Lists, memoirs, and the supernatural

• I want to spend less time hitting the refresh button on my stats, which I do in a kind of compulsive but unsatisfying way, and spend more time doing what I did before, which is read books.  To that end, I’ve taken inspiration from Ms Make Tea Not War who keeps a rather lovely list of books read and movies watched, and started my own list; a rather sorry looking thing which will embarrass me into leaving my stats page alone, because I can’t tell people I read a lot of books and then say stuff like ”Well, there’s only one book on my list because I’ve been refreshing my stats.”
• I’m reading I peed on Fellini: recollections of a life in film, by David Stratton.  He’s a much nicer man than the title suggests and I’m enjoying it very much; his recollections are far more honest and open than I would have expected from his demeanor while giving movie reviews with Margaret on Sunday afternoons.  The story that’s sticking with me at the moment happened in 1944, when David was just three years old.  His grandmother loved movies and took him to see them with her four times a week and on one occasion while they were watching The Princess and the Pirate the naughty woman told him to pee where he sat so she wouldn’t have to take him out of the cinema and miss the ending.  I’m torn.  He loved his grandmother very much, so on the one hand her action seems like a five star rating for the movie, but on the other it seems like a story which told by someone else would be the reason he or she never went to the movies again.
• I’m about to watch Supernatural with Eddie.  It’s actually a little bit too supernatural for me, but not for Eddie.  Sometimes I have to walk out of the room, or watch it through my fingers.  But still, I watch. 

A butcher, a red cardigan, and a music video

• It’s Sunday night and I’ve been watching Merlin while waiting for our large pot of bacon bones soup to cook.  The bones were bought from our local butcher; a man who told us he used to be a vegetarian.  I wasn’t sure if he was serious, or merely telling us an old line for dramatic effect.  I can only imagine the person who interviewed him for the position either didn’t question him very thoroughly, or had a sick sense of humour.
• On Saturday I went shopping with the balance on my birthday gift-card for something to wear for drinks with the girls.  I bought a cardigan!  It’s red and very cute.  But really.  A cardigan?!  On Saturday night I sat drinking cocktails with my friends in a very trendy bar full of glamorous women, not one of whom was wearing a cardigan, and I thought “Uh, the extreme modesty I embraced as a young Jehovah’s Witness is never ever going to leave me.”
•  On Friday night I discovered how little attention I was paying to that Sarah Blasko music video.  In case you’ve forgotten, and I wouldn’t blame you if you have, a few weeks ago I saw a music video of Sarah Blasko in a pretty layered dress leading a dappled grey horse across the landscape, and it caused me to download her latest album ‘What the sea wants, the sea will have’  for the lovely song she was singing.  Well, as I was perusing the Net on Friday night, I accidentally stumbled over another Sarah Blasko album.  One which was released on Friday.  And somehow I just knew the song I’d heard was on THAT album, not the one I bought.  So, I searched for and found an online version of the music video I’d seen, and, well,  yup, Sarah was in a pretty skirt and top leading a roan horse *luckily Gemara and Boozer aren’t around to hear that one* across the landscape singing a lovely song,  which is on her newest album. *blush* 

Expectations postponed

If I hadn’t been at work when I received my unit guide for next semester informing me my compulsory tutorial is on the same day as the Blackmores Marathon, for which I have been training almost five months, I might have cried.  As it was lunch-time and fairly quiet I said fuck a lot.

The things you learn riding the bus

It’s possible to learn all sorts of unusable but interesting information while traveling home on the bus.  Even if you’re trying really hard not to, and Eddie and I were trying really hard not to last night. 

It all started when we got on the bus and sat down in two seats facing forward and a young guy and girl sat down in the two seats facing us.  Eddie and I were trying to talk about our respective days in quiet voices thinking probably nobody else on the bus wanted to know things like how I wanted Eddie to come with me to use my voucher for a free coffee and chocolate at Adora Homemade Chocolates.  Then the couple opposite began talking and eventually we were sitting silently, looking politely out the window and pretending not to listen as they chatted about their stuff.

What did we learn?

1. It’s not a good idea for your little brother, or you, to get a tattoo in Bali.
2. Even if it is really really cheap.
3. So cheap it only costs $600 to get your whole entire arm tattooed.
4. Because in Bali they use watered down ink to do tattoos.
5. That means if your little brother gets his whole entire arm tattooed it will fade really really quickly.
6. And he’ll have to get it re-done when he gets back to Australia.
7. For $2000!
8. Also, if you have a little brother and he wants to get his whole entire arm tattooed you should tell him to get his Mother’s name tattooed in the middle of it, not his best mate’s name.
9. Then your Mum won’t be quite so upset when she sees her little boy come back from Bali with his whole entire arm tattooed in watered-down ink.  Apparently.
10. And on a related note, girls shouldn’t wear nose rings, because it makes them look like bogans.

Yup, we had an informative ride home on the bus.

Healthy living tips?

If you think healthy living means choosing food according to how many calories it has and how many kilometers you’ll need to walk or run to burn all those calories off, then you’ve probably been receiving the City2Surf count-down emails too.    

If you haven’t, then let me tell you all about them.  I’ve received two count-down emails from the City2Surf organisers now; one at six weeks to go and one at five weeks to go.  And within the email there’s a section titled ‘Healthy living tips’, because “If you are in training for the City2Surf [a 14k run from the City to Bondi Beach], it’s important to combine your exercise regime with healthy eating habits.” 

Trouble is, everyone, and I mean everyone seems to think of health in terms of losing weight these days.  After reading their emails I think the City2Surf organisers are no exception.  Just to get it out of my system and make me feel a little better I’ve summarised the tips as follows. 

1. You eat roasts on Sunday?!  Oh My God that means you eat THREE tubs of margarine a year!  I mean I know you think you’ve eaten a roast, but really it’s just like eating margarine, so we may as well call it margarine.  And that means you’ll have to walk a gazillion kilometers every year to get rid of all that margarine.   
2. You drink regular milk?  Gasp!  Why would you drink regular milk when you can drink skinny milk which means you can eat chocolate as well!  The calories are the same you know? 
3. You’re planning on drinking that milk-shake?  You know you’re gonna have to run another gazillion kilometers to get rid of the calories in that?

I really hate when people pretend to talk about food in terms of exercising and being healthy.  Real healthy eating tips for exercising aren’t about losing weight, they’re about ensuring you’ve got enough energy to run, and you’re hydrated enough to run, and you’re eating enough of the right food to recover after you’ve run.

Work, another birthday, the Hollywood librarian, library fines, pylories and marathon training

• Our reference desk at work succumbed to end of financial year madness a couple of weeks ago.  That means we’ve been really busy.  Not I-don’t-know-what-day-it-is busy like when there’s a huge case, but busy enough to cause brain freeze on the bus ride home.  I’ve been retrieving cases, articles and legislation; tracking down regulations and industry research; ordering property, company, and personal searches; searching for judicial consideration of sections of legislation, and cases dealing with specific scenarios, and books on subjects it seems no-one wants to write about anymore; and my favourite, looking for European cases in languages I don’t understand.  Actually there’s more, but I fear I may have stretched your tolerance level for the details of my work already.  I love to complain about being this busy, but really I love it, even if I can’t process anything more complicated than dinner when I get home.
• I forgot my Father’s birthday!  Well, not completely.  I was five days late.  But really, five days late is pretty much the same as forgetting isn’t it?  I’m a terrible terrible daughter.  I hope he forgives me.
• I get sick of librarians moaning about our image, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find that image interesting.  So, when I received an email this week inviting me to a special screening of The Hollywood Librarian, a documentary about the image of the librarian on film and the reality that is being a librarian today, I RSVP’d straight away.  I wonder if they’ll show footage of Giles…
• I visited my public library last night to pay $13.50 in fines and borrow a book on marathon running.  And I’m wondering, because those fines have been owing for over a year now, if the librarians somehow knew I was coming and arranged for that young boy to be walking down the stairs with his football just as I walked in.  I mean I can think of some clients past who would have benefited from having that young boy boot his football at them, so I wouldn’t blame them really.  But seriously, if I hadn’t been fiddling around with my ipod and trying to turn it off, his football would have left an indent in my chest.  As it was he was damn lucky I didn’t drop my ipod, ’cause then I would have had to tell him off or something, instead of just giving him a deadly stare.  At which he wasn’t scared, one little bit.
• Oh I do love life without Eddie’s pylories.  I cooked a delicious lamb shank and barley scotch broth with wine this week.  It’s the first time we’ve had it in over two years and his tummy didn’t burn, or curdle, or make him want to be sick.  That he was able to eat it without feeling sick was almost as good as the dish itself.
• I ran 19k today.  It felt good and easy.  Only 23.6 to go to make it marathon distance. 

The highlight of Terminator Salvation

The highlight of Terminator Salvation, which we saw yesterday afternoon, was the gorgeous ginger and white kitten we saw in the pet shop on our way to buy tickets.  He was laying back against the cushions in his basket, with his eyes closed, hind legs stretched out and paws resting on his slightly potted belly.  All he was missing was a hearty snore and a TV set to the sports channel. 

If only I could have lain back against some cushions with my eyes closed and had a hearty snore in the picture theatre.  Instead I had to endure the torture of a story with no real beginning, middle or end, and Eddie had to endure the torture of me trying to make sense of it, out loud (I know you’re cringing now.  It’s OK we weren’t sitting within hearing of anyone else). 

I mean really, if you’re gonna tell a complex story is it too much to ask that you make it coherent?  Yeah, I suppose it’s hard to do that when you’ve squeezed in that much shooting and smashing stuff up.  Not much time left for irritating things like a storyline after that is there?

Well, *purrs* there’s nothing like a mini-rant to make me feel better about wasting two hours of my life on a crappy movie.

The Buffy dress, winter, and giving up tea… again

• Leona Edmiston’s dress of the week is… The Buffy Bell-Sleeve!  I know this because they sent me an email telling me it’s so.  Unfortunately it would look terrible on me, but I can’t stop opening the email to make sure that’s so, just ’cause it’s called the BUFFY Bell-Sleeve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• I’m so over winter already, partly because it’s so cold, but mostly because it’s that time of the year when we all have to get up in the dark and then just to keep things all tidy and even, we don’t get home ’till it’s dark again.  The brightest time of the day is spent at work.  It’s the pits.
• I’ve stopped drinking tea and coffee again.  It’s only been two days and I’m not finding it tough yet.  In fact I’m finding it easier to stay hydrated, which is a real problem when I’m running a lot.  If only I could find a healthy drink that I enjoy as much as I enjoy tea. 

How I buy music

It’s been nearly a year since I confessed to my musical laziness and how any pride I had in my musical taste was being eroded by time, catchy CD compilations, and said laziness.  A year on and Jack Black would still crucify me if I walked into the music shop in High Fidelity; I still listen to ‘Classic’ radio stations on long trips up the coast (though that may change now that I’ve bought an i-pod player thingy that plugs into the cigarette lighter!), and though I haven’t bought any compilation CDs called ‘Music after dark’ I still hum along to the tunes when I hear them on the TV.

So, nothing much has changed in a year except that I’ve bought and downloaded four albums within the last month.  I haven’t bought any music for years, so that’s bordering on problem behaviour for me.  And it all started quite innocently one morning while I was agonising over my jurisprudence assignment.  The 2500 words I had to write were beginning to squeeze out at about a rate of one every ten minutes when I decided a nap on the couch might be in order. 

So I lay on the couch, but rather than take a nap I turned on the TV to watch Sarah Blasko sing something in a lovely voice while wearing a very pretty layered dress and leading a dappled grey horse across a grassy landscape.  And that’s all it took.  Ten minutes later I had downloaded her latest album ‘What the sea wants, the sea will have.’ 

Now, I’m not sure if I like the rest of the album as much as I liked the song with the nice dress and dappled grey horse, but it may grow on me.  And it didn’t stop me from downloading Lily Allen’s ‘Alright, still’ a week later, and “It’s not me, it’s you’ a few days after that.  No regrets there.  I don’t know if I’ve heard anyone speak let alone sing in clichés, without sounding clichéd, but she does it and cracks me up in the process.

Tonight, the second game in the State of Origin is playing on TV and Eddie is abusing the NSW Blues for playing so poorly.  I don’t care who wins.  So, I put my headphones on and hunted around on Audible for something to spend my credit on (Cloudstreet by Tim Winton) and once that was done I popped onto i-tunes and downloaded Gossip’s ‘Music for men’ just because I saw a picture of them recently where Beth Ditto was wearing the most amazing red dress, and I like their lyrics.

So, yeah, that’s how I buy music.

Buffy vs Edward (Twilight Remixed)

I found this fabulous remix of Buffy and Edward tonight and had to share.  What can I say, I prefer Buffy’s strength to Bella’s helplessness.  And maybe I’m just biased, but I never thought of Angel as a creepy stalker like Edward.  It’s from rebelliouspixels.