2 April 2009
I work in a really small office, and most of the others are guys. This means I mostly have the women’s bathroom to myself. It’s a nice bathroom too, with marble walls and floors and those fancy sinks that sit above the bench. Anyway, I realised today I might be a LITTLE too comfy with my private bathroom. Inasmuch as I’m pretty much treating it as I do my bathroom at home. Today I didn’t even bother shutting the cubicle door. Likelihood of someone walking in? Close to zero. Although we have a new receptionist starting this week, and she’s a girl, so I may have to stop unbuttoning my pants as I walk towards the facilities. Spoilsport.
Luckily for you there are no photos of the bathroom, but only because I can’t find my camera battery charger. Annoying. I couldn’t even take a photo of the cling-film wrapped cars outside my work on April Fools’ Day. And in fact they were still there today, leading me to believe that under the cling-wrap may be a copious collection of parking tickets. The parking inspectors are like raptors where I work – constantly circling then swooping in to pounce on anyone who has been there for exactly 7 seconds past the allotted hour. The pickings are rich, too; office buildings plus shopping strip plus residential houses with no off-street parking equals DELICIOUS PARKING CARRION. I feel like I should work roadkill in here somewhere too, but I can’t think how. It will come to me.
23 March 2009
Oh hai! How was your weekend? Mine was good. I discovered this place where they will let you take books out and you can read them. For free. Yes, I am quite disturbed to say I have never joined my local library the entire time I’ve been in Australia. I know, poor form. So I wandered down to join my suburban book depository, and there I found the Tiniest Library Ever. Seriously, it was like someone’s back room with some books in it. And way more DVDs and magazines than books, even. Oh, and children’s books, but I’ve no problems with that. Why so few books? And, once I started browsing, why ALL THE SAME books over and over again? How many copies of Diana Gabaldon do you need? (and I hasten to add, I love a red-heided Scotsman as much as the next girl, but a whole shelf? Really? When there’s only like 200 shelves in total?) Although I have to say that when I last went to the library, they didn’t email you to tell you when your books were due. I heartily endorse this use of technology, especially the part which tells you the names of the books you’ve taken out. For those of us who might, um, forget.
Speaking of books, I got my hair cut on Friday and I remembered to take a book so that I didn’t have to read painfully stylish fashion magazines (say what you will, there’s not a lot of actual reading to be had out of Vogue). I took “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, which I just bought in its reincarnation as an orange Penguin, for just this sort of occasion. However, apparently bringing a BOOK, with WORDS, was the most fascinating thing to have happened in that place for weeks. Other customers were staring at me with outright fascination. Every stylist that touched my head just HAD to ask me about it. Sadly, very few knew the book; a select few knew the movie, but most just looked interested. Or pretended to, at any rate. Then again, the average age of the stylists would have been 22, and I don’t know how much “history” these young people learn. Whereas I, 10 miles, in the snow, both ways, don’t know the meaning of hard work, etc. I don’t know if I’ve written this here, but a previous time I went here for a cut I asked for about 2 inches off the bottom. The young stylist looked at me wraptly, like I was speaking a foreign language. “Well, how much do you think I should cut off?” I asked worriedly. She brightened, and said, “Um, about five centimetres?” Bless.
6 March 2009
Whee, we just had an earthquake. What, the bushfires weren’t enough? Richter scale 4.3 : enough to make our whole house shake and the cat bowls clink together, but not enough to make us RUN RUN DIVE for cover. In fact I don’t even think the cat on Mr. T’s lap woke up. I say again, it is a FALLACY that animals can sense earthquakes. My animals, anyway. Maybe I just get non-psychic ones. Typical.
Eggs for the dog (I had just bought a dozen fresh ones so these had to go).
One is free-range, the others are not. But they’re all happy!
9 February 2009
As was predicted, Saturday was insanely hot. Mr. T kept checking the temperature map, which reached 47.3 degrees in the middle of Melbourne. I didn’t even step outside of the house until about 2pm, when I realised the vege garden was flat to the ground – you couldn’t even call it wilting. The wind was fiercely hot and stinging and huge eddies of leaves and dust and sticks were gusting around our street and our house. We left at around 4pm to visit friends, driving towards the east. We were detoured off a major freeway due to a spot fire burning and smoke shrouding the road. When we finally reached them, we found them in their pool – “wear shoes!” they yelled at us, because their glass-topped outdoor table had shattered in the heat earlier in the day. We spent the night in the pool or watching movies, after the cool change came through. We drove home. It rained, lightly, in the night.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I realised that further east, the state was burning fiercely and is still burning now. The death toll keeps rising and is now over 100. The animals in the thousands of hectares of burnt forest will remain uncounted. What can you do? We will donate money and we will donate blood, but what can you do, really?
The Grey Cat on our drought-stricken lawn, far away from danger.
5 February 2009
It’s hot. It’s been really hot. And it’s going to get hot again. Oh hai! Welcome to summer in Melbourne! And/or Adelaide, which has also had it’s own 1-in-100-year heatwave. Or so they say. I think they’re just jealous. Anyway, I think I have mentioned on here before that I don’t do well over 30 degrees, and I shut down over 35. Imagine the joyous bundle of fun I was when the temperature went over 40 for a week, and the copious amounts of patience I displayed on the 44 degree days. Yes, days. Plural. (44C = 111F, FEEL MY PAIN IN BOTH HEMISPHERES.) (That’s what SHE said.) There’s another 44 degree day coming on Saturday, apparently. Suck. I mean, oh yay! Hey, you know when you open a fan-forced oven, and a massive gust of hot air hits you in the face and body and engulfs you relentlessly in a steady stream of dry heat? That is what awaits me on Saturday. The wind! The hot wind! The beating of his hideous heart! Wait, where was I? Oh yes, being driven insane by weather. Carry on.
Having said that, it hasn’t been THAT bad – my sister has been visiting, and although she was stuck in Melbourne’s hottest week in 100 years, she did fine. They were over to watch the tennis at the Australian Open, and to buy everything in the state. Status: success! We also did a lot of swimming at the beach (not sitting on the beach, which is for mad dogs and Englishmen). Our method is to walk down, loll in the water for an hour, including the dog, then head straight back to the aircon. That pretty much kept us sane… look how normal and rational we look!
Oh hai. I’m in the back, with my head doubling over itself.
Yeah, it does that sometimes.
30 July 2008
I didn’t want to make dinner tonight, so I bargained my way out of it by saying I would take the dog for a run. I shouldn’t have done that really. It is fucking cold outside. However! I didn’t have to make dinner! And due to the aforementioned cleaning rule, I don’t have to clean the kitchen either! Sometimes life just gives you lemonade.
Oh, apart from the whole “run with the dog in the cold” thing, which is more a lemon than lemonade. If you’re interested (and you’re not) I’m doing the Couch to 5K thing, which in theory takes you from a sedentary couch-loving life (it doesn’t mention the internet but I’m sure it’s implied) to a sporty 5 kilometre running machine in nine weeks. Some American fellow has made free podcasts of each week of the program on iTunes, which are set to really uninspiring techno background music, but they tell you when to run and when to stop. I like the stopping. The dog likes the stopping too, as he gets to sniff and wee and turn in circles and stuff. Unfortunately he doesn’t pull me along during the running bits, useless animal that he is. He trots along without a care in the world, while I labour along beside him taking great heaving breaths and shuffling along like a zombie. (I do this in the dark, for added zombie effect. Also see above: it is fucking cold and WINTER, which means it’s always dark.) However I’m up to Week Four (don’t ask me how many weeks it took me to get to week four; I don’t want you to feel embarrassed for me) and that has multiple five-minute runs and I RAN THEM. ALL. I am a FITNESS GOD. I don’t know what that makes my exponentially fitter dog; the Creator? Thor? Maybe I am just one of the minor gods. That sounds about right. I’ll need to practise my smiting before I can work my way up the god pantheon.
Not a god. Not a superhero, either, despite appearances.
21 February 2008
It’s been such beautiful weather the last few days… I wish I lived near a beach or something.
*not gloating just feeling extremely lucky*
*also omg I have a mortgage and will have to work until the end of time*
19 January 2008
When we watch Iron Chef, we always guess what the battle is going to be. (If you don’t watch the strange Japanese wonder that is Iron Chef, there are two chefs competing to serve a menu based on a theme ingredient, and the ingredient is called the Battle. If you search youtube you can see clips for Sushi Battle, Liver Battle, Bell Pepper Battle, Rabbit Battle and Natto Battle, and no doubt many more because these people are insane.)
Anyway, tonight I guessed Parsley Battle and Mr. T guessed Lobster Battle. However, we were both wrong as it was Chicken Battle (how unimaginatively unlike the Iron Chef). Anyway, it reminded me of another Iron Chef a few months ago, which started when I was out of the room, and Mr. T hollered out, “There’s a warning saying this episode is graphic and may upset some viewers!”
I yelled back, “PUPPY BATTLE!”
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phantasmagoriaReading:
Stephen King, "Everything's Eventual". I found this abandoned in a suitcase.
Listening:
The snores of the Little Dog, who sadly seems just as loud and snorty at night as the Brown Dog.
Watching:
Endless episodes of UFC, which is some sort of fighting... thing. Do not want.
Eating:
I'm having a bit of an avocado binge. The Little Dog likes them too.
Liking:
Renovations! Apart from the cost of said renovations. Let's not think about that part.
Pondering:
If there is dirty washing in the basket, the cats ignore it... but if it is CLEAN, one of them has made a nest in there within 10 minutes. Five minutes, if it's black clothes.
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