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the jubjub birds : random 10

[I wrote this at work, hence the tea break.]

It is a sad fact that I cannot type my own name correctly. It is also a sad fact that I am currently driving Mr Toad in a little car aimlessly around my keyboard whilst drinking tea, but that's not why I can't type. What happens is, my right typing hand is faster than both my brain and my left typing hand, and when I type my name I tumble over the letters. As proof, if I type my name 10 times: jacquleine jacquleine jacquleine Jacqueline jacquleine jacquleine Jacqueline jacqlueine Jacqueline jacquliene. That is remarkably consistent, and the autoword thing has capitalised the spellings I got right, which is 3 out of 10. Poor. Anyway, I have set up an auto-text shortcut in my work email which automatically types my signoff sentence. If I type rrr it changes to "Regards Jacqueline" and ttt becomes "Thanks Jacqueline". Every time I do this I get a warm inner glow at outsmarting myself. Ah, the pain which comes with having a first name with 10 letters, one of which is a Q. I imagine people with names like Marguerite (my mother's bridesmaid's name, which in hindsight I was lucky to avoid) or Augustine would understand... your fingers are all over the keyboard as if trying to play whack-a-mole.

See, this is why I don't tend to do this at work. Strange things come out of my head. Drive on, nothing to see here.


7:39 PM § 2 comments
Oooh, Kate tagged me for a meme and I haven't done it. Bad. OK.

six things you didn't know about me

(the six ties in quite nicely with the blog, don't you think? Very thoughtful of these meme people.)

1. I pace around when I think. I always have done, according to my parents, who used to find me doing laps of the coffee table while daydreaming. I transferred this to the trampoline when we got one, but I have been sans trampoline for lo these many years. Now I often find myself pacing up and down the hallway, sometimes breaking into a skip-step if I'm thinking of something really interesting.

2. I don't have underarm hair. Well, I have like four or five hairs under each arm. Weird, I know. Useful, however, as it means I don't get that big stubbly patch (or indeed, have to shave at all). I think it's my super-power.

3. I hate the phone. Hate it. When I came back from the USA I forgot about my mobile phone and went three days without it. Completely forgot that such a thing existed. Only the fact that I was sent a work-related text cued me in to the absence. In a related point, I am the world's slowest texter and much prefer Bluetoothing my phone to the laptop so I can type a full sentence, with correct pronunciation and capitalization, on an actual keyboard. I know this is lame and that nobody cares but me... but I still can't do it.

4. I have a blank diary that I'm using as a five-year diary, because I think these five years will be full of change and it will be fun to look back and see what I was doing two, three, years ago. Except I can't make myself change. What? It's so comfortable here!

5. I hate handguns. Shotguns, hunting guns - fine. Just handguns freak me out. They seem so menacing and singular of purpose: to hurt people.

6. I will often buy books and DVDs and not read them/watch them, because I'm happy just owning them. Actually, scratch the books. I read all my books. But I must have a dozen movies I've never watched. Note to self: watch The Big Lebowski. You are the only person in the world who hasn't seen it.
11:24 PM § 5 comments
I think I have weaned myself from the Twilight thing, thanks in no small part to My thoughts on Twilight, let me show you them. I LOLed. I think it's passed now. You can all be grateful; I know I am. Mr. T will no doubt give heartfelt thanks that he no longer has to discuss vampires with me.

My other internet timesuck that I forgot all about once The bOoks appeared: Surf The Channel. As you can tell by the link, I myself was watching my way through Weeds (a series which always seemed to be on at odd times or be taken off without notice). But you may watch whatever takes your fancy. It's FINE. Really. I don't mind. I DON'T.

(As an aside (which is basically this entire website, really) I have decided to leave my capitalization error up there because it reminds me of The Librarian.)

So how was your weekend? We braved Ikea this weekend (I know, what the fuck possesses me sometimes) to buy something to fit in the computer/sewing room and hold all my junk. We did this (note I am glossing over the Experience that is Ikea on any given weekend) and slid the flat pack (Part 1 of 2) into the back of the Hilux. I said, "Do I need to hold that?" as Mr. T let it go to get Part 2 of 2, and Part 1 fell over onto the internal wheel arch. And BENT. Oh god Ikea is only made of fibreboard oh god my brand new ELFSTRUNG or whatever is snapped in half before it is even out of the box. I hyperventilated all the way home, and had formulated elaborate plans on how I was going to disguise a large piece of furniture with a big break across its top. Once we opened it at home, I found to my intense relief that it had bent at some internal point where there was a gap, and nothing was damaged. But I could just see it, you know? This is exactly the sort of thing that happens to me: spending several hundred dollars on some piece of furniture that is basically made out of wet bracken and Nordic dog hair, and snapping it like a pencil before it's even in my house. If it is going to happen, I WILL HAPPEN TO IT. Then Mr. T had to spend 1 hour 22 minutes putting it together (I timed him) with kittens trying to get into every nook and cranny. In the end I shut them in one of the cupboards. They were confused by the glass door. Maybe I won't tell the Save a Dog people that part.

We also went to the Vic Market and bought protein: prawns, meat, and a snapper. My only criteria for seafood at the moment is that it has to be Australian, which means we eat hardly any at all because the supermarkets are full of Vietnamese fish and Chinese prawns. Anyway, Mr. T chopped the snapper's head off and smoked it. It was delicious. This meant the Brown Dog got the fish head, and about five minutes after he ran outside with it (you don't think I'd let him eat a fish head INSIDE, do you?) he was back at the back door howling with impatience to get back in. As I went to open the door I was yelling at him, "Where's your head? You can't have finished that head already? That's the only head there is, don't be expecting another head when you get back in here." I then realised that I might have hit my Top 5 Surreal Conversations with Myself this week without even breaking a sweat.

PS. SHE SMELLS DELICIOUS. LIKE BACON. (I feel uncomfortable using quotes without attribution; you don't need to go here, it is just catharsis for me.)



11:13 PM § 2 comments
HIIIIIIIII INTERNET.

I don't know what it is about this time of year which makes me run far, far away from the computer. The lighter evenings, probably. Whatever it is, I just don't write much of anything anymore. It's a loss, clearly.

Things I have done:

I went back to NZ last week for my nana's funeral. Not the most fun trip home. I spoke as well, which... gah. Don't do that. On the plus side, she was 92, sharp as a tack, and died peacefully. The alternative was the cancer which was diagnosed about 6 months ago and which had recently spread to her lungs, and apparently lung cancer is a nasty and painful way to die. For something that can never have good timing, she had good timing.

I tried to convince my kittens that the washing left to dry on the airing rack is not a gymnasium. Every day I come home to a pile of wet shirts pulled onto the floor and two innocent looking faces. Look, I know it's not the dog. He stopped pulling washing off the line about six years ago. Also he is lazy. BUSTED.

I sprayed that spray bandage stuff onto a massive scratch on my leg caused by a falling kitten. Have you used that? Stings like a motherfucker. The kittens both have claws, but Colonel Mustard still has those needle-sharp baby claws, while Earl Grey seems to have thicker adult-like claws (and never uses them). Guess which one fell off the cat tree and onto me taking photos below it? Yeah.

Oh I bought a cat tree. Crazy cat person in 3... 2... wait let me go buy some cat toys from Ikea... 1. Having said that, at least they USE the cat tree, which was my biggest concern. And it is covered with plain beige carpet, not paw print or leopard skin fabric, which was my second biggest concern. Which is funny really, considering the house in fact looks like several bombs have gone off inside it (not helped by the wet washing all over the floor). But by god at least my cat tree blends in.

I read the Twilight series, all four books, in four nights. For those who don't know, this series is aimed at teenagers and has a massive, probably rabid, fan following and the movie of the first book is out in a month. I did not know these things, so I read them without any hype, which was undoubtedly beneficial since it is, after all, Young Adult Romantic Vampire Fiction. My favourite was Book 3, I think, but because I read them in one long ribbon it might have been the latter part of Book 2. Book 4 is awful and then GOT WORSE. Stop at Book 3 if you can make yourself. I felt faintly nauseated after reading all four books at once, but I did feel compelled to. Make of that what you will. Executive Summary: he is beautiful and cold and intense; she is determined, in a limpet kind of way, astonishingly non-self-aware and frustrated the hell of me, to be honest. But again: compulsively read all four. Tell me if you've read them. We can bond. Like survivors.

I started using my Kitchen Aid which I bought in the US and made Mr. T lug halfway around the world. Due to a long and boring story, I didn't need to buy a step-down power converter to get it to work, as Mr. T installed the Australian motor instead. I am using it far more often than I thought I would. It mixes a mean banananana cake, and last night I made afghans. The biscuit, not the rug. (Speaking of afghans, I have two massive crochet-square blankets that my nana made, and although I love them because she made them, it does make me smile to know they are the height of crafty fashion at the moment.)

I have Proof of the kittens. They are almost six months old now though, and are probably better called gangly adolescents.


11:35 PM § 2 comments
Yes I'm back! And I have 600 photos (probably more like 800 now I think about it) and I cannot be arsed finding any to post here. Poor, poor form. So nothing changes.

The holiday was brilliant and we had a fantastic time. Highlight = Yosemite National Park, hands down. I could have spent close to three weeks there alone. I ate lots and lots of sweet food, bought too few clothes and shoes and too many kitchen accoutrements, and we just about hit an elk. No bears, though. I'm quite disappointed about the bears. I promise I will dig up some photos at some stage, but it's either write this now and throw it up there or wait for a magical post full of photos. I think we know which it's going to be.

Also, on Saturday it was Grand Final Day but we scorned it and went to the RSPCA for kittens. Which sadly means that my cat has not come home since he disappeared during a massive storm in April. We are sad about that, because he was The Best Cat In The World. However if he comes home now, he will have to deal with two kittens in his house (one of whom is currently biting my ankle OW and the other is making eyes at the mouse cord). Much as I would have liked to adopt an adult cat or two, it's just not fair to make them deal with a gigantic dog who loooooves cats. So kittens it was. There were very few cats at the RSPCA, so onwards to the Lost Dogs Home in Malvern, which also has Lost Cats. There we found two 5-month old littermates, and now they are here.

Photos (probably waaay too many) to follow. However I will let you determine their colourings by their internet names: Colonel Mustard and Earl Grey. I think I have posted here before my love of the name Colonel Mustard; and Earl Grey is funny. Take my word for it.

Edit to add: Here they are, the top two. That's not me holding them, though.


Oh wait, I do have a couple of photos on this computer. This should tide you over. I'd like to be here right now.
10:36 PM § 10 comments
Why hello. I am here. What have we been doing? Have we been running? Not noticeably, thanks to the long streak of rainy days Melbourne has had. (Did it rain today? No. Did I run today? No. Shut up.) So we are still on week four of the podcast. It's lonely here. Four is the loneliest number.

Speaking of hiding indoors, I trialled the 2-week free Quickflix DVD thing, and it expired on Monday. Expired, meaning, unless I cancel it they will, as a "service", sign me up to an account and charge me money. So on Friday I went on the internet and clicked the "cancel my subscription" button. It went... to a page telling me to ring customer support between the hours of 9am and 5pm.

[deep breath]

May I remind you, denizens of the web, that this is an INTERNET-BASED BUSINESS. You choose movies and write reviews on them and queueue(ueue) them to your heart's desire, all within the confines of your computer. But to cancel I have to ring a phone number? Within business hours? And quite possibly sign me up and charge me in the interim, requiring me to fight to get that money back? Oh no. No no no. I am NOT impressed. So I ring on Monday morning, at 9.10am or so, only to have the phone go through to a "press the buttons" service ("press 6 to unsubscribe" - maybe six is the loneliest number?) and then the phone rings. And rings and rings and rings. And rings. And then it goes back to the options menu, requiring me to press 6 again. And it rings. And rings ringsringsrings. And then I am back and I press 6. Argh! It is like "Lost"! I am in a bunker, I swear it! After 28 minutes of this (I am tenacious) I finally hung up and went to get something to drink. I no longer work with alcohol and never have I regretted it so much. After half an hour or so I rang back, and after only 16 minutes or so I got through to a person. Who promptly unsubscribed me, no questions asked. So. WHY COULDN'T I DO THAT ON THE INTERNET? Fuckers. I watched 6 movies in the two weeks and one of them had Lindsey Lohan in it and I really don't think it was worth the pain.

Hmph. So, what else? Oh, this is me. Although not really. The avatar people don't have my hair. What, limp and straight not one of the major options for people? How can that be? Anyway, close enough. I didn't think it looked much like me so I asked Mr. T and he said it looked freakily like me. Or maybe just freaky, I wasn't really listening. Anyway, I don't think it's much of a likeness but eh. I added the scarf as I'm wearing one most days. Yes, round the office. It's cold.

Also, I'm trying to fit this writing-in-blog stuff in as I'm on holiday for three weeks on Sunday. YES OH YES BRING IT ON. This is the great American shopping and wilderness adventure we have been hanging out for. I say "hanging out for" and you would assume it was all meticulously planned, right? Oh no. No no no. We just assume these things will happen for us. I don't know how, because our, ahem, travel agent is currently writing in her blog and eating a chocolate biscuit. (Mint slice!) And then about a week and a half before we fly out, we get all freaked and motivated and start blaming each other and researching and booking shit left right and centre (prompting phone calls from the credit card company - thanks Visa, but if you hold the transaction as I'm buying groceries at Safeway because my last seven credit card charges were for accommodation in the USA, I will look like a criminal and I will have NOTHING TO EAT) and finally we have figured out what we're doing. Mostly. Four major cities & three national parks in three weeks, is what we're doing. What? It's doable. And if anyone tells you that you need to book accommodation in two of America's most popular national parks months (or years) in advance you can tell them to SUCK IT because I am currently some sort of accommodation booking super-being. Although I am sort of doubtful about my super powers as currently I am freaking the fuck out at the DANGER DANGER BEARS DANGER notices on all the Yosemite photos I'm finding online. Fuck. Bears. I'm not prepared for bears. Mr. T keeps reading out all these internet horror stories to me about tourists leaving one apple in their car and they wake up the next morning to find the front doors ripped off and a gnaw mark in the apple. I don't need to know! I can live without apples, I swear! We just won't eat!

So there's that. Have I started packing? No, although I have dug out a tiny plastic bag in which to pack my liquids and gels (heh, dirty). Have I prepared the house for my friends who are housesitting the whole time we are away? No, they will walk into a pit of squalor, and they will ENJOY IT. Have I completed all my work at work so I can go away feeling free and refreshed? No no oh my god SO MUCH WORK. So, yeah. All continues as normal. How bout you?
8:36 PM § 8 comments
Sorry for my absence, I've been stuck in traffic. More specifically, behind THIS fucker:


I think the part that gets me the most is that this is the sort of person who drives inconsiderately - sitting miles below the speed limit in the right hand lane - then complains about the aggressiveness of other drivers. I mean, have you SEEN Australia drivers? They will take you out without a second look, then reverse blithely over your shattered hatchback. I sense doom approaching for this self-righteous letter writer (or is that a tautology?)


In other news, I am slowly building my photo reserves back up:


I took this photo to send to my nana, as when I was home at Easter she wanted my sister and I to take whatever we wanted out of her china cabinet. She has moved into a rest home and has no room for her things. So on my kitchen windowsill last week were both the hand-etched measuring beaker (in pints! no she can't remember who made this or what it was used for!) and a little blue faceted glass jar. The dead looking vine out the window is the grapevine, which was really pretty in summer and autumn. A surprising amount of plants have survived our benign neglect over the few months we've owned this house... although I think lavender and grapevines are both pretty hard to kill? That's what we're banking on anyway. I would say 'send rain', but we have heaps. Thanks.
10:23 PM § 7 comments
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.



11:38 PM § 5 comments
In Which: I meet a person off the internet and do not get killed (or even maimed); and also I poison my dog with ham.

OK see I didn't MEAN to poison the dog with ham. It was Mr. T's birthday on Sunday and so I made ham and cheese and tomato croissants for brunch. All good, except the sliced ham was a bit old. Two weeks, from memory. Maybe three. However it had been living in the Cold Bin part of the fridge, and actually had a huge chunk of ice on top of it. So I was pretty confident that the ham would be OK. Not confident enough to put it on my OWN croissants, though. I'm not stupid. Just mean. So Mr. T's croissants were merrily ham-filled and I dumped a great handful of the packet of ham into the dog's bowl. All was well. Mr. T has a stomach created of iron and antifreeze and an elaborate system of gears, so he suffered no ill effects at all. But the dog, my Brown Dog, who is always cheery and happy and interested, within a few hours was lying listlessly on the rug and wouldn't even lift his head. I felt bad.

"I poisoned the dog. With ham," I told Mr. T.
"You have not; you couldn't have. He digs up bones which have been buried in the back garden for weeks, which are filthy and have gone all green and slimy, and he's fine," Mr. T pointed out reasonably.
"But he's not fine now! He's saaaaad!" I whined.

Mr. T dismissed my concerns, and thought something else was making the dog listless and unhappy. He remained uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of Sunday, all through Monday and Tuesday morning. When I got home from work on Tuesday night he bounded out the front door with his tail wagging and tongue lolling - he was BACK! I found no mysterious piles of vomit or other bodily functions, so I can only assume his immune system massed forces and overcame the ham by sheer force of will.

Or otherwise he ate the vomit.

Also, I met up with Kate for brunch. (Yes! MASTER of the segue!) Before you become worried for her, rest assured I did not PROVIDE the brunch. I would not poison Kate with ham. Well, I would, probably, but not on purpose. No, we ate at a neutral meeting place where neither of us could either poison the other or, I don't know, steal each other's identities or something. (Or DID WE? I must say I, I mean Kate, has great hair. Also everything Jac, I mean I, may have said about Adelaide in the past is completely untrue. No gypsies whatsoever. Or sinkholes. None.)

Anyway, Kate was in Melbourne for a few days at a travelling clown convention. (What? She hasn't updated her blog yet, so it's not like she can contradict me.) Between learning how to fit fifty people into a Fiat Bambina, and roping giraffes, we met up to eat brunch and, for someone, I'm not saying who, to spill their food down their top (DAMN YOU, SLIPPERY BUTTON MUSHROOM, YOU FUCKER). And who knew? People from the internet are interesting and fun to spend time with and have excellent conversational skills! Well, not me, obviously. I am awkward and you can't take me anywhere. Unfortunately I just TURN UP.
9:41 PM § 2 comments
So OK I was cleaning up the kitchen last night, after I wrote that post actually. I hate that; when I forget that it was me who cooked dinner and therefore I have to clean up the kitchen. (Do you have that rule? Because we cook almost equally, it works out better not to have to clean up another person's mess. It also means you can't get shitty with the person who left the mashed potatoes lurking in the pot to harden to a solid mass; because that person was YOU.) Anyway, I wandered into the kitchen, went "oh bugger" because there was crap everywhere, and noticed a sort of delicious chickeny smell. Why would that be? Oh, because I made risotto, using chicken stock, and the now-empty saucepan I used to heat the stock up in was still sitting on the gas hob. On low. For over four hours. Ah. So that pot is now filled with baking soda and water, in the hope that the Magic of Baking Soda will remove the charred remnants of chicken stock burned deep into the saucepan. I rely quite heavily on the Magic of Baking Soda. Also the Power of White Vinegar.

Actually, speaking of, I have a related laundry story. I know, it's all domestic and shit over here! But a couple of weeks ago I was pulling washing out of the washing machine, and as I pulled a shirt out, there was An Odour. Not a pleasant one. I stood there blankly for a minute, trying to figure out what it was and where it was coming from. You know what it was? It was FISH. A definite, strong, fishy smell. I started pulling items of clothing from the washing machine and smelling them, much like a bloodhound on CSI. And a few items later, the smell increasing in potency with each piece I pulled out, it was determined that the smell was concentrated in... a pair of Mr. T's work trousers. Why? How? What... what? I couldn't even focus; the smell of fish was everywhere, my vision had narrowed to one blurry point and I was finding it hard to breathe.

When Mr. T got home, I confronted him with his Piscine Pants of Doom, hollering, "SMELL! SMELL THEM!" (Actually, now that I think about it, he didn't even blink at being forced to smell his own clothing. I should think up more bizarre things for him to do.) Being the great judge of flavours that he is, he couldn't even pick up that it was fish. Then he flat-out denied that it could be fish. How could it be fish? It's fish! With pants! Pants and fish don't mix! Then I showed him this odd yellow crunchy plastic stuff in the pocket... oh. Oh yeah. Now he remembers. He remembers putting the trousers on in the morning. He remembers not having time to take his fish oil capsule. He remembers PUTTING IT IN HIS POCKET as he left for work. And he doesn't remember ever eating it.

A fish oil capsule. I have no words.

Those pants are fucked, basically. They've been washed four times, and hung up in the rain/wind/hail/sleet for weeks at a time on the clothesline. Every time they dry, the smell of fish returns. Not even the Magic of Baking Soda and the Power of White Vinegar COMBINED has worked. Any suggestions? Bueller? Bueller?


OK now I have detailed my domestic shortcomings... a picture! This is from my trip back to New Zealand in Easter, which was mid-March. What can I say, I don't clear off my memory cards that often. Again, suck it, dead hard drive! You're not the boss of me!


This is Mr. T's sister with one of his nephews. They're identical twins, so if they're not both in the photo, neither of us can tell which twin it is. We think this might be the Fat Twin (whose name starts with F) but it is just as likely to be the Little Twin (whose name starts with L). Hard to say, and I don't think you guys can help me here.

I posted this because I made the bib he's wearing. In fact I made approximately 30 bibs for these babies, as apparently most bibs are quite small and the huge size of this one was a hit. It does have a gorgeous fabric on the front, but he's wearing it towelling-side out, due to his unfortunate habit of being sick on it. Babies. No respect for craft.
12:34 AM § 9 comments

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