Unfortunate Name

My friend Judy just sent me this on email...



...which just goes to show that she understands my sense of humour perfectly.

File This Under "Keeping The Wolves From The Door"

My job here at the Big Christian Charity finishes tomorrow, and given the recent arrival of my nemesis I'm ready to move on. (My nemesis and I had a massive fight yesterday! I didn't tell you because I would have spilled stinking black bile all over The Internetz. Today, I've moved on.)

The person I normally deal with at my agency is on leave at the moment, so getting someone else to take an interest in my case has been frustrating. I did some lobbying and networking of my own today and I've scored a short term stint back at the first department I worked at here at the Big Christian Charity. It's a compromise, but at least it means gainful employment for a little while and a safety net to find something permanent.

Plus it's back with a bunch of people I used to enjoy working with... and no nemesis.

Actions Have Consequences

One night of passion...

Jackie Beat and 'friend', [courtesy of Thom at Fabulon]

Can mean a lifetime of explanations...

Photo by George Platt Lynes

The Wednesday Night Irregulars

I feel a wee bit improved today, still hacking and all but not as badly and my chest doesn't feel as tight. Oh, and it's not raining! Not! Raining! (Sure, rain is forecast for later, but let's not be a buzzkill m'kay?)

Maybe it's the therapeutic powers of beer and conversation. After hardly going out at all for the past couple of weeks, I decided to catch up with the regular Wednesday pub crowd. The irregular regulars, if you will. Fun! Beers and laughs were had, and conversation ranged far and wide. As far as the comparitive bulges (or 'bluges' thanks to a famous typo by James) of all the current crop of Big Brother boys, for example. Highbrow!

As it was I was home and tucked in bed before 10.30, and only had a couple of beers, so I'm sure the evening could be labelled therapeutic.

Good for the soul, at least.

I Have Succumbed

There comes a time in every novice knitter's life when you just have to look deep within yourself, to search the darker recesses, to consider the daunting and the scary and to bite that bullet and say to yourself "It's a right of passage, and I'm up to the challenge."

To knit the first pair of socks.

Oh, you may laugh. You may until you go ahead and pick up those skinny little double pointed needles (that's sharp at BOTH ends, just so we're clear). All FIVE of them that is. Five needles! At the same time! 5 teeny, skinny, doubly pointy sharp needles that look like they are so skinny and so, well, many that you just know the stitches are going to fall right off those suckers as you try and juggle 5 needles with only the 2 hands that nature saw fit to give you.

So, I'm ready for the challenge.

Oh and I've got some cool yarn on the way. Passionfruit it's called and it's giving this fruit the passions, and that's for sure. The photo doesn't do it justice. It's all purply and olive green/grey in real life, and even though it's also scarily fine to go along with the scarily skinny needles I still love it unreservedly.

Fun times ahead.

Well You Can Colour My World With Sunshine Yellow Each Day

Fresh on the heels of me extolling my love for the Grammercy Park Hotel's new colour palette, comes a collection of colour palettes inspired by Old Master paintings over at ColourLovers. Fabulous! I think I need to paint a dining room 'Picasso'...

[Link via the always colourful thingsmagazine.net.]

Miraculous

On the way home from my (aborted attempt at an) honest day's labour yesterday I popped into Borders at Parramatta to find something to read. I normally prefer to shop at the small independent booksellers, but Parramatta is pretty short on those and I needed something for the ride home.



The upside of shopping at Borders is that they seem to be having some pretty agressive sales on some interesting new books these days. A week or so ago I had flicked through a copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver in a bookshop in Newtown. I put it back down again though when I decided that as interesting at seemed I didn't want to pay the $29.95 paperback price at that time. So I was especially pleased to see that Borders had dropped the price by $10 to $19.95!

Does that make me sound cheap? Tight? I hope not, but with the rate I churn through books it can get to be an expensive habit when you buy lots of books around the $30 mark.

Anyhoo. I was really intrigued by the idea behind the book. Barbara and her family relocated to a small farm, and took this as an opportunity to try and spend a year only eating food that was seasonal, locally produced, or at least whose provinence they could vouch for. Basically eating the way recent generations ate, and much of this planet still does. What they couldn't produce themselves they would source from local growers.

Along the way Kingsolver examines how the industrialised food production system works, the phenomenal amount of resources expended and cost added in trucking out of season produce across the world, obesity and processed food, and how out of touch most consumers are with really fresh good produce. It's fascinating stuff, and just starting to read it has made me want to seek out local growers' markets and think more about the value of a really good in season tomato. Or apple. It's kind of sobering to think about just how old some of this stuff is by the time it arrives in the supermarket, how little the grower receives and how much of the value of the item is made up in petrol and freight.

It's an interesting read, full of the personal as well as the political. There is a website associated with the book, where you can read more about it and even print off some of the recipes that are in the book.

Food for thought. (Sorry, had to.)

One Of THOSE Mornings And One Of THOSE Entries

I'm still struggling with this verchacte bronchitis, and frankly it's getting even more boring for me than it is for you. For realz. Trudging into work every day through torrential Winter rain is officially Not Helping me get rid of this thing. After one of the worst drought periods in history we now have been blessed with endless, endless rain. Or so it seems. Right now I'm starting to doubt that I may ever be completely dry again.

(Oh, and I become a drama queen when I'm sick. Prone to hyperbole.)

Yesterday I made it into the office, stayed an hour and a half, and then turned around and went home again. A total of nearly three hours of travel time for an hour and a half spent in the office. You know, something is not right with that equation and I should have just saved myself the bother. Hindsight, you know?

I feel a bit like that maiden aunt that does nothing but talk about her bad veins and bursitis at the moment. Middle of the night coughing fits do not good blog posts make. Hey kids, let's rap about sputum!

See?

Flame On!

I caught Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer on Sunday morning with Mikey (the lovely ex). The verdict? Somewhat disappointing. Thank God that Chris Evans has a completely gratuitous contractual obligation shirtless scene. Seriously. It took my mind off the script for a minute (actually, it took my mind of everything else but his furry pecs for a minute). That's a Good Thing.



And if I didn't have a thing about the skin tight wetsuit look, then I do now. Nice packaging, huh?

Such a big budget quality franchise and yet such a lame cobbled together script. How do they do that? It had great moments, the action scenes were largely, well, fantastic but the poor actors looked like they were struggling to get enthused with some of the lines they had to utter.

A Long Way From 28 Barbary Lane

My friend James mentioned to me on Saturday that he had bought the new "Tales Of The City" book "Michael Tolliver Lives". I was kind of surprised that I wasn't aware of it before because I'm a big fan of the series (having started reading them around 20 years ago when only the first few had been published). I was stuck for a book to read on the train home a couple of days ago, so I popped into Borders with some excitement to see if they had it. They did.

I was a bit daunted by the $32.95 price tag on the large 'trade' (appropos?) sized paperback, especially when a flick through it showed that the text was equally oversized and a bit sparse. Given that the book is set in the present day with our young hero Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver now a 55 year old, maybe the large format text was thematic.

The cover of the Australian edition. In my opinion, thoroughly underwhelming.

I'm not a fan of the Australian edition cover (above). The design itself is ok and very eye-catching, but unless it crops again up at the end of the novel (I'm not there yet), the orchid shown on the cover is only mentioned in a throw away aside in one line in one scene. It just doesn't seem to fit this book. I much prefer the overseas style cover (below) which at least places the story in the context of San Francisco, the city which itself is almost a character in all of the novels.

The cover of the overseas edition. I think this places it much more into the "Tales Of The City" oevre.

It pains me to write this, but it's just ok. I haven't finished it yet but I'm around 75% done. The other "Tales Of The City" books always entertained with their outlandish coincidences, topical storylines, loveable characters and sense of this large collection of friends being 'family'. I don't get that from this book.

I read a somewhat scathing review in the online UK Guardian, much of which I sadly agree with. (A less opinionated publisher's review is here.)

The novel is entertaining enough, but doesn't read like a 'Tales' book. For a start the invisible narrator (Maupin himself) is absent and the novel is written in Michael's first person voice. Sure the characters are older and their journeys have changed. Sure people that we loved intensely once and thought we'd be Best Friends Forever with move on. Sure we live in complicated and difficult times. But, where's the joy? Where's the novel 'family' we grew to love? Largely absent, sadly. Taking some of the charm with them.

I don't hate it. Not by a long shot, but I loved these books and these characters. I do think Maupin has lost his way here somewhat. In trying to make a later instalment with older, more adult characters who reflect the changes of ageing he has lost the fun of the earlier books.

I guess reading it makes me feel sort of a bit sad and old myself in an odd way. Like you sat down with a bunch of longterm friends, only to think "you know what, we used to be more fun than this".

Pirates, Log Cabins and Small Men In Big Coats (or The Post In Search Of A Theme)

Sweet, sweet Jeebus it was freezing cold this morning!

I got to bed late last night (hey thanks The Amazing Race: All Stars! and adios princecitas Oswald and Danny) and when I woke up this morning it was cold and dark and I really, really did not want to get out of bed. But I did. Lurching around my room like a zombie in search of robe and slippers (if zombies shiver and cough like they are hacking up an undead lung that is). Fast forward to a freezing cold bathroom and a hot, hot shower which gave rise to a thought process around the concept of staying under that stream of warm deliciousness forever.

An hour and a half, two train rides and some steely resolve later and I'm trudging the 20 minute trudge from the train station to the office in my big English cashmere & wool coat, scarf and somewhat pinched face. I'd like to think I looked Wintery and stylish and so very European, but suspect the effect is more cranky Teletubby than Milan catwalk.

So many pretty word pictures, right? Anyhoo, that's been my morning so far but let's press on.

In a bid to try and rid myself of this kennel cough I stayed in last night and consequently subjected myself to some bad television. Specifically, Pirate Master which is the sort of show where people labelled Scientist/Exotic Dancer wear bad pirate drag like they are drummer #2 in an Adam & The Ants cover band, and stomp around a really shoddy piece of art direction talking about how they 'intimidate' others. Right. If being a wanker is intimidating, sure. I suspect what they really mean is "I have a history of problems with people, but I'm not prepared to consider that the fault lies with me.", you know? They cannot be blamed for their fabulousness being a problem for others, obviously.

So. Pirates. Or Survivor: Eye-patch Edition as I came to think of it.

The one thing I did do last night that I'm proud of, and that did not make me want to throw anything at the television, was try some log cabin knitting. Love it! I started knitting some squares for the charity Wrap With Love in preparation for the Knit-In next month. 25cm squares of garter stitch (just basic knit stitch repeated endlessly) are kind of boring to knit, so I thought it'd be a nice little object to give log cabin a try. Fun! I might take a stab at knitting a throw rug for myself at some point using this technique.

My night ended with The Amazing Race: All Stars! to the clack of the needles before I tottered off to bed. And now gentle reader we have basically come full circle in one of the rambliest posts in a good long time.

In Living Colour

I'm a very visually driven person and I absolutely love colour. To be truthful, it's a love that borders on an obsession. I've studied quite a bit of art history over the years, read a lot about art and have even taken some colour theory studies for artists. I'm an art fag, it's true.

In particular I've always been really drawn to the beautiful jewel tones of lots of Medieval and Renaissance art. The dark reds, clear greens, rich blues and browns that are derived from a palette largely made from mineral pigments. I especially love the Northern Renaissance painters like Jan van Eyck, who seemed to have been able to make these colours glow even while embuing all of their works with the cool grey light of a Netherlandish winter.

Jan van Eyck's portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his bride, 1434.

So I was particularly excited to see the Apartment Therapy story about The Grammercy Park Hotel. The Grammercy Park Hotel recently reopened with a complete makeover inspired by this exact sort of colour palette, in this particular case based on the works of Raphael.

The 'Cowper Madonna' by Raphael, c1483-1520.

Oh my gah, I'm in love with these interiors! Weirdly such intensity of colour almost looks modern to me. Maybe because we've become so used to the ultra moderne white box by now, that to see such rich and vibrant colour handled so skillfully looks kind of new. Instead of very, very old like the inspiration it comes from.

It may be a bit much to have an entire house done in such a scheme, but I think it works beautifully for somewhere where a bit of drama is called for. Like a hotel, a nightclub, or in a home perhaps a dining room! Could you imagine a candelight dinner in a room such as these?

Fabulous.

Thanks

Thanks for the sweet messages and well wishes everyone! I'm still not well, but definately on the improve. Sadly it appears that I have passed the baton to my poor flatmate who is now suffering badly. Oops.

I share because I care, you know?

Checking In

Hey ya'll. Thanks for the sweet Get Better Soon! messages after my last post. 3 solid days of staying in bed and sleeping as much as possible (surprisingly, between coughing jags, quite a large amount) seems to have broken the worst of it. No more fevers and even my cough seems to be more Chihuahua now than Irish Wolfhound.

I'm back in the office today, even though I still feel quite shitful. I'm so dedicated! To income. I'm dedicated to not starving.

As a welcome back gesture my nemesis decided to totally rearrange my desk to her needs in my absence. Moved my monitor, changed my chair set-up, went through my desk drawers... Oh, she slays me. I don't think she's going to last her probationary period to be honest. Her latest trick is shouting down the phone at our elderly clients, not angrily but it's like if they didn't understand her the first time (she has a thick Singaporean Chinese accent) then SHOUTING WILL MAKE THEM UNDERSTAND.

Anyhoo, this is about me not her. I'm still low on energy and verve so I'll hopefully be back with something entertaining tomorrow. Kisses, and thanks again for the good wishes!

A Short Break

Sorry for the short break in transmission everyone! I'm really sick with bronchitis at the moment, so I probably won't be around much for the next day or so. I had the start of a cough at the end of last week, but then getting caught in torrential rainstorms on Friday and Saturday helped it along nicely to being a full on bout of bronchitis. I've basically been in bed since Sunday. Fun! I guess I have hot lemon drinks and crap daytime television to console myself with.

Anyhoo, have fun and I'll see you in a day or so.

5 Wintery Morning Commute Observations And/Or Joys

1. The Chinese Blanket Lady. There is a tiny sparrow of a woman that I pass many mornings that I like to think of as The Chinese Blanket Lady. She wears this coat that is possibly the ugliest thing you have ever seen, made from some sort of slightly fuzzy and very acrylic looking blanket material, with a design of large stylised Chinese flowers in pastel colours. Peonies writ large. The rest of the coat is trimmed with a knit rib in the most incredible hot orange colour, almost but not quite Hazard Orange. But oh man, she looks so tiny and snug in her big ugly blanket coat that it always makes me want to go over and give her a hug or something. I don't think she'd like that somehow, at least not out of the blue.

   
   

2. The Toasted Sarnie. I had a long cold walk to work from the train station this morning. Eyes tearing from the cold wind and nearly getting blown over as I crossed over the Parramatta River. The light at the end of that tunnel, the gold at the end of the rainbow, was a piping hot toated cheese and tomato sandwich. The sandwich of corner milk bars, car holiday roadside service stations and childhood. White bread, cheddar cheese, thick(ish) slices of tomato, salt & pepper, and then all pressed flat and toasted until the end result is something even thinner than one slice of bread, but crisp and filled with yummy melted goo. Heaven.
   

3. Gristle Guy. I have to take a couple of trains to get to work every morning, and one of the longer train rides takes about half an hour. On that trip this morning there was a guy sitting opposite eating his breakfast from a plastic container. Except, in the half hour period he took about 3 bites and it took him the whole trip to chew them. Both cheeks full, chomp chomp chomp he went. He was kind of wiry and skinny and it did cross my mind that he probably expended more energy chewing than he was getting from whatever he was eating. But what could he be eating? What takes that much work? I was thinking beef jerky, giant balls of bubble gum, pure beef gristle, the stringy bits (only) from celery or maybe even a few floorboards.

   
   

4. The Strapping Lad. This is less of an observation and more of a joy really. I'm no Chicken Hawk. Ok, I know I've mentioned young guys in the past but I normally go for guys close to my own age. However, there was a boy of about 20 in the train station this morning that stopped me dead in my tracks. Tall, brunette, massive broad shoulders and yet with a lithe athletic build. All wrapped up in a form fitting cream sweater. Man, I'll bet there are a whole bunch of broken hearts/petty jealousies/distracted tutorial attendees/proto-gay boys discovering themselves on whatever university campus that beauty stalks.

   
   

5. The Sunflower Principle. I'm a bit of a creature of habit and tend to get on the same train carriage every day. Consequently I usually stand in the same spot on the train platform at Redfern, where I board my second train of a morning. Redfern station platforms are mostly open to the elements, so I often find myself standing in roughly the same spot on the platform with roughly the same group of people. Some are there to smoke. Some are there (like me) to get on the first, and usually fairly empty, train carriage. As the seasons have changed we've all moved along a bit. Just a month or two ago the unseasonable warm weather meant we all clustered around the shade given off by the solitary (and slightly feeble) tree in a planter on the platform. Now the cold wind and weak Winter sunshine has us all moving along out of the shade, trying to warm ourselves in the sun. Turning towards the light like sunflowers.

   
   

It Goes Beyond Lust, Now It's Officially LOVE

Because I'm shameless and incorrigible and have no respect for copyright I stole this picture fresh off Mr Mike's Pipedreams. We love the 'Dreams! Go read it right now if you never have. I can wait.



My future husband T.R. Knight, aka George from Grey's Anatomy aka Intern Cutie Pie. The T.R. Knight who stood up to a workmate that called him a faggot, standing his ground and saying "None Shall PASS!" In summery plaid. With a nice set of forearms. With his dog Arrow. The cute puppers that was saved from a shelter and was a gift from his workmate and friend Katherine Heigl.

Cute. Check. Has strength of convictions. Check. Likes dogs. Check. Has loving friends. Check. Looks mighty fine, even in a Western shirt. Check.

Seriously, who can resist this? If you can, well then you are made of sterner stuff than I. There's only one McDreamy/McSteamy on that show as far as I'm concerned.

Connected

About a year ago (or even more probably) I lost my mobile phone. Gone. Lost in the seat of a taxi. On the plus side was the fact that I had been to the cinema and it was still turned off, so nobody racked up thousands by calling their brother in Albania or their aunt on Lesbos, thankfully.

I used to use it and quite liked it when I had it. (Not least for the snerk value of it being a Siemens, because juvenile is how I roll y'all.) I've never been a mobile phone maven though. Once I didn't have it, well I just did without. I know some of my friends think this must be some sort of posturing, about taking joy in being a Luddite. It really isn't.

Or wasn't because now I have a mobile phone!

I met up with friends for drinkies last night, as per a regular Wednesday, and Graeme presented me with a carry bag with a brand new mobile phone in it. He had been cruising around a Telstra store and seen a stack of phones going out really cheap on sale, so bought me one, set it all up for me and put $10 worth of prepaid calls on it as a starter.

Sweet huh? Isn't that just thoughtful and kind and I'm so happy about it. Oh, and it makes me happy that it's a win/win situation. You see it also helps Graeme's mental health by no longer sending him into paroxysms of frustration that I don't have a mobile. Ha!

It's cute and compact and precious and flips like Cap'n Kirk's communicator and it's mine, mine, all mine. Oh, and it's silver and Lady Penelope pink.

I'm down with that. It takes a Real Man to use a pink phone.

[Updated: It's only tiny, but here's a pic I found on online. Cute, non?]

Comfort Food Is Aptly Named

It's officially Winter in this neck of the woods. Dark early, light late, gee my bathroom is fucking cold in the morning, once-in-a-generation raintorm-ingly Winter. Ok, sure, no snow drifts, blizzards or whatever people in the Northern Hemisphere deal with in Winter. Agreed. But still, when you are used to a temperate climate it kind of hits when it's not so. Temperate that is.

Anyhoo. Lately I've taken to dreaming of nummy, warming Winter comfort food on my long commute home. Sometimes this morphs into can't-be-bothered-pizza-delivery by the end of my loooong commute, but in the past week I've been in the mood to cook better and eat better. I've been reading cookbooks and foodie books and that is definately both a cause and a symptom.

So last night I decided that what I really craved [strict vegetarians LOOK AWAY NOW] was a fish stew. Buttery. Garlicky. Frenchy sort of fish stew. I stopped by the supermarket on the way home and bought potatoes, leeks, a red capsicum, some fish (sadly frozen was all I could get), fish stock and some sourdough bread. I knew I already had some butter in the fridge and some garlic in the pantry cupboard, so I was all set.

So I thought, I didn't count on the garlic being well past its natural life span. Small setback. So I crossed 'garlicky' off my expectations and soldiered on.

It was good. I put the potatoes, leek and capsicum into a pan with a little butter and the lid on to sweat over a low heat until the veggies were soft, but not mushy. (Have you ever smelled potatoes and leeks cooking in butter? I would marry that smell if I could.) Then I threw in the fish stock to cover and upped the heat until it was simmering. Next the cut up fish went in to simmer until opaque and cooked through. Once all that was done I lifted it all out with a slotted spoon, and cranked the heat to reduce the stock left. I mixed a little butter and flour into a beurre manié (That's French, bitches. All of a sudden I'm Julia Effing Childs!) and whisked that in to cook a bit and thicken the sauce. Parsley from my garden, then salt and pepper next and I was done.

Pretty easy really as much of the time it was just busily sweating or simmering without too much attention from me. With a couple of slices of sourdough to sop up the juices it was perfect cold night fare. I would have liked to have tried it with a good whack of garlic in it. Maybe even having roasted the garlic in the oven first to give it a mild flavour. Perhaps next time.

Knitting In Public

Here are some pics from the Worldwide Knitting In Public Day get together on Saturday.

What you can't really see in these pics is the torrential rainstorm that was thundering down about 10 feet from where we were sitting. Dramatic! Oh, and cold. It was really cold! Despite it being the worst rainstorm in about 30 years we had 27 intrepid (and well rugged up) knitters in total. Not a bad turn out and all, and a fun afternoon.









Big thanks to Kris for organising the event!