And Almost Undetectable!

[More fun from Vintage Ads.]

5 Hump-Day Items Of Gratitude

I feel like I'm starting to get a cold, sore throat etc, but in the spirit of positivity here's 5 things about this Wednesday morning that I'm digging:

• I've said this before, but my local cafe's Pear & Pecan loaf never fails to satisfy.
  
• Sexy, compact redheads with cute butts. (Yes coffee shop guy, I'm looking at you.)
  
• Sexy young dads with salt & pepper hair. (Yes the other coffee shop guy, I'm looking at you too.)
  
• Booking carpet cleaners for Saturday morning. I know, but it is oddly satisfying to me.
  
• Warm sunny weather! Now that Autumn is here in Sydney, the rain has temporarily abated. It's a world gone mad.
  

I Need Your Opinion

Referring to your bedroom as The Jack Shack is:
(a) Amusing
(b) Accurate
(c) Juvenile
(d) All Of The Above
(e) Who is this Jack person?

Because in truth, I no longer trust my own insticts on these things.

Happy Birthday To You

If you've read this blog for a while, or perhaps read my old 100 Things post, then you probably know that both of my parents passed away from cancer many years ago. My mum died at the age of 55 when I was 21, and it's amazing to me to think that she would be 77 years old now. Today.

Wow. Aside from the frailty that came from the latter stages of her cancer illness, the image I have of my mother is fixed in middle age. To think of her as elderly is a mind shift I can't quite make. She was 34 when I was born, the last of the three kids. So she was in her forties for much of the childhood I remember. A short, busty, friendly, popular woman. One who negotiated the relationship with my rather taciturn father with quite a bit of patience, pursed lips sometimes and the rare cathartic plate smash. (She kept a small stack of old crockery under the kitchen sink just for that purpose.) She loved Sean Connery's 'James Bond', English comedies and action movies, and when she found something funny would laugh in a high whooping laugh that still makes me smile to think of it.

We were good mates she and I, and if we ever fought we always ended it by agreeing that we were friends again. Happy Birthday mum, I miss you.

Bowling For Adrienne & Sarah

Photo heavy posting today!

I had a really nice weekend, although Saturday was partly a day of missed connections. I went to knitting at cafe Barmuda in the early afternoon, and I had intended to go and watch the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade in the evening. I had bugged Mikey (the lovely ex) during the week to try and find out if friends of ours were watching the parade or having parties, but nothing seemed to be organised. Although I was presented with the last minute option of going in the parade. In hindsight I probably should have, or should have been more proactive about making plans.

I elected not to go in the parade, and so after having a quiet night at home and going to bed I got a phone call at 5 minutes to midnight with a group of drunk friends telling me I should get dressed and go out with them! I have to say, I was a bit frustrated by it. If they had rung an hour or two earlier I might have joined them, or if I had known they were planning on partying after the parade I might have made plans to meet with them afterwards. So I ended up feeling kind of put on the spot, and as if I was being lame by not getting out of bed and going out. Eh, as I said I should have been more proactive.

I had an early start planned for Sunday morning, breakfast and a fabric shopping expedition (for her) with my friend Judy. We headed into the city and managed to find what Judy was looking for, before she dropped me off in Petersham to meet up with a group of my friends at a lawn bowls club, for a combined birthday party for my friends Adrienne and Sarah.

As it turned out Sarah was home in bed with the flu, but a bunch of us hung out at the club, celebrated with Adrienne and toasted Sarah in her absence, ate, played bowls, drank, chased children around the greens and had a grand time. The morning had been grey and cool, but by early afternoon had become bright, sunny and quite hot. Perfect sitting in the shade sipping shandies weather.

Adrienne & Daen's son Oliver (L), and lining up for a shot (R)


The jack, an irresistable lure for the kids (L), lawn bowls (R)


Pink geraniums growing by the greens (L), disused score numbers (R)


Jasper, Jack Thief (L), Oliver being sun smart (R)


Lorrikeet in the rubber tree (L), Keith and Zoe share some quiet time (R)

I left the bowling club late afternoon to meet up with my friend John who was in town from Perth for Mardi Gras, another friend Andrew who I hadn't seen for about 15 years, and Bernard and his partner Stewie. We sat in the beer garden of the Courthouse Hotel, laughed, boy watched, caught up, ate and drank. It was lovely! By about 9 o'clock I had to go home or fall over. After about 9 hours of eating and drinking they were frankly my only two options.

On balance, a very good weekend. You?

[Click the pics to see them full sized on Flickr.]

LolWinona

Thanks for the inpsiration Thom!

Seperated At Birth

Alexander McQueen, Fall 2008 RTW (top).
Aunty Jack, Australian tv 1972-73 (bottom).

Coincidence?

[More Aunty Jack info on Nostalgia Central. Alexander McQueen photo courtesy of Fabulon.]

A Horst Is A Horst

Of course, of course.

Le sigh. I hope one day to be able to take photos as half as well as Horst P. Horst did. The world needs glamour.

Meet & Greet

Last night was the GLBTI Blogger meet at the Courthouse Hotel. I had booked a table under cover, but still outside, and as it turned out the weather didn't really smile upon us. It was fairly chilly and wet, and even though we stayed dry (for the most part) it could have been more pleasant.

The warmth of the company went a long way to making it fun though. There were quite a few people I already knew, Riayn and Marcellous who I had both met once before at Sydney Blogger Meet, James (of course) who I have known for a few years, Grant who I have known for more than 20 years, Therin who I have known for almost the same length of time, my fellow knitting buddy Mary-Helen, and Panther who's house I once went to a party at but hadn't seen for about 20 years! Small world indeed. Ninglun and Mike I hadn't met before, and their blogs were completely new to me.

Here's a mousketeers' roll call of the attendees, and check out these blogs because there are some great reads:

• Grant, who is also A Girl Called Dusty
  
• James O'Brien
  
• Marcellous, the man who is Stumbling On Melons
  
• Mary-Helen, who puts the witty in Witty Knitter
  
• Mike, one half of the handsome duo El Loco & El Lobo
  
• Ninglun, who is writing New Lines From A Floating Life
  
• Riayn, is Dancing About Architecture
  
• Panther, who stalks Pinkboard
  
• Therin, who's motto is Have Phaser, Will Travel

James has written a really good recap of the evening, with his thoughts. I had a really great time, and it was fantastic to see such a diverse group of people. We talked about our blogs, about plagiarism on The Interweb, knitting (yay, Mike is a knitter too!), travel, tv, all sorts of things.

The conversation flowed easily, which has been my experience with meeting other bloggers in the past. I guess blogging really is an extension of our desire to communicate after all, and as such bloggers are generally pretty good communicators. Even though some of us are a little more shy in person than on our blogs, I guess because our own blogs give as a safe space to write our thoughts in (interweb trolls aside).

James, Riayn and I hung at the pub out until about 9pm, by which time it was raining fairly heavily and the cold had driven us inside. I made the short walk home in the rain, having had a fun night and looking forward to all the new blogs I now have to read!

Thunderbolt And Lightning. Very, Very Frightening Me.

Dear Queen,
(the band, not the person... or persons),
As entertaining as "Bohemian Rhapsody" is, I think you'll find that it's actually lightning bolts and thunder claps. I mean, "thunderbolt"? Oh, and maybe "very, very frightening TO me" would be a sentence worth your consideration.
Cordially, TOA.

It has been raining on and off for most of the day here today, with storms forecast. A short while ago, completely without warning, there was a lightning flash and simultaneous humungous crash of thunder. Louder than I have ever heard before, and closely followed by flickering electricity, and various building and car alarms. Yup, I think the building scored a direct hit.

It was enough to make me exclaim Fuck! at the top of my lungs, let me tell you.

I wonder what the good Christians here at The Big Christian Charity that I work for have to make of that? I think we just got smited*. I don't care what they say, I am NOT taking the blame for this. Not this time.

* Smote? Smitten?

Colour Inspiration

Oh man, I have a new obsession! Ever since I saw this on Apartment Therapy earlier today I've been looking through all the entries on Kris's Color Stripes blog.

Kris is an artist and fashion designer in Italy who takes favourite photos and deconstructs them into colour palettes. Because most of the photos are of nature, what you end up with are quite harmonious palettes.

So fantastic! I just mentally redecorated my house about 10 times over!

[All photos and palettes from Kris's Color Stripes blog.]

Self Inflicted

Another Thursday, another (slight) hangover. Ay dios mio, I need to ease up on those midweek beers with my homies. Homos... Whatever...

And tonight more beers! Um, yay. The GLBTI Blogger Meet is on tonight. My only concern right now though is the weather, storms are forecast for today and we are going to be outside in a beer garden. Under cover, but still outside. Oops. I'm sure it'll be fine, right! ::crosses fingers::



I'm really looking forward to it. I have already met about half of the people intending to come along, but there's going to be some new faces in there. I've been to a few blogger meets of various kinds, and with the exception of a few freaky "I'm going to blog to make a fortune, because people will pay to read anything" types (I kid you not), everyone I've met so far has been pretty cool and interesting.

Oh crap, that means the pressure is on for me to try and be cool and interesting...

Ummm, If You Say So!

Dirty.

[Via Vintage Ads]

Urban Archeology In Newtown

Over the past few weeks I've been taking my camera with me almost everywhere I go, and I snapped these pics while wandering the back streets and lanes of my suburb Newtown. It's amazing how much you can find within 5 minutes of home, if you look hard enough. I particularly love the layers of this place. Paint over paint, signs of new occupation over old, of people making their marks.

There's no stopping puffy.

Or bust?

Slightly crazed in Newtown. I know how it feels!

[I'm having some firewall issues with Flickr on my work computer at the moment, so I haven't posted these to Flickr. But as alway, you can click these pics to see the full sized version.]

Absolute Alliteration!

More vintage pulp fun courtesy of BookScans.

Still Getting My Ass Kicked

By work. Ay dios mio! I'm so used to doing the bare minimum working at my own pace that to have to sort out this complicated mess I mentioned yesterday, whilst working to a deadline, is well and truly kicking my ass. Boring, right? I know.

On the upside one of my team mates here at work just left on a bakery run. Mmmmmmm, fat.

So what else do I have to tell you? Let me see...

Still obsessed with So You Think You Can Dance: Australia, even though I stopped blogging about it. (Until now, I guess.) All I can say, the judges got it wrong last night. Rhiannon and JD should have gone home.

I watched the Oscars last night. I thought the telecast was a little flat. Jon Stewart was very funny, but the audio was a little weird in parts. You couldn't hear the announcements of who was presenting each award, for instance. But one word for Katherine Heigl:



The word is GORGEOUS.

I made risotto for dinner last night, and I made enough for two meals. Then of course it was so good I ended up scarfing down most of it. I'm a pig. A pig who's also a good cook, that is.

My boss has the radio playing in his office, and right now it's playing Celine Friggin' Dion. [hate]

I wish she'd hurry with those pastries.

All The Fishes In The Sea, Couldn't Be Happier Than You And Me

Curious fact of the day: there is an International Aquatic Plant Layout Contest.



True.

[Link via things magazine.]

Trend Watch

Clowns.

Somehow even the pretty ones are a bit scary.

However

...so that I don't appear dour after my little rant earlier, can I just say that a night that involves a) the So You Think You Can Dance: Australia results show, and b) The Oscars makes for such a fagalicious night of tv that I want to squeeeee! and inadvertantly moisten my knickers just a little. Seriously.

Does Not Compute

Oh my dears. I was feeling reasonably upbeat this morning when I sat at my desk and turned on my computron. Ugh, was.

(I say reasonably upbeat because I'd had a bit of a weird weekend. I had a really nice time at a function on Saturday afternoon, got rather drunk and spent the rest of Saturday night sobering up. In fact I promised my friend Graeme I'd write a blog post about Saturday but I'm not in the right headspace at the moment.

Then I went to my regular knitting group on Sunday and nobody showed up, so I got kind of shitty and frustrated and ended up feeling like I'd wasted an entire afternoon. In fairness the knitting group is one of those drop-in things that people come and go at, so I didn't have a real right to be ticked off, but the reality is that sitting alone at a table for 6 for 45 minutes in a crowded beer garden, while everybody else who is looking for a table gives you the stink eye, is officially no fun.)

Anyhoo, back to today. So after posting my previous post early this morning about the GLBTI Blogger Meet I started a task here at work that is so mind numbingly tedious and frustrating that if I actually told you in detail, well all your synapses would simulatneously explode in misguided attempt at self-preservation.



The short description is to do with Income & Expenditure reports, with us carefully informing our head office of where each item we bank needs to be allocated, and with them apparently shredding everything we send them and then randomly reassembling them into something that uses the same source material, but bears no relation to the spirit (or meaning) of the original. My task is kind of like looking at the original and looking at the end result and trying to reconcile the two. Fun!

I think my own synapses started committing hari-kiri some hours ago...