This and that

I've moved

2006-03-11T14:48:00.000+11:00

I've moved my blog. Please change your bookmark and any links that you might have to here to http://www.kristarella.com/blog/

Hope to see you at my new place!

Thursday Thirteen

2006-03-09T21:13:00.000+11:00

Thirteen Things I like.

1. Ice Cream with Cadbury Chocolate Topping
2. Raspberries in sparkling wine
3. Rainy days at home watching movies
4. Taking photos
5. Being in photos (that's right, I'm not camera shy, I like being in photos, then I can say "I was there!"
6. Writing haikus
7. Doing the dishes (the conditions have to be just right to make this one likeable)
8. My iPod nano
9. Not being sick
10. Creative stuff - especially on the computer
11. Adobe Photoshop
12. Chocolate and peanut butter together
13. Most of all - my husband

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
1. Eph2810 (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteenerss is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things.

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Moving out

2006-03-09T15:59:00.000+11:00

I'm thinking of moving out of Blogger and into somewhere else - maybe my own domain name and use wordpress or something like that. This way I can blog, have it set up just the way I want and if I want to set up other pages about whatever I can.

I would appreciate some comments on what other people have found to be good, reliable easy or not in this sort of venture.

Rude people

2006-03-09T11:16:00.000+11:00

There's a woman that we are forced to deal with at work who is just rude! We sometimes (or possibly often) have problems either with them or with our own stuff which makes things complicated with them - basically things don't work which is what happens in science more than half the time. When anything goes wrong at all, the smallest of discrepancies she goes on full defensive mode and sends a really narky email saying things like "I don't know who is responsible for doing these things but..."

Recently they told her to put me on her list for sending emails regarding this lab which is good because I get electronic versions for some stuff rather than having to enter it all in to the computer from paper. However the the most recent problem is something they don't do electronically - apparently the girl in charge of it "doesn't do email" - so I have to enter it in from paper and I made ONE little mistake (seriously it wasn't hard to fix) and she went nuts. She didn't even start off by saying politely "there's a discrepancy here could you check it and get back to me" she just went straight into "you guys suck" (paraphrased - she didn't actually say that).

Luckily I work face to face with nice people who tell me not to worry about her bitchy emails and they will deal with her.

Big crash

2006-03-09T08:10:00.000+11:00

There was some kind of car crash outside our place (actually outside the building next door, we couldn't actually see what happened because of trees) at about midnight last night. It was a really big crunch - I wasn't sure if it was cars or not because there was no brake squeeking or tyre skid before hand, but when the yelling started it was fairly obvious. A huge amount of profanities coming from some guy's mouth, it was insane. I'm glad I've never crashed into someone like that! Imagine if you crashed into someone, the initial shock is still with you, your hands are shaking, your car is ruined and then this big guy keeps yelling at you and calling you an idiot and saying "$@&*! Look what you did to my car!" I would have been tempted to go out and take a photo if he hadn't have been yelling like that. I think everyone was okay, an ambulance might have taken someone away but there's nothing in the news so possibly just whiplash or a bump on the head. Not that whiplash isn't bad enough - I had it once, it made me want to vomit for about 5 days.

New Tenant

2006-03-08T21:59:00.000+11:00

Farewell to Odd Planet hello to ~~Occasional~~ Bitch. I've seen this girly around the blogosphere but never latched onto her blog - so now here's my chance and yours too to check out what she's got to say. From her hundred things it seems that we're both short girls with not straight hair that like scary movies and word games, have greenish eyes and love firefox. We don't have in common a dislike of pink, a love of potatoes, sexual orientation, traveled to many places and lived in lots of states. This "bitch" is also an insomniac who loves sleep - is this an oxymoron? I should ask her. I also really like the way her blog is set out - it's powered by wordpress and I'm very tempted to look into switching to that - of course that would require a significant rewrite of my template again. I don't think I have time for that right now.

Please visit my new tenant and make her feel welcome, maybe help her move in if you're early enough and give the other bidders a look in too.
RHandoko.com
Rob in China

Quick while you still can!

2006-03-08T12:49:00.000+11:00

Odd Planet only has a few hours before she has to pack her bags. Please visit her in the "spare room" while you still can.

Questions and maybe some answers

2006-03-08T11:37:00.000+11:00

I'm home sick today. Bummer! I thought I wouldn't cope today especially with a French tutorial, which is the worst thing to miss but my throat is sore - I don't want to speak at all let alone try to speak a different language that needs a throat pronunciation.

I've been thinking of a few random questions, unfortunately I don't think I'm going to remember them all... we'll see.

Why when I click on the number, Blog Mad says that I clicked the wrong number when I'm always so careful to click the correct one?

Why when you are in a conga line the first person is only walking but the last person has to run to keep up, then when you are in heavy traffic the first car crawls and the last car doesn't move at all?

Why do the clouds look like they are sitting on some kind of invisible shelf?
Actually I sort of know the answer to this one. Hubby told me when I asked a while ago. Archimedes' principle - simply put (possibly too simply and maybe a little incorrect) if something has volume it displaces the surrounding fluid (in the case of clouds, air) and that fluid has to go somewhere. If the object is less dense than the surrounding fluid the displaced fluid will go underneath it and the thing will float, you will have seen this happen with a helium balloon. The object will stop going upwards when it reaches an area of the same density. Evaporated water goes up, it clumps together as clouds and sits on a shelf of similarly dense air. When it gets too dense it rains.

I can't remember the question I thought of yesterday - it was really good =(

I'm going to go and lie down now.

Richard Beeston

2006-03-08T10:22:00.000+11:00

If you read this post you would know that I went to the Beeston's for dinner a little while ago. They are Alison and Richard Beeston. They are so lovely! I'm glad they are my friends.

I wasn't one of the first people to befriend Ali and I remember being a little intimidated by her. One time when we were all away together I asked someone to help me fold my sheets and she helped me but I didn't really know her. It's not that anything about that event was intimidating, it was very nice of her to help me. There's nothing really intimidating about Ali either. I guess I'm just wary of pretending to be friends with someone when we've barely even met properly - sort of like in France when you meet someone you should use "vous" instead of "tu", they both mean "you" but vous is the plural or polite form. I dunno, maybe that makes no sense.

Rich is cool, he likes to talk with hubby about nerd stuff which is cool, because Rich isn't really a nerd. Although they do share the same type of silly jokes. I like to listen and sometimes input something in those nerd discussions. The Beestons are very easy to talk to and get along with.

Rich is also a musician! It's really cool. His CD is regularly listened to in our car and it happened to be on last night when we were going to their place for bible study.

I really like his music because he is honest and writes about things that I either haven't thought about or can totally relate to or both. Not on his current CD (hopefully on the next one), is a song that he sang at church that went something like, "just a little more... a little better... a little sweeter... a little nicer... then I'll be happy" I'm totally like that, going after things all the time, just another CD, I have my iPod - now I just need a case... and so it always goes on. Need to be content in God and with what he's given me! I spoke to Rich afterwards and said how I liked that song and he was telling me he liked it too but he also didn't like it because when he writes and sings a song like that it means he's accountable to it and has to change in the same way he's encouraging others to. Not a hypocrite... always a good thing.

So yeah, I hope I've sold you on Richard Beeston, you can visit his website here. In the songs section you can download a few songs from his album and he has a new album coming out in March - ooh, that's this month! Yay! He's also touring LA and California soon so if you live there you should totally go and see him because he won't be here and that's sad for us who wanna hang out with Rich and Ali so make the most of it while you can!¹

1 Photo used without permission from www.richardbeeston.com - I think I was at that gig =)

Song of the Week!

2006-03-06T19:33:00.000+11:00

This week's song is Left of the Middle by Natalie Imbruglia. I don't know how big she has been anywhere else but she was huge in Australia a while ago... in 1997 when this album came out. She was born in Australia, right here in New South Wales of an Italian father and Australian mother. Her music career seems to be based in the UK where she recorded her first album Left of the Middle, of which this song of the week is the last and title track. Natalie has an excellent voice and cool eyes. I should definitely buy some of her newer music.

Getting sicker...

2006-03-06T19:06:00.000+11:00

I thought I was going to get past this cold that hubby gave me with just a runny nose and a couple of dizzy spells. Alas, the tell-tale sore throat has been coming on since about midday. I'm just waiting for my peppermint tea to cool down a bit... it's going to be good! I just hope I get away with a sore throat and not much more now because I can't afford to be stuck in bed for two weeks like I was in the middle of last semester.

I'm actually going to cook a proper meal tonight! I haven't done that for a while because we've been sick or I've been tired or we've been out late. I forgot to take out the mince beef to defrost this morning but I asked hubby to take it out before he left and I popped it in the microwave to defrost. It defrosted really nicely, none of it cooked and nearly all of it is defrosted, it will all be defrosted by the time I start cooking. I must take some credit for the beautiful defrosting as I did have to break it up and I did take out some of the defrosted bits from the rest. We're having pasta bolognese - I don't actually want to cook spaghetti, nor do I really want to eat it so we a going to have the short curly pasta instead. Plus it makes it seem less like bolognese and more like pasta with meat which is good because I don't have any red wine to go in the sauce.

I'm still scouting this CD for French. I was going to try to get the school of French to lend it to me so I could bring it home and rip it but they make it quite difficult for you to take it away from the listening lab because of its copyright. So I suppose I really should buy it.

This is a photo my hubby took on our honeymoon. It's the view from the restaurant at the resort on Copacabana Island in Fiji.

Current emo: happy

Uni sucks!

2006-03-06T12:36:00.000+11:00

Don't forget to visit Odd Planet before it's time for a new tenant!

Big thanks to Luin from the Palace of Exhile from whom I am renting this week.

So why does uni suck? There are not enough computers! They got some really nice new ones in last year and it was totally awesome, I used to go in there all the time. They were also the only computers with accessible USB ports for USB key memory, now the other computer have new keyboards that have a USB port. Now those labs always seem to have classes in them even when they are not scheduled. I had to wait 30 minutes to use a computer now. That is just not cool! I won't be using computers much because I only have two hours free in the whole time I am here, the rest is back to back classes, it would be nice to not spend my whole break waiting to check my email.

I really want to buy Reflets 1 the audio CD that goes with my French class text book and then I can listen to the exercises, I can put them on my iPod and listen to them before class and after class. The least I've found it for is $45 and here at uni it's $67. I don't know how much shipping costs on the cheaper one. If anyone has a copy and you want to sell it to me - please do!

Oooh, it's song of the week day so stay tuned for that coming up.

Current emo: blah

I suck

2006-03-05T18:35:00.000+11:00

I'm crap at this being organised thing - when I say it like that it doesn't sound as bad as I feel about it. Really, I feel totally useless - you are like "Come off it, nearly everyone is poorly organised." Perhaps that is true, but you forget, I have high standards and if I can't live up to them, then who will? You see I have a lot of stuff going on. I work, I go to uni (those two things take up all the week days), I have karate (although not for the last week, I really hope I'll get to go this week), bible study, Fully SIC (they take up three week nights and then I have two free but both of them hubby is out at karate or we are going out to dinner at someone's place or something). So that's all weekday and all weeknight I'm either out or I'm at home but can't do anything else because hubby has the car. So what doesn't get done? Supermarket shopping, tidying, dishwashing. Weekends are either spent relaxing or doing heaps of stuff - I refuse to go to the supermarket on weekends because there are too many people there, it's the most disgusting experience. I'm also crap at organising money and I'm tired and I'm sick of being crap at these things. I'm sick of doing stuff all the time and then being too tired to do stuff. I've only been off holidays for a week and already I'm freaking out. I suck.

Current emo: sad and disappointed

Stupid pancakes!

2006-03-05T12:09:00.000+11:00

I was going to be a nice little housewife and cook us some pancakes for breakfast this morning. I was so excited - there are some many possibilities... Well two really, choc chip or maple syrup, but that's enough for me! I opened the fridge and... no eggs! How annoying. Yes we have officially reached that stage where all we can eat is noodles. We do have milk which normally would be the first thing to run out but we have that because we already ran out of that and I got milk and a loaf of bread (which we just finished) on the way home from the bakery. So I want to go to the supermarket tonight (I never go during the day, way too hectic) but hubby is still sick and doesn't think he'll be coming to church. I'm supposed to do one of the bible readings at church, I don't entirely want to go without him though. I could but it's not like I couldn't do with some relaxing as well. I think I can feel some nasty period pain coming on.

So far our movies have gone well. Turner & Hooch was really good. It was funny and sweet and there were human interactions, not just getting to love the dog. Now all we have left is I'm With Lucy, I wonder if hubby is actually going to watch it or if he'd going to say "No, that's okay, you watch it." FYI mister - I hate watching stuff by myself when you're in the house! Only when you are out can I do such a thing.

I did a funny loop of BE tenants and renters today. I went to read Cat's blog because she is totally awesome. Then I clicked on her renter Lou and she seems cool too (please read her recent posts about a Passion Party and her hubby losing the car - funny stuff!) then I clicked on her renter, Ficklechick, who has Cat as a renter! I love the blogosphere.

Hosea and Habukuk

2006-03-04T17:07:00.000+11:00

"Plead with your mother, plead--
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband--
that she put away her whoring from her face,
and her adultery from between her breasts;
lest I strip her naked
and make her as in the day she was born,
and make her like a wilderness,
and make her like a parched land,
and kill her with thirst.
Upon her children also I will have no mercy,
because they are children of whoredom.
For their mother has played the whore;
she who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, 'I will go after my lovers,
who give me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.'
Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns,
and I will build a wall against her,
so that she cannot find her paths.
She shall pursue her lovers
but not overtake them,
and she shall seek them
but shall not find them.
Then she shall say,
'I will go and return to my first husband,
for it was better for me then than now.'
And she did not know
that it was I who gave her
the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and who lavished on her silver and gold,
which they used for Baal."
Hosea 2:2-8

You make mankind like the fish of the sea,
like crawling things that have no ruler.
He brings all of them up with a hook;
he drags them out with his net;
he gathers them in his dragnet;
so he rejoices and is glad.
Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and makes offerings to his dragnet;
for by them he lives in luxury,
and his food is rich.
Habukuk 1:14-16

I think these are amazing words that speak to the nature of mankind. God created us and we leave him for the things he has created, or things that we think we've created. I feel like I've done this sort of thing a lot lately. I have little trouble trusting God with the big things in my life, I feel like things overall will work out because he is there and even if they don't work out and I die horribly - the next thing will be heaven, which will be awesome. Part of my being easily angered of late is that I get really angry when things don't go my way. I have a plan of how things are going to work which I think is good and then they don't work like that. Like when I went out to dinner with some folks while hubby was away and I was expecting him to get home late. Then he got home early (while I was still out) and my whole world spun out of whack. It didn't matter, I just had an idea of how nicely things were going to fit together and they didn't. I can't control the little things - gotta trust them to God too. Gotta look to him for provision and praise him for the things he does because they are good.

Darn...

2006-03-04T16:28:00.000+11:00

I think I've caught hubby's cold. I've never sneezed so much in my life! I think that if those things about sneezes and heart stopping or sneezes and orgasms were true I'd either be dead or really happy right now. Unfortunately I seem to be feeling worse by the hour. At least it's the weekend and I can rest.

I rented five DVDs last night. It's pretty good, in Blockbuster at Hornsby you can get 5 weeklies for $6. So far they are going well. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, hubby hadn't seen the first one but it was out so I couldn't get it. It was an okay movie. Good if you want to watch a bit of action, a bit of fun and some Angelina Jolie (I have to admit, she is hot). I thought the first Tomb Raider was better though.

Today we watched The Devil's Advocate. It was really good. What else can I say really? It makes a statement about human nature, about desire, about the devil. If you believe the devil exists it's a great illustration of how he influences people to do things that they want to do, it seems like a good idea at the time, but it turns out badly - for everyone.

The other movies I rented are I'm With Lucy (it doesn't look all that great but I just keep being drawn to it when I'm in the store - it might be the girl, she was in a couple of other romantic comedies that I really liked), End of Days (what can I say? I just love those Roman Catholic prophecy type movies) and Turner & Hooch (who doesn't love Tom Hanks? I just hope the only relationship formed is the one with the dog - I need human relationships too!).

Blog vs. Journal

2006-03-04T09:52:00.000+11:00

Wow! Is this true? It's an article describing the difference between weblogs and online journals. Pretty much blog looks outwards to others and journal looks inward. That's all fine, obviously they've evolved over time to be a bit of both. The things that he says are specifically characteristic of blogs are things that I actually don't' like and skip over when roaming blogs. For example, listing sites you found interesting - I especially don't like this if you don't add what your opinion is and don't want too many sites listed because I came to visit your site not one hundred other sites. Also I don't like when it's so outward looking that the sole purpose is to sell things or something like that - I think to myself "Geez, don't be so cheap - just pay for a website!". I did at some point think that the distinction between them was dumb because an implicit added condition was that journal was paid for but blogs are free, through blogger, blogcharm etc. Then I remembered that live journal is a free blog hosting thing but it's called "live journal" so you could argue that they are free online journals.

On a different note - I realise I didn't post yesterday, I said I would but work was busy and then I was too tired when I came home. I didn't even turn on my computer!

Don't forget to visit my renter! She is cool! Go on... clicky clicky on the spare roomy =)

Current emo: sort of ambivalent really

Thursday Thirteen

2006-03-02T22:49:00.000+11:00

My landlord is part of a Thursday 13 meme. I want to be a part of it and I will next week but I'm so tired right now... I need sleep... I don't want my posts to be half-bottomed¹ because I'm tired.

1 I don't really want to use the word arse (ass for you americans) unless I mean it strongly in a bad way... it makes you wonder what that phrase means huh?

Blog Mad!

2006-03-02T22:33:00.000+11:00

Woo hoo! Blog Mad is in public beta! I'm really excited! I didn't think I wound be as excited, mostly because I didn't really know what was going on with it. I really look forward to exploring it tomorrow though!

Nice end to a poopy day

2006-03-02T22:06:00.000+11:00

I just had a meeting for Fully SIC - the school years 6-8 youth group I lead at at church. I thought this might be a less great part of the day but actually it went really well. It was quite productive and encouraging. It was a really pleasant atmosphere and I didn't end up volunteering for heaps and heaps of stuff (just a few things which I was already doing anyway but now I know a little more about them) which I often do and get stressed out about later.

I had an infected toe today. It hurt a lot! My toenails on my big toes have grown in in the last 3 months which is annoying because I didn't cut them any differently to the rest of my life. So the other big toe got infected really badly a while ago but this time I was sort of prepared. I looked at it and thought "Yep, that's red, and sore and getting worse." So I whipped out the antibacterial ointment (Fucidin) from last time and put a bandaid over it and went to bed. It was worse this morning but I refreshed the ointment and over the day it has diminished. It was very hard to walk though because my toe was too painful to walk properly but walking on the side of my foot caused cramps and such. Not cool! Then before the meeting I cleaned it up a bit my and redid the ointment and now I can actually squeeze my toe without pain! Yay for Fucidin!

I was so tired at work today. We were also quite late because the 8:35am express train was super late, like the 8:14am express train hadn't even come at 8:30am and they didn't know when it was coming. So we had to take an all stops. Then the bus went the wrong way at Central station so we took the slow route to work. That worked out fine though because there were Post Graduate talks on and there's always a free lunch before them and it doesn't count as a lunch break when we go to them. I was able to leave at the same time and not lose any pay for being late in the morning. On the tired front I hope to go to bed a lot earlier than last night so that I'm not dragging the chain all day.

I've been reading cool things in Hosea and Habakuk lately - I hope to be able to post about them tomorrow.

My poor hubby is getting sick. He feels crappy and his nose is nearly running off his face. He's a smart boy though, I've seen him drinking lots of water. I don't know if it's a conscious thing or if he just does it to soothe his throat, either way it's good for him.

Current emo: happy

Blog Olympics Party!

2006-03-01T23:10:00.000+11:00

It's the second event for the Blog Olympics Training Camp and we all know that an extremely large part of the Blog Olympics (and its training) is to have as many parties as possible just to discourage the Olympians from getting enough sleep before the big events.

Welcome to my party! It's a little sudden I know and I didn't have a lot of time to decorate. Luckily it's usually fairly tidy around here. Possibly the most famous person here this evening is Jedi Master Yoda he unfortunately had to wear his disguise this evening because Kenobi insisted on coming. He peeked out for a moment just so I'd know he was here though, even if no one else did.

I'm hoping that Mags will have time to stop by before her big trip to Disney World. I'm not sure how much she has to pack, and I know that she likes having her hair done and would have liked to do that before attending this fabulous party.

Owl unfortunately couldn't make it because he's been so busy at work that I told him any extra time must be spent with his girly because if she's anything like me (and she's potentially not) she'd like to spend a bit more time with her man.

Our local hero Genuine couldn't make it because his kids have the Chicken Pox and the flu and Genuine has probably caught their gastro bug. Also, I think one of them got knocked out by a football... or possibly his apple juice.

Chatty couldn't come because she tripped over one of her dogs toys and twisted her ankle. The poor doll! The doctor told her to stay in bed - I hope her husband is waiting on her hand and foot... get it? Foot... ankle... hmmm... yeah.

Anita said she'd bring her whole bookclub though so maybe it won't be as quiet around here as it was starting to sound. I must say however, the noise Kenobi is making makes up for everyone I think.

Lets party like it's 1999! My hubby always says that so it must have been a good year for partying!

Tagged

2006-03-01T17:28:00.000+11:00

Wow, I got tagged. How odd. Other people get it all the time but I haven't. I don't hate memes so I'll do it - just for you Queen!

What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was in school. I had youngster, angsty depression. It was possibly around the time I had chickenpox.

What were you doing 1 year ago?
Getting married. Moving into new place. Starting 2nd year of uni (I think this year is going to be heaps better, not that the last year of uni was bad).

Five snacks I enjoy:
-Curry puffs
-Noodles
-Muffins
-Peanut butter and choc-chip cookies
-Many kinds of fruits

Five songs to which I know all the lyrics:
-Always by Bon Jovi
-Worlds Apart by Jars of Clay
-Drops of Jupiter by Train
-Good Enough by Sarah McLachlan
-Even When I'm Sleeping by Leonardo's Bride
(I found this one really difficult!)

Five things I'd do if I were a millionaire:
-Give money to my church and uni Christian stuff
-Build a house on my parent's block of land so they would either have a better chance of selling it or they could rent it out.
-Travel to Europe
-Invest a bit for a rainy day
-Give money to a charity that really needed it eg starving children in Africa or breast cancer research or any kind of cancer research or support centre for people who need help but can't pay for it.

Five bad habits:
-bad language
-bad temper
-bad eating
-always want to buy something
-isn't that bad that I can't think of another... I can think of bad stuff but I don't think they go in the habits category

Five things I like doing:
-Going out to dinner
-Going out for coffee
-Watching movies
-Hugging my hubby
-Blogging

Five things I would never wear, buy or get new again:
-Glo mesh
-Tall stilettos
-Arseless pants
-Avon perfume
-Midrift shirt

Five favorite toys:
-Computer
-iPod nano
-Old school camera
-Guitar
-Computer programs

Here's the deal: remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot.
-Southern Circle of Hell
-The Newsbitch Chronicles
-[ i am gen]
-My Bipolar Life
-This and that

Then select five people to tag:
-Newfie Girl
-Mags (it's okay to do it when you get back from hols if you don't have time now)
-Hezza
-If you read this and are so inclined to do it then consider yourself tagged, to be honest I'm not sure who still visits here these days.

Tough call

2006-03-01T16:30:00.000+11:00

Okay it was a difficult choice. Thanks for your bids everyone. I have gone with Odd Planet as this week's tenant. Don't hate me you others, please. This time it was actually a matter of narrowing down those that really caught my eye and doing "eenie, meenie, miney, mo". Thankyou to Haunted House Dressing who has both rented and bid here before, and Newfie Girl - I still love you!

Of particular note today were the blogs:
Pictures of Nature - excellent photography!
Mystickal Incense - sad story of a little girl weeing her pants (not the whole blog, just one post!).
Cricket's Corner - I'd never seen this blog before, I like it.

Yeh Baby!

2006-03-01T15:42:00.000+11:00

Overnight got me 8 bids (I think). Now I have 12! This is a good number. I like this system because it gets people to look at your blog, even if you don't get accepted. So even if I don't choose someone, I might still like them and keep visiting them. Speaking of which I'm renting at My Lighter Side. Yay for Eph2810 for choosing me!

Oh my gosh, kids are so cruel! Then again some adults are just pricks too so maybe it has nothing to do with how old someone is. Anyway, my little bro had a blog, I've spoken of it before, I can't link there because it's deleted now. Someone wrote really awful comments about how fabulous communist Russia is/was and how he has so many women and his penis is huge and hurts other penises. My bro didn't want these people to come back so he was thinking of changing the address of his site. Mum has always had a bee in her bonnet (only because she loves us and is conscious of our safety - love you Mum!) about it being so easy to meet dangerous and deceptive people on the internet. So they told my bro he should delete his blog and he agreed. So he did. Now it turns out that it was a kid from his school that wrote those things! The boy must be about 13 or 14! What is wrong with people today?! When my bro told him he had to delete his blog because of what that boy had written the arsehole snickered! I just wish I could tell that boy off in such a way that he'll never even leave his room messy again.

Text books are so expensive! Just the books for my French class came to a total of $112 and I haven't even bought a French dictionary yet.
[aside] I'm having a thing with exclamation marks. I seem to put them at the end of every sentence and then think "That's just silly, I should just put a full stop."
I'm selling my text books so if you happen to be here and want to buy Biology by Campbell (5th Ed.), Chemistry by Silberberg (2nd Ed.), Physics by Giancoli (5th Ed.), Introduction to the practice of statistics by Moore & McCabe (4th Ed.), or Fundamentals of Organic Chemistry by McMurry (4th Ed.) then drop me a line. Chances are that most of the people that come by here are from another country or don't do those subjects at uni. If you are at uni you probably only have these as prescribed text if you're at UNSW.

I think that my friend Hezza is going to be Mark's shopping slave. I'm not sure because the whole thing is a little weird to me but it's both funny and cool too.

UNSW buses suck! I had to wait in a huge line only to have to stand on a hot stinky bus to get to the station! In the morning getting to uni was bad too. There must have been nearly 500 people on that sidewalk. I want to be able to fly!

I'm going to have to practice my French pronunciation a lot. The "r" sounds are not actually a rolling the tongue as many mistake when faking an accent. They are actually a throaty sound that having never spoken a language with throaty bits before I'm not very good at. I didn't know when I learnt some French in high school that you needed to say it like that.

Current emo: happy

Crazy!

2006-02-28T23:32:00.000+11:00

Oooh hoo hoo... I'm going to do something crazy and let bidding for my blog run over night. I wonder how many bids I'll get this time.

Current mood: tired

Exciting!

2006-02-28T18:12:00.000+11:00

This is a very exciting time! I'll have a new tenant in a while So make sure you go visit them, whoever it may be.

I have bids on three blogs at the moment... someone's gotta accept me eventually!

Finally, here is the song of the week! Walter Reed by Michael Penn. It's from his latest album My Hollywood Jr., 1947. You can check out Michael Penn stuff at his official website. Michael Penn is married to Aimee Mann which is sort of how I heard of him. He's not big here Down Under, in fact you can't even buy his cds here! I like this song though.

A guy in my husband's office is looking for a shopping slave! You can check that out here. If you are in Australia perhaps you would like to apply. If not you can go and ask silly questions, or sensible ones if that's what blows up your skirt.

I have to get ready for dinner now. Dinner with the Beestons! Yay!

Current emo: excited (I don't know how this emo looks excited but he's supposed to be!)

Goodness me!

2006-02-28T11:53:00.000+11:00

Oh gosh! Just as I'd convinced myself that my timetable was good and it was going to be a good semester of classes I got an email saying I'd been accepted to a course that I'd applied to do without having done the prerequisite. I'd spoken to the course co-ordinator last week and she said she wouldn't let me do it. I got all excited and thought I would be able to do it and I was going to be this amazing student. They even enrolled me in the course before they emailed me which meant I was overloaded (had more units than one should in one semester). I went to speak to them and the co-ordinator said the same thing she did on the phone - that I'd be making it difficult for myself trying to do the third year and second year course at the same time. So I decided to not do it and leave it 'til next year. I'm a little disappointed so I should stop writing and thinking about it before I go into a depressed stupor.

Lately I've had alot of trouble being angered way too easily and getting upset at little things or nothing at all and crying all the time. It's not cool but I've been alright today.

I was a bit silly. Yesterday I convinced myself that because BIOC2101 (Principles of Biochem) laboratory wasn't on, that meant BIOC3151 (Human Genetics) lab wouldn't be on. Even though I'd already been to a lecture for genetics saying that it was on. So I've left my genetics lab book at home. Doh! Hopefully the exercises are not actually in there and I can just use a pen and blank paper... Ooh - it's okay, I found the lab manual on the website so I can print off just the two pages for today!

I'm going to sell my old text books! I've always had a thing about keeping things like that but I barely looked at them when I was doing the course and I haven't looked at most of them since. I think it would more useful to buy newer biochemistry text books rather than keep my old biology, chemistry and physics ones. I've looked up all the new prices and I'll possibly make a call on what is fair considering the condition of the books. The ones I bought new are bound to be nearly perfect because I've hardly used them but ones I got second hand might have been dodgy to begin with.

I'm hungry - lunch time... My lunch (left overs from last night) has been stinking out my bag in a big way. Condensation from the container being in the fridge made my diary and notebook soggy =( I'll be glad to heat it up (shouldn't smell so gross then) and eat it and get rid of the container.

Oh and I didn't get a chance to put the song of the week up but I will do it!

Current emo: bored

Blog Mad

2006-02-27T15:27:00.000+11:00

Blog Mad is a new publicity thing for your blog - similar idea to blog explosion, there's credits and traffic generating involved. If you sign up now (before the launch) you can get prelaunch credits and even more credits for referring others. Do it! Do it now!

Moving out

2006-02-27T13:14:00.000+11:00

Quick! Go visit The Queen in the spare room before she moves out!

So much time!

2006-02-27T12:05:00.000+11:00

I thought that going back to uni I wouldn't have much time to blog. That probably will be the case later but today being the first day my french tutorial isn't on because we haven't had the lecture yet. So that's two hours to fill, plus the two hour break after that. I've already filled the french tute actually. I went and stood in the enormous line for my new student card. Then there was another big line for student diaries. I don't actually use the diary but I'm glad I got one because it had vouchers and I got another whole voucher book and a discount card for stuff on campus so that was pretty sweet. I don't know if the VSU (voluntary student unionism) is in or not so I don't know if we have to go out of our way to pay union fees or not. I guess I'll get an email about it if we do. Although you might have thought they'd send an email to say there was no tutorial for french since it's a first year subject - the poor things, some of them must have been really worried, if they were in the right place or wondering if it was on or not? I had to call the lecturer to ask if it was on cos I didn't want us to all sit there for two hours (not that we would have stayed that long). I also updated my student status at the bank and got the reading book for my gen ed course - Murderers, Maniacs and Medical Detectives.

I have very full Tuesdays! 9am-6pm without any breaks! Hopefully Biochem lab won't always run the full time and I can get some lunch in there.

I just visited Owl's blog and some anonymous person put a comment "who gives a shit???" Yes, that's right, they didn't say anything else and they have no concept of grammar. That is my pet peev, I don't know if I have any other peevs, but useless rudeness while remaining anonymous is just annoying. Does it make you feel big to poo on someone's blog and not let them know who you are? If we see that kind of stuff on our blog I'm sure most of us just ignore it and it's not as bad as verbal abuse in person but it reminds me of those people at school that were put on a pedastal but were really mean to people and their own friends actually hated them but for some reason they were labelled as being "cool". Well being out of school now - we don't give a crap what you think and if you don't care about what we write about then don't read it! We could disable anonymous comments on blogs but then that discriminates against people who don't have a blogger account.

It's Monday which is song of the week day but that's going to have to wait until I get home because I can't upload the song from uni. I should have thought about that last night *sigh*.

This is one of the most clever/funny blog topics I've seen!

How crazy! Lately I've been making blog templates for fun and I just finished one and I was going to put it up to show and say that if anyone wanted to make it their own they could email me and i'll send them the code... I just realised I can put the file up so that anyone can just download it. If I did that though I don't know if I could monitor how many people downloaded it and I might like to know that. Anyway the crazy part is that Master Yoda directed his readers to this guy who has free blog templates. They are certainly not as fancy as the ones you would pay for (not that mine are fancy - yet, nor do you have to pay for them - yet) but they are good. You may go here to see the new template I made.

Current emo: content and very hungry! Lunch time.

Study study study, makes you funny...

2006-02-26T22:57:00.000+11:00

Well, uni goes back tomorrow. I've always loved studying and learning things. I liked school where I got to learn and see my friends. Uni is a little different. My hubby liked uni for the same reasons that I liked school. I'm not looking forward to uni as much though. The holidays have been excellent and I know that I don't get tired of the holidays as much as when I was at school because I'm able to entertain myself in a lot more ways; I can drive and see people without depending on my parents. I also don't have many friends at uni. It's not that I'm a loner (entirely); I'm friendly to people and there's people I sit with at lectures but I don't hang out with them at other times. Maybe because I'm not doing the same degree. Maybe because I live far away so at the end of the day I jump on a bus and go home. Maybe because I feel like I can't relate to them as much in some ways because I have a very different lifestyle to them. They live in college, roll out of bed and come to uni but I travel to get there and I have a husband and worry about feeding us properly and working and stuff like that. I've figured out how to teach myself things (with a little help from others) so with the lack of friends I just can't get excited about uni. I'm also catching up on that second year class so I won't be doing classes with the people I did last year because they will be doing the third year stuff that I'll have to do next year.

I'm also a little concerned because my emotions have been really out of sync lately. They are all over the place and I can't seem to control them. This afternoon I got sad for about 30 minutes and nearly cried because my favourite guitar pick was missing. It won't be very good if I'm at uni and I have to walk out of lectures because I start bawling. Or if I get so angry I lose it and punch someone. I haven't punched anyone for several years so that probably won't happen but crying might.

I think I'm going to sell some of the old textbooks that I haven't looked at in a year. I have a thing about hanging on to them but now I don't buy new ones because I don't want to spend the money. It would be far more profitable to sell the old ones and buy new ones that are more relevant to my field of study. I have a next to new physics text book that was probably bought for about $120 and I'll never do uni physics again! When I say next to new I mean I've probably opened it twice!

Better get some sleep before the big day!

Blogging emo: anxious

Sunday

2006-02-26T11:10:00.000+11:00

Well, it's Sunday. Hubby is back. They actually got back early which I was a bit annoyed about. They go away to this conference which only extends over 24 hours and then there's not enough boys going to hang out and go out to dinner to make it worth while so they drive the two hours home. What a rort! (For them I mean.) Anyway I'm over that now. It's nice to have him home. He's sick though, last night he had to shove the ends of his hankie up his nose so he could read a book without dripping on it. I too have a runny nose now. I don't know if it's related.

I've had a bit of an upset tummy this morning but some peppermint tea seems to be doing it alot of good.

Hah! When I went to get petrol yesterday before dinner. The attendant guy asked me how my week was (or something like that), I was in an excellent mood so I replied "Good thanks!" with a big smile. Then I'm pretty sure he said to me "Lookin' good." I just smiled, not such a big one this time. It was one of those sliding statements that you're left wondering "was that a pick-up attempt?" It was a little funny.

Hubby is still in bed at 11:40am! I never know if I'm supposed to wake him up at some point.

Blogging emo: happy

Renter

2006-02-25T17:16:00.000+11:00

Please click on my tenants room and go visit her! She's cool and wants your love!

Relax!

2006-02-25T16:32:00.000+11:00

I just finished watching Spellbound. It was pretty good. It wasn't a very entertaining movie but it was well done. It introduces you to each child they are documenting in a way that makes you want each to win the national spelling bee for their own individual reasons. At the end (don't worry I'm not spoiling it - I don't think) you hear the word that one of the kids needs to spell to be the champion and then it cuts back to all the other kids and goes through their reactions and feelings (mostly relief). During this time I was thinking "Argh! I want to know how to spell that last word." Then I realised that they were doing something in particular here - showing how it's important to have goals, it's important to work hard at whatever you are endeavouring to do, it's important to be content with your achievements. You don't have to win - just do your best because that's all you can do and just because you didn't win doesn't mean someone else is better than you, it means they are of comparable caliber and they were luckier on the day because in everything is an element of chance. Then they did show the last spell, just to say "It is nice to win when you can!"

I've been trying to get things sorted with Blog Explosion. They are having a few problems - don't get me wrong, I think this is a good tool. I've come across some really good blogs that I return to. However things are not really working properly. No one will accept my bids to rent on their blog (this isn't a technical difficulty, obviously). I have changed my blog look a couple of times, when I asked for a new thumbnail the first time I guess they didn't wait for the background to load or something because it was mostly white except for my profile pick and a photo in a post. This time I requested a new thumbnail and didn't get one. So I sent a help ticket thing and they said they'd do it manually. They were really good in replying quickly but now my thumbnail looks like this: It may be an innocent mistake but I wonder if it's laziness on someone's part. Did they think I wouldn't notice that my blog is blue and my thumbnail is green? Did they think that I would like having a huge pic of a dog doing a doodle on my thumbnail?
Oh well, I've asked again, it might be right this time.

This is the blog I'm bidding on at the moment. It's totally cool! I hope she (I'm pretty sure it's a girl cos "her" fiance is "SwedeMan") chooses me. It had a really cool design and she's going to be showing some baby photos soon. Baby photos are cool!

MacGyver Season 1 is out on DVD. Someone told me about it last night because Stargate was mentioned and Richard Dean Anderson was the big part (or at least one of) in both series. Although it turns out that they've been available in the US for a while because Amazon has all of them. I would really like to get them, I used to love watching MacGyver when it was on. I don't really remember much of it, just that I liked it.

I'm going out to dinner with a bunch of people tonight. I'm driving three people! It's so weird because someone reversed into Hezza's parked car the other day so she can't drive at the moment. So I'm driving her, which means I'm driving her friend Claire and we are also picking up Sarah, I guess her parents needed the car. Usually Dave drives when it's the two of us, sometimes I drive him to karate but I very rarely drive with anyone else in the car and now I'm driving everyone. Also designated driver doesn't get to drink. That's okay, I don't mind this time cos it's not a party but I'm not driving to a party next time there is one!

Blogging emo: bored

Ah, the weekend

2006-02-25T12:35:00.000+11:00

I slept too late to go to my parent's place for lunch. It's nearly lunch time already!

When I went to bed I read some more of Narnia and listened to my iPod a bit to combat the quiet (usually I've got hubby's breathing next to me) until I was literally drifting off. That worked quite well. I'm feeling much better this morning (or afternoon!).

I'm hungry. I'd better eat something. I also borrowed Spellbound from Hezza to watch today but I think I might have left it in the car, I don't remember picking it up - that's why I should put things in my bag!

Still up!

2006-02-25T03:44:00.000+11:00

Heh, I'm still awake. It's quarter to four in the morning. My hubby will probably disapprove when he gets home but I intend to sleep in tomorrow and have an excellent day! I don't know what I'm doing but that's okay. I sort of have this urge to go have lunch with my family. I guess it depends what time I wake up and what they are doing.

In the time since my last post I have been making a header for Bloggin' Bizatch. She's having a way generous competition for people to make her a new header for her blog - the prize is a $50 iTunes card. Since I now have an iPod nano I would totally appreciate that! This was my effort for entry to the comp.

Who cares if it's raining or pouring? It all comes from the same place.

2006-02-25T01:44:00.000+11:00

This sucks! I was going to come in, write a quick post and go to bed. I was driving home and looked at the clock; 1:24, "Hmmm," I thought to myself, "I haven't been home this late in a while." Hubby is away until tomorrow night - it's the first night he's been away and I've been at home. Might I add that the goodbye I got was entirely insufficient. He was totally preoccupied with packing and the computer and I know it's only one night but I'm sensitive and I want some damned attention and love! Over a year we've been married, he hasn't noticed yet?!

After Fully SIC (youth group I lead at) we drove Jo and Sam home 'cause their parents couldn't come due to younger siblings being in bed. That was all fine. I went to Hezza's place afterwards with some people and we got pizza and watched a movie. That was all good. I came home with the aforementioned idea and turned my computer on, sitting in front of it a note that read "I spilt OJ in the kitchen, but didn't have time to fully clean up. Can you mop? Thanks!"

I think "Great, okay, fine." I walk into the kitchen and it stinks! It's 1:30am which means this orange juice has been on the floor for about seven hours now! There's still a square of paper towel there, soaking up OJ, that's nearly dried and stuck to the floor. I start to look for the bucket. I walk into the laundry, it's not on the floor, it's not at the bottom of the cupboard - okay where is it? I walk into the kitchen, no it's not in there; I look in the cupboard under the sink, it's not there. By this time I'm starting to stress out, I try to get onto the balcony, the door won't open, I'm latching and unlatching the door trying to get it to open, I've already taken one bolt out, turns out the other bolt is in too - the one we never bolt. The bucket isn't out there either. "Maybe it's in the garage." I think to myself. "I hope it's not in the garage." I think to myself. I notice that there's a cupboard under the laundry sink that I've never opened. There's the bucket! A perfectly reasonable place to put it, I just had no idea that such a place existed in our flat! I've avoided tears so far despite the quick building frustration as I remember the quick, distracted kiss goodbye that I got and try to look for the darn bucket. As I mop the floor I think to myself, "Don't ever say I'm not a good wife! I should get a present for this." Also, "At least this is a good reason to mop the kitchen floor, which - lets be honest - is a job well overdue."

While I was mopping I found a big chunk of glass from that time I broke a mustard jar. I rinsed out the bucket and thought that I should empty the bin because it was full - stuffed full of rubbish plus all the paper towel used to mop up the floor (at least I know he tried to mop up the floor, I think all the towel is gone). So I took the bag out of the bin and it started dripping all over me. Yes that's correct, there was a hole in the bottom of the bag, the OJ had drained from the paper towels at the top, through all the rubbish collecting dirt and stench, pooled at the bottom of the bin and dripped on me and the freshly mopped floor. That was it! Too much for me - I was gone. I started bawling. I had to put the bag in another two bags before I thought I was safe. I looked down at the bin and the dirty orange pool of muck and started to wail - I couldn't put a new bag in there. So I rinsed it and threw it in the sink with the orange juice bottle that is still sitting in there - I don't know why or what to do with it. I walked away and wailed, and cried and bawled and wondered why I'm such a mess when he's not here.

I went into the bathroom to wash my hands and started gagging over the sink at the thought of the mucky orange juice in the bottom of the bin. The smell is still lingering, I don't know if it's because it's on my or just in the air. I put my clothes in the washing basket already so it's not them.

Still crying, I came to my computer and saw I had four emails. One from my brother telling me to take him off my bloggerpalooza list because he's not going to be blogging anymore. He said he doesn't have any more to say and that he's sorry that I put hard work into making him a header but he's not going to be using it now. He's saved the template in case he comes back to it later. This did make me sad, I kind of really liked that my little brother had joined me in the blogosphere. So that added a few more tears to much already gushing ones. What I don't get is that he said things like "it is just too risky... I just don't think it's safe" what does that mean? He also said that if I'm the only one who reads his blog then he might as well just talk to me. He's only been doing it long enough to write 18 posts! I also know that Hezza reads his blog as well, we were talking about it today. These things take time, if you want them to happen.

I got two emails on my other account, one from BE, my rent bid has been denied again! What is this? No one, wants me! The other was a response to the bible issue being discussed here which I'm really not in a state of mind to read at the moment.

I started to write this post with many tears in my eyes (quite difficult - can't see the keyboard) and I guess it has been therapeutic because I'm not crying now. I'm not happy either though, perhaps some sleep will be good, I hate going to bed sad and by myself - this sucks the pus.

Don't get me wrong - I don't blame my hubby for spilling orange juice and making the whole flat smell yucky and stressing me out. I really am working on the not getting angry thing. I think I'm starting with trying not to get angry directly at him, I'm not even angry, just extremely upset. It was an accident and I can be trusted to clean up and perform such duties, I guess some prior warning would have been good - why wouldn't I be out partying late if he wasn't going to be here? I also want to apologise greatly for the enormous hypocrisy that occurred yesterday when I was at home on the computer and hubby was at work and started to download something and then told me the network was going to be slow and I got really annoyed because I was using the network and would have liked the warning before he started sucking up bandwidth. Then that evening I started to send and email with two mp3s attached! It took forever - I actually cancelled it because it was only up to 30%. I'm really sorry! I truly didn't realise it would take so long, I know email isn't that speedy but I was naive. I actually feel so guilty, I'm gonna start crying again because I forgot to apologise to him before he went to sleep last night and now he isn't here for me to tell him and he might have even forgot about it by now but I'm really sorry. Hypocrisy is not a thing I do a lot - it's a horrible thing to do, I should not take advantage of his patience with me by doing the exact same things that piss me off.

What type of candy are you?

2006-02-24T10:07:00.000+11:00

Blogthings is a cool place to go sometimes, it gets old kind of quickly but I did have quiz results for "What age will you die at?" down the bottom of my sidebar. I thought it was time to change that so now it's "what candy are you?" - the results were really funny! Can guess what I would be? Go have a look!

Gmail is USUALLY so cool

2006-02-24T09:11:00.000+11:00

Last night I couldn't access gmail at all. I thought "This is crap!" but I also thought "Hmmm, maybe they are finally updating my account so that I, a faithful user for about a year and a half now, finally has those cool new things like assigning contact groups and having google chat right there in the web browser." I log on this morning and what? No bloody google chat, no new features but people who have been using gmail for a month (and didn't start with the features) get the new features put in while I'm here left out in the cold! What a load of poo! Where's the love?

Is BE dumb?

2006-02-24T09:02:00.000+11:00

Is it just that BE has a small pool of customers? It doesn't seem that way most of the time. I keep running into the same people in the surf blogs thing. I guess it's cos they assign alot of credits to their blog? I don't really understand how it works yet. I even get people that I've already bogmarked! I guess it's good though cos it's not like I always go back to blogmarked ones - I did one time, I opened all the ones I wanted at the time up and then got to their originating sites and bookmarked them. Who wants to get to blogs through BE when you could just go straight to them?

Johari Window

2006-02-23T20:59:00.000+11:00

On Janet's blog, for Tell It To Me Tuesday she had a Johari Window - I'm not entirely sure what this is apart from it's named after its inventors Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham. Supposedly it's about awareness - but I think Janet is more correct in saying it's about perception and misconception. I thought it was kinda interesting so here's mine. I'd like to see your answers!

Rockin' the Casbar

2006-02-23T18:18:00.000+11:00

I can't quite believe I did it...

I wasn't expecting to...

I didn't even have any desire to before she suggested it...

I bought an iPod nano! I took my old mp3 player back to Bing Lee and told them all the problems. They called San Disk to determine if it was under a repair or replacement warranty. It was a replacement warranty but they had to order another one in. I said 'While we're replacing it, why don't you let me "return" it and I'll get something else?' So they said yes and the girl excitedly said "Why don't you get an iPod nano? You can get the 1GB one" So I did!

Julie and Julia

2006-02-23T11:52:00.000+11:00

Anita wrote a review of this book, Julie & Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen on her book blog. Now I really want to read it. You can read an excerpt of it on Amazon, it seems like just the kind of book I would really enjoy. A nice relief from the book I'm reading now which is really good but it's pretty heavy. He has a writing style that uses some big words that I don't understand - other words would do just fine but I think he's a bit of an intellectual type, the kind that has an extended vocabulary and uses it instead of his normal one.

I can't justify buying this book right now though because it is really expensive for a book - for a light entertaining book. It's nearly AU$40. Normally I would pay $20 for a new book or less than $10 for a second hand one. I might pop into the second hand place and see if they have it. I'll admit that I haven't shopped around for the best price but if A&R has it at that price I can't imagine it getting down to $20 anywhere.

Julie and Julie, the title and the excerpt quite reminds me of Like Water for Chocolate : A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies. It is such a beautiful book about a girl trying to find herself while being oppressed by her strict mother. She falls in love with a boy who is forced to marry her sister and they all live in the same house! The way they interact makes you tingle with the same excitement that one does when confronted by such strong attraction and the brush of hand against skin in passing. Each "chapter" starts with a recipe which then flows into the story of the goings on in the house. I really enjoyed it! Perhaps I will read it again, perhaps if I can't find a less expensive Julie and Julia I will read Like Water for Chocolate.

IE is stupid

2006-02-23T11:13:00.000+11:00

Don't forget to visit my renter at My Bipolar Life!

I was popped into internet explorer to see what my blog looks like in that. Apparently IE can't handle transparency in .png images so instead of having a swanky gradient thing blending into the blue background on the sides of my set up there is blue gradient-white-blue. I just came up with a fairly simple solution though... lately all these things have been popping into my head like I actually know how to do things that used to seem really complicated. Like for example Mystickal Incense is a cool looking blog, I wouldn't have had any idea how to do something like that but now I can see how it's done. Oh my goodness - I think I've actually learnt how to do something these holidays!

Sucks the puss

2006-02-22T16:00:00.000+11:00

I hate when things get like this! I feel awful, I don't know if it's because I'm sad and angry or if I'm getting sick or I just have a one off headache. Perhaps I have all three - that would really suck the puss!

"Sucks the puss" is something my old friend Sally Duckworth used to say when we were in about year 9 at school. Lately it just pops into my head when things are crap. Like this week at work I've repeated this stupid test three times and don't know the results for sure. My mp3 player is crap! When I first bought it there was something wrong in the firmware and the controls would freeze up and the only solution was to take out the battery. So they replaced it because it was within a week. I later found the same problem but fixed it by updating the firmware. Now the earphone socket connections are bad so if you bump the earphone jack at all while the thing is playing the sound goes all wrong and sometimes you don't get sound at all. Really convenient if it's in my pocket - walking requires a certain level of movement - including inside my pocket. Along with the earphone thing, the stupid little machine turns itself off at random - I know it's not me doing it accidentally because the key lock is on. I want my money back!

Possibly the worst bit is that I had a conversation with some other Christians at work. It was a good conversation in itself about the Spirit and other things. I don't have a strong opinion about some things because I don't know much about them but there are some things that I do and once again it has become evident that things I take for granted as true from the bible, other people think differently about. I hate that we look at the bible and see different things. How can I know the truth when everyone has a different version? There are many things I'm willing to take on faith and accept that I can't fully understand (eg the trinity and predestination) but even those things are different in other peoples' minds.

I thought that finding Reese's Cups down in the hospital cafeteria would make my day. However as much as I love chocolate and peanut butter, I'm disappointed - they are not as good as chocolate spiders (chocolate, peanut butter and crunchy fried noodles). Plus I still have that headache. At least I might get to go home soon and I can sleep on the train.

Still need a little help

2006-02-22T10:09:00.000+11:00

I would still like some votes on this issue =)

Quickie before work

2006-02-22T08:13:00.000+11:00

Yep, I'm about to leave for work...

When I see a really excellent design on a blog it is often done by a professional. I usually go check out their site and prices and portfolio. I always think "Woof, that's expensive!" I have been thinking more about it though and it can take from one to three hours (I imagine that would be typical) depending on how complex it is and where you are starting from to make a blog template and if you are charging $30-60 per template then that's about $10-20 an hour. So really it's quite reasonable. Unless it was very much a hobby, you wouldn't want to charge less and if you charged less for awesome designs everyone would come and you'd have to make so many it wouldn't count as a hobby anymore and you'd probably need to up the prices for your time.

Got to go.

Deleted post

2006-02-21T16:00:00.000+11:00

My post that was so rudely deleted went something like this:

In the end I had 16 bids for my spare room. It sort of dispelled the discontent I was feeling from so much rejection - not one person has accepted my bids for their spare rooms, but now I feel popular, so many people want to hang out at my place for a week!

I chose The Queen this week because I really like how open and honest she is about her bipolar and also other stuff that is happening in her life. I think that she deserves kudos, or snaps or encouragement, whatever is your thing!

Since all of the blogs that bid were good I'll mention a few and what I like about them.

Newfie Girl is cool. She's funny and down to earth and she posts regularly so I visit pretty much everyday - I really should put her in my sidebar.

Mystickal Incense & More Blog is way hot! It is such a cool design and she sells "Oil free bath oil" (among other things). Hehe, I like oxymorons, how funny.

Martijn Vreugde has extremely cool digital designs. "Sooo good!" I will be going back there.

Grand-pa is really funny! He has some good jokes and also a story that was so sweet it made me feel all mushy!

The Dramedy of Life also has a totally cool design!

Neal has a really sweet little daughter and he seems like a really great dad.

Kristen gets bonus points for havng the best name ever! (Ok I might be a. biased and b. exagerating) Also for adding an apostrophe on her blog name in BE.

I think that's about all for now. Don't forget to visit The Queen!

Ahhhhhh!!!!!

2006-02-21T15:12:00.000+11:00

I could throw this gorram computer out the window! I just wrote a post explaining why I chose The Queen and her blog My Bipolar Life to rent the spare room and I also said why I liked the other blogs that bid and it took forever because this network at work is soooo slow today and then the bloody thing instead of publishing the post went to the login page and now the post isn't there! Grrrr, I fell like screaming four letter words. Instead I'm going to go back to work and I'll re write the post when I get home to my beautiful computer and lovely wireless network.

In the mean time, please visit The Queen in her room.

12 bids!

2006-02-21T08:06:00.000+11:00

Oh my Gosh! I have 12 bids for the spare room! I've only had to choose between two before! It must be because I went to bed and in all that time people were awake and bidding.

Feel free to help me choose - I'm going to be checking out these blogs for the rest of day! Something exciting to do in the lulls at work!

Athletic Support Her
eccentricman.blog-city.com
Newfie Girl
Martijn
Ramblings and Rhetoric
The dramedy of life
The Sweet Stuff
Grand-pa
My corner of the web
My bipolar life
Right religion
Kristens junk (yes she spelt it without an apostrophe)

Excellent Day!

2006-02-20T23:25:00.000+11:00

Today might almost have been the perfect day - as perfect as any ordinary day gets. I had a nice relaxing day, tapping away on my computer, saw my best friend for a coffee and cake and shopping, went to karate, had perfectly cooked steak (by my hubby!) for dinner, watched a little bit of TV and have all the dishes done! This is an excellent moment! It is however accompanied by a stench that is coming from either me or my clothing which has been worn to karate two days in a row. I therefore must quickly de-clothe and shower before bed. Goodnight!

Farewell!

2006-02-20T18:50:00.000+11:00

Farewell Jeremy! Thanks for renting!

Help!

2006-02-20T18:44:00.000+11:00

I am being very responsible (about two years too late!) and making a spreadsheet of all the classes I need to complete my uni course. As well as enrolling in both semester one and two of this year. I need one more general education course (something that has little to do with my major - so that I come out of uni a well rounded person with different interests!). I can't choose between The Art of Scientific Visualisation or Graphics and Contemporary Society. What do you guys think?

Favourite books

2006-02-20T15:03:00.000+11:00

I've never actually been tagged but I was reading Anita's blog and she asked regular readers to do this meme, so I thought that's the least I could do...

1) Name five of your favorite books.

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
I read this quite recently and I just adored it. I love the movie too but as is often the case, the book is better!

The Red Tree by Shaun Tan
This is a picture book, some might feel its a children's book but I think it has something for everyone and I don't think that a child would appreciate the amazing artworks that make up its illustrations.

The Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell
Yes it's true, they are not just one book! I'm gradually working my way through these. I love them. I'm up to Black Notice, I just have to get it.

The Dark Is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
No, this isn't a single book either. I don't know that they have the most quality writing, maybe they do, I haven't read them in a while. In fact I haven't even read all of them, I've read three of them. I like them a lot - can't go past the adventure with a touch of mythology where good always triumphs at the end of the battle!

The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
Those who don't like them haven't read them! Most of the time, I find that's the case.

2) What was the last book you bought?

The Goldsworthy Trilogy by Graham Goldsworthy
It's about biblical theology. I haven't read it yet.

3) What was the last book you read?

What Women Really ~~Want~~ Need
It's really good for those who are looking for something missing in their life - especially if you already have the things that make you happy, or if you know there's a greater purpose.

4) List five books that have been particularly meaningful to you (in no particular order).

The Bible
It might sound trite but this book - or collection of 66 smaller books - is the book that has had the biggest impact on my life. (I'm counting this as five or more books!)

5) Name three books you've been dying to read but just haven't gotten around to it?

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Loved the movie, have been meaning to read the book for several years.

The Chronicles of Narnia
I have read the first two books, The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but I haven't read the rest.

The Rabbits by John Marsden
Since this is illustrated by Shaun Tan, I am very interested to see/read this book.

Song of the week!

2006-02-20T11:25:00.000+11:00

Oooh, it's monday! Alot of you don't know but that means it's time for song of the week!

Normally I would put up songs that you probably haven't heard because what better way to experience new music than to take it on recommendation and as a free sample? I'm already plotting for next week what the song is going to be so stay tuned for that! This week however I'm recommend you listen to Always by Bon Jovi. I know - you already know about him and have already formed an opinion right? Well, this is a song that I've listend to for many years, my cousin taught me the words to it and when I stayed at her house we used to listen to it on her Dad's cd. It takes me back and I think it's one of those things that I'm always going to love. I think Jon Bon Jovi is just one of those rockers that I will always love and even though some hate him, I will remain faithful, no matter how dorky it is!

Yesterday

2006-02-20T10:23:00.000+11:00

At about 6pm yesterday I had visions of writing a post that went something along the lines of "Today was an excellent day! Like most excellent days it started off horribly..." in the end though it was a pretty average day.

It started horribly as I was angry and emotionally stretched out due to barely sleeping. Any sleep I did get was full of nightmares about giant snakes that suck the life out of you and Priors of the Ori that kill (horribly) anyone who doesn't choose the path of Origin.

After that I was trying to help my brother put the finishing touches on a blog I'd designed which was really annoying! Not because I don't want to help him but I was saying "just go here" and he couldn't find where here was and my hubby was behind me saying we needed to get ready to go to karate so I was just a little stressed. Mostly because of the previous problem - lack of sleep, not only Friday night but the two nights before that. In the end my bro used the header I made on his old blog template it looks cool.

We went to karate and I was starting to feel better. There was an hour class on self defence; that was good. I probably won't remember most of it because for it to work it really needs to be instinctive and we just don't practice it enough in weekly classes - hubby said we might start though. Then an hour on kata which I can say I learned at least one thing. I really couldn't hear anything for most of it because it was quite loud in the hall. At least I got to practice my kata a bit more. After that I was tired and had had enough, but I stayed for the kumite (sparring) hour which was a workshop which was cool. In the one minute of free sparring we had I managed to get a round kick to someone's head through, I like that I can do that, she wasn't the greatest of blockers (neither am I!) but I did that with a blue belt another time as well, I think that's going to be one of my main things against people my height, just cos I like it!

There were some demonstrations but we left early so we could shower before church. We passed a GPK (Gourmet Pizza Kitchen) truck on the way home which peaked our hunger (only having eaten breakfast and by then it was 5.30pm) so I called ahead to Bambino's and got a BBQ Meatlovers. It was sooo good!

We then went to church, we were going to go out to Cafe Insomnia afterwards - mmm Snickers Milkshake; but when church finished Robo turned around and told us that our bible study group was on supper. So we stayed and washed up and I served people coffee with "expired" milk - it was three days past its use-by-date but I warned them of that and let them smell it before putting it in their coffee. They told me that it was okay because off milk goes chunky in coffee and this didn't. We couldn't be bothered to go to Insomnia after that.

We came home and went over Romans chapter one together - I was a little annoyed because we were supposed to do that on Saturday morning. My husband is very insightful though, it was good, I learnt about Romans 1, yay!

That was pretty much it, I fixed up a problem with my blog - hubby figured it out. We watched some Stargate - cool episode, I liked it. It was season 9, either episode 17 or 18 I think.

Then I slept well at times during the night but I woke up a lot and look quite bedraggled today.

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y

2006-02-18T17:12:00.000+11:00

Woo hoo! It's Saturday! Which means that it's not Sunday - it felt like a Sunday because I had Yum Cha lunch with my family (Happy Birthday Dad!) and we normally do such a thing on Sundays. Since I realised it's Saturday I have the Bay City Rollers in my head...

"Ess ay tee you are , dee ay why night
Ess ay tee you are , dee ay why..."

I don't actually know who the Bay City Rollers are, nor do I know any of their music, except that which is in So I Married An Axe Murderer, which is a totally funny and cute movie and deserves more than a 6.2 out of 10.

I finished making a new blog template. It's quite simple which is excellent because it can easily be modified to suit what one would want. You might be able to see an example of it here in a while - it's my design if it's purple, not if it's dark and spotted.

I downloaded the Photoshop CS trail like I was saying yesterday - it's totally AWESOME! I like Photoshop alot! My li'l bro has given me Photoshop 6 to install, I hope that it doesn't lose too many of the features that are in CS. I'm doing fairly standard stuff so it should be okay.

I whipped out my old SLR camera and I bought some film. It's nice taking photos - still as frustrating as ever to not know whether the photo is going to be good or not. That's the excllent thing about digital, while it doesn't make that cool shutter noise it is instant, you know if the photo is okay or not and whether you need to take it again before it's too late to do so.

Oh no! My husband just opened my blog on his computer for the first time since I changed templates and it doesn't work particularly well... I guess I'll have to make a new one. I admit that what I did may look okay but I did it fairly poorly, it was my first attempt, but noe I'm much neater and don't have nearly as many stuff ups.

Mmm, muffins

2006-02-17T12:47:00.000+11:00

73% of download completed!

Mmm, I just made muffins. It was a recipe for blueberry muffins but instead of blueberries I put black cherries and chocolate chips - an idea I actually borrowed from Elsa who made such a thing for our bible study group on Wednesday night. I made them in cupcake-patty pan type things so I didn't get my muffin trays dirty cos I hate washing those things! Due to the large chunks of cherry they break apart a bit when trying to get them out but that's alright. I think I may have overestimated how much nutmeg is one teaspoon - either that or one teaspoon of nutmeg is alot... they still taste good though.

Ugh!

2006-02-17T11:02:00.000+11:00

Please visit my tenant, I don't want him to get lonely (plus it reflects badly on me if no one clicks on his little room!).

Jeepers! Last night I really couldn't sleep. I think I lay for hours before going to sleep at all and then later I woke up and one of my nostrils kept getting all blocked so I had to keep getting up to blow my nose and then when my hubby got up to go to work today I didn't go back to sleep. When he left I actually got up because I couldn't sleep! There is something wrong with me! Actually there probably isn't, my mind is just too active and there's all this stuff I want to do. None of it is particularly important but I want to do it anyway.

I really want an easy way to make cartoons. I just want to make portrait type things. Like that cutesy one I showed you yesterday. Or there's a fairly spunky one here. I found this site which once upon a time made a cartoon somewhere by just picking eyes and face shape etc. That site doesn't seem to exist anymore though - I'm not quite sure, it was in German but I think it said it couldn't find the site I was looking for.

I'm downloading the new Photoshop trial. I don't have any version of Photoshop. I think my brother had v6. I used to use a program called Corel Photopaint. It was actually way cool and I realise now that it is better than The Gimp, which is what I'm using for imaging now - Photopaint had a lot more scripts and filters than The Gimp has. I'm assuming that Photoshop will have those things and more, since it's so darn expensive! It will probably still require at least an hour of work on my part to get what I want. I'm not saying that I hate working to get what I want, it's just that the cartoon itself is such a small part of what I'm doing. This download is taking a long time though! I started it at about 8:45 this morning and it got to 12% and seemed to die so I had to restart it. Now it's at 24% Ugh, at this rate it might take all day!

I tried sketching on paper to make some cute pic and then colour it in on the computer but unfortunately I'm not a very good artist!

Hmmm, I'm hungry, I might go have another crumpet. Finally I have crumpets that aren't mouldy! Last time I bought crumpets they were 2 for $3 so I thought, "Oooh, cool, I'll put one pack in the freezer." So I did that but the packet not in the freezer got mouldy very quickly all the way through when it was unopened! Mel suggested to me that they were on special because they were nearly at their use by date. That might have been true, I don't know. Anyway I checked these ones for their use by date because they were n special too. They supposedly don't go off until Sunday. Don't you think they could produce food in a slightly cleaner environment though - they were unopened!

Chai lattes

2006-02-16T17:33:00.000+11:00

Have you ever had a chai latte? Oooh, they can be sooo good. I did order one from Brewhaha that was so appaling, I couldn't drink it. Every time I go to Sado in Hornsby I get the greatest vanilla chai ever! It's so frothy and creamy and yummy! I was feeling really tired and down this afternoon and realised that I had to get off my bottom and go to the supermarket.

I had a headache from looking at the computer screen for so long. You see I came across this blog, which as you can see has the cutest cartoon on it and I wondered how I might make something similar of my own (I don't want to steal too much but I can't afford to pay people for these things). It turns out that she got it from this guy who's done a series of the little girl, among other things, using the program Blender, which is a 3D rendering thing. I find it quite confusing and while I'm getting the hang of a couple (I stress that it really is only two of the hundred, maybe thousands) of features I think I'm very far removed from making gorgeous little pics like his.

So the chai latte really helped soothe my mood for the supermarket.

This week's tenant

2006-02-15T15:32:00.000+11:00

Have you been by to visit Haunted House Dressing yet? There's so much there that you'll have to keep going back to check it out! Go on... you know you want to.

What the heck?

2006-02-15T12:56:00.000+11:00

This article was in the Sydney Morning Herald today. People flocked to be blessed by a calf that was born with folds in its skin saying "There is no God but Allah"; this calf is supposedly God's response to some blasphemous cartoons.

This article reminded me of a time in fourth grade at primary school when there was a group of boys that were pretty cool. Brenton and David were in my class, Luke, the cutest of them all was not. We all fancied Luke and one time we wrote him love letters asking if he would go out with one of us "Yes", "No". The idea was that he circle his answer. Not having a pen in the play ground, the response to mine was to rip the yes out of the page so that left "No" being the answer. To make myself feel better I decided that he had ripped it out in the shape of a heart - there was hope for the future! When I said this in class Brenton said "no he didn't, I was the one who ripped it out". Deep down I knew that what might have been the inner point of a heart was really just the point where Brenton's thumb and forefinger met in the ripping process. Not to worry, it wasn't all lost, I later went out with David, which is a another story.

The point is you can believe whatever you want, it doesn't make it true. I don't know about anyone else but a god that writes his messages in the skin of lower mammals seems kind of lame to me - apart from the fact that flocking to be blessed BY A COW seems slightly idolatrous.

What women need

2006-02-15T07:57:00.000+11:00

I finished the book What Women Really ~~Want~~ Need. It was good. It had a totally excellent quote from a book called Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, which I also want to read.

A man who was merely a man and said the sorts of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he isa poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make a choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up as a fool, you can spit on him and kill him as a demon. Or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher, He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Ready to rumble!

2006-02-14T19:03:00.000+11:00

I was checking Barbara's blog and linked to the quiz about the upcoming Blog Olympics Training Camp. I got 19! How crazy, I thought I answered all the questions in a fairly laid back, reasonable manner. I plan to participate and try but I'm not going to doctor my blog to win.

Pavlov's Bell

2006-02-14T15:36:00.000+11:00

One of my favourite song is Pavlov's Bell. I really am not sure what it means though. I did however come a step closer to figuring it out when Janet wrote this post, which mentioned "Pavlov's Dog". So I looked up Pavlov's Dog and it turns out that Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine¹ for his work with dogs and their reflexes, especially salivating when they are preparing to eat dinner. He noticed that the dogs salivated at the sight of lab coats because those that fed them dinner wore lab coats; so he started ringing a bell when they were given dinner and then hearing a bell ring would make the dogs salivate. His work is recognised for the idea that reflexes and responses can be conditioned.

So the words of Pavlov's Bell are:

Oh, Mario,
Sit here by the window;
Stay here 'til we reach Idaho,
And when we go, hold my hand on take-off.
Tell me what I already know:

That we can't talk about it.
No, we can't talk about it.

Because nobody knows,
that's how I nearly fell,
trading clothes
and ringing Pavlov's Bell.
History shows
there's not a chance in hell.

But, oh, Mario, we're only to Ohio.
It's kinda getting harder to breathe.
I won't let it show,
I'm all about denial
But can't denial let me believe

That we could talk about it?
But we can't talk about it

Because nobody knows,
that's how I nearly fell,
trading clothes
and ringing Pavlov's Bell.
History shows
but rarely shows it well.

Well, well, well

Oh, Mario, why if this is nothing,
I'm finding it's so hard to dismiss.
If you're what I need,
then only you can save me,
so come on baby give me the fix

and let's just talk about it.
I've got to talk about it.

Because nobody knows.
that's how I nearly fell,
trading clothes
and ringing Pavlov's Bell.
History shows
like it was show and tell

So tell me...

That's how I nearly fell...

by ringing Pavlov's bell...

So, baby, show and tell...

Oh, Mario, Mario

I'm thinking that maybe it's about drug addiction. Perhaps "ringing Pavlov's Bell" is about having withdrawals. Aimee Mann sometimes sings about drug addiction as a straight drug thing but sometimes it's also a metaphor for the other things that hide within us, that can sometimes cause us to despair, things that other people don't understand. It would also be true that things like addictions sometimes seem like a taboo topic - we can't talk about it.

Time after time

2006-02-14T09:52:00.000+11:00

Has anyone heard the remake of Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper (who originally sung the song) and Sarah McLachlan? I heard it on the radio today and I can't decide how I feel about it. Lauper's voice is getting to sound like she's been smoking too many cigarettes, but it still sounds good, it's interesting at the very least. Sarah still has an amazing voice but I don't know whether they mesh together very well. I really liked the original, I'm inclined to like this one too, despite it being a little strange. I'm just not sure though.

New tenant!

2006-02-13T18:40:00.000+11:00

I have a new tenant in the spare room already! His name is Jeremy. Please go visit his blog full of free stories, featured artists and a comic series starring a stuffed pumpkin!

Wedding Anniversary

2006-02-13T18:03:00.000+11:00

It was our first wedding anniversary yesterday (12th Feb). It was a good day. We went on a picnic to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney. It was nice, with a breeze and a view of the harbour.

We had a really tiny budget on pressies. We had to do something creative with paper, since the 1st anniversary is the paper one. I did a sketch of us in chalk crayons and wrote a poem; trying to sum up my happiness in being married. I rolled them up and put them in a glass bottle with a cork in the top because I always like the message in a bottle idea. He learned how to make a "Lover's knot" in origami and made one out of paper with our wedding vows on it. It was very nice, especially since it took him about 5 days to figure out all the parts of folding tying a lover's knot!

When song words go wrong...

2006-02-13T14:31:00.000+11:00

I wrote this post a little while ago, which included examples of misunderstood song words. My cuz then left a comment that told a story about how when she was little she adamantly believed that Disney ended with a silent P... can you blame her?

I also wanted to share that a guy we know believed that in Creedence's Bad Moon Rising, rather than the words being "there's a bad moon on the rise" he used to sing "there's a bathroom on the right". It's very funny but understandable if you listen to the song.

Song of the week!

2006-02-13T14:16:00.000+11:00

This week I'm listening to Beth Orton's 1996 album Trailer Park. I've heard of Beth around the place but never made the effort to listen to her music. Friday, after getting my hair cut, I had a hankering for some new music. A guy in Angel let me listen to Natalie Merchant - who is totally cool and I hope to buy a cd of hers soon. After that I went into JB Hifi and there were Beth Orton CDs for only $10 so I bought Trailer Park. I like it alot. It's quite "airy", there are alot of layer to the music with lots of effects and mysterious sounds, possibly made by string instruments. On top of it all is an excellent voice and guitar. Similar to Sarah McLachlan. Listen to the first song on the album She Cries Your Name.

Spare room

2006-02-13T10:10:00.000+11:00

Scooter is only going to be here for a couple of hours and then his lease is up and he needs to move out. Make sure you go visit him before it's too late!

GPS

2006-02-12T21:08:00.000+11:00

My hubby has been wanting a GPS unit thing for a while. He recently found some on eBay for $150-180, rather than the usual $300 upwards. So he bid on it and won. He literally dragged me away from church (in a nice way that could have been construed as dancing) to get home to see the end of the auction. He won and was so excited! I love how men can become excited like little boys at some stuff - the child at heart. It's so cute! What is it that they say? Something about the only difference between boys and men is fancier, more expensive toys.

Hair!

2006-02-10T15:09:00.000+11:00

Woo hoo!

I got my hair cut.

I love it!

My salon experience was totally awesome too! I went to a new place in Hornsby called The Sanctuary. They have good music (fairly loud but still good), the chair that you sit in to get your hair washed is electric and it leans back and puts your feet up and... wait for it... it vibrates! It has a massage vibrating type system that goes across your legs and back! Totally cool right? Then she (Maddie) started to cut my hair while someone made me a cappucino (on the house!) and brought it over. It was good coffee too! Yes, there is a risk of getting hair in your coffee but thankfully none of my hair got in there. When my hair was cut she blow-dryed it straight. It's the first time I've immediately loved my new hair style. The price ($60 - alot less than some pay) is totally worth it.

After my haircut I went to David Jones to find a hair dryer because I don't have one (except a little one at my folks place) and I think I will need one to keep my fringe nice after washing my hair. DJs had a small selection so I went to Myer which had a really good selection. After staring at them for ages while talking to my Mom on the phone, I decided on a Breville one that is 2200W and was tagged $39.95; in comparison that was really good because there were other that were 1800-2000W that were twice the price - they are probably quieter. Also some of the money from the Breville hair dryers go to the Beast Cancer Foundation! So I asked the shop guy's advice and he said that one was alright and then they didn't have any. So he sold me the one on the shelf with 10% discount and it also ended up coming with rollers and two round brushes!

This is me yesterday and me today...

Fonts etc

2006-02-10T10:39:00.000+11:00

I was playing around with the fonts on my blog because I wasn't quite happy... As you might notice it hasn't really changed much but I wanted to ask is it hard to read? If so how should I go about fixing that? Maybe I need to change the background slightly to be more hospitable to text.

Hair cut!

2006-02-10T10:32:00.000+11:00

Woo hoo!

I'm very excited, I'm going to get my hair cut today. I'm going to a new place in the local shopping centre. I've tried everywhere else and was only one time happy with my cut. I don't really want to go back there this time though because I'm going to get a fringe (or bangs as the rest of the world seems to call them), I don't know if I trust that place to do them.

I'm also a bit nervous because I'm getting bangs and that's a big change and they take a long time to grow out in the event that I don't like them. I think I'll need to buy a hair straightener as well so I can keep my new hairstyle under control.

It's going to cost a bit more than I want to pay for a hair cut - I hate how much it costs women to get a decent hair cut, it's twice as much as for men!

What lots of people really need

2006-02-09T14:25:00.000+11:00

I'm reading a book at the moment called What Women Really ~~Want~~ Need. It's really good and addresses issues not just for women but things that we all encounter by living in the world. It has some really amazing stories by people who came to trust in Jesus to bring them back into a relationship with God.

Excellent points that were made include...
Contentment: "Imagine for a moment how ratings would plummet if Better Homes and Gardens became a five-minute slot called Perfectly Adequate Homes and Gardens...the assumption these lifestyle programmes are built on... life will be richer, fuller and happier when we raise our standard of living... As much fun as it is , it doesn't ultimately deliver lasting contentment. There will always be the next thing I need."

Stability: "If your foundation is movable, says Jesus¹, then you are a disaster waiting to happen. So often we make the mistake of building our lives on sand masquerading as rock... The reality of death means that even our closest relationships are sand masquerading as rock... the woman [or man] who has reached out for the rock and taken Jesus' words to heart has a foundation which is solid. It cannot be stolen, broken, or ruined in any way."

Acceptance: "There are millions of people all over the world who cannot stand their own faces or even their whole bodies... The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.²" This is reassuring because we cannot impress God with our clothes and hair but it is also concerning because God can see the darkness in our heart. Not to worry though - Jesus who has no darkness in his heart at all has made it possible for God to look at our heart and see the perfection of Jesus. How?

Relationship: "With more than 50% of marriages ending in divorce, you would think that men and women would slip in and out of marriage with barely a thought, and as easily as we change our shoes... there is more going on beneath the raw statistics. There is hurt and pain... in [the] first marriage... they supported and loved each other perfectly... this is what we desire, what we crave for." We try to find this kind of relationship in our partners but who can live up to that? God so intimately loves the people he has made, he describes that relationship like a marriage. He is the husband and his people is the adulterous wife. Rather than divorcing us he continually forgives us, hoping we will turn back to him.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for great marriages and relationships because that is a good thing to do and have, but in God we can have the perfect relationship.

I haven't finished the book yet, I should soon though. It's really easy to read and has something for everyone I think - it has plenty of things for me, and things I can see for other people aswell.

KT Tunstall

2006-02-09T11:50:00.000+11:00

Today Scooter is reviewing an emerging singer - I can't wait to get home, download and listen to her first single - check it out by clicking on his renter's space (left, in the sidebar)!

Grrr!

2006-02-08T22:31:00.000+11:00

I was so upset this evening. I was looking forward to going to talks by Peter Jensen at the Abbotsleigh school hall tonight with my bible study group and heaps of other people. We were sitting there, we had seats all together. My hubby seemed to be making a big deal about there being enough seats for all of our people to sit together which was very considerate of him, although it did strike me as a little strange at the time - perhaps I felt he was making too big a deal out of it. At some point an overpowering old-lady-perfume smell came about. It sort of smelled like pot-purri. Then my nose started running, I started sneezing, my eyes started itching. Just as Jensen was about to start speaking I decided I couldn't bear it for the next hour; I wanted to rip my head off! So I moved far down the front of the hall. There was a perfume smell there too but my nose dried up so I guess whatever I was allergic to wasn't in that woman's perfume.

It makes me so angry! How inconsiderate to have such overpowering perfume that it causes someone to have to move! Perfume (or aftershave or deodorant on men) can be great in small amounts when it's noticable in close proximity to someone. When it's strong enough to make my head want to explode it's just rude!

Investment advice

2006-02-08T11:14:00.000+11:00

I got this email from my hubby last night - It was funny reading the first line as I had just hung up the phone after leaving a message at home that I would be going to the pub for not a beer because I was driving. He hadn't gotten home to receive the message when I got this...

On the topic of beer:

Subject: Investment advice

In 2001 if you had bought $1000 of One-Tel shares, it would now be worth
about $9 to you as an unsecured creditor if you're lucky.

In 2002 if you had bought HIH shares, you would have about $6.50 left of
the original $1000

In 2003 if you had gone to the US and bought ENRON you would have less
than $5 left.

But, if you had purchased $1000 worth of beer only one year ago, drank
all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminium recycling
price, you would have $24

Based on the above, the best investment advice is to drink regularly and
recycle.

2006-02-07T23:54:00.000+11:00

Eternal hope we have, day to day it stays.
Day to day, life keeps eternity at bay.
What makes us cry and pain and sorrow?
Why does this life hurt us so?
Why can't God just tell us how?
What is life if not short and then gone?
I look over life and only see the small,
I wish my eyes were bigger.
I think of God but not of men,
what good does it do? He doesn't NEED me.
I long for the new, better and greater me...
The one that cares and helps and sees.
When will she get here?

Cricket Superbowl

2006-02-07T19:54:00.000+11:00

Everyone is talking about the Superbowl (including my tenant, go visit him!). I'm not American, therefore not too excited about the Superbowl, nor do I understand it. I did however go to the last day of the test cricket¹, Australia vs. South Africa on the 6th Jan 2006. It was pretty cool. The match had lost a lot of time² due to rain and looked like it was going to be pretty boring but then the South African captain was really brave and he declared³ the South African Innings to give Australia a chance to bat. Australia had to get 286 runs (I think) which was doable. We were at work and when the South Africans declared we decided to go down the road to the SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground) and watch the rest of the match. Mel at work is a member at the SCG so she got her ticket and then one on a guest pass and then she has two other pass things so we got in for "free". Sweet! Australia won AND Ricky Ponting got a century (100 runs), not only that but he got one in the first innings as well giving him two centuries in his 200th test! It was a good moment.

1 A test series is a series of 3 matches, each match played over 5 days (I think)
2 The match is 5 days regardless of whether you stop because of rain so there was only that one day left
3 When you declare an innings you are essentially saying "we have enough runs to win" it means your batting innings is over and the other team comes to bat

Doh!

2006-02-07T16:41:00.000+11:00

Don't forget to visit Scooter... find his blog via his room at the left.

I wrote a post earlier today about how I was having an airhead day at work. I had walked into the bathroom in a lab coat and gloves instead of going into the chemical room, which was where I was aiming for. Then to add to my stupidity I wrote a post and tried to publish it and Blogger had gone off line. I knew they were going to do this at 10:00 PST, but since I have no idea what PST is I didn't know what time that really was (ie what time AEST) and I lost the post. Doh!
On the topic of gloves... I feel like I look like Michael Jackson when I work with latex gloves on while I'm wearing my black jacket.

We had a chocolate cake craving today because it's cold, therefore we are more hungry than usual and on the front of one of the sections of today's newspaper was chocolate cake. Luckily we are close to Randwick shops so we could go out and get cake! Mmmm, chocolate mud cake.

I drove to work today - the traffic was pretty ugly. Aside from that I was listening to Dido, her No Angel album. There is a song on there that I just never know the words to. I always think it's something like "take my hand and if I'm lying to you, I'll always feel all warm, if I'm lying to you" having looked up the actual lyrics at the official Dido site it says "I'll always be alone, if I'm lying to you". Does that make sense to anyone? I don't get it. I'm not paying out Dido because I was listening to her and I like her music alot, I was just struck by how weird that line is.

That reminds me of my cousin. When we were quite small and playing around on my Dad's computer while listening to CDs. We put on Enya and my cousin was singing along "Say no way, say no way, say no way doo doo, doo doo..." and I informed her that the lyrics were actually "Sail away, sail away, sail away doo doo, doo doo..." (well the doos are not so much lyrics as my impression of the instrumental music). She couldn't have disagreed with me more. I'm not sure if she really believed me even after I showed her on the CD cover that the song was called Sailaway.

I also used to think that "Layla, got me on my knees layla..." by Eric Clapton was "Baby, got me on my knees baby..." (the baby had to be said more like babeh).

What song words do you chronically get wrong?

New tenant

2006-02-06T16:45:00.000+11:00

I have a new tenant at This and that! Please visit Scooter via the link to the left. Scooter seems to be addicted to Survivor and Lost which I myself can't relate to but I bet lots of you can! I like his grasp on music, very insightful! So don't forget to pay him a visit.

Pavlov's Bell

2006-02-06T15:41:00.000+11:00

I'm tying to find a good file hosting thing for music so that I can regularly share some of my favourite songs with you. At the moment one of my top songs is Pavlov's Bell by Aimee Mann. It was the song that drew my attention to her and she's so cool! So go here to listen to Pavlov's Bell.

It took a while to load on my computer so let me know what happens and if it doesn't work or is too slow I'll find something else!

Woah - I just heard a big bang on a door in the building next door and someone yell "Police!" It's probably someone playing a joke on a friend, I wonder if real police actually do that or if it's just on TV.

Which Serenity Character are you?

2006-02-06T11:50:00.000+11:00

When I first saw this test at Whiplash Smile I thought "hey that's cool" and I also thought "someone else likes Firefly!" but then I remembered (just now actually) that Serenity came out as a movie so alot more people know about the characters of Firefly now, not that they know that Serenity is from the one season TV show Firefly. Anyway, here's my reults (I'm happy with this):

You are Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)

Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)		90%
Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command)		70%
Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic)		70%
Derrial Book (Shepherd)		55%
Wash (Ship Pilot)		55%
Inara Serra (Companion)		55%
Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)		45%
Alliance		35%
Jayne Cobb (Mercenary)		30%
River (Stowaway)		30%
A Reaver (Cannibal)		0%

You are good at fixing things.
You are usually cheerful.
You appreciate being treated
with delicacy and specialness.

Click here to take the Serenity Firefly Personality Test

Finally!

2006-02-05T23:51:00.000+11:00

I finally finished my new look blog. You are looking at it right now. It was pretty crazy having something I wanted to do and very little idea how to do it. Now it's done. There's a flicker somewhere and I don't know why, but I did figure out that the reason the first post on the page was down really far was because it was told "div style="clear:both;" by blogger and the sidebar is floated so it had to clear it but now it's floated too so it's okay. Yay for my investigative and deduction skills! Yay for my husbands extensive computer knowledge!

I wonder what I'll do tomorrow having finished this project. It's nice to be on holidays! I could catch up on the blogs I couldn't check this weekend because they are powered by blogger and blogger went... I don't know where it went but it sure wasn't here!

You live and then...

2006-02-05T15:01:00.000+11:00

Every now and again I think about what would happen if my husband or I died while still very young. I start to think about funerals and cremation vs. burial and I was thinking of writing a post about it. I then wondered if that was too weird or depressing but now that Neil started it first I'm just going to go ahead and write.

I think that if I were to die I would want to be cremated and scattered. I don't really care where I get scattered; into the wind, over the ocean, over grass, over a garden bed - I'm happy for my body, of which I'm longer a part, to be "pushing up daisies". I don't really want there to be somewhere that people can go to visit me because I'm not there. While I'm alive my body is an integral part of me, it allows me to do, and to feel and communicate with others, but the second I die I am in the running for a new body, one that doesn't age or get sick or get fat provided by God. It's like people going to church to be with God, he is no more there than he is here when I'm typing on my computer; maybe in days gone by he was, like in the temple in Jerusalem before the Babylonian exile, but those days are over now that Jesus has come.

I'm not sure about funerals and the like. I would want there to be some kind of recognition somehow and to give someone the chance to tell everyone that I "appreciate their sadness that they won't be seeing me anymore but they should also be joyful that I have gone to be with God in my true home".

Those are my two wishes in the event of my death.

The system is down

2006-02-05T13:44:00.000+11:00

Oh no! blogspot.com seems to be down. I can't get onto anyone's blog if they use blogger! I can't get onto any of my sites! I feel that there is a problem or two with the new template on This and that (here). Problems may include the first post for some reason going down past the sidebar and possibly some weird background shifting behind the sidebar when scrolling but I can't see them and I can't fix them because I can't see the site!

So I can't visit Mags or Owl or my li'l bro... it's terrible!

It's also quite possible that no one can read this because no one can see blogspot right but I thought since blogger.com sites seem to be working that I'd post this info incase someone can see the site and they wonder why my blog is spazzing... don't worry, I'll fix it when I can.

On the topic of the system being down... I recommend downloading some of the funny sonds at Homestar Runner, including "The System Is Down".

CSS

2006-02-05T13:15:00.000+11:00

I wish I understood what is going on with CSS and html stuff. It's so weird! It seems simple enough until something just won't work. What is this thing that just won't work? I can't find it. There may be little demons in my computer.

Big Week!

2006-02-03T10:07:00.001+11:00

This week really has been jam packed full of stuff!

I went to the beach on Monday and got very burnt - thankfully that's nearly all better. It's a little itchy, you know how it is when your skin is healing?
On Tuesday I went to work, karate and we tried to go shopping but failed due to not bringing our wallets!
Wednesday was more work and then we managed to do the supermarket shopping.
Yesterday I went to the shops to drop off my hubby's dry cleaning - we have a wedding to go to on Saturday. I then met up with a friend from church and we went to Max Brenner for hot chocolate - it's a whole other chocolate world in there! I then went and visited my friend and her baby. I worked on a new template for my blog - I'm going to change it one more time, then that's it for ages! After dinner we had to go to a band rehearsal for the wedding tomorrow.
Today I'm: working on my blog template; preparing for youth group at church, which starts back tonight; checking up on all my favourite and not yet favourite blogs; I also need to go to the shops to pick up my hubby's clothes and also find something to go under my dress - I need to cover my boobs a bit - they show way too much in that thing!

Woo, and the weekend is going to be jam packed too but I might leave that until it's actually happened.

I wonder if I should have my tea and chocolate before of after going to the shops...

Jenna

2006-02-02T23:01:00.000+11:00

I went to visit my good friend Meryl today who I hadn't seen in ages. I also had the pleasure of meeting her new baby girl! Her name is Jenna. She is so sweet!

Stupid English Language!

2006-02-02T22:26:00.000+11:00

Why is the English language so stupid?

There is an exception to practically every rule. If someone asks you "So, you're not going to the shops then?" You can answer, "Yes." or "No." and both will mean that you're not going to the shops because that person really was listening when you were speaking before but in recollection they weren't sure if they were.

I think the answer to my initial question is that people don't really listen to you, so it doesn't matter what we say and over time things that don't really make sense have become acceptable to say.

Firefox on Mac

2006-02-01T15:15:00.000+11:00

Can someone please tell me why I can't install the most recent version of Firefox? I've downloaded the firefox1.5.dmg file and this computer is running on Mac OS X 10.2 and the file just won't "mount", it's error 95 supposedly. This is a computer at work, I have PC at home, not that I'm against Macs it's just PC was cheaper (and I'm more accustomed to it).

Altoids

2006-02-01T15:06:00.000+11:00

I am totally and utterly addicted to Altoids! These sour apple ones that I bought from The Candy Store in Leura are sooo good! I just keep popping them in my mouth. I love how they are so sour and sweet at the same time. But not sickly sweet (like the sponge cake I said earlier today). I don't know what I'm going to do when I finish the tin!

How to boil an egg

2006-01-31T21:56:00.000+11:00

Isn't boiling an egg one of those things that is innate? Aren't we just born with the knowledge of some things? Apparently not.

As my husband and I contemplated our very sparse fridge after going to the supermarket, both of us without a wallet, we decided that boiled eggs was the most appealing dinner option.

I said to my hubby "You know how to boil an egg right?" He said, "Yeah [exasperated tone], you bring the water to a boil drop the eggs in and boil them for four minutes." I said "No, if you do that the shells will crack and the whites will go in the water." We looked at each other rather puzzled and he grabbed a cook book off the shelf. Find a "recipe" for boiling an egg we tried that.

It said to bring the water to a boil and then bring it back to a "rolling boil" and lower the eggs in slowly with a spoon then cook for five minutes. So we did that. One of the shells cracked and the whites were still runny after five minutes. So we popped those remaining back in and then they were done but no runny yolk for dipping bread¹ into. I think we just missed the runny yolk.

Next time it will be six minutes at a "rolling boil".

1 Focaccia bread that has been in the freezer for quite some time. We are actually out of regular bread.

Switchfoot

2006-01-31T18:33:00.000+11:00

I was listening to my mp3 player while I was doing PCR today at work. Switchfoot came on and I was really enjoying it, I think they are really good. They have cool music, fun to listen to and their songs have good messages. I then began to contemplate how I got their CD, The Beautiful Letdown. I won it, I think it was some kind of random competition with Sony and Triple M. I just received the CD in the mail one day with a note saying I had won the competition for a signed copy of Switchfoot, The Beautiful Letdown but they were waiting for them to come to Australia, in the meantime they'd given me an unsigned copy. It was cool because I never win things and I didn't remember entering a competition to do with Switchfoot. I never got that signed copy though... I wonder why that was.

Make up your mind!

2006-01-30T19:17:00.000+11:00

There have been three "private" calls to our home today, none of which left a message and two of which I was actually here for. The first call I was out, it would have gone through to message bank. The second call rang for two rings and I was waiting until after the third ring when Caller ID shows up but they were gone. Then the third call I picked up, "Hello, kristarella speaking." And they hung up! How rude! That just peeves me - do you want to call or not? Make up your mind.

Kissed by the sun

2006-01-30T16:37:00.000+11:00

Welcome to the part of me affectionately known as the "strip". This is the part where my swimming costume bottoms and the singlet meet; or more correctly don't meet. This is the part that I often forget to sunscreen, the part that I didn't forget to sunscreen today.

That's right, I didn't forget to put sunscreen on here when I went to Freshwater beach today. Nor did I forget to reapply sunscreen to most of me, but alot of me looks as red as the strip does. I don't know how to explain it, perhaps the bottle was "off", it was getting to the end of the bottle, maybe all the good stuff was used up, I may have not done a good job of reapplying but I shouldn't be this burnt! It hurts!

I was looking forward to karate tonight but I can't say I fancy having my gi¹ rubbing on my sunburn :-(

1 White pyjama looking outfit used in martial arts.

The Candy Store

2006-01-28T17:46:00.000+11:00

Oooh, speaking of my Utili-key's swanky tin box reminded my of The Candy Store in Leura. It's five minutes down from Katoomba and it has lots of lollies! Many of which you can't get in Australia, or can only get in very few places. I really wanted to get Rhesus Cups but they only had white chocolate ones so I settled for Peanut Butter M&Ms. I also got sour Pez and sour apple Altoids and Runts. I love Runts! They are my favourite lollies ever. The ones I got were the chewy variety that I'd never seen before but they were quite similar to the regular ones so that was good. Unfortunately I only bought one packet, have to see if I can find them closer than two hours drive away.

Heh - you might not have caught onto my train of thought there, the reason the tin box reminded me of the candy store is because Altoids come in tin boxes :-P

Utili-key 6-in-1

2006-01-28T17:38:00.000+11:00

I got a Utili-key this week from Think Geek it's fairly cool. It's sort of hard to open but perhaps with some use it will lossen up enough to be easy to use but won't swing open all the time. It would have come in handy when I was breaking up boxes from the garage to put in the recycling bin! It even came in a swanky tin box.

I'd really like to get a Swiss Memory USB. It's sooo cool - a swiss army knife with usb flash drive. Wow! Since I can't afford it I will stick to my Utili-key.