all together ooky

I know it's been an absolute age since I blogged and I totally blame it on trying to pack up my 3 1/2 years of life in the UK and move it all over to Oz without my mother knowing. Well she kinda knew but she thought I was arriving 3 weeks later (I surprised her for her birthday) so things were all very covert for a while there plus I was rushed off my feet. This week, apart from hoping to land a job interview, my aim is to bring this blog up to date with the life of me. I'm sure someone out there cares...

But in the meantime, this has been sitting in my drafts. Somehow it came up at work (well my former work) so I had to google the lyrics (for personal edification) to The Addams Family.

The Addams Family

They're creepy and they're kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky,
The Addams Family.

Their house is a museum
Where people come to see 'em
They really are a scream
The Addams Family.

(Neat)
(Sweet)
(Petite)

So get a witches shawl on
A broomstick you can crawl on
We're gonna pay a call on
The Addams Family.

Possibly the best rhyming in history: "see 'em" and "scream". Genius.

floral craziness

I had never seen this flower before in my life although I was told it was a passion flower and is the flower of the passionfruit vine which you get quite commonly in NZ with the orange passionfruit so it's strange I haven't seen them before. But I have now and my aren't they crazy?

Happy Halloween

I was catching up on a backlog of blogs (in the time I don't have at the moment) and saw a link on The Daily Monster to Monster Go Away Spray. The Daily Monster blogger was, justifiably outraged but I had to check it out:

Monster Go Away Spray

Most children both younger and older will at one time or another be afraid of the boogie man, ghosts, monsters, spirits and even the badly behaved house elf. Monster Go Away Spray was created by a mom to help her children get to bed and go to sleep much easier. Simply spray your child's room, the closet, under the bed and anywhere else monsters hang out. You can do this ritual with your child before bedtime or spray their room ahead of time and let them know the coast is clear. Many children have the gift of being able to see the spirit world, so it is important to never tell your child that what they are afraid of doesn't exist. But together you can asks the spirits to leave and create a safe and peaceful sanctuary. A light spray on their pillow will ensure a peaceful nights sleep. Ingredients are all-natural and include essential oil of French Lavender, Roman Chamomile and Italian Mandarin Orange.

This is definitely one way to deal with kids being scared of the dark and things that go bump in the night but I must admit that when the time comes, I will be able to deal with this issue in a more Pratchett-like fashion. I remember reading, I think it was Hogfather years ago and Susan, the daughter of Death, was nannying some children and two issues got raised.
1- the monsters under the kids beds or hiding in their closets were there as they had been created by the parents. "If you don't brush your teeth before you go to bed to horrible XYZ monster will come to get you."
2- Susan's way of dealing with the monsters was to walk in to the room with a large baseball bat (or discworld equivalent) and smack the &%** out of it. When one of the kids came running out to get her

And should we even start on the Monsters Inc take on things? All I know is that I will definitely be taking the 'stand up for yourself' line of approach and hope that any kids of mine are precocious enough to follow my lead. And I guess even better than the ass-kicking approach would be the Daily Monster/Monsters Inc method.

hanging on by a thread (and some superglue)

Today the stress has hit the fan. My days left here are numbered and I'm starting to feel it, I'm in my final fortnight of work and, true to the laws of Fate, it's our busiest fortnight in a long time and my boss was off sick today and I myself am fighting off a cold. Usually, burning off stress and clearing my mind isn't a problem. Minor levels of stress can be baked or doodled away but for this kind of variety, I usually hit the gym or, even better, the climbing wall. Unfortunately, having literally hit the climbing wall last week, I am banned from figuratively hitting it for another week. And I miss it, I really really really miss it. Aaah well, I'm sure I can de-stress some other way.

Just call me OneStitch

I was lead climbing last night on a route with 2 shelf overhangs and peeled off just under the 2nd shelf. I fell and unfortunately it was just the wrong distance and I landed just below the first shelf and although I had my hands up to save my head (not the face!), my knees were just at the wrong height and my left knee clipped the edge of the shelf as I swung underneath. I thought it would just be horribly bruised and I'd need ice but when I pulled up my pants there was this massive gash. My poor belay buddy blamed himself for giving me a crap belay but really, it's just one of those things. 10cm more less and my feet would have been on the wall and 10cm more and my knee would have sailed underneath.

So we headed to Charing Cross Hospital A&E and I was in and out in about an hour which has to be a record. Sadly I only have one stitch and some superglue to show for my efforts and annoyingly I'm out of commission for a week. And taking stairs is a pain in the, well, knee.

And of course I documented it but to keep gore to a minimum, I've done a montage of my latest adventure. Needless to say I have more pics. And excuse my manky thumb (chipped nail polish and I had just been climbing) but I needed something for scale.

I wish I felt like this every day

Canterbury- UK stylz

Last weekend I went to Canterbury with my friend and her parents. Despite the pouring rain and occasionally very gusty winds, it was very picturesque.

These bits of graffiti on a local monument just made me laugh. People choose some weird things to scrawl on buildings.


Nightclub?!?!
I'm not sure if I want to know what this sign means...


This picture is almost a family in-joke but I had to put it on. it's a tribute to my sis.

I like the way this dude looks like he's curiously peering out of his alcove.
Ok, is it just me or does this totally look like Wesley in his man-in-black phase from TPB?


Not surprisingly, I have an issue with religion and and the glorification of martyrdom but I'm not going in to it here. (Because it's Friday and because I can't be bothered.)

I think this is where people get baptised/christened? I have two main issues with this structure, the main one being that it isn't centered properly. Is it wrong to find this annoying? If it were my church and I had to look at it on a regular basis. It's not centered AND it's not straight. It'd do my head in.
This is my other problem with the structure. How terrified would you be having this hanging over your head. All I can think of is 'sandwich'...
One of the best aspects of the town were the awesome shop signs.

Friday movies

And for once something actually about fonts.

What does a font say about the person using it? Lars Willem Veldkampf takes a shot at answering this minutes-old question in a series of images

I'm hoping they're being ironic when it comes to Comic Sans...

Those who have been to see Wall-E will have seen the new short film from Pixar, Presto. If you haven't, go look at it here. It is one of my favs to date, there ppl are ingenious and, in the spirit of Wall-E, no dialogue is necessary.

This is incredible:


The highlight of this is the cats at the beginning:


Not a movie but still amusing:


for the OCD within:


crazy breakdance

lentil trauma

TRAGEDY HAS STRUCK!!!
This morning I took a lentil concoction out of the freezer, put it in a plastic bag "to be safe" and then put it in my bad to take to work for lunch where I promptly forgot about it. I also put my sketchbook in my bag as I wanted to scan in some black and white stuff I'd done before I coloured it in. I forgot about all of it until I went to get my bag ready for the gym and when I pulled out my lentil bag, I noticed it was dripping. It has somehow got through the plastic bag and emptied an unholy amount of water into my sketchbook which was behind it. I mean they're only doodles but hours of OCD have been poured into them, they are my babies.
It isn't too bad really although some colour or patterns have leaked between layers/pages and there were some near misses- phew- but now my poor battered book smells vaguely of lentil...
So as an emergency first-aid measure, I put paper towels between each page to soak up the liquid and aid recovery (drying out). It is currently sitting on top of my magazine archive and looks more like a ragged pile of paper towels than my dear darling sketchbook.

stress doodling

It seems that I have swapped stress baking for stress doodling. Around late June, I decided that I needed to start doodling- something creative to get my mind working and my hands used to doing something again without the stress of drawing 'real' stuff. There's no real stress in making patterns but there is a challenge in making them look cool. So I started doodling a little bit in a book/notepad I'd been given as a promo thing from a picture library but I wasn't really doing that much. And then suddenly, it seems to have just taken off. I hadn't even really realised it was 'stress doodling'- I just do it in front of the TV (till very very late...) but the other night, as I sat down with pen and paper, Sean looked at me and said, "Aynia, are you stress doodling?" I looked down at my pad, said "No?", looked up at him, looked down at my pad, which was full of a pretty darn intricate and OCDesque pattern and said, "Oh no. Yes?" I've heard there are studies about how you can do psych analysis-typed stuff on what people doodle and I can well believe it. My doodles vary depending on my mood, both in nature (colour or black&white) and also content (whether they're more picturey or more pattern-based with lots of intricate and repetitive details). Here are some samples-

Some I think are quite crap:

Some are just plain weird:

And others I'm quite happy with:

Avast!

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day to ya my filthy bilge rats!

So I had to take a personality test to see what type of pirate I am and this is my result:

You are The Quartermaster
You, me hearty, are a man or woman of action! And what action it is! Gruesome, awful, delightful action. You mete out punishment to friend and foe alike – well, mostly to foe, because your burning inner rage isn’t likely to draw you a whole lot of the former. Still, though you may be what today is called “high maintenance” and in the past was called “bat-shit crazy,” the crew likes to have you around because in a pinch your maniacal combat prowess may be the only thing that saves them from Jack Ketch. When not in a pinch, the rest of the crew will goad you into berserker mode because it’s just kind of fun to watch. So you provide a double service – doling out discipline AND entertainment.
What's Yer Inner Pirate? brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!

I must say, it's a bit accurate really. I know for a fact that many of my friends enjoy winding me up just to see me get on a rant. Hmmm....


And although I know I've bogged this before, here it is again. My Pirate Name

My pirate name is:

Captain Anne Rackham

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

So get out there and shiver some timbers me hearties!

stress baking

My flatmates were telling me last night about a woman at their work who had recently had a miscarriage and has taken some time off work and has taken up baking. Apparently this is a woman who previously had never even bought a bag of flour because she never baked but she has now worked her way through a whole Delia Smith cookbook. Sarah thought maybe the lady was nesting and was pregnant again but I just shook my head and said, "She's stress baking."

Stress baking is something I have only recently encountered- or more accurately only recently labeled. I've always baked, I love baking. I bake when I have to, when I'm bored, when I want to, any time really. But when I've got a lot on my mind and am feeling a bit stressed out, that's when things really get going. When I suggested that this aforementioned lady might be stress baking and that I do it too, Sean looked at me and said, "Oh my God! You DO!" I still laugh at the memory of them coming in one night and Sean taking one look at a kitchen table filled with biscuits and me standing over the oven and he just said, "Put down the gloves down and step away from the oven!"

I'm not sure exactly what it is about baking that calms me down but my stress baking differs from I'm-bored or I-wanted-to baking in one vital aspect: volume. There is a rhythm to baking for stress. Stress baking for me almost invariably means cookie or muffins- something relatively quick to make and bake because it means as one item is in the oven, you can be preparing the next one and the cycle can just go on until someone pulls you away or you run out of ingredients- I've had to stop before because I ran out of flour. I think baking soothes me for several reasons:
1- I'm doing something which keeps my brain otherwise occupied
2- the smell
3- I'm creating something which always makes me feel good
4- better yet, I'm creating something that will make other people happy because it tastes good so they will like me because I'm cool and make yummy stuff*

And I am not alone. My sister, pre-taking-off-on-adventures has apparently filled up my parents' freezer with baked delights as well as having items farmed out to family and friends. I thought maybe it was genetic but some poking around on the web has proved me wrong. This blog entry and its comments show I am not alone, as does this.

So for those who will live with me in the future know this- I will bake when bored and I will bake because I like to so don't be worried to enter the house to the smell of freshly baked deliciousness. But if you walk in and see a lot of it? Well make sure you try some first and tell me how wonderful it tastes and how amazing I am and then ask what's wrong. ;-)

*anyone notice the list?

Eeeek, it's been a week

Once again I've been collecting links and hadn't noticed a whole week slipping by. It hasn't been the best week really. Not that anything's gone disastrously (or even moderately) wrong but ever since my tendinitis came back, I've been feeling slightly off form. I don't know if I've been fighting off a cold or what but I've been lacking in energy and motivation for a while now. Then on Wed night I had my Thai massage (I'm a case study for a girl at work who is doing a course) and tree-hugging as it may sound, I think it really cleared out my energy lines because going home from it, I felt much more tension-free and yesterday I went to the gym at lunchtime for the first time this week (and usually I'm an every lunchtime girl) and came away feeling heaps better.

Despite this, I still tried to cancel climbing as I was sure Friday was going to be a sick day and I was intending to scoff copious amounts of popcorn and watch Pride and Prejudice* one more time before I finally ship it away to Oz but my climbing buddy Steve guilted me in to going and thank God because it was one of the best nights I've had in ages. I pushed myself really hard, the shoulder felt almost back to old form and the boys were, as usual, hilarious. I came away with that buzzing feeling of endorphins combined with feeling physically shattered that I thrive on but haven't had in ages. I sincerely hope I can find a similar bunch of nuts to climb with in Brissie. I mean these guys are Australian so clearly their type exists, I just have to hope they haven't all buggered off overseas.

But as for those links I've been filing away:

I'm not the only bigsmall fiend out there!


You all need to check out these amazing doodles. I can't put in a pic as it's a flash page but they're colourful and fun.

I have a fascination with the miniature. I don't know exactly why but I think it's amazing when people make small things, I love macro photography (which is making the small look huge), maybe it the attention to detail.


Crazy metal sculptures


I know this may walk the fine line of garden kitsch for some people but I have a deep love for fantasy and if nothing else, there sculptures are amazing works of art and imagination.


And this one just appealed to my quirky sense of humour.


Another cool add, another cool doodle.



*the BBC mini-series version. There is only one Mr. Darcy and that is Colin Firth. Don't get me started.

random Friday thoughts

signs of the times
I missed out on the Cookie Monster becoming politically correct, or more to the point, health conscious. I see how and why he was made to change- role model for children, etc etc but I think it's taking it a bit far. This is a hilarious 'interview' between Cookie and Stephen Colbert.

makes me want to vom
Potted meat, pickled pork rind, fermented soy beans, fungus-infected corn kernels, EEEEEW! I can't believe that people eat this stuff, let alone that one man is crazy enough to try it all. I'm sure as hell not putting up any pics.

skeletal art

Ever wonder what bugs bunny's skeleton would look like? Or other cartoon characters for that matter? Well here is your answer.

link-tastic Tuesday

I've been collecting a veritable smorgasbord of links over the past week or so as I've been stumbling and now that the list has reached almost epic proportions, I've decided it's time to just cut to the chase and blog 'em. Clicking on the images should take you through to the websites.

discworld geek it up

I love geeks, just lovelovelove them.


How amazingly cool are these wooden toys? They're Japanese. I want one. Hell, I want them all.



lego imitates art



I'm very into my doodling at the moment. I'm finding it a great way to switch off my brain when I need a break, it gets the hands moving again and stretches my creative muscles. I like these doodles. Also, for those who haven't noticed that I've updated my links and recommended blogs, check out doodlage. It's fly.

This made me smile:


As did this:


As did these:




And there's plenty more where that came from...