just fold it

Reading Autumn Zebra today, I came across this supercool link to style.com which is a site that rarely fails to disappoint for eye candy. Because I couldn't brig myself to put these pictures in small, here are my top favs from the Christian Dior collection. Marie makes some interesting comments on them (so do check Autumn Zebra if this kind of thing interests you) but I don't necessarily agree with them all. Still very salient points though. I think I have to look at this collection more as art than fashion though but by golly it's amazing. But then I'm in to my origami so they had me at Japan.















When I saw the grey dress, I was reminded of the exact same flowers I used to make so of course I had to see if I could still remember how to do it because it's been a while. Like ages. I had quite a few false starts and dead ends but I got there in the end.

The Valentin selection is also very cool but more in an hmm-look-what-they're-doing-with-white-and-is-she-wearing-any-underwear-at-all?-If-not-she-must-be-waxed e-everywhere kind of way...

oh, I get it, it was a joke...

Turns out that my friend was totally (well mostly) winding me up about tick-tock-baby stuff. The problem with email is that the finer nuances of a communication are lost. I think I've pinned her down on the no-baby-before-2009 thing though so I'll be able to influence it's poor innocent mind right from the get-go. Mwah hah hah.

But more importantly- I LEAVE FOR THE RED SEA IN ONE WEEK!!!!! Yes indeedy, next Thurs I get to get up at an ungodly hour and drag myself out to Gatwick for a week of fun in the sun learning to dive. And this is where I get to stay. Not too shabby huh? There are four of us going from work and we're all just a smidge excited about it. :-)

reality check

signs from the heavens
I enjoy reading my horoscope. Seeing as I usually only read it in the evening paper on the way home, it amuses me to see, retrospectively, how it might have applied to my day. Yesterday, the gem that awaited me in London Lite was:
Don't mistake the pressure that comes with the sun's move into the crucial midheaven angle of your chart, which accents your activities and your lifestyle, as an indication that decisions need to be made swiftly. Rather, it's time to review these, and be ready to consider in just what way things could be improved.
I beg your pardon? Am I the only one who had to read that several times? Am I then to take it that I should not rush decisions on changing my activities and lifestyle? That's how I'm reading it anyway. Why she couldn't just say "don't rush things kiddo, haste makes waste", I don't know. But then with a name like Shelly von Struncknel, what can you expect? That's right, von Struncknel. I mean I'm 99.9% sure it's a pseudonym but still, that's a humdinger. The other star signs got nothing quite so convoluted, I felt very special.

Pee in a cup
Today I finally registered with a doctor. I really only finally got around to it because if I want insurance for my diving trip, I need to be registered with a doctor here. So far, in my one year and almost nine months in this country, I have only had to go to a doctor once and for that I went to a walk-in clinic. The NHS over here is renowned for being totally shit and there are many horror stories about mis-diagnosed illnesses and generally incompetent care so I decided I'd just rather not get sick. Plus I've been back to NZ twice in that time and seen my doctor both times. Today's trip ended up being rather anti-climactic. I was told that I had to bring my passport with my visa in it and a utility bill as proof of address but when I turned up, they never even looked at them. I just rocked on up, scandalised them with the knowledge that I'd been here for over a year and not registered with a doctor (and they really were. I was given several glares), filled out a couple of forms, peed in a container and that was it. BORING! But at least I'm registered and now travel insurance shall be mine! Oh my life is complete...

Tick Tock
I realise that I am now at an age where it is not totally insane that friends of mine are doing grown-up stuff life getting married and having babies (not that they're all doing them both, or even in that order, just that those two things seem to be happening with increasing regularity at the moment...) When I was home at Christmas, I was talking to one of my closest friends who was discussing plans for the future and she mentioned wanting to do something this year because next year... tick tock... I stared at her in shock and said, "Tick tock?! What the fuck to you mean tick-fucking-tock?!!" But then I realised, it's not so crazy after all, most of us are chasing 30. And then today I get an email in which she again mentions the baby thing but now I'm freaking out for different reasons. I'm already going to miss the birth of one friend's kid but I reallyreallyreally don't want to miss my best friend's pregnancy. Given the way my plans are going at the moment, I won't be back in NZ until the end of 2008 by which time the kid could be 6 months to a year old and that's just not good enough. I mean I can still win its eternal love and be the best and craziest Auntie Aynia ever if I get them that young but I want to be there for it all. (Although given the father-to-be and uncle-to-be, I think I'd have stiff competition.)

But that's the way it goes. I have decided, for whatever reason, that this is where I need to be at the moment, and for the next wee while as well. I don't always like it but I still feel it's the right decision...

this'll learn me...

Firstly- given the massive response of 3 comments that my tulip pics generated, I an instigating a new policy: write a comment and I'll send you an email.*

My friend Sue is hosting a murder mystery evening soon- Death by Chocolate and yesterday we got sent around the character descriptions.

Lauren aka 'Chocolate' Bertrand
You are the greatest legend of the Belgian chocolate industry. Debonair, but tough.
Costume suggestion: Evening suit, elegant and understated.
Kerry aka Marchioness Duchamp
You are an internationally notorious artist, whose work has scandalised two continents, and whose private life has done much the same.
Costume suggestion: Dress in free flowing, slightly exotic clothes in rich colours (purples, deep reds) with silver jewellery and a silk scarf.
Karuna aka Maria Von Schnapps
You are a young business woman who has just taken over as head of a long established Swiss Chocolate firm.
Costume suggestion: A formal evening dress, suggesting quiet sophistication
Di aka Dame Barbara Carthorse
You are the most popular celebrated beauty in England, as well as being a hugely popular romantic novelist.
Costume suggestion: A very grand evening dress, complete with spectacular jewellery and a tiara. Nothing should be understated.
Gunning for glory aka Mike Bison
You are a rising star of American boxing, and you've come to Paris for the Olympic Games.
Costume suggestion: Jeans and a white vest, with a plaid shirt worn open on top. A temporary tattoo or two would be useful, as would a black eye (using make up).
Tania aka Dr. Doris Johnson
You are an amateur archaeologist specialising in Aztec culture, and something of an eccentric.
Costume suggestion: A long velvet coat and a floppy hat with feathers in it. Reading glasses on a chain around your neck would be good - a pince-nez or monacle even better.
Sue aka Dr. Sigmund Fraud
You are a controversial psychologist from Vienna, much distrusted by conventional society.
Costume suggestion: Brown, three piece suit with a bowtie. A beard would add considerably to the image, and a cigar (as a prop) would also help.

Aynia aka Little Fitz
You are a star of the Music Halls of Europe, where your ventriloquist act (with your dummy, Ziggy) has proved very popular.
Costume suggestion: A loud check suit, preferably in brown with a novelty bowtie. It t is vital that you have a dummy with you. This can be anything from a genuine ventriloquists dummy to a glove puppet. Even a sock with suitable adornments (eyes and mouth drawn on ) would do. But you definitely need to bring this prop with you.

WTF?!!?

My initial reaction was to think, "This'll learn me for trying to be the funny man in the group. Other people get to be slinky and sexy but not Aynia, oh no, I get to be someone called Little Fitz and a ventriloquist no less." Apparently Sue read it and thought of me immediately. A ventriloquist. Isn't that just one step away from being a mime? Me being me though, and doing nothing like this by halves, I will now have to spend weekend time I don't have trawling through op shops looking for loud check suits and I get to make a puppet. I'm still deciding whether to dress up a sock or to buy a 2nd-hand soft toy and gut it for my purposes. And of course I have to start practicing talking without moving my mouth, it sounds like my puppet is to have a staring role in the whole thing...

*provided that I have your email address and actually know you. I make no guarantees though.

tiptoe through the tulips

Yesterday I finally went to the Columbia Road Flower Market. Actually I went to a few markets in the Bethnal Green area with Willie and co. but the flower market was the one I've wanted to go to for ages. If I lived in the area, I'd be buying fresh flowers every fortnight or so. I love them. Instead, I satisfied myself with getting 3 bunches of tulips for £5 which is a bargain. I settled for yellow, pink and purple and spent most of my tuube ride home staring at the beautiful bright colours with a silly smile on my face. Someone looking at my would be forgiven for thinking that they were a present from someone special but no, I was just delighted by the colour. And the tulips, I just loveloveLOVE them, they're a favourite flower. It's a shame they don't tend to last too long. Geberas are also a big fav of mine. There's something all bright and brassy about them. And they do tend to last a while.


And in contrast, I'm finally putting up one of my pics from when it snowed. My but it's been a while since I've put pics on here.

back on the diamond rant

One of those personality spam emails is circulating around my group of friends at the moment. You know the ones with questions like:
What time did you get up this morning?
What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
What is your favourite TV show?
What did you have for breakfast?
yada yada yada

Well for most of us, the answer to latest movie seen is Blood Diamond and it is with a slight feeling of horror that I have now seen two of my friends answer the question Diamonds or Pearls? with 'diamonds'. I'm trying to calm down a bit before I write an email so that I come out with something a little more polite than:

Dear valued but obviously slightly mentally deficient friend,
Maybe I'm the deficient one here but weren't we at the same movie? Which bit didn't you get? How the diamond trade is effecting the regions? How diamonds are stored away to keep the price high? How you can't really tell if it's a 'conflict diamond' or not because of how they get processed?
WTF?!?!!
A xox

One of my friend's comments after coming out of that movie was along the lines of, "I'm glad that it was mentioned in there that part of the horror is these people doing it to themselves because everywhere you go you always here white people get blamed." She's from South Africa so I understand that they are touchy about people assuming they're all racist and yes, the people of diamond regions are killing off their own people but now I'm worried that that is all they (but they I mean all my SA buddies) saw. Are there people out there thinking, "I'm white, I'm not to blame because of what they (by which I mean the native people of the area) do to each other? It's their war/reign of terror and if I buy a 'non-conflict diamond' I've done my part of my conscience is clean." Is that what they're thinking? Sure, even if there was nothing of value in that area, children might still be made into soldiers and all those atrocities might still be committed but surely taking a demand for diamonds out of the market might help? Some might argue the two things, the war in the region and the diamond trade, are unrelated, that your £1000 necklace has nothing to do with babies running around killing people. But are you totally sure?

I've been so busy of late that I've been mega-remiss in reading my usual blogs. One that has suffered is HongKong Ham, the blog of my former boss from Critic. Reading it again today I was struck by the winsome and endearing nature of most of Hamish's entries. It's a genuinely pleasurable read (don't let it go to your head Hamham...) and it was something I didn't even realise I was missing. I was also glad to see that Hamish was also effected by Blood Diamond. Because after the reaction of my friends, I was starting to think it was just a me and Dad thing. It's not. Phew. Every now and then I tend to see things in stark black and white (a trait I know I get from my Dad) and I'm usually more of a shades-of-grey girl so when I come across these B&W issues, I can get a bit surprised at how adamant and blinkered I can be. Something is suddenly RIGHT or WRONG and people that can't understand that are STUPID or BLIND or INCOMPETENT. Which, surprisingly enough, is not my usual attitude to life.

builders
I wonder if there is some international workmen's pledge that you have to take before you're allowed to put on your high-vis vest and wonder around with your pants sitting too low and wielding a power tool. It probably goes along the lines of, "Please repeat after me: I do solemnly swear to show my butt crack to the world and stare and female passers by. I understand that it is my right yell out lewd comments or to make similar comments in a normal tone of voice. As soon as I see someone coming, I pledge to stop doing all work and take a tea break."

This morning I was walking to the train and passed two workmen just standing on a corner. I had my iPod in and was listening to a very random mix that my sister complied for me. Just as I was coming up to them, Goldfrapp's White Horse started playing and as I walked past I KNOW I heard one of them say something dodgey. This is where Little Aynia Brain branched into a Calvin and Hobbes styled reality with three options. 1- I walk back and in a movie-styled-way, the music from my iPod swells to fill the air around us and I just dance my ass off in front of them. 2- I walk back, calmly take out one of my headphones and say, "I'm sorry, did you say something?" (Delivered, for those in the know, in icy-cold Aynia Tone complete with pursed lips and raised eyebrow.) 3- I ignore them and carry off down the street but I'm kinda half dance-walking. I was pretty close to option 3 anyway. I'm pretty sure that some songs on my iPod start me walking with a bit of a skip or a strut, it seems I can't help myself. I do manage to stop short of sashaying down the high street complete with jazz hands and spirit fingers though. Thank heavens for small mercies...

when I grow up...

Well I should have known but of course, me being me, I didn't. Ms. Dressaday and Ms. Smartypants are famous. Of course they are. They write brilliantly, are semi-famous and have even published books. Mimi Smartypants' book is a collection of blog entries (or so it seems from reviews/summaries) and Erin, aka Ms. Dressaday, has written loads. (Sure, part of it is her job but still...)

Jealous? Moi? Well sure. I want to be fantastically literate and be able to voice all my comments on the world in a pithy, witty and winsome manner. (I also want to be able to do handstands without having a wall for safety, be able to play the guitar properly instead of massacring folk songs like Scarborough Fair and to look gloriously waif-like* for my diving holiday in 2 weeks but I don't always get what I want.) At any rate, in between bouts of work (it makes it sound like an affliction), I have been googling my idols and pandering to my stalker-esque tendencies.

.......I just got back from doing a circuit class at the gym with some of my fellow work colleagues. The circuit class involves going around various 'stations' where you do different exercises- sit ups, press-ups, lunges, tricep dips, skipping rope etc- and in my case, just to make it more fun, you also try to go a brighter shade of red and sweat more than anyone else in the class. I so totally kicked their asses. It was good to get the heart pumping though, especially as it's been hard to get out of bed this week as I'm fighting a cold. It's one of those really annoying ones where you don't really feel sick but when you get up in the morning and sit up, you can feel all the snot in your head shifting position. Just lovely. And then I get to climb tonight as well. Ha! I doubt I'll be pulling myself up anything in a hurry. That said, something at the gym must be working because the other week I was definitely aware of the climbing no-no which is using my arm muscles to just haul myself up as opposed to using my legs and technique. Graeme, my regular Thurs night climbing buddy, does it all the time. It was only the other week that I became aware of it though. Since we started at the same time one might think (at least I did) that we'd be at the same level but he consistently climbs a grade or two higher than me and it's really starting to glaze my doughnuts. I know he's naturally a bit stronger and goes to the gym more and is a bit taller (this helps) but last week we were climbing and I watched him climb something I couldn't finish and when he got down I was like, "You're a great big dirty man-cheater! I saw you just muscling through that. You are such a cheater!" We know each other well enough by now that he just smirked and shrugged and said he'd use whatever he could to get up that wall. Fair enough, it's my attitude as well. I'll try to remember that tonight when I'm peeling off the wall because my muscles are too tired...

*I will never look waif-like. I'm more of a solid load-bearing kind of girl but I also would not WANT to look waif-like, in all honesty. I like knowing that I will not snap. I also like the feeling of being able to sense my muscles working and how my body fits together which is something I most usually experience when climbing because you use your frame quite a lot when you twist and turn to reach stuff or crank up for holds and that's when you get to feel your muscles working. [Editor's note: bugger me but that was an awful sentence. *shudder*]

much better now

A benefit to having lots of friends over for dinner who get so full they almost fall asleep is that they leave behind lots of wine. And bless them, they drink red. So I've been able to indulge in a 'free' glass every night since Saturday. Cheers guys! I also have had lunch and dinner for the past two days although I might finish it all off tonight. That is thanks to Irish genetics- I totally blame my Mum. I worked out how much everyone might need, made a bit more and then one person couldn't come so I had, well, a lot. The laugh is that when I finally got a chance to sit down, about 20mins before the first person arrived, I was looking at all the food and suddenly has this panic of, "Shit! It's not gonna be enough! Maybe I should whip up another wee something..." But thank Christ I didn't because what with food for me for 3 days, I sent some of it home with the girls and Sean scoffed a lot when he got in and had a HUGE lot of the risotto on Sunday. So God bless the Irish and God bless my Mum. xox

I also got from Amazon, a copy of Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes and Fables: Wolves. Then I came across this which fit in with the whole Fables thing quite nicely I thought. I have been absolutely, thoroughly enjoying reading Revolting Rhymes. I remember being read this as a child and thinking it was the funniest, bestest thing out. I still think this- the rhymes and language are brilliant. It's the kind of book I like to read out loud because the words are just positively delicious to say and hearing it and giving a cadence and rhythm to it all is almost as much fun as the story itself. I need to go out and find a small child who will sit and listen, enthralled, as I go through the whole thing. Or I'll corner my flatmates tonight. Hee hee hee.

Oh- and traumatically, my girly movies will probably not arrive in time for me to hole myself up tomorrow and indulge in singleton-ness. I'm hoping Sarah and Sean bugger off for a romantic meal somewhere and leave me to wallow on my lonesome. Last year the girls and I went out for a meal but this year people are busy. Me, I'm just gonna try not to hook up with Ben and Jerry.

on a lighter note...

This couple did a full-on reenactment of the final dance from Dirty Dancing at their wedding. So cheesey. So glorious. Good on them I say.

slightly doom and gloom

Once again, so much to write, so little time. I'll just have to type fast...

Last night I went to see Blood Diamond and I came out of it in what I would call not exactly depressed or pensive but maybe more... introspective. Having no time to write about the movie itself, apart from to say that it was somewhat bludgeon-esque with the politic messages and quite heavy going (in an emotionally harrowing way) but otherwise I really liked it, I will instead direct you to by Dad's blog entries about it: 1 and 2. (Because in broad brush strokes, I basically agree with what he said.)And the old fav Rotten Tomato plot summary.

But walking home I really started to think. I mean in my existential way, I'm already in a what's-the-point frame of mind but this movie, or rather issues brought up by this film, really made me put my life in perspective. I always come away from this kind of thing slightly shell-shocked and immediately want to go out and help save the world. But of course I don't want to put myself into physical danger, and well, it's a lot of effort really, isn't it? But what am I doing about anything? My job involves putting images and text on paper and I can have a whole day taken up with deciding what font to choose and how big it should be. A bad week for me involves struggling with design or office politics. That is NOT a bad week. In a bad week you get chucked out of your home, most of your village is shot, you see your mother raped in front of you, your father and brother get shot, get raped yourself and possibly have a hand chopped off. That's a bad week. Me, I'm pushing images around a page- little to the left? Little to the right? Oooh, I don't know, that's a tough choice.

What the fuck does it really matter?!

What is almost worse than this is to know that in a couple of days, this feeling will probably have worn off and I'll go back to being the kind of person who feels good about themselves because they put £1 in someones's plastic bucket and got a sticker as proof that they "care" about blind people, deaf people, cancer victims and homeless abused children. And after that I'll pay someone to shape my eyebrows and put hot wax on my armpits to rip the hair off.

WTF.

So of course I called up Dad when I got home which is what a girl does when what-is-the-point-of-it-all crisis hits. And I took this away from our talk: you can't live every day in this heightened sense of this-world-is-super-fucked-and-I-need-to-run-out-and-save-it because it would drive you insane. I had already decided that. But you can allow yourself to keep that awareness at a certain level and use it to make your decisions about things, like what food/jewelery/[products you buy. And when you start to get pissed off because you can't get a page to look "pretty", well then just get some perspective.

This also made me think about my job/career though. I used to always think that I'd be doing design forever. I like it. Making things look pretty makes me happy and it can be like solving a puzzle when you get it right. But maybe there's something else I can be doing with my life that can fulfill me but be more generally 'useful' in the grand scheme of things... I was a bit surprised to find myself thinking this because as I said, I always assumed I'd be designing forever.

Also, and this I decided on my lonesome, you get to choose to be one of three people. 1- you complain about what's wrong with this world but do nothing about it
2- you are bothered so you get off your fat ass and do something about it, no matter how small
3- you stop caring

Now I really don't want to be person 1 or 3 so maybe, just maybe, I'll have to get off my fat ass...

This morning I woke up still relatively sombre about the whole thing. I thought about trying to snap myself out of it but I've decided to wallow in it for a while. I played Radiohead's Amnesiac on my iPod on the way to work which actually made me smile, if only because I was laughing at myself because it is rather Bathtub Brigade music and I was being quite self-indulgent... Then I got to work and saw Play.com was having a 3 for 2 sale (I went in only to buy Amelie but came out with Miss Congeniality and While You Were Sleeping as well. Mainly because when I came home last night, I wanted to watch something to girly and warm-fuzzy to snap me out of it only to find that I only own action movies...

angry raging white female (on the inside)

Currently I'm meant to be in a state of ketosis. My book says I'm meant to be enjoying a heightened state of alertness and clear headedness with lots of energy. What I am is quitequite pissed off. You try to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when all you can think about it whyGodwhy are you not allowed to eat carbs (well I am but I'm meant to be keeping it under 20g a day which is sweet f*ck all so basically no bread, crackers, spuds, pasta, rice, cereal, beans etc) and what is the deal with even quite a few vegies being quite high in carbs so that when you put an amount on your plate it looks like nothing and salad is about all you can load up on. Of course I'm allowed to eat all the protein I want but I'm a vegetarian* so I'm kinda f*cked. Or, as the case seems to be, f*cked off. And lets not even START on how much I want chocolate right now...

Now before people think that I'm some psycho-obessed diet freak let me set you straight. To me, the word 'diet' defines more a way of structuring what you eat than the more traditional 'eat cabbage soup for a week' or 'eat this protein shake at every meal** For health reasons I will not go in to, I need to be looking in to a low GI diet and one vege low GI cookbook I got recommends kicking this off by at least a week where you eat 20g or less of carbs which should put you in to ketosis which helps to kick things off. So I thought trying it for a week couldn't hurt but I'm only on day 3 and I feel like I have a raging beast trapped within me. I'm sure this isn't just due to carb-cutting but I'll go in to that later...

This whole ketosis thing is quite interesting but doing some quick googling just now I'm not so sure how I feel about it. The first place I checked was wikipedia and I wasn't too keen on the term Most medical resources regard ketosis as a pathological state associated with chronic starvation. I was a bit happier with www.answers.com (Scroll down the page a bit for the definition part.) Basically I'll try to stick it out till Saturday when I'm having friends round for dinner- I'm sure I can last till then. The question is whether I've ripped off the heads of every one I come in to contact with before then...

Other reasons for me being in a foul mood (in no particular order):
1- Work stuff. But of course I'm not going to go in to that.
2- I slept like shit, woke up at 5am and went back to sleep and didn't end up going to the gym
3- Probably low on my daily endorphin jolt because of missing the gym. So I have to hang out until climbing tonight to get my fix.
4- ear piercings are probably to blame (partially) for poor sleep. And now both are a bit swollen.
5- I'm having 9 people over on Saturday and although I can feed them, I have no idea where the f*ck they're meant to sit. Or even fit. We have a rather small open-plan kitchen/living room. And it's the first time they've ever come over. What was I thinking?!!!!

I think that sums it up. I will now stop ranting and get back to work. Peace out.

*who eats seafood
**and you won't crap for a month. This happened to one of my sister's flatmates long ago- she was on this protein shake diet and the whole time she ate it she did not poop once. That is not natural.

attention to detail

I wanted to try to embed this here but as it's a separate url, I can't seem to. You all simple mustmustMUST check it out. It's absolutely amazing. Lots of pixel lunar art on this massive page. So much attention to detail. To find out more about it or add to it, go to www.x-panded.com/pixeldam/indexpixelmoon.html. I'm just gutted that you can't click on things and have stuff happen. That would be truly truly awesome.

Postscript: As a side note, look at me go! Nothing for weeks and now 4 entries in 2 days. So typical...

all types of crazy...

This morning there was an article on the Metro entitled 'Astronaut in a nappy attacks her love rival'. Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's what I want to be reading on my morning train ride. The only reference I've been able to find to it online is here and it reads a bit dry but to sum up, this woman drove about 1500km wearing a special nappy so that she didn't have to stop to use the loo, to meet a woman who she heard was interested in a man she was interested in. My fav bit was where the Metro said The 43-year-old was arrested and found to have a mallet, a 10cm knife, rubber tubing and rubbish bags......Nowak told officers she just wanted to scare Shipman into talking about her relationship with Mr. Oefelein and did not intend to hurt her. I'm sorry WHAT? In the world as I know it, you don't turn up to "chat" to someone carrying a knife, rubber tubing and rubbish bags. To me that reeks of body parts and a whole lot of not-talking. At least not nicely. Maybe Miss Astronaut Lady had some weird otherly experience in space which fried some synapses...

not knowing the meaning of small-scale

Ever since I moved in to my new flat, I've been meaning to have people around for dinner/afternoon tea/brunch/something similar and I have finally done it. Well at least the inviting part. And as a result, have encountered the problem with having a large circle of friends- there are a lot of them. I've just realised that I'm making dinner for 9 people on Saturday night- 11 if I count Sarah and Sean, which I feel I should. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. When I realised how many people it was, my first thought was, "I really must buy another shelf for our oven." Currently we only have one and I think we can all agree that there's no way you can cook for 11 people with one shelf!

new shiny goodness in my ears

Oh you faithful few who have kept checking this blog in the vain hope that I'll actually post something. Thank you. Who would have thought I could be so busy? All I can say is that doing a 40 hour a week job that only usually takes up 40 hours has made me soft. Back at Critic, I'd usually have done my 40 hours by the time I left on Thursday. Since getting back, it's been hella-crazy flat-tack all-out madness at work as I helped to put out not one but two magazines. Dude. But my dad has been asking, ever so nicely, when I'm going to blog again so here I am. Blogging again. Hoping not to let it slip again this badly although I do seem to periodically drop off the face of the cyber world.

Currently my latest news is that I got my ears pierced in the weekend. That's right folks, at the ripe old age of 27 I finally did it. In typical me fashion it is of course slightly in reverse as I've had my tracha pierced for years. I remember when I got that done, I went through this stage where it all felt a bit surreal and I really wasn't sure I wanted it there. I mean I'd had a piece of metal stabbed through my body. When you think about it, it seems a bit weird. And now, about 8 years later, I've done it again. This hurt nowhere near as much, in fact not at all- at least until yesterday. It seems that when I get changed, I pull my top off and brush my right ear. ALL THE TIME. And right about now, my right ear is more swollen than my left and a bit hot and burning whereas the left if totally fine. All because I happened to nastily jerk it a couple of times. When I get home I intend to hold ice to it until I can't feel it any more. On the bright side, it's not seeping or anything so I'm sure it'll be fine. But at the moment I'm a bit of a grumblebum about it. As you may have noticed...

The other thing I've been aware of at the moment, apart from the throbbing pain in my right ear, is that I'm going through another 'phase' as I like to put it. Not a personal one but rather a social one. This at least is how I've chosen to term it. You know how you can look back over your life and track fads or phases of your life? Mine tend to get defined by my social circle at the time and I can get quite nostalgic about it. Life is constantly changing but every now and then you get to settle in a pocket of time for a while where everything is basically good and it's just nice. At the moment I'm fairly settled here in London, I go to work, I climb twice a week and most weekends I usually have coffee with my friend Sue on a Sat morn and the bunch of us will do something on the Sat night. The other week I was having dinner with my friends and I was laughing so hard I was crying and I looked around at a group of 8 women, all of whom I really like and I enjoy being with. And happy as I was, I was also a bit sad because I realised that this will not last. We'll leave London, move apart, life will go on. It's just a bit sad really. The nice, or at least interesting thing about being in London is that we are all at pretty much the same stage in life but it's almost a kind of stasis in a way and back home, be it NZ for me or SA for them, friends are moving on with lives and buying houses and getting married and having babies. Which we are definitely NOT doing. Is it something about being in London, the different pace of it all, the reasons we came here? I don't know. I just consider myself lucky enough to have good enough friends back home that they can go down a different path to me and we can still have a close enough bond that we don't become strangers to each other. We still hold similar values and opinions on things- at least at the moment. Part of me wonders how long it'd take with us living our different lives before we grew so different that we no longer felt that we understood the other person. I know it's happened with some of my friends when they've gone back to SA for a holiday- they just have nothing in common with people they used to consider their best friends. And I know that's just part of life but it doesn't stop it from being a bit sad too.

no time no time no time

IT SNOWED TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Too busy, too much to do. Tomorrow will have more. Plus pics of snow. ooer.

brrr...........

Abandonment Issues
Kitty has left me. Don't be fooled by the fact that she may occasionally post on here. She's left me. She now mainly bogs on the greener shores of her personal blog kittyonsafari.blogspot.com. I don't feel stabbed in the back as much as pitched out of a moving car onto the side of the road in the middle of the desert. (Just joking K, you go forth a blog where you may...)

What will I not do for a photo?
Lotte came over for tea and cake yesterday afternoon and as we were looking at her photos from Prague, we came across this one which was taken when we stayed a friend's place in Devon ages ago. There was this digger on the side of the road which we walked past every day and Lotte and me being Lotte and me, of course we had to hop in to the scoop bit to have our photo taken. Look at me being all (unintentionally) calender-girl in the digger. I'm looking a smidge hoochy-mamma-esque, well as much as you can in jeans, t-shirt and a wooly hat with a bobble on it...


so this is what winter feels like
It came out of nowhere- overnight (it felt like) an almost 6 degree drop in hit us. One week we're basking in an 11˚ winter and suddenly it's 4˚. Jesus. It is C O L D. Brilliant timing on behalf of my wonderful Mummy though- I left some clothes behind in NZ (actually it was all undies and some may laugh at me getting them sent over because yes, you can buy underwear in Britain but my Mummy knows how attached I am to my sensible cotton underwear in totally non-sensible colours so she was a honey and shipped them over) and the package arrived today and even though I said I didn't need thermals, she sent me a thermal singlet anyway which was a Godsend because when I headed for the gym this morning I forgot a jersey and was freezing my bits off in my polyprop and t shirt so THANK YOU MUM YOU ARE A GODDESS. I am wearing the thermal now.

I have stuff I feel I could/should/will write in response (somewhat belated in some cases) to stuff my Dad has written in his blog but I don't have time right now so instead write this in the hope that he at least will remind me that I have to do it. Fantasy writing/ good and evil/probably something else but can't remember what....

I did a bad thing

I've updated our blog to the new blogger thingy, I'm sorry if this actually becomes a pain for you Aynia, but they kept asking so sweetly.

SO I'm in America! In Pt Reyes which is just out of San Francisco, to be specific.
So far I have:
Eaten: Big burger curly fries, cherry cola, mexian food including tamales and tacos. Lot's of goats cheese (for some reason), granola, goldfish crackers and I just had a big piece of pizza.
Been to: Some of San Francisco, Golden Gate Bridge, Oakland, the pacific coast, a swing dance restaurant, an american-as-heck bar, a burger joint, a fancy japanese restaurant, and a house with heated floors and a double door fridge.
I plan to in the near future:
Go to a shooting range (awesome!), horse riding, go to a roller derby (where girls on skates fight -ha!), go to live music, Vegas, and the Grand Canyon.

I've been hanging out with my brother Peter and his new wife, Bonnie, and her 3yo daughter, Sophia. I'm going to be doing some work for Pete - web and graphic design stuff, and hopefull will earn mega greenbacks so that I can treat Aynia when I come visit after April sometime.

check out my other kitty specific blog yo.

so happy that I'm jumping

I HAVE MY iPOD BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Whoppee! No more broken-record-Aynia-brain. No more enduring shit gym music. Oh the rapturous joy. Oh the happiness. Oh the dance of I've-got-my-iPod-back. Oh the funny looks from people on the office...

WARNING FOR DEADWOOD FANS- POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD
I'm writing this in small print so that it's easier for Deadwood fans to skip over this bit. Like Julie. I was thinking of her last night when the episode from Season3 featured a fight between Dan and The Captain, Hurst's muscle guy. Now Dan isn't a nice guy but I was soooooooooooooooo rooting for him and had absolutely no idea who was going to win the fight. It really could have gone either way and would have had quite different plot consequences. It was tense. I was tense. I was also thinking of my sister because I was doing what she hates most and talking at the TV. There were lots of cries of "Oooh" and "NO!" and "Get him" as well as an almost constant chant of "Go for the eyes, go for the eyes, gofortheeyes, GOFORTHEEYES." Dan did. He won. But I had anticipated eye-gouging, (which is bad enough) but in true Deadwood style, it was an eye popping-out. Which was quite graphic- it was swinging around and everything. And of course it's game-over at that point. Kinda gross but so well done, as the whole show is. Ka Pai makers so Deadwood.

Ok, it's fine to read again now.
Just to bring you up to speed if you skipped the fine print, I was talking about a fight between two characters in Deadwood. This morning when I walked to the train, I was thinking about it and it made me think of how my martial arts has influenced my opinion of fights I see on TV/in the movies. So often, people are fighting nicely- I always want to yell, "Bite him!" or "rip that finger off!" or "go for the eyes". They don't, and I just sit there shaking my head in disgust. I learned a lot a fancy moves doing martial arts but there is a HUGE different between busting a move when the person is working in the same style as you and it's a training environment and busting a move in the real world. Real world people don't move or react the same way and although I consider myself competent, when faced with a big chap wanting to whale on me in some dark alley way, I would not use my training methods to deal with him as I might in sparring. I'd stay as far away as I could and if I got in close, I'd be biting anything I could and gouging eyes and pulling hair. And I feel no shame in that. Down and dirty is the way this girl would play it. Straight arm? I'll break it if I fear for my safety. Shove your head near mine as you try to strangle me? If you're stupid enough to leave my arms free I'll poke your eyes out. Oh I'm a charmer. :-)

Military Alphabet
I live with two travel agents and it has become a matter or pride to me to learn the military alphabet which they have to know because they have so many codes with letters in them. So I thought I'd drop it in here for the sake of posterity. Also I've been watching too much of The Unit...
A: Alpha
B: Bravo
C: Charlie
D: Delta
E: Echo
F: Foxtrot
G: Golf
H: Hotel
I: India
J: Juliet
K: Kilo
L: Lima
M: Mike
N: November
O: Oscar
P: Papa
Q: Quebec
R: Romeo
S: Sierra
T: Tango
U: Uniform
V: Victor
W: Whiskey
X: X-Ray
Y: Yankee
Z: Zulu
See? Don't you feel so much better for knowing that? And so much cooler?

And now work calls. I have a weekend looming and stuff to do. Ciao. xx

'fessing up

So it turns out that the real reason that I need my iPod back is that is saves me from myself. Left to my own devices, my brain will amuse itself (in a totally sadistic way) but doing endless broken-record-styled repeats of snippets of some of The Most Crap Songs Ever which I swear by everything holy to me* do not exist anywhere on my iPod or, for that matter, anywhere is my music collection. Yesterday I almost stopped walking when I realised with horror that the song snippet on endless repeat was , "It's getting hot in here so hot so take off all your clothes I am getting so hot, I wanna take my clothes off." This may have been partially due to the fact that I was getting bloody hot walking along as I was layered up and tend to walk quite fast so tend to get a bit hot and sweaty. But still, I don't think that makes it forgivable... The other day I had a snippet of a Pink song (not as bad as Nelly but still less than ideal) and for days and days I had the song from The Lion King that Julie and I sing as a duet. Now a duet can be defined as "A piece for two performers" in which case yes, this is a duet. But in reality it's Julie singing and my piping up at the end. It's from near the end of The Lion King where Timon and Pumba are creating a distraction so they sing this song (Julie sings Timon, i pipe up for Pumba, in a faux bass tone):

Timon: If you're hungry for a hunk of fat and Jjuicy meat, eat my buddy Pumbaa here because he is a treat! Come on down and dine on this tasty swine, all ya gotta do is get in line! Are ya achin'...
Pumbaa: Yep Yep Yep!
Timon: ...for some bacon?
Pumbaa: Yep Yep Yep!
Timon: he's a big pig!
Pumbaa: Yep Yep.
Timon: you could be a big pig too! Oy!
Timon and Pumbaa: AAAAAAAAAAH!

Too much info on the quirks of my relationship with my sister? Maybe. But that tune's been in my head ever since we sung it when I was home. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh. If only I could record us doing it and put it on here as an MP3. That would make it all so much more understandable. (? Really?! Oh the illogic of the Aynia Brain....)

Speaking of songs, my flatmate Sean has a ringtone at the moment that isn't entirely public-friendly. It's a sound bite from Southpark and I can't find it on the web (although if you want to see some quotes from the show, check this out. (Scroll down past the show listings.) So inappropriate but so hilarious. As is the Uncle Fucka song.) Anyway- Sean's ringtone has a bit where Cartman is going, "Who are you calling fat you fucking Jew?" Then Mr. Garrison tells them off for swearing and Kyle goes, "What? Fuck? Fuck fuckity fuckfuckfuck." It's the kind of ringtone where you want to answer your phone reallyREALLY quickly. It's embarrassed him a couple of times but I have no sympathy for him, I've told him he needs to change it. Hilarious? Yes. Suitable for an everyday ringtone? No.

*choccie, family, the beach at low tide when the sun is rising and I have it all to myself, the laugh of a small child**, the moment just as the plane takes off and leaves the ground

**so some of this is a bit cheesy. So sue me.

I'M LEARNING TO DIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well it finally happened. My boss came in to office one day and announced that we were learning to dive. (We being me and three other girls from work.) We are being shipped off to the Red Sea for a week from March 1-8 for sand, sun, lots and water and hopefully some Nemo sightings. AWESOME! I've wanted to learn to dive for absolutely ages and having this trip in March will break up the British gloom quite nicely. So now I have 43 days (yes, I set up a new countdown widget) to stop eating and exercise lots and miraculously be able to wear a bikini. NOT. This body is a bikini-free zone. If God had intended for anyone to see my stomach he would given them a second eyelid or something similar to help reduce glare and help numb the pain.

I am also going to be going to the Outdoors Show which is cool but mainly because they're having the European Bouldering Championships there which I reallyREALLY want to see. I'm sure I'll be able to sneak away for the finals and to have a play on the wall. Hee hee.

So it looks like I have quite a few holidays and things to look forward to which is what it's all about really. At least it's part of what my being over here is meant to be all about.

I've been really good with the gym since being back but if I thought last week went slowly I was sadly mistaken. This week has crawled. Yesterday morning my alarm woke me up at 6.20am and as my hand scrabbled for it automatically, my brain was going, "Oh God no, just make it stop. It CAN'T be time to get up." Brain 2 chipped up with, "It's not that bad, you've only got one more day of this to go then you can sleep in."
brain1: Oh thank God.
pause for mental gears to actually start working
brain1: no wait a minute, this is only Tuesday. FUCK!
brain2: OH GOD! Only Tuesday?!!! Shit! [Editor's note: my language aint' at it's best first thing in the morn] How can we only have done this dragging ourself out of bed at an ungodly hour to shuffle to the train station like a zombie to then shuffle further to the gym to sweat and do exercise (at 6.30am that is rather like a dirty word) only once this week. ONCE. Jesus. I just can't do this. HELP! Argh!!!
brain1: Dude! Pull yourself together. Just get out of bed, it'll be fine.
brain2: oh fuck off *grumble* *grumble*

Thank God for auto pilot I say. Now that I've started doing this 25 min walk to Putney overland, I usually prefer it to my combo of walk, tube & walk or just taking for the bus (once it deigns to turn up) because it's good time to think and the walk is actually quite a nice one- plus it's far more reliable time-wise than the other options. But the past couple of mornings the love has been gone. I'm sure things will be better once I get my iPod back. The thought of doing cardio at the gym without my own music for motivation is a bit daunting. I get bored easily on the machines and the music at the gym is absolutely bollocks. But my baby should be returned to me by Monday, oh the joyful anticipation.

boo

It seems that since getting back from NZ I've been swamped. That and week one was pretty tough- motivationally wise. But I've made it through one whole week of work now and have even been to the gym in the mornings so, having proven to myself that I won't die doing it, I'm up for round two.

Once again though I seem slightly lacking on the whole time thing so today's entry consists of two links. This website I liked for two reasons, well maybe three. In no particular order:
1) The blue background
2) The supercutie robot animation. I was gutted that I couldn't make him move more
3) The way the pages link together. It's like you're moving around on a huge palette and I think it's quite a nice idea.

This site is totally awesome when it comes to choosing colours for web pages. If you click on the link it will take you through to a homepage. There will be a purple link near the beginning of the text which says 'spin the colour wheel'. It brings up a pop-up window (hence no direct link) and you spin the wheel and it randomly generates three colours for you and previews them in relation to each other. Hard to explain (at least for me) but very very cool. For someone who find the task of choosing colour schemes for websites quite daunting (as I do), this site is an absolute Godsend.

Oooh ooh ooh AND I have booked my flights to go to Portugal at Easter to stay with Cathy and co. This means I will get to witness Sean and Daisy doing their Easter Egg Hunt which will have to be übersupercutiepie, especially as this will be Daisy's first Easter being completely mobile so she'll be doing all the hunting herself.

what a Monday needs

I know that I need to do a decent entry. I really really do. I even have stuff to write about. Just slightly lacking on time and motivation... So instead I will leave you with this gem that was passed on to me by my buddy Dave:
a music video using treadmills
God only knows how they came out of it alive. I would have broken something.

I will however share just 2 pics from NZ. In the first I am cleaning my hiking boots in prep for waterproofing them. I really kinda let myself go in my two weeks at home. Who on earth would think that I am a designer and have any sense of what good taste might be? Red t-shirt, stripy polyprop, purple butterfly flannel pajamas, not to mention topping it all off with leopard-wannabe fluffy slippers. Dear God. I am a cacophony of colour.



This one is a big-small that Dad and I had fun setting up at Lover's Leap. A holiday, (not matter how rainy) is not complete without silly big-smalls.

what a jolly entry.

Before I left for NZ, I had a countdown widget. Basically you name an event and put in the date and everytime you looks at your widgets, there's a little message that tells you how many days it is till the big event. Mine was "HOMETIME!!!!!" so my message would read "2 days till HOMETIME!!!!!" which was all well and good but coming in to work today, I went to feed my tigergotchi widget and to my great horror, my countdown widget now reads "17 days since HOMETIME!!!!!!". All those exclamation marks leap out from the page and mock me. I must find something to replace it with as right now it's pretty bloody depressing.

Apart from widget horror, I have nothing to report apart from jetlag which seems to be manifesting itself as overwhelming apathy. I can't be bothered, not with anything. And I'm not really tired, at least not in the jet-lagged-I'm-about-to-drop-dead-RIGHT-NOW-I-need-to-sleep-so-bad was I'm used to, I just don't care.

good old Dunners

I should have known, I really really should have but the weather was so GOOD at Easter, when it is usually puss, that I foolishly thought it would do the same for me again. Ha. I doubt my 3/4 pants will ever get an airing and I am still frantically hurling clothes out of my wardrobe in search of my stripy Kathmandu polyprop goodness. If this is all the weather has I might as well have stayed in the UK, at least it has central heating. But then I wouldn't be with the whanau so I guess I'll just have to cowboy up and cope. I'm sure I'll be better once the rain clears long enough for me to walk on my beach.

*grumble* *grumble* woe is me etc... ;-)

But on the bright side- I just found out that one of my friends is pregnant which is SUPERAWESOME and when I think of that I couldn't be happier.

final missive

I HEAD HOME IN TWO DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's so soon it's surreal. I'm glad I only fly out on Monday evening because it gives me the whole day to pack and clean my room etc.

Oh I can't wait.

Mum, Dad, J, see you soon. Beach here I come! Break out the jandles and the sunshine, this girl is coming home.

easy on the eyes

I have a widget that gives me a new Calvin and Hobbes comic every day. Sometimes I just have to share them.

In fact I think today shall just be a day of eye candy.


www.aoj.ca


I think this guy's drawings are amazing and I particularly like the perspective on this one. www.byroglyphics.com Look in the gallery section for more of this style of thing.


www.imphead.comI've long been a fan of fantasy art. I envy these people their imaginations.


And finally, the simple pleasure of line art should never be taken for granted. www.explodingdog.com

Möchten Sie eine Tüte damit?

I thought an entrée of Calvin and Hobbes was suitable for a Monday. There's nothing like laughing at some naked mischievous Calvin ass. Hee hee.

So this was the weekend of Berlin. Dude, if I thought Belfast was bleak, Berlin takes the cake. 'Austere' is my word for Berlin. I mean really, it shouldn't have surprised me. A lot of the city has only been rebuilt since the 90's and unification so it's a weird mix between 'new' 90's architecture and buildings that have been rebuilt in imitation of what used to be there. The whole place feels quite bleak and a bit artificial and leaves me quite cold. The other thing of architectural/arty note, at least for me, were the memorials to things from the war. They were totally different from other ones that I have seen which, once again, if my brain was working, would not have surprised me either. Usually war memorials are tributes to the soldiers who have given their lives. They've commemorative, maybe uplifting and a bit inspiring. Not the German ones- and rightfully so really. One was a large stone room, all grey concrete slabs and high ceiling and I was already weepy before I got in. I'm not really sure why, this wave of emotion just hit me. And when I got inside I was looking around this massive, bleak, grey room and was ready to bolt, it was getting a bit much. In the middle of the room was a large bronze statue of a person holding/sheltering another one half on their lap and the only light on the room was a hole in the ceiling which cast light on to the statue. It wasn't pretty and it was slightly abstract but as I made myself stand there, I could feel my distress gradually dissipating. There was a sense of peace and comfort that gradually took its place. This is not to say that peace etc radiated from it because they didn't. It just fascinated me how somehow I could stand in this grey, bleak room and gradually it felt like things weren't quite so bad. And as I came out and thought about it, it seemed totally suitable. Another one that got to me was the holocaust memorial. It's a large square of undulating ground filled with a grid of grey stone columns of varying heights. As you walk in to it, the ground drops away and the columns get higher. From the outside, it doesn't look like it takes up that much room but when you're walking through it, you're glancing down row upon row of grey columns and it seems to go on forever. It feels like a graveyard and becomes quite overwhelming, like it will never end. Again, totally appropriate. I took photos of neither because at the time, it didn't feel appropriate. These are images I will carry in my mind and feelings I will remember forever.

[On a side note, how art is used to commemorate things of war and conflict (finding this hard to articulate) fascinates me. Before coming to Europe, I was used to triumphant statues of fallen heroes and plaques with names written on them . Then I go to Belfast and they have massive murals on walls glorifying both martyrs and terrorists (sometimes the same, sometimes not) which is a totally different slant on things and now I have the sombre, almost dark, not at all glorifying memorials from Berlin. It's fascinating.]

But now for the photos, the bit people really care about:


Me in front of the Brandenburger Tor. Day one in Berlin was overcast and cold and really did nothing to create a good first impression.


The Berlin wall. This is not apparently the prettiest section, the ones in the west are better but this was the bit we got to see. The bits that aren't still standing are marked by cobblestones and you can follow the whole line of the wall, all 150km (ballpark estimate) of it.


This was taken in the most amazing chocolate shop ever. This was a huge hulking santa made of mini santas. Oh the cunning artistry.


Day 2 in Berlin was much colder, probably because it was crisp and clear. It was sunny although I still didn't find the city beautiful, it was a much better day. Lotte and I wandered around markets and had mulled wine and it was fab.


What caught my attention on this cathedral was this sign. Siehe, ich bin bei euch alle Tage bis an der Welt ende. Which I translate to be 'I will be with you all until the end of the world'. I don't know if it's a quote from something and I'm not a person for poetry and as previously demonstrated, am not religious, but I thought that in German it read very eloquently and was a very nice sentiment.


This is the ground above the bunker of Hitler where he ended his life. Apparently it's a car park because the walls of the bunker were built so thick that they couldn't be demolished and no building could be built on top of it. So it's doomed to be a carpark until the end of time in all likelihood. Part of me thought it would be nice to make it a garden but that might be falsely interpreted as a celebration or glorification of Hitler. I see it as being the complete opposite of everything he stood for. You could take it to be- here beneath us is the final resting place of one of the largest atrocities of mankind. Because of the death and destruction and intolerance (I could go on, I'll stop here) that he stood for, we choose to wipe that memory away with new growth. Come here in spring to contemplate the daffodils poking up and the buds appearing on the trees and think about new life, come here in winter and sit on a cold concrete bench and look at the bare tree branches and the grey sky and the horrible accommodation blocks that enclose the space and feel gloomy but remember that spring will be coming and soon this grey and brown patch will be green and thriving and life carries on. (Gosh, look at me being all wanky. I think those memorials had a greater impact than I thought.)

On these columns, the chipped away parts are from bullets. We're looking at history folks. Apparently there is conflict as to whether the columns should be beautified and replaced or left as they are. I say keep your history Germany, leave them where they stand.


And this is the mob who went, minus, of course, me. Because I'm taking the picture, duh.
So essentially it was a weekend of sightseeing but mainly wandering around markets and trying out my German. It’s well rusty, I haven’t spoken it in 8 years, but I still got by just fine and could translate for my friends. I felt quite a sense of achievement from that which is cool because me and German/Germany… well lets just call I a rocky relationship…

the way things work
And I'm sorry but was there something in my last entry that somehow got thrown up by Google because 55 hits? It seems a freak anomaly. But on the other hand, it's made my clustermap look a whole lot more populated so I shouldn't really complain. *slight pause* I just checked my blog for comments and it would seem that my rise in hits are in fact due to Damien. It would seem he did a massive spamming of Hi5 people and if most of them googled him or that link, they would have come across my blog (apparently) which explains my rise in hits. It's a funny world.

of puppies and ducklings and weird shit

This picture was forwarded to me by a girl at work and I don't know if it makes me a bad person but I find this bloody hilarious. Apart from teh obvious duckling-down-the-drain, there is the bewildered look of the mother in the final frame. I can just hear her going, "Wha' happen'?" Oh the slapstick of nature. It's hard to beat.

Yesterday we had a visitor to the office. One of DIVE's sales staff is now based in Manchester and when she came down this month she brought her new dog Bailey. He's even been added to the meet the team page and has his own profile. "DIVE's new advertising assistant Bailey Sturgeon joins us from the Warrington Animal Welfare rescue centre. The 18-month-old scuba dog has just started shallow water diving. His other hobbies include chasing frisbees, chewing plastic ducks, running, dribbling and playing catch in the DIVE office. 'Woof, woof!' he says." Oh we're a bunch of softies here. Being inventive, we gave him a plastic duck to play with and now poor duckie has been chewed to something almost beyond recognition. At our new offices, we are split over 2 floors and we've decided that ours is the cool floor. Bailey sure thinks so. On our floor there are toys and people who will run around with him and give him water and behave pretty much like dogs themselves. He's coming in again this afternoon and I can't wait- I was a special favourite (maybe because I was the one who sacrificed the duck in the first place...)


The weirdness of the internet
In the past month I have had a couple of Hi5 requests from people I do not know. It's a bit strange to check your email and have some random asking you to sign on to their friend list when you don't even know them. I also had no idea why these people were contacting me. I thought maybe they're blog fans? (And yes folks, it would seem that I am that egocentric) but then I realised that YEARS ago I signed up to Hi5 at the request of someone I actually knew and it turns out my profile is still on there. But has current age and location which means I did update it within the last year which is strange because I reallyREALLY don't remember doing that... Anyhue- amnesia aside, today I got my strangest Hi5-related thing yet. Apparently I had a message from a guy called Damien which read:

hey, whats up? just came across your profile at the search page and was wondering if youd wanna chat sometime?
where ya from.. things ya like to do..
if ya wanna know more about me and see more pics go to myswtpages.com/damien
hope to hear from ya
damien

It seemed innocuous enough and I'm in carpe diem mode so I checked out myswtpages.com/damien and I have only one thing to say- oh my Holy Jesus, WTF?! This is the first picture I came across so of course I had a good giggle. LOTS of buff posing shots but imagine my horror when you click on some of the pictures and get told that you have to be over 18 to access the site! OMG! You know what that means- naked pictures! Man bits on camera! Ooooo yicky. So now I am suitably repulsed and amused. Damien, if by some chance of the web you come across this, I'm sure you're a lovely guy but you're just not for me. I like to view man bits in person and not via the internet. (Although if we overcome this, I feel there may be other irreconcilable differences we will not be able to overcome. Hence "irreconcilable".) So that's my excitement for the day.

things that make you go, "BABIES!!!!!"

My latest check of what's new on with Homestar Runner brought me to this I mean oh my God how cute are these?!! A teeny tiny girl squad?!! It's just so bloody cute I'm going all gooey.





The only thing cuter than this is Josh, my friend Sam's new baby. I'm sure she'll be fine with me sharing his image with the world. I mean he's CUTE. It's always such a pleasant surprise (relief) when friends have genuinely beautiful children. I know Kitty would argue that all babies are beautiful but some just don't twinge my heart strings. But Joshy's a honey. Look at those big blue eyes.

the looming dark

It's 16:15 and it's dark already- I'm tellin' ya- that's just not right. Not one bit, not a little, not at all. The only silver lining to this nasty gloomy cloud is that I FLY HOME IN 14 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry for all those exclamation marks, they may have been slightly excessive but I am quite excited about it. Never mind the sun and the sand, I get to see my family. I get Mum hugs and Dad hugs and I get to annoy Julie by limpetting on to her at any chance I get. I just tend to sit down beside her and latch on. She may complain but I know she loves it really. Heh heh heh.

This weekend I'm heading to Berlin with 8 other females to see the sights and go to the Christmas markets. (So everyone back home be warned- it's cute but kitsch Xmas decorations from Berlin for Xmas.) Eight females. I'm sure we'll be fine.... Actually we've already decided we'll split up to do whatever we want to do during the day and the make a time to meet up for dinner. I'm quite looking forward to bundling up all nice and cozy and wandering around markets and sipping mulled wine. I have to admit that nothing feels quite as festive and 'Christmas-y' as a northern hemisphere Xmas. It's just different. Not that I'm complaining about getting to see both sunshine and daylight in 2 weeks- oh no. Bring it on. Lots of sun. Please? Pretty please? Oh go on Dunedin, I know you have it in you...

drawing the line

I can be pretty oblivious to 'signs' that are presented to me but the other morning when my iPod had died and I was walking to the bus I found myself with the theme song to Baywatch stuck in my head. Now call me crazy but I think that has to be a sure indication that I've been watching too much of it. Which is really only once in the weekend but I still think that is about twice as much as I should be. Especially because the last episode featured yet another soft porn montage with some girl walking along the beach in different skimpy outfits and lying in the sand stroking herself. HOW did they get away with having this on the prime-time tele?!

I also happened to stumble across Top 100 Facts for Chuck Norris the other day, in fact about an hour after my last blog entry which mentioned him. Freaky coincidence. (And I promise I wasn't searching for it, it just appeared. That's destiny.) The Chuck Norris facts are hilarious, and even better for anyone who remembers Walker: Texas Ranger. Some of my tops favs were:
• Chuck Norris does not hunt because the word hunting implies the probability of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.
• Chuck Noris puts the "laughter" in "manslaughter".
• Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck roundhouse kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of the month.
• Superman owns a pair of Chuck Norris pajamas.

I could go on but I'll stop there.

And just when you think you've heard of it all
I did think that unicycle hockey pretty much took the cake on WTF things- and in fact I still do but somewhere is in the top10 would have to be a Corduroy Appreciation Club. Thanks to A Dress A Day for that link. The first meeting was held Nov. 11, 2005, and the second on January 11, 2006, since Jan. 11 is the date which, after Nov. 11, most nearly resembles corduroy. It is a delightful feature about someone who was asked to be a guest speaker at a meeting of the Corduroy Appreciation Group. Before we parted, I asked Mr. Rohan what it was about my writing that had made him think I would be a good keynote speaker, and he mentioned one of my novels in which a character refers, early on, to a favorite corduroy jacket. “I was disappointed, though, that it didn’t come back the rest of the book,” he said. “I kept waiting.” Read it. It's a gem.

WTF?

I've got two words to say to you- unicycle hockey. (Oh yeah and by the way, that site is a bit nasty on the eyes, you have been warned.) Yep. You read me right. Unicycle hockey. Hockey whilst on a unicycle. I've been meaning to blog about this for just ages. Every Thursday night when I finish climbing, there are people playing unicycle hockey one on of the courts outside the gym. I derive a pure and simple joy from watching people tool around on one wheel with only a stick for balance as they chase a ball around the court. It has everything- suspense, action, coordination and, of course, humour.

What I want to know is WHY and HOW? I mean they have a FAQ page on the site which I checked but it has questions like: 1) What is Unicycle Hockey? 2) The History of Unicycle Hockey 3) The Rules of Unicycle Hockey etc etc but nowhere are the questions written in by the public: 1)WHY? 2)What in the name of God made someone decide to play hockey whilst pedaling around on one wheel? 3)How on earth do people find out about this? 4)Did I ask WHY?!

There is a little girl, I'm guessing belonging to one of the players, who usually wheels around while they're playing. I'm sure she can't be more than 10 years old and she does a pretty impressive show of keeping up on her pink unicycle. It is just cute.

so many excuses, so little time...

So.

I have finally started as designer on DIVE magazine so am both busy and challenged and oh so veryvery glad to be back doing design. But the process of learning new ropes whilst teaching my replacement the old ones takes up quite a bit of time. Hence no spare time. Hence no blogging. I'm sure you've all been pining (hahaha) so today I shall endeavour to fill in the gaps.

things that go bump in the night
The other weekend I house/cat-sat for a lady from work. I heartily indulged in long overdue quality kitty time. She's a needy kitty, I'm needy- it was a match made in heaven. On the Friday night I watched two episodes in the DVD of Supernatural that I had got from my online rental place and then decided I needed to go out and forage for essentials like milk before the shops closed. I had chosen this series because it has Alex from Dark Angel and Dean from Gilmore Girls and is by the makers of X-Files so if nothing else, I was interested. I can guarantee now that most of you out there would probably rather watch something else. But not be, oh no. I don't how I developed the penchant for trashy b-grade shows but it's definitely there. And cable TV just caters to this even more. There are different categories of course- there's Baywatch, which has to be the equivalent of a car crash. I mean it's awful but I really can't seem to look away. And then there's A-Team which I think I like because of nostalgia (same thing with MacGyver but that isn't showing here). Oh my God- and Walker: Texas Ranger. I mean that show is TRUELY awful but when I was first year at uni, I would come home from my Wed evening shift at the supermarket, grab dinner and sit in front of Walker- with headphones on (everyone else was asleep my this stage and there were super light sleepers in our house) with almost religious dedication. And then you get all the sci-fi stuff which really doesn't have to be very good at all to capture my interest. Buffy, Angel, Firelfy*, Tru Calling, Torchwood, Battlestar Galactica**. I could sci-fi my day away. Patsy's house has the glory of all all Sky Channels so I even got to see Vampire High on the horror channel. I was a bit perplexed by that. I would've thought that something on the horror channel would be scary but this wasn't even b-grade enough to hold my interest for a full half hour episode. Which is just sad. But I digress. Supernatural, although not the fabbest of the fab, is by the makers of the X-Files and as such, has that same slightly creepy element which isn't all-put scary, just a slightly tense. So when I went out for milk at 7pm, when it happened to be totally dark and felt a lot later, I noticed that the moon was almost full and my brain clocked that it was just 2 days after Halloween. Patsy lives near where I work so I know the general area and saw this shortcut/lane thingy which I guessed would take me down the hill and it looked wide and well lit so I headed down it. Only to find out that it went alongside a cemetery. And not some slick, modern deal, oh no, this was a pokey little dark plot of land complete with long grass and tilting headstones. I have a vivid imagination and let me tell you, you could not have paid me enough money to walk across that grass because I know some rotten skeletal hand would have punched its way out of the ground to grab my ankle. I just knew it. I could feel it in my waters.

trying something new
There have been some rather hilarious (as in OHM WTF?!) updates in my social life but due to the public nature of the internet, I'm waiting to see how they resolve themselves before I share the car-crash comic value with the rest of the world at large, in particular the person they involve. I'll limit it now to saying that I might have a date on Tuesday. I mean I'm definitely going out for a drink with someone I have never met before (and blind dating was the one thing I had vowed never to do again (I lie, there are several things I have vowed never to do again. Work in a supermarket is one of them.) even though the only blind date I ever had was really dinner with someone I'd never met but two of my friends were there as well for safety buffers so it wasn't really a proper date at all.) but I don't know if it's a 'date' as such. Murky waters. Much room for schadenfreude for you folks. I may or may not keep you posted.

in conclusions
Apart from work and fully exploring the potential glory of cable TV, all I've really been doing is climbing which, thankfully, is going well at the moment. I feel like I'm closer to consistently climbing the same level of stuff and near the start of next year, Graeme, my climbing buddy, and I, plan to do a lead climbing course which beings us one step closer to being able to climb by ourselves outdoors which is the ultimate goal.

There were so many other tales I wanted to tell but priority goes to getting something up seeing as it's been so long since I've written anything...

*notice my Joss Whedon tendency
** I am in no way calling these shows crap, by the way. I will defend Firefly and Angel to the death (probably yours) as well as others.

Long time, no blog!

Hey! Wow! I won $2.65 on a bet in the Melbourne Cup! Best result I've ever had!!

not the gumdrop buttons!

When I was at high school, I, like most girls, would cover my A3 art folder with pictures. Unlike most girls, I would not have pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp plastered across my folder. Oh no. I got my Dad to photocopy cartoons out of his Farside books and I put those on in a tidy, OCD arrangement and then protectively cover sealed them. In the last years of high school I branched out to putting some Escher images on there as well. At the start of the school year, I would sit in the car on the way to school, bookmarking the pages I wanted Dad to photocopy for me, occasionally sniggering when I came across a particularly good one. Dad would always comment that the ones that made me laugh out loud were usually the sickest ones and to be fair, he wasn't wrong. (Although it's hard to go wrong with a good lemming suicide cartoon.) Well today I stumbled across something that reminded me of a mixture between Wylie Coyote and Farside material. Bunny suicides. They range from the simple to the very complex. I've sticking in an example of each here but check them all out.