Best Friends

[Photos via Vintage Photo.]

Inspired

One of my favourite design blogs Desire To Inspire has a weekly feature that is absolutely slaying me. Simply called "Pets on furniture" it does exactly what it says on the tin. There's pets, and they're on furniture.

But oh, the puppehs. (And sometimes, oh the furniture!)

Case in point:


"Here is my dog Baron on our Chesterfield. Sometimes I come home and see him sitting like that waiting for me! He's about 100 pounds at 18 months and cuddly like a teddy bear."
- Jeanette

I need to cuddle Baron immediately, once I've fetched him his pipe and slippers that is.

5 Things About Thursday, 19th March: Books & Bitches Edition

• The whiff of Autumn is in the air. It's been warm and lovely the past few days, but the days are getting noticeably shorter and the night's cooler. Time to get serious about the Autumn/Winter knitting schedule.
  
• There is a gorgeous, huge Great Dane bitch who roams the 'off lead' dog park near my house with her owner. She's so sweet and inquisitive that she's quite the belle of the park, everyone loves to stop for a pat and she usually has at least one little lapdog running around her ankles. What I really love is that she's the unofficial peace keeper of the park. Any snappishness or roughhousing sees her giant concerned nose poked into the fray, and all it takes is one deep, booming woof to scatter the participants. Tonight it was a gaggle of little yapsters that got the caution.
  
• Today I chatted briefly to visiting US blogger and kitchen whizz La Diva Laura! I've only recently statered reading Laura's blog, but we 'know' each other from Thombeau and Fabulon. It looks like we'll be catching up this weekend, I can't wait!
  
• I'm so grateful to be gainfully employed in this economic climate, but Great Caesar's Ghost my job's exhausting at the moment. I had a change of boss, and he's a little less highly strung, but this is a tough time to be someone responsible for keeping the funds flowing in! Everybody wants to hold onto their cash, and very few want to pay their bills.
  
• And yet curiously, I've been on a book buying spending spree. Sequels! The third Lucifer Box novel by Mark Gatiss, the seventh Retrieval Artist novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, "Imperium" by Robert Harris (sequel to "Pompeii"). Not a sequel, but I did also snap up the companion volume to the brilliant tv series I loved How Art Made The World. I want a world made by art.
  

GLBT Mardi Gras Fair Day, 15 Feb 2009!

Sunday, part 2.

OMG, what a fabulous day! Yes the weather was a bit crap, cool but sunny one minute, bucketing down with rain the next, then sunny and humid. Hello, pick just one and go with it Global Warming, at least I could plan my wardrobe.

Speaking of which, kilt pics! (As promised.) I LOVED wearing it, and got lot of attention, including some favourable comments from strangers. In my opinion though there was one guy that looked better in a kilt on the day, and that was Mr Leather Sydney 2008 in a leather micro kilt. Woof.

Oh yeah, and there was this other rather attractive boy there. OMG IT'S MATTHEW MITCHAM. SQUEEEEE!

He and his partner Lachlan were just hanging out, watching the drag shows, while gay men all around (and I speak from first hand knowledge) were plotzing so hard. I could. Have. Died. I was too shy to talk to him but I did snap some pics, and I took a pic of Graeme with him for Graeme. (Who was braver than I). And you know what, he and Lachlan couldn't have been nicer and more gracious. Crush! These guys are a class act.

Gratuitous underwear competition photo, no explanation required.

The fair was as fun as always. The unpredictable weather was a nuisance, but didn't dampen (ha!) the spirit of the day. I wandered with Graeme and James, chatted with other friends I ran into and hung out at the Leather Pride stall and chatted with Fin and Bec (right) for some of the afternoon. Speaking of hot bitches (sorry ladies!) there were adorable puppers everywhere (left). I could die from the cuteness. Couldn't you?

The Budweiser Bunny! Sometimes the funny things you see, really. You could not make this stuff up.

How about that pink fur, and the licorice button nose! OMG, diabetic coma!

So it was a really fabulous afternoon, one of the most enjoyable Fair Days I've been to. A few beers, and lots of fun just hanging out with James and Graeme, and meeting up with people was had. It was so refreshing to be reminded of the diversity of the community again, and that is one of the great things about Fair Day. In my own small way I did my bit for the team by answering every darn community questionnaire that came my way.

AND DID I TELL YOU I SAW MATTHEW MITCHAM?!

Bow-Wow Wow!

[All pics via www.art.com.]

LOLDOGS!

It's kind of hard to hang out on the net without encountering the lolcats phenomena, so I guess it was only a matter of time before dog lovers got in on the act:

Stinky Dinky

Fancy a fag, fella?


The Beauregarde sisters were many things, precocious was one of them.


They called him "Old Yella". (Because that was the colour of his teeth.)

[All pics via Shorpy.]

Chistmas - The Picture Edition

I spent this Christmas with my sisters in Ballarat (about an hour out of Melbourne), and stayed with the younger of my two sisters and her family. Oh, and her menagerie of two cats and two dogs. One thing my parents did was raise us all to be obsessive animal lovers! I mentioned the other day that I shot lots of pets and buildings this Christmas, well this is pretty much the pets side of the Christmas photo shooting.

I don't think I'd been in the door for more than about 10 minutes before I was buried under 4 furry bodies. My sister's big labrador has interestingly followed the lead of her little Shihtzu, and somehow considers herself to be a 'lapdog'. Ooof.

The venerable aged Nigel (L) and the uber lapdog 'she who must sit upon' Choochie (R)


Sweet (and somewhat needy) LuLu (L) and the pretty girl cat, that turned out to be a boy cat, Zeus (formerly known as Xena) (R)


My sister has a Santa fetish, just a few of the 16 I counted on her mantle (L), James unwrapping a Nintendo DS with much happiness (R)


Connor unwraps an electric guitar (which he plays surprisingly well) (L), while Nigel passes comment on the wearying nature of Christmas (R)

Watching my nephews enjoy themselves was a large part of the fun. Connor does a passable "Smoke On The Waters" on the electric guitar, and James pretty much disappeared with the Nintendo DS, only to reappear for meals.

Once Christmas day was over I went into Ballarat to have a wander around, check out the post Christmas sales (a bit underwhelming, but it's a small town after all) and shoot lots of pics of the lovely Victorian era architecture. Ballarat was a major focus of the Australian goldrush, so was a very cashed-up city in its day. Big wide streets and elegant public buildings, most of which have thankfully been retained. Pics to come!

Weekend Recap, Now With Pictures!

Compared to the social whirligig and hullabalu of last weekend, this weekend was a more relaxed and sedate affair. As befits a man of my advancing years.

Saturday morning (early, early morning) saw myself, Judy and her handsome son John tackle the monthly Pyrmont Growers' Market. I don't know whether it was the unseasonably warm weather, the early sunrise or some memo was passed around, but it was packed. Maybe it was the mountains of cheap new season asparagus?



This gear makes your pee smell, just so you know. Forewarned and all that. I didn't buy any asparagus (q.v. Asparagus: smelly pee) but I did buy a gorgeous bunch of really dark purple Sweet Peas, which really looked the business in one of my pale green 'Depression Glass' vases that used to belong to my mother.

(I collect this glassware, although it has started to get really expensive now. Which is more than ironic because it was super cheap glassware in its day, and was at the height of its popularity during The Depression. I have about a dozen pieces now.)



Saturday I decided to have a quiet night in (this is becoming a pattern), but as it turns out not such an enjoyable one. I've had really disturbed sleep of late, which is usual for me at the first blast of warm weather as it always takes me a while to adjust to the warmer nights. I turned in about midnight, but was woken up around 12.30am by a) a pizza delivery guy banging on the front door, b) my flatmate tromping up the hallway and c) said flatmate standing right outside my bedroom door calling out "Sweetie, hurry up! The pizza is here!". I have a problematic relationship with sleep at the best of times, and being woken up like this is officialy Not Good. You know Mr Furious from "Mystery Men"? We share a super power. After I got out of bed, stomped through the house, yelled at my flatmate and his boyfriend, and slammed a few doors. I didn't really feel any better, but I might have made my point. Maybe. If you wake me up by accident, fine, I can live with that. Wake me up through a lack of consideration or rudeness, then look out.

Anyhoo. Yesterday I hung out with Mikey (the lovely ex), who was dog/house/tropical fish sitting for our friends Bec & Steve. Mikey's new boyfriend Evan was away in Melbourne for the weekend, for a friend's birthday, so Mikey and I just hung out, had lunch, a beer at The Green Park Hotel, a bottle of yummy Veuve Clicquot pink champagne and then an early Thai dinner.

Part of the fun of hanging out at Steve & Bec's place is Rex the Papillion. Aka the Leaf Thief:



The aftermath:



It's a massacre!

Puppers

The more I hang out with the dogs of my friends, the more I feel like I need one of my own.


One of my friend Spyder's beautiful whippets.

Mind you, I've thought this about boyfriends in the past. We know how that one's worked out. They're all cute and stuff when you get 'em, then they start chewing on your best shoes and it's all downhill from there.

Puppers Playtime

On Sunday night, after yum cha with Mikey and his parental units, and a beverage fest at the Green Park Hotel, Steve and Bec invited Mikey and myself back to their place for dinner.

Of course this means more pics of Rex the baby Papillon (oh, and 'smokingly hot Steve' as he is now known).


Cuddle time with Rex and Steve.


Still tiny, but getting bigger every day. I think the ears grew first.


Licky face! Rex and Mikey

Australia Day Pics

As promised, here are some pics from the lovely afternoon spent on Friday at Michael's farewell lunch.


Celia's beautiful old boy "Tigger" (left), and Jeff & Patrick's gorgeous girl "Zelda" (right)


Pink tinted frangipanis in Celia's beautiful courtyard


Jeff and Zelda, and a finger dipped in apple juice


Some more shots from the courtyard, lush plants and sculptural bits of industrial machinery blended in surprisingly well with the Mediterranean style.