I have two pairs of sneakers, and both of them give me blisters. Admittedly, they are not worn very often - I don't wear them unless I'm doing exercise of some sort - but I've had them for a while now, and surely they are supposed to be comfortable from the get-go anyway! So now I have to fortify my feet with large numbers of band-aids before setting out.

Oh well. Better than sitting at home on my arse pecking away at the computer... oh.

Ding dong the bells are going to chime!

2009-06-21T19:16:00.004+10:00

So, ten years to the day that Rusty and I got married, we finally had our wedding day. It kinda rocked.

It was a fairly low key affair, as far as weddings go, which is good, because it kept the stress levels pretty low. Despite a bit of last minute (read: the morning of the wedding day) sewing on hems, it all went pretty smoothly. My decision to make as much stuff as I did was a bit ambitious, as it turns out, because I didn't even get started on the hat. I did manage the dress, my coat, Rusty's waistcoat, the cake, the bridal bouquets, and the placecards all in reasonably good time though. At the risk of sounding overly chuffed with myself, they all turned out really, really well. I received some fabulous compliments - some from complete strangers - on the cake and the dress. It's a good thing for the bride to feel pretty and clever on her wedding day, isn't it?

The day went pretty smoothly, despite my getting a bit cranky with the hairdresser. If you make an 11am appointment to get your hair done, you shouldn't have to wait until 11.30 before the first roller goes in your hair, should you? My hair turned out pretty well, although it looked a bit odd with jeans and a t shirt. JD was with me, getting her hair set into a tres cute cap of curls. She wasn't very happy with it, but she looked gorgeous - despite pulling an all nighter to get her bridesmaid dress finished. She is Teh Roxor.

After the grand hair experience, we came home to grab our stuff and off the the hotel! Thank goodness for hotels with big mirrors everywhere - it made getting ready soooooo much easier. It was a funny thing - I had been thinking that the hair looked a bit odd, and I wasn't sure that I was entirely happy with it. As I put on my makeup, though, it started to come together. Then I put on the dress... All of a sudden I was 1940s! JD looked fab in her maroon (so your colour, matey!) and Rusty looked like the Godfather.

Then we went downstairs to our car. Oh boy! We had a 1947 Jaguar Mk 4 in gunmetal gray. This one, in fact:Photo nicked from the Silver Cloud Cars website, from whence the car came.

So pretty. And really nifty watching all the heads turn to watch this gorgeous car go past! And full of folks in 40s dress, too! We met the photographer at the venue, and then went traipsing all over the shop to have a bunch of photos taken, before the sun went down. I'm looking forward to seeing the result, and I will post some photos when we get them.

Just at sunset, and before the ceremony was due to start, we went for a cruise around the park in our car. Figured that this was a good plan, as the car was horrendously expensive. We saw Nathan Rees taking a walk, and completely failed to run him over. Sorry folks, but we just weren't prepared to pay to get the dents out of the Jag.

The ceremony was lovely. Elly preformed her duties as a flower girl well, despite Rana's concerns that she would totally lose it (although there was a moment where she was about to forge ahead in a rather gung-ho fashion). Rusty's mate Phil read a poem for us, and Rana, who I have known for nearly 17 years (as Rana said, since primary school. Yeah, good one, I'll go with that!) said some words about us and our relationship. It was really touching, and disturbingly accurate (!) and everyone was very touched. Rusty and I said our bits, despite both of us suffering from stage fright and forgetfullness. We both got a bit choked up, and managed to choke a bunch of other people up too. It's nice to know that we touched the hearts of our friends and family. Mr H was awesome as our MC - it was really nice to have someone kinda taking charge a bit, who knew exactly what to say to make things happen.

Dinner and drinks happened, as they are wont to do, and the service seemed to be really good - nobody was wanting a drink for too long, food came and plates went in good time* - and it was reeeeeeaally nice to sit down and take the weight off my high heels.

We kept our speeches short and sweet, Dad got a golden opportunity to poke fun at me in a public forum (must have been loving that) and I made people (including myself) cry with my toast to my mum, for the 20th anniversary of her death. We had our traditional bridal waltz, and Rusty's two left feet came into the fore here. Then some people joined in, and we got a bit more comfortable getting some ballroom jive and spinning around madly.

The cake was a great success. It looked great (sorry, but no false vanity here) and apparently was very yummy. So, I was happy, as everyone liked my cake, and they were happy, as they got yummy cake. Win-win situation! Hooray!

I would have liked for there to be more dancing, but everyone seemed to be having a really nice time regardless, so I'm happy. All in all, the day was a great success. Needless to say, there are a couple of little things I could have been happier with, but they were pretty petty, so I really don't have any cause for complaint.

By the end of the night, I was exhausted. I think someone nicked our taxi (and I will find you, whoever you are!) and we had to get them to call us another. I was as pleased as it's possible to be to get back to the room, and take off my shoes (and my corset, oh bliss!), wash my face an pull all of the pins out of my hair, and climb into bed.

You know what happened next? It took me about three hours to get to sleep. Why is that always the way?

And how did we spend our Saturday and Sunday? We have watched about 18 hours worth of Buffy. I think I've spent about 25 minutes in total off the couch. It's been the best honeymoon ever. I promise to post photos when we get them too!

*The next morning at breakfast, Dr Mark was telling a story of a wedding he went to recently where the drinks were flowing, but the food took hours to come out. By the time it did, everyone was trashed, and all the couples were having huge barneys. I think the service we got was worlds away from this, for which I am extremely thankful!

Awesome day

2009-06-11T21:16:00.003+10:00

Ok, I've been a bit crap with the blog updating lately. Been pretty busy with the sewing. That will teach me to have a wedding...

Today I shirked my sewing responsibility and went over to my gran's. As she lives in Avalon, it was a reasonable hike (by the time I got home again I had spent enough time in the car to have driven to Canberra. As Rusty so succinctly put it, but then I would be in Canberra. Yes, I know the grammar of that sentence bites). We had a really lovely day together. The weather, apart from being freezing, was gorgeous. We sat outside in the sun and drank coffee and ate croissants and chatted. Then we walked down to the beach - Avalon is a fabulous place for walking - and sat on the rocks and watched the surfers. The surf looked perfect, and there were a whole bunch of die-hards out there in their steamer suits. We were so envious of them! It would be awsome to surf, but I think that you have to be pretty fearless. I tried once, many years ago, and almost drowned. Never again. Oh well, it was fun to watch them.

We sat in gran's garden again for lunch, and fed the crusts of our sarnies to the magpies and the lorikeets. A bit naughty, but kinda cute too.

We chatted all day about all sorts of things. I love my gran - she's ace tops, mate.

All in all, it was a fabulous day.

Miffed

2009-05-04T16:24:00.008+10:00

:Sulk:

I have a length of black linen that I want to make a summer weight day-dress (tourney frock) from. What I would really like to trim it with is pink - not bubblegum, but a nice dusky rose. I have looked at many, many pictures, and the only colours that black frocks were trimmed with in 16thC Germany were white, gold,Hello, you look familiar...

or,

(wait for it)

more black.

Aaargh! Why don't you people have some imagination!

So, what do you reckon? Should I be true to form and trim my frock in gold, or should I "accidentally" make it the way I want it, and just shout "Oooh look, an elephant!" any time someone asks me about my colour choice?

The first person to offer to alleviate my problem by taking the linen off my hands, or tell me I should do a stinky eye-tye, will get a boxed ear for their trouble. So there.

:Continue sulk:

Girly German coat

2009-05-03T10:49:00.010+10:00

One of the next things on my list of SCA clothing that I want to make is a schaube, or German coat. A coat is so much more useful as a keep-warm garment than a cloak or mantle - your arms are free and not weighed down by metres of fabric, and coats don't slip off your shoulders and try to choke you to death. I have been wearing one that BT made for her ex, that didn't fit him, and now I feel that it is time that I made my own.

The first hurdle was to find sufficient pictorial documentation of chicks wearing coats. More to the point, of chicks wearing coats that I liked, and weren't huge, shapeless sacks. Needless to say, although it seems that men wore coats all the time, women... not so much. The piccies are out there, one just has to look a bit harder.

Here are a few examples:
There are two in this one - I like the collar on the green one, but the sleeve treatment on the grey one.

Oooh, big pink coat.
This is St Helen, so the ermine is out. This is a seriously gorgeous coat, though.

The images above all came from REAL, which is a fabulous resource, although very damaging to your spare time. To find these images I did a search on Kleidung (clothing), and then narrowed the field to Schaube, between 1500 and 1530. It still gave me hundreds of pictures to look at (most of them with men with coats on), but all of them included someone wearing a schaube. The site also rather handily notates who is in the painting, what they are wearing, what colour it is, and any objects of interest that are also able to be searched. The only kicker is that it's all in German. It's amazing how much you can figure out on your own, though, and for the rest there's Babelfish...
This is one from Bildindex that Baggy Trousers found for me. The chick standing behind the little model church has a very cute coat on.

This one - "Portrait of a Woman aged Fifty-Seven" by Hans Muelich, 1539, is going to be the source for my colour choice. Some time back I found some faux cashmere (this is what it was called) at Spotlight. It was on special, so I bought some. It's a wool blend, mixed with poly or acrylic, and is a napped fabric, with a soft, velvet like feel, hence the faux cashmere moniker.

Many (read: most) of the schaubes, whether for men or for women, were fur lined. As I have no desire to die from heat exhaustion, I will not be lining my schaube in fur of any description. This last pic, with it's silk lining, seemed to be the best option. Not very exciting, colour-wise, but I do like the textural differences, with the velvet ribbon trim to set things off.

Taken in bright sunlight so that the differences can be seen at all. The whole thing is going to need to be interlined and probably make use of a bunch on the really expensive iron-on interfacing as well. None of it is really coat weight. Still, it will look pretty spanky when it's done (I hope)

I will keep you posted!

Things I saw on my walk today

2009-04-30T15:04:00.004+10:00

The odd juxtaposition of houses that you often see around here - one house that is impeccably kept with very neat garden, cheek-by-jowl with the scruffiest of scruffy houses where the paint is peeling and the garden is an overgown jungle.
The Bogan Princess, complete with earings that dangled to her shoulders, pushing a pram and studiously avoiding my eye so she wouldn't be forced to smile at a stranger.
The old man getting out of his car to open his garage door, the young woman taking her toddler out in the stroller, the Italian woman with the market flower garden, all of whom responded to my smile with one of their own.
The furry brown catterpiller trundling his busy way across the footpath.
The Noisy Miner in the tree barely an arms length away.
The knobbly brown seeds left after a bottlebrush has lost the flowery bits.

My eyes took many little photograhs along the way, all the colours and shapes. I actually really quite like living in the 'burbs, especially a well established one, with houses of many kinds, and lots of greenery. I just wish my friends weren't all a 30 minute drive away...

I am trying to use this time that I have on my hands to establish some good habits - daily walking, doing stuff in the garden, good cooking and eating practices.

Today's walk was a backwards version of the same walk that I did on Tuesday, but took me about 10 minutes less to complete. I walked it faster and felt better when I got home. At this rate I will be running the whole way by the end of the week! (yeah, right)

A Conundrum

2009-04-16T22:54:00.006+10:00

Well, technically it's not, because I already know the answer. You must admit, however, that it is a great word...

Imagine this scene:

A person goes to a shop with the intention of making a purchase. This person discovers that a very high quality variety of the product that they were wishing to purchase is on sale, therefore allowing them to purchase this high quality item rather than a lower quality one at the same price. This makes the person very happy, and causes them to exclaim "Excellent! I shall take two!" The person takes note of the little red price tag on the display item, which we shall call Price A. The person takes their intended purchases to the counter.

Once at the counter, as the sales assistant is peeling off the bar code stickers, the person makes note that one of the stickers displays Price A, and the other displays a price a little higher than Price A, which we will refer to as Price B. The person doesn't let this bother her, as she is quite well aware that trade practices allow that the product must be sold at the displayed price (I'm sure there are extenuating circumstances here, but I would imagine that they are generally for extreme cases).

So, imagine this person's surprise when the total cost issued to her is twice that of Price B! Remember, one of the items was barcoded at Price A, which was also the price on the display item. Technically, the shop assistant could have been in the right had she rung up one product at Price A and one at Price B, as this was the price shown on the items themselves. Then she could have been gently reminded that the goods must be charged at the display price (and isn't there something inherently wrong with charging different prices for identical items?). No, she deliberately chose to scan both products on the Price B barcode, therefore charging more that the ticketed price for one of the items, which the author hesitates to suggest is ILLEGAL, YOU STUPID WITCH!

When this was pointed out (far more politely that strictly necessary, by the way) one of the items (count it, just one) was reluctantly recharged at Price A as shown on it's bar code. Okay, so now the situation has wandered back from the precipice of illegal transaction, but still not right. There's still that pesky display price (Price A) and the fact that one can't charge different prices for identical products in the same transaction. It wasn't until the display item, with it's little red sticker with Price A on it, was fetched and shown to the World's Stupidest Shop Assistant, that she relented (with much grumbling about how people should check these things, and how she was going to get into trouble - LIKE I CARE! - and boy, how much trouble do you think you are going to be in if I write a letter of complaint about your very nearly unlawful transaction?) and chaged both products at the displayed ticket price, and to the purchaser's, by now very small, satisfaction.

All this happened at David Jones. At the Royal Doulton counter. You'd think they'd know better.

Next time I'm going to Peter's of Kensington.

Wow. No, really...just...wow.

2009-04-15T17:13:00.005+10:00

Festival has been and gone. I got the tent* finished in time to be used - needs a bit of tweaking done to it - the roof decoration still needs to be painted, and the walls need to be re-brained (I got the angles all wrong, so instead of being taut they were a bit on the saggy side), but it was workable. I even managed to get together enough stuff to have a display in the Laurel Prize Tourney this year, which turned out to be a handy thing...

On Sunday I was invited to join the Order of the Laurel. If anyone chances across this blog who is not intimate with the workings of the SCA, this is the highest level award in the Society for learning - arts, crafts, singing, gardening, research, music, cooking, etc. It's a pretty big deal. I'm still in shock. In my case this award is for my work in embroidery and costume. Neither was quite there on their own, but together made up a body of work worthy of elevation, or so I am told. It still feels a bit unreal, and really was totally unexpected. I'm pretty blown away that a bunch of intensely clever people, who's work is of a really high standard, have deemed me worthy to be their peer. The ceremony formalising my elevation took place in the Royal Court on Sunday evening.

So there you go. I went to Festival thinking nothing of note was likely to happen, that there would be hanging out at the tavern and the wine bar, carousing, maybe some shopping or taking in a class or two (I didn't manage any, which I think is a first for me), and I come home a Laurel and a Peer of the realm. Wow.

*Which spent much of it's creation being known as "that fucking tent", mostly because it took me 4 years to build it. Not because it was hard, mind you, just incredibly tedious, so I'd keep putting it aside for 9 month periods...

Doin' stuff

2009-03-31T13:39:00.003+11:00

Today has been a day of accomplishment! So far today (and to think, it's only 20 to 2, there's still heaps of doin' stuff time left!) I have managed the following:

Went to the RTA and did my knowledge test (100%, she says, huffing on her nails and buffing them against her shirt) and got my motorbike learner's permit. Hooray! and also Eep!

Took the car to the lovely and very helpful chaps at Fastfit Bullbars and Towbars in Auburn and had a very reasonably priced towbar fitted to my car.

Walked to Auburn station and caught the train to Parramatta.

Called my dad to wish him a happy birthday.

Did some wandering about, had sushi train (mmm salmon sashimi) and a devonshire tea (nto so flash - the scones had sugar in then, the cream had sugar in it, the jam was 98% sugar with a little red food colouring in it - so the whole thing was too sweet. The tea was nice though.)

Caught the train back to Auburn. Had one of those pleasant train trips where people actually talk to each other. Was wished a nice afternoon by a pleasant chap, I complimented a lady of her dress, which was very pretty, and she and her friend (who are both African of some sort) had the most beautiful little brown babies.

Got caught in the rain. Needless to say, the precipitation had been very light, a mere sprinkle, until I was caught out in the open, the furthest distance from shelter. Then it pissed down.

Picked up the car, complete with shiny new tow bar.

Came home, peeled off the wet jeans.

Made a blog entry.

If I manage more useful stuff today I will update in the evening. So much stuff to do!

Guerilla gardening

2009-03-18T20:42:00.003+11:00

Was watching the teev this evening, and channel 10's Guerilla Gardeners came on. My interest was piqued, because they were doing the little quadrangle in Newtown across the road from the Bank Hotel. This one:It ended up with a purple gazebo on the little octagon thingy, and new turf, and plants and stuff. Looked pretty funky. Unfortunately, there isn't a pic of the result.

What really got me though, was that I walked passed this area last Tuesday, and it wasn't there then. So not only the garden happened really quickly, but the post production of the show.

Weird.

Update:

OK, so I just missed it. I have been reliably informed that it was done ages ago and all got ripped out for being dead and/or unsafe. I did say it seemed a bit weird...

The great unwashed

2009-03-17T18:42:00.003+11:00

Or at least the great unemployed.

That's right, I got retrenched today. Not hugely worried - there's plenty that I can do that will keep me from starving, and I got a reasonable payout. Still, came as a bit of a surprise. So, after nearly seven years with Reece, I am now at a loose end. Kinda looking forward to having a little bit of time to myself, and then throwing myself into the challenge of getting a new job.

Should be interesting. At the very least, maybe I'll have more time to keep my blog up to date!

Update:

Yes, this did come completely out of left field, and right in the middle of me being busy, busy, busy. It's not a huge shock, though, we've been told for a while that the business isn't making any money... I am a little surprised at some, ok one, of their choices. If it was my business, I probably would have kept the person with the most experience and best knowledge of the systems (me) over the person who has been with the company for less than a year and knows waaaaaaaaaaay less about everything Reece-wise. Oh, and I know how to do her job. But still, I've been wanting to leave for a while, and now I have the opportunity to do so with the golden handshake attached. Bad time to be looking for a job, but there's always temping.

All in all, I'm pretty happy at the present time. So it's all good!

I am an island, I am an isthmus...

2009-01-10T21:36:00.004+11:00

Last Saturday, I went to a lovely BBQ at the abode of Baggy Trousers and JD. Whilst there, the charming Harry regaled us with many tales (and many rice crackers at high velocity) and some delightful clips from Youtube (where else?). For a good laugh, check out Fuck the Shit and Jizz In My Pants. Don't do it if you should be working, as the bad language (from your 'puter) and the gales of laughter (from you) will be a dead giveaway that you are not, in fact, working...

During the tall tales session, I was reminded of an act I remember seeing on Hey Hey It's Saturday, many, many years ago. Raymond J Batholomeuz, and his delightful poem, Days by the ocean. I couldn't remember the details on the night, just a few words from the poem. Watching Rockwiz tonight though, reminded me quite suddenly. You see, Brian from Rockwiz is, in fact, Raymond J Batholomeuz...

So here it is.

Flat tyre

2009-01-03T14:39:00.002+11:00

Husbands are so useful!

For the past few days I've had a large screw stuck in one of my tyres. It took me a couple of days to find it - I always seemed to have parked with the screw on the botton where it couldn't be seen - and then I'd keep forgetting to try taking it out when I was at home.

Rusty changed the tyre for me this morning. I am perfectly capable, except for the loosening of the wheel nuts part. When R is struggling with it (and he is so big and stwong), I know that there is no chance that I would be able to undo the little buggers on my own. So, now the car looks funny, with 3 mags and one spare. But, it's a good thing that I didn't manage to get the screw out before - as soon as we pried it loose, all the air came rushing out! I wasn't sure before that whether it was a screw or a bolt, and therefore, whether it had actually punctured the tyre. Yes, is the operative word here...

So, my husband has been infinitely useful, and I no longer have the insanity making tick, tick, tick of the screw hitting the tarmac every time I drive the car. Hooray!

Hot and icky

2009-01-01T19:23:00.002+11:00

Ugh, hot today. I am so much a cold weather person - this heat and humidity sucks the life out of me.

Which is why I spent the first day of 2009 lying on my bed with the air-conditioner on, reading teenage vampire romance (hey, it's not my fault. I got the second book of the Twilight trilolgy as my Chrissy Pissy pressie last year (no, the year before, now) and I picked it up as something to read whilst I ate breakfast, then had to keep going. It only took me today to read. Great literature it ain't)

New year was spent at a friend's house, hanging out, watching the fireworks on the teev, drinking champagne and margaritas. It was really nice. I'm really hoping that tomorrow will be cooler. I actually want to get stuff done, and I struggle with that concept when the weather is above 25 degrees. I know, I know. Cold weather any day.

Tomorrow will bring the installation of a salt water chlorinator for the pool, which should pay dividends in the amount of time needed to be spent on pool maintenance (which is currently way too much). After that we'll see.

Oh, and if you are wanting to know if I made any NY resolutions... are you kidding me?!?

Iz sick

2008-12-24T12:37:00.001+11:00

I must have really pissed Santa off this year. I got the flu for christmas.

I really hope I'm going to feel better tomorrow...

Bah humbug!

2008-12-18T17:34:00.005+11:00

:Snort!:

I don't normally copy LoLcats to my blog, for fear that it's too nerdy even for me, but I think this one captures the xmas spirit so beautifully...

Wheeze.... ow, I think I hurt something...

Fuck all on tv...

2008-12-01T19:53:00.003+11:00

Must mean sumer is i-cumin in.

I might be forced to go outside occaisionally.

Driving makes me sleepy...

2008-11-24T18:34:00.002+11:00

Fortunately not during the driving, though. Just afterwards.

Spent a total of about 8 hours of driving on the weekend. Went to Canberra, fighting the wind the whole way down (and then the whole way back again), to go to a cocktail party. The cocktail party was lovely, the food was yummy, I looked fabulous (no really, ask anybody, they all said so!) and I didn't get horribly drunk and therefore felt like an actual human being the next day.

The next day contained really good eggs Benedict and a really good latte, more driving, and then lots of sleeping (I'll just lie on the couch and read my book for an hour or so....).

I'm still tired though. It didn't help that today was about the longest day of my life. I'm sure they slipped an extra couple of hours in after lunch. Oh, and then one of my colleagues got sacked (no real surprise there, I'm sorry to say), but that still didn't seem to while away a great deal of time. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

I'm just going to go and rest my eyes for five minutes. Really, only five.... just resting my eyes... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Customer service - huge whinge

2008-11-19T19:24:00.003+11:00

I've been thinking a bit about customer service lately. Why? Don't know, really. Just one of those things that pops into your head and won't leave until you've given it some of your attention.

Partially, this train of thought comes from the appalling customer service I received whilst purchasing a new printer at Dick Smith Powerhouse at Lidcombe (hey, I never said that I was going to be impartial and not name names!). Appalling. A bunch of people less capable of giving any level of customer service I have yet to find.

But my faith in the future of customer service gets it's biggest shake-up from the blog that I read, maintained by a fairly well known historical pattern drafter. If you know me (and didn't stumble upon this blog by accident on the way to the fridge)* you will probably know who I mean. Now, this woman runs her own business, researching and drafting historical patterns. She also sells an enviable range of useful notions and whatnot that would be extremely handy to a reenactor. Kudos to her. She is doing something that brings her fulfilment, and servicing a niche market that has been largely ignored. What really bothers me is what I perceive to be an extreme lack of professionalism in the way she conducts her business.

Let me elaborate...

Many, in fact, there are times when one could say most, of her blog entries are whinges about how irritating and stupid her customers are, with moans and bitches about her suppliers chucked in to spice things up a bit:- They are stupid, they have unbelievably unrealistic expectations (whoo, try saying that 3 times really fast...), they make complaints about things that she couldn't possibly have any control over, don't they know how internet shopping works, oh my god, haven't you been listening to my fornight long gripe about about the printer ink saga, whaa, whaa, whaa...

You know what? Fair enough. Everyone has got the right to whinge about things that annoy them (this entry is a case in point), and with the advent of the interwebs, we can share our woes with a worldwide audience (unless it's on this blog, which gets about .0002 readers). How does that saying go? "A trouble shared is a trouble halved", or is it more along the lines of "A trouble shared is a good way of spreading the misery more evenly"... So. Go for it, knock yourself out - blog all of your whinges if that makes you feel better.

But... There's always a but.

If you are going to offload your complaints about your customer base onto the World Wide Web, shouldn't you be just a weeeeeny bit circumspect about the way you go about it? Maybe think about an anonymous blog (ooh, going out on a limb here!), or perhaps make it friends only. Noooo, that would mean that all your sycophants couldn't leave comments about how terrible it must be, poor you, to put up with these IDIOTS who buy your products, how they are soooo stupid, and how you are such a saint, and I want to be you when I grow up... Bleech. So, not only do you make your blog entirely public, but (and this is the bit I really like) you link it to your business web page, so that all of those morons that you (deep breath) have to put up with in order to run your business, can click on the link on the page that they buy their products on, and go to your journal where they can read about how stupid they are.

Does that strike anyone else as rather counterproductive? Many companies spend millions on advertising and PR to tell everyone how fabulous they are. What they generally don't do is maintain public forums where they tell the world that their customers are idiots. Of course their customers are idiots! Stupidity is what people do best. Nobody likes to be reminded of it, though. When it all comes down to it, customers are human beings, with all of the quirks and faults and ridiculous idiosyncrasies of our race. Nobody reads to the bottom of the page to see the fine print; we all want our stuff right now, goddammit; we don't want to pay for it before we have to, and if we can see our way clear to getting something for nothing we will jump at it; and most of all, we want someone to blame when things go wrong - particularly if we are at fault. That's just human nature - to think otherwise is not going to get you anywhere.

Word of mouth and repeat business are the building blocks of small business. If you whizz on your customers from a great height, you are going to get neither. True, she names no-one, but I bet that if the customer being related to in the post read it, they would be able to make the connection from a thousand paces. I don't think that I could bring myself to purchase any of her products (which is a shame, cos some of her stuff is quite nifty) , because I find her really unprofessional.

It's a good thing I'm so perfect, eh?

Enough vitriol for tonight. I think I have used up my blogging quota for some time!

See you next time something really pisses me off.

* Assuming of course that there is anyone at all who reads this blog, except me. I am the world's worst blogger after all...