Things I saw on my walk today

• 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

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.

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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!

: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...

Must mean sumer is i-cumin in.

I might be forced to go outside occaisionally.

Driving makes me sleepy...

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

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...

Urgh...

I am never drinking more than a single glass of wine again. Seriously.

One year ago today...

Thought I'd write a quick post to commemorate this day, which is the anniversary of my last post.

Nothing really to report today, just thought I'd celebrate one year of no blogging!

He he he

So incrediably crap at blogging............

Sorry,

I really am incredibly rubbish at this whole maintaining an online presence thing..... I guess it comes down to the "spend all day at work on the computer, get home and want nothing to do with one" factor.

Meh.

So what's been happening? Well, went to NZ again, this time for Midwinter (which was fabulous) and actually managed to take the husbondo for a bit of a holididleday as well. Drove around, saw some snow, pushed each other over in said snow, had a nice time. I wore the black Cranach frock, that has now had it's skirt fixed, and looks like a real dress, and (wait for it) even got some photos!!! I know! Even I'm amazed!

With the lovely Gillian (looking smashing in my hat....!!)

And from the back, in front of a rather charming fireplace.

On the costuming front - I've finished the beading!!!!!!! YAY!!! Now I just have to manage the hard bit - making the frock. Yikes. And I want to get all this done by the 1st September. Along with the Rowany banners that I am helping with, and the Festival organisational stuff that I'm doing. I've said it before - I need a job that gives me both more money and takes less time. 2 chances - bugger all and none.

Ah, c'est la vie.

Anyway, I'm not going to get this dress done chatting with you lot, so I'm off!

See you in another 2 months or so........

More frocky goodness, Part II

On to the actual sewing part.....

Work has currently stalled on the Beaded Frock of Instanity, because I am perilously close to having the beading finished. What I need to do now is start putting the bodice together, so that I can ensure that all the beading patterns match up properly.

So, I have been fixing some of the problems with the black and gold Cranach frock that I made last year. Here's a slightly blurry photo of me wearing said frock (that I nicked unashamedly from Miss D, because it's the only photo that I have of this dress. Sorry D)

Now, the bodice is pretty good. I'm really happy with the way it turned out - there are a couple of things that I would do differently, but overall it's turned out well. I'll go into some of the details about how I built it a bit later.

The skirt was a disaster, which is odd, because you'd think it would be the easy part. The problem stemmed from the fact that the dress is made from a really soft wool twill. I has a beautiful hand, and a lovely drape, but realistically speaking, was too soft and drapey for a renaissance frock. So over the past couple of weeks I took the skirt off and re-jigged the whole thing. Firstly, I lined the skirt with a ramie-cotton blend fabric, which has enough stiffness to add some body to the soft wool. It's essentially bag lined - the inner and outer layers of the skirt are sewed together at the waist, right sides together, and then flipped inside out. This also meant that I had a nice clean edge to attach to the bodice. Around the hem I have sewn a deep band of......ahem, stiffening fabric.....(I'mnotgoingtotellanyonethatit'stullebecausethen they'llknow) which has the two-fold benefit of kicking the hem out, and helping the pleats form the deep conical shapes that you tend to see in the Saxon gowns in Cranach's paintings. If I were to try a more period approch, I would lean towards canvas, or a woven horsehair braid, although it's possible that I wouldn't need a layer of stiffening, as the quality of the fabric used is likely to be quite different. As all fabric in our time period (600-1600AD) was hand woven - and this is one of those times when the word "always" can be used with impunity - the weave was tighter, and the fabric likely to have quite a different drape. One of these days I'll pull out some of the documentation I've got floating around that talks about the making of fabric, so that I can back up what I'm saying here, but that's a project for later.

Once the fabric was lined, I could re-attach it to the bodice. I used some thick, felty wool to pad out the pleats in the back, but I left this out (this time) in the front, because I didn't want too much bulk over my tummy. Now all that's left is to hem it, and sew on some guarding to match that on the bodice. That ought to be fun - there's over 10 linear metres in that hem, that's a lot of handsewing.......Sigh! I will post some photos once I have figured out why the flash on my camera isn't working.

More frocky goodness

Further to the post before Luke Skywalker (yes, it was terrible) I was talking about the picture of the chicky with the red insert in the front of her frock. Well, here she is!

And here is a close-up of her tummy

It's an interesting view - and you can see how it could be interpreted as an under-bodice stiffened with boning or reeds. I am loath to use the word corset here. When I think corset I think of it as being a much more rigid undergarment, used to shape the body, rather than moulding itself to the body's natural shape, and just smoothing everthing out a bit.

May the 4th.........be with you.

Sorry.........just couldn't resist!