Both the HMs are out for dinner, and The Boy is boozing it up with the philosophers, so I'm in, on my own, and snug on the couch with my orange boots on and miso soup in my belly. (It was a struggle to choose which of my favourite solo night dinners to have, but I went with the most wholesome. Miso soup with udon noodles, tofu and asparagus. A little more nutritional value there than the asparagus with eggs on toast, or the sour cream and mushrooms on a doorstop of white bread. That's just the possibilities without leaving the house... a trip to the supermarket would have been just too much choice.)
H burnt a copy of Sarah Blasko's new album and it perfectly suits a night in on one's own. I couldn't really decide if I liked her last time, but I think this is a go-er. Needs a couple more listens, but I'm well up for that.
So. It's been an interesting week or so. We spent last Sunday in that awful stomach-churning state of helplessness that seems to be becoming an unwelcome but common feature in our lives. The Boy's brother came off his motorbike, and although he's fine - inasmuch as all his broken parts will heal - there were a good few hours where it wasn't at all clear that he was going to be ok.
It makes my hands shake to think about that phone call. The Boy was at aikido and I was strolling along Carlise St with HM#2 and K. K and I had just been talking about how The Boy was coping with his dad's death (the autopsy results came back on Friday) and how terribly sudden and unexpected it was, when my phone rang. It was The Boy, saying M had crashed and it wasn't good. That feeling in my stomach makes me swallow and swallow, trying to keep a handle on the wild, flapping leaps my imagination wants to make. Many hours, many kilometres, many emergency services vehicles and a helicopter ride later, M was in the trauma department at the Alfred, and we were huddled in a relatives room with The Boy's mum. Horrible. He's got a pretty impressive list of fractures/punctures/dislocations, but nothing that will cripple or kill him. So, you know, that's good. But it's just one more thing. I was hoping initially that it might be enough to shock him into clean livin', but he spent yesterday at the pub with a mate. Across the road from the hospital. In a wheelchair.
I didn't get the Sydney job, but there's another one on the horizon. It's not exactly ideal, and it's probably less money, but at least I'd be doing something with my time other than playing Scrabulous. I oscillate constantly about whether to stick it out with the boredom of excellent conditions, or to take the leap into the real world and hope I can climb the ladder fast enough to make the money issue a minor one. I'm inclined to keep applying until I get something and try to use it as leverage for a better title (at least!) at the current place. But seeing as there's not actually all that much for anyone to do at the moment, it may well backfire on me and I'll be stuck somewhere just as boring with half the sick days. I'm leaning towards the action plan, though. It's depressing to think about just sitting there hoping things will get better.
I had lunch with Dad today (who still has no idea about the birthday plans). He brought up Christmas, and in his usual accommodating way, said he and mum would be fine with whatever The Boy and I want to do. The last couple of years we've driven from home to my mum and dad's for breakfast and presents, to oysters with the Irish at 11, to lunch with The Boy's family, and back to my mum and dad's for dinner with extended relatives and random hangers on. Which obviously is exhausting. And because this will the first year without The Boy's dad, and his birthday was Boxing Day, we'd thought we might stay out there after lunch and not do the ridiculous trip back to my parents. But apparently dad had not discussed his willingness to eat dinner without us with mum. I won't ask The Boy's family to re-arrange their way of doing things for my mother's whim to want to eat Christmas lunch. Especially not this year. It actually doesn't worry me all that much if I don't see my step-grandfather's retarded children. I'm sure they'll all still be there next year. But that doesn't seem to have occurred to mum, and she's pretty keen on finding a way to get us all in the same room together. It's scary how much she gets like her mother, despite (because of?) the amount she bags her out. Let's hope I manage to break the mould.
Miso soup for dinner is a good start.
Tuesday, 30 October 2007
Thursday, 18 October 2007
RIP Razr. (And good riddance.)
It's been an eventful few days, in the way of day-to-day things.
I spilt water on my phone yesterday. The outlook is grim. (Intriguingly, the nano escaped unscathed, despite its little sock being saturated.) There was much wiping and pulling apart and putting back together, and it seemed that the actual phone still worked... I just couldn't see anything. And then it started getting really, really hot. So I dis-assembled again and have given it up as a lost cause. I hated the thing anyway, so I don't care, except that I think I'm on some sort of plan for another year or so, so I'm going to have to fork out some cash for a new phone. I've gone back to my trusty old nokia until I sort it out. I love that battered little thing. But when I fished it out of the cupboard this morning, the battery was kind of weirdly rounded. Seems to work fine, but it looks like an explosion may be imminent.
I have a coldsore. Disgusting. It's been years since I had one, and this just appeared on Saturday morning with no warning whatsoever. I've been slathering it with Zovirax and it's not actually that gruesome to look at, but I know it's there and it doesn't really seem to be going anywhere. Ugh.
It was The Boy's mum's birthday on Sunday, so after aikido we went out to the farm with her. It's such a gorgeous time of year out that way. Actually it's almost always lovely there, regardless of the weather. But at 5 o'clock, as the sun was beginning to set and we'd bundled the dog into the back of the car, driving across those paddocks with the hills of the forest rising up behind the house… it's so beautiful it makes my heart hurt. We had dinner across the road at N's house, and it was exquisite, as it always is. She was pissed, as she almost always is, so the conversation was not very linear, but it was warm and funny and a nice way to spend the first birthday period since The Boy's dad died.
I applied for a job in Sydney this morning. It's pretty much my dream job (apart from the location, obviously), so I did it, and we'll see what happens. Deal with the potential consequences of moving cities if and when they arise.
We're going to see Laurie Anderson tomorrow night as part of the MIAF. I'm not really sure what to expect, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be great.
Oh yes, and old Grandpa Howard finally called the election. November 24. Come dinner time that Saturday I'm either going to be drowning my sorrows or dancing in the street. Let's hope it's the latter.
(Oh yes, AND, it's 29 degrees today! May I remind you it's October? Faaark.)
I spilt water on my phone yesterday. The outlook is grim. (Intriguingly, the nano escaped unscathed, despite its little sock being saturated.) There was much wiping and pulling apart and putting back together, and it seemed that the actual phone still worked... I just couldn't see anything. And then it started getting really, really hot. So I dis-assembled again and have given it up as a lost cause. I hated the thing anyway, so I don't care, except that I think I'm on some sort of plan for another year or so, so I'm going to have to fork out some cash for a new phone. I've gone back to my trusty old nokia until I sort it out. I love that battered little thing. But when I fished it out of the cupboard this morning, the battery was kind of weirdly rounded. Seems to work fine, but it looks like an explosion may be imminent.
I have a coldsore. Disgusting. It's been years since I had one, and this just appeared on Saturday morning with no warning whatsoever. I've been slathering it with Zovirax and it's not actually that gruesome to look at, but I know it's there and it doesn't really seem to be going anywhere. Ugh.
It was The Boy's mum's birthday on Sunday, so after aikido we went out to the farm with her. It's such a gorgeous time of year out that way. Actually it's almost always lovely there, regardless of the weather. But at 5 o'clock, as the sun was beginning to set and we'd bundled the dog into the back of the car, driving across those paddocks with the hills of the forest rising up behind the house… it's so beautiful it makes my heart hurt. We had dinner across the road at N's house, and it was exquisite, as it always is. She was pissed, as she almost always is, so the conversation was not very linear, but it was warm and funny and a nice way to spend the first birthday period since The Boy's dad died.
I applied for a job in Sydney this morning. It's pretty much my dream job (apart from the location, obviously), so I did it, and we'll see what happens. Deal with the potential consequences of moving cities if and when they arise.
We're going to see Laurie Anderson tomorrow night as part of the MIAF. I'm not really sure what to expect, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be great.
Oh yes, and old Grandpa Howard finally called the election. November 24. Come dinner time that Saturday I'm either going to be drowning my sorrows or dancing in the street. Let's hope it's the latter.
(Oh yes, AND, it's 29 degrees today! May I remind you it's October? Faaark.)
Friday, 12 October 2007
"You woke me up just to check that I'm alive..."
As much as I bitch about the almost-catatonic state my job puts me in, there are some upsides. One is its proximity to a quite excellent market. It's no Queen Vic, but it's great for a little lunchtime meandering. I strolled through yesterday and gaped at the 7 varieties of potato and 5 kinds of beans in their pods. I was almost overcome with the urge to by kilos and kilos of veggies, but having schlepped them home from work on the train a couple of times before, I took heed of my better judgement and was content to buy nothing but an apple. Which was goddamn beautiful. If I was Eve, I would have totally sold out the human race for that piece of fruit.
After my market visit, I had good intentions of coming home last night and cooking up a tofu-laden veggie-riddled deliciously nutritious feast. But the weather turned and the numbers changed, so it ended up being chicken maryland, from an old Jamie Oliver book. Bless his heart, I love the man, but I don't often find his recipes all that useful. This one was no exception. It tasted fine, but I ended up with a corn and cannellini bean slurry under the chicken, rather than the picturesque jumble in his photo. Obviously Jamie's definition of a 'big wine glass' and mine are a little different. I guess that's what comes from living in a nation of alcoholics.
There's two bottle shops right near us. Actually there's three, but one's attached to the pub down the street to the left, and the others are with the rest of the shops to the right. I have a somewhat irrational attachment to one of these bottle shops. It's not cheaper or better stocked, and although the staff are lovely, that's not really why I go there. It's because it has a real door onto the street. Not an electric sliding one, not a swinging one you just push on, and not a gaping space where a door would usually be. This bottle shop has an actual door, with a handle. And it doesn't close itself. I really like pulling it shut behind me as I step down into the street. It feels old-skool and homely and a little like a country town. And last night as I came out and looked up at the misty rain, a baby possum waddled its fat little self across the power line. Cute.
The weather today is nuts. There's a wind blowing straight off Antarctica and
whipping up my sleeves. Nasty, squally rain that comes from all directions and renders even the most practical of umbrellas (which my Big Gay number is clearly not) completely redundant. Very glad that birthday drinks at the pub trumped the fancy-pants work do. Although I was looking forward to wearing C's gorgeous, gorgeous dress, this is not the weather for bare legs. (And hey, now I don't have to confront the fact that although I'm quite happy with my furry pins, there are people in the 'real' world who find behaving nicely around them a challenge.)
I had another email from A the other day. It's funny, but I think these few months with her on the other side of the world are going to be just what we need. We've drifted a lot since those boozy days skipping classes at uni, and I have a certain amount of trouble seeing her at the same time as our other friends. There's always issues simmering under the surface and someone's always resenting someone else. (I do love my friends. They are completely fucking awesome. But they (we) are all a little broken too.) It's good to have this dark tunnel of time and many miles through which to send our thoughts. Makes them clearer and more honest. Makes it feel like we still have what we used to be.
After my market visit, I had good intentions of coming home last night and cooking up a tofu-laden veggie-riddled deliciously nutritious feast. But the weather turned and the numbers changed, so it ended up being chicken maryland, from an old Jamie Oliver book. Bless his heart, I love the man, but I don't often find his recipes all that useful. This one was no exception. It tasted fine, but I ended up with a corn and cannellini bean slurry under the chicken, rather than the picturesque jumble in his photo. Obviously Jamie's definition of a 'big wine glass' and mine are a little different. I guess that's what comes from living in a nation of alcoholics.
There's two bottle shops right near us. Actually there's three, but one's attached to the pub down the street to the left, and the others are with the rest of the shops to the right. I have a somewhat irrational attachment to one of these bottle shops. It's not cheaper or better stocked, and although the staff are lovely, that's not really why I go there. It's because it has a real door onto the street. Not an electric sliding one, not a swinging one you just push on, and not a gaping space where a door would usually be. This bottle shop has an actual door, with a handle. And it doesn't close itself. I really like pulling it shut behind me as I step down into the street. It feels old-skool and homely and a little like a country town. And last night as I came out and looked up at the misty rain, a baby possum waddled its fat little self across the power line. Cute.
The weather today is nuts. There's a wind blowing straight off Antarctica and
whipping up my sleeves. Nasty, squally rain that comes from all directions and renders even the most practical of umbrellas (which my Big Gay number is clearly not) completely redundant. Very glad that birthday drinks at the pub trumped the fancy-pants work do. Although I was looking forward to wearing C's gorgeous, gorgeous dress, this is not the weather for bare legs. (And hey, now I don't have to confront the fact that although I'm quite happy with my furry pins, there are people in the 'real' world who find behaving nicely around them a challenge.)I had another email from A the other day. It's funny, but I think these few months with her on the other side of the world are going to be just what we need. We've drifted a lot since those boozy days skipping classes at uni, and I have a certain amount of trouble seeing her at the same time as our other friends. There's always issues simmering under the surface and someone's always resenting someone else. (I do love my friends. They are completely fucking awesome. But they (we) are all a little broken too.) It's good to have this dark tunnel of time and many miles through which to send our thoughts. Makes them clearer and more honest. Makes it feel like we still have what we used to be.
Thursday, 11 October 2007
Over-qualification. That's my game.
I walked into the yoga building last night, and went down the corridor to get changed in the bathrooms. There's two cubicles; one that's off the corridor on the left, and one straight ahead at the end of the corridor. I always go for the end one. So I pushed on that door yesterday, and copped myself an eyeful of the beautiful girl on the toilet. There was lots of 'Oh god!'s and giggling and embarrassment. She forgot to lock the door. She's beautiful even on the can.
It was just three of us (all of whom were at the NGV on Sunday at some stage, it turns out), plus a strange guy I'd never seen before, but who's obviously some kind of expert. He's even got a pair of maroon leggings to match P's. And he did it with his shirt off. Mostly I didn't notice he was there, but then out of the corner of my eye I'd see him doing the same thing as the rest of us, but with a little flourish. When do you get to the point where you include flourishes? Like when do you get to the point of swirling your wine around your glass before you drink it? (At the moment, most of the vino I'm consuming is coming out of cardboard boxes. No amount of swirling is going to make that taste any better.) Reminds me of going out to dinner with S & M. I can totally understand going to a wine-tasting and swilling and slurping and splashing your way through thirty different varieties. But surely once you've chosen one you like and you've brought it with you to dinner, you leave the filthy aerating behind, no? I don't care how much of a guru you are. It's uncouth to gargle at the table.
Ooh, while I was ambling towards yoga, I went past Sticky, in the Degraves subway. There's a YOU collection coming out! Launches tomorrow night, so I can't go, but I'll definitely be picking one up next week. It's put out by Breakdown Press. I'm very excited.
Also, somewhere in the last 48 hours or so, a little gem of an idea for the Masters crept into my head. I'd almost resigned myself to the fact that I was going to ditch the whole thing, but then this little glimmer flashed into my brain, and all of a sudden, it might be on again. It'll take some more thinking and a bit of leg-work to figure out if it's a goer, but things are looking up.
e.
It was just three of us (all of whom were at the NGV on Sunday at some stage, it turns out), plus a strange guy I'd never seen before, but who's obviously some kind of expert. He's even got a pair of maroon leggings to match P's. And he did it with his shirt off. Mostly I didn't notice he was there, but then out of the corner of my eye I'd see him doing the same thing as the rest of us, but with a little flourish. When do you get to the point where you include flourishes? Like when do you get to the point of swirling your wine around your glass before you drink it? (At the moment, most of the vino I'm consuming is coming out of cardboard boxes. No amount of swirling is going to make that taste any better.) Reminds me of going out to dinner with S & M. I can totally understand going to a wine-tasting and swilling and slurping and splashing your way through thirty different varieties. But surely once you've chosen one you like and you've brought it with you to dinner, you leave the filthy aerating behind, no? I don't care how much of a guru you are. It's uncouth to gargle at the table.
Ooh, while I was ambling towards yoga, I went past Sticky, in the Degraves subway. There's a YOU collection coming out! Launches tomorrow night, so I can't go, but I'll definitely be picking one up next week. It's put out by Breakdown Press. I'm very excited.
Also, somewhere in the last 48 hours or so, a little gem of an idea for the Masters crept into my head. I'd almost resigned myself to the fact that I was going to ditch the whole thing, but then this little glimmer flashed into my brain, and all of a sudden, it might be on again. It'll take some more thinking and a bit of leg-work to figure out if it's a goer, but things are looking up.
e.
Wednesday, 10 October 2007
Hey remember that time...
There was a girl at the bottom of the stairs at Richmond station on Monday night, screeching crazy things in crazy, crazy ways. "I am very horny!" "I need a good lay!" Sort of like the Mr Matey 'clothes off, bath' thing but more psychotic. She didn't really look wasted though, and was maybe even carrying a school bag. Perhaps she flipped out about the fact that that little inter-platform tunnel is hanging under the trains and suspended over the 6 or whatever lanes of Punt Rd. Freaks me out if I think about it too long. Can't believe it's taken me 27 years of living in this city and a couple of years of intensive train travel to notice it.
The computer screen blinds me today. I had bizarro dreams about living somewhere where it snowed and having snakes crawl all over the bed. Not actually scary while I was dreaming it, but disturbing in hindsight. I feel like I wasn't really fully asleep all night either. My conscious brain was playing a way bigger director's role than usually happens in dreamland.
But now I'm tired and cranky and those little tics my workmates have are making me want to throw things at them. The honking nose-blowing. The airy, tuneless, just-under-her-breath whistling. The chewing with her mouth open. There's not many people within hearing distance that haven't pissed me off today.
It was the Boy's birthday yesterday. I gave him four presents, all wrapped in thick, delicious tissue paper and stuck with a little metal letter that once collected spelled his name. I nicked the letters out of a drawer at a job about three years ago and intended to use them somehow, but promptly lost them in the appalling amounts of crap floating around my life. Each Christmas and birthday I looked for them again to no avail, and then they re-appeared a few months later. This time I finally pinned them down and made good use.
We ran into each other in the bookshop on Brunswick St cos we were both half an hour early for dinner, and where else are you going to go. He pulled chocolate out of his pocket for me and trawled the 'Theory' section while I flitted around and bought a copy of 'The Hungry Girls' Cookbook'. Awesome. They must have done another run, because I saw it on the counter at Readings aaaages ago and it was gone by the time I got paid. I love how home-made and sweet it is, but still with awesome fonts and printing too. Not to mention some pretty kick-arse sounding food.
Dinner was at Bimbo's, in the dome, which is an entirely different experience now that no one can smoke and I'm dressed in a work skirt. The Boy's brother bitched about the food, but was hilariously 'social' (as opposed to anti-social). It was over pretty quickly because HM#2 realised he hadn't bought a ticket for his car, but it was good. Felt like I hadn't laughed like that in a while.
Instead of going straight home, HMs 1&2 went to Readings and The Boy and I dropped in at The Clyde (awful shit-hole that it is) and hung out with the post-grads for precisely half an hour. Three beers in and I was firing out witticisms like nobody's business. Sat between the Americans and talked shit and laughed and made them laugh, and saw, as I was looking from one to the other, that The Boy was soaking me in. I don't often notice him looking at me like that, but it made me warm and fuzzy and glad to be heading home with him. SO glad we didn't have to catch the stupid tram. It's got to either be a whole lot earlier or a lot more drunken for that journey to be bearable.
Regina Spektor's in my head. "A street cat got 'im and a something something something and a bit more here in our building's playground". Listening to her at the farm that night with The Boy and B was happiness I hadn't felt in ages. (Could have had something to do with the pot I hadn't smoked in ages too.)
e.
The computer screen blinds me today. I had bizarro dreams about living somewhere where it snowed and having snakes crawl all over the bed. Not actually scary while I was dreaming it, but disturbing in hindsight. I feel like I wasn't really fully asleep all night either. My conscious brain was playing a way bigger director's role than usually happens in dreamland.
But now I'm tired and cranky and those little tics my workmates have are making me want to throw things at them. The honking nose-blowing. The airy, tuneless, just-under-her-breath whistling. The chewing with her mouth open. There's not many people within hearing distance that haven't pissed me off today.
It was the Boy's birthday yesterday. I gave him four presents, all wrapped in thick, delicious tissue paper and stuck with a little metal letter that once collected spelled his name. I nicked the letters out of a drawer at a job about three years ago and intended to use them somehow, but promptly lost them in the appalling amounts of crap floating around my life. Each Christmas and birthday I looked for them again to no avail, and then they re-appeared a few months later. This time I finally pinned them down and made good use.
We ran into each other in the bookshop on Brunswick St cos we were both half an hour early for dinner, and where else are you going to go. He pulled chocolate out of his pocket for me and trawled the 'Theory' section while I flitted around and bought a copy of 'The Hungry Girls' Cookbook'. Awesome. They must have done another run, because I saw it on the counter at Readings aaaages ago and it was gone by the time I got paid. I love how home-made and sweet it is, but still with awesome fonts and printing too. Not to mention some pretty kick-arse sounding food.
Dinner was at Bimbo's, in the dome, which is an entirely different experience now that no one can smoke and I'm dressed in a work skirt. The Boy's brother bitched about the food, but was hilariously 'social' (as opposed to anti-social). It was over pretty quickly because HM#2 realised he hadn't bought a ticket for his car, but it was good. Felt like I hadn't laughed like that in a while.
Instead of going straight home, HMs 1&2 went to Readings and The Boy and I dropped in at The Clyde (awful shit-hole that it is) and hung out with the post-grads for precisely half an hour. Three beers in and I was firing out witticisms like nobody's business. Sat between the Americans and talked shit and laughed and made them laugh, and saw, as I was looking from one to the other, that The Boy was soaking me in. I don't often notice him looking at me like that, but it made me warm and fuzzy and glad to be heading home with him. SO glad we didn't have to catch the stupid tram. It's got to either be a whole lot earlier or a lot more drunken for that journey to be bearable.
Regina Spektor's in my head. "A street cat got 'im and a something something something and a bit more here in our building's playground". Listening to her at the farm that night with The Boy and B was happiness I hadn't felt in ages. (Could have had something to do with the pot I hadn't smoked in ages too.)
e.
Tuesday, 9 October 2007
I really should slack off less.
One of those golden Melbourne mornings when the light makes it seem like anything is possible. That's quite a big deal given that I was standing on the platform waiting for my late, late train to take me to work. But it was warm and fresh and the ol' nano was doing an outstanding job. I saw a boy whose skin looked so clear and soft that I wanted to stroke his forehead. A fat cockatoo sat on a low metal fence watching the trains go by.
There was talk last night, as we waited for the kick-arse lasagne to cook, of starting up a House blog. Ha! Beat you to it, fellas. (Strange how things are in the air. I haven't breathed a word of this, but a day after I started it, my housemates have the same idea.)
I've been reading a blog by a girl named Siobhan, and it's frustrating now because I can't tell what I've read and what I haven't. I jumped around like a skitz when I first discovered her, and now it looks like I'm going to have to run through the whole thing in order if I want to get the full picture. Which is annoying, because I don't think I've missed all that many. The links don't change colour enough to tell easily. But I like her. I like the way she writes and I like the things she feels. She's a couple of years older than me, I think, but despite living on opposite sides of the globe and having really quite different lives and experiences, it's incredible how much I identify with the way she expresses herself. Hoorah for the internet.
(Incidentally, what's the etiquette with this whole blog thing? Is it ok to trawl through five-odd years of someone's life and not tell them you're looking? I guess the fact that it's out there for people to see implies that she's fine with the idea of her life being somewhat public, but still… Feels a little like stalking. I guess that's the cue to say hello then, isn't it? My feeling that otherwise what I'm doing is kinda creepy.)
I saw an ad on the side of a tram at lunch for a reality TV show called 'The Singing Office'. Dear god. Seriously? David Brent does Idol. *Shudder*. Sometimes I want to top myself over the state of 'entertainment' in this country. (And sometimes, like when I get Japanese for lunch, I sit and gorge on trashy photos of Britney with no knickers.)
On a more high-brow note, the Gug visit was not bad. I liked a lot of the more contemporary pieces. The older stuff… I don't know. Perhaps I'm a philistine, but without doing a whole lot of art history research, it's hard to appreciate a little rectangle painted red. When it was first exhibited, I know it shook things up and was all kinds of controversial, and you know, I can appreciate that nothing like that had been done before and it was turning the art world on it's head, etc. But I'm just not sure the impact of it as a piece of art is all that great anymore. Symbolically, sure, great. But physically, technically? Eh.
Of course, C did find a park, just across the road from the gallery. We stood in a queue for 40 minutes or so, elbows out to stop this terribly well-groomed girl in a very expensive coat from jumping in front of us. So silly, but man, we were not letting her get past us. We were there first, godammit! Felt vindicated when ages later the audio tour guy only had two sets of headphones left. I've never done the audio tour thing before. Not sure if I will again. Definitely won't on the last day of an exhibition when there's a billion people jammed into each space. (Although, actually, it did help cut some of that inane chatter that drives me crazy whenever I go and see something like this.) I saw the beautiful girl from yoga (it's getting way too late to ask her name again) and she was with this tall, skinny, black clad boy, who had the sweetest face that no amount of op-shop cred could disguise.
One good thing about going to an exhibition on the last day… they slash the prices in the gift shop. The catalogue was originally selling for $44.95, but yesterday afternoon you could pick one up for 20 bucks. Sweet. And the peripheral stuff, the mugs and fridge magnets, $3! For stuff that was $30 last week! (I bought no mugs, it's ok. But I did get a rather tasteful little set of three round magnets with little snaps of FLW genius trapped under their heavy plastic spheres.) I am a total gift shop tightarse. Love it.
I don't think of myself as a luddite, but alas, it seems I might be one. I can't make the times in this thing right. I've resolved not to care.
e.
There was talk last night, as we waited for the kick-arse lasagne to cook, of starting up a House blog. Ha! Beat you to it, fellas. (Strange how things are in the air. I haven't breathed a word of this, but a day after I started it, my housemates have the same idea.)
I've been reading a blog by a girl named Siobhan, and it's frustrating now because I can't tell what I've read and what I haven't. I jumped around like a skitz when I first discovered her, and now it looks like I'm going to have to run through the whole thing in order if I want to get the full picture. Which is annoying, because I don't think I've missed all that many. The links don't change colour enough to tell easily. But I like her. I like the way she writes and I like the things she feels. She's a couple of years older than me, I think, but despite living on opposite sides of the globe and having really quite different lives and experiences, it's incredible how much I identify with the way she expresses herself. Hoorah for the internet.
(Incidentally, what's the etiquette with this whole blog thing? Is it ok to trawl through five-odd years of someone's life and not tell them you're looking? I guess the fact that it's out there for people to see implies that she's fine with the idea of her life being somewhat public, but still… Feels a little like stalking. I guess that's the cue to say hello then, isn't it? My feeling that otherwise what I'm doing is kinda creepy.)
I saw an ad on the side of a tram at lunch for a reality TV show called 'The Singing Office'. Dear god. Seriously? David Brent does Idol. *Shudder*. Sometimes I want to top myself over the state of 'entertainment' in this country. (And sometimes, like when I get Japanese for lunch, I sit and gorge on trashy photos of Britney with no knickers.)
On a more high-brow note, the Gug visit was not bad. I liked a lot of the more contemporary pieces. The older stuff… I don't know. Perhaps I'm a philistine, but without doing a whole lot of art history research, it's hard to appreciate a little rectangle painted red. When it was first exhibited, I know it shook things up and was all kinds of controversial, and you know, I can appreciate that nothing like that had been done before and it was turning the art world on it's head, etc. But I'm just not sure the impact of it as a piece of art is all that great anymore. Symbolically, sure, great. But physically, technically? Eh.
Of course, C did find a park, just across the road from the gallery. We stood in a queue for 40 minutes or so, elbows out to stop this terribly well-groomed girl in a very expensive coat from jumping in front of us. So silly, but man, we were not letting her get past us. We were there first, godammit! Felt vindicated when ages later the audio tour guy only had two sets of headphones left. I've never done the audio tour thing before. Not sure if I will again. Definitely won't on the last day of an exhibition when there's a billion people jammed into each space. (Although, actually, it did help cut some of that inane chatter that drives me crazy whenever I go and see something like this.) I saw the beautiful girl from yoga (it's getting way too late to ask her name again) and she was with this tall, skinny, black clad boy, who had the sweetest face that no amount of op-shop cred could disguise.
One good thing about going to an exhibition on the last day… they slash the prices in the gift shop. The catalogue was originally selling for $44.95, but yesterday afternoon you could pick one up for 20 bucks. Sweet. And the peripheral stuff, the mugs and fridge magnets, $3! For stuff that was $30 last week! (I bought no mugs, it's ok. But I did get a rather tasteful little set of three round magnets with little snaps of FLW genius trapped under their heavy plastic spheres.) I am a total gift shop tightarse. Love it.
I don't think of myself as a luddite, but alas, it seems I might be one. I can't make the times in this thing right. I've resolved not to care.
e.
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Grand Plans
I had grand plans for this weekend, and spent most of yesterday sitting on the couch. So today I got out of bed BEFORE The Boy went to aikido, and had myself showered and ready to go by 10.30. That's a big achievement for a Sunday. My list of things to do is like this:
* buy The Boy a book for his birthday
* re-pot the tomato seedlings (which involves buying a pot and potting mix)
* go and see the Guggenheim exhibition before it ends today
* try on C's dress, and thereby (hopefully) solve the problem of what to wear on Friday
* do something about the state of my eyebrows
* bake an orange cake. Although that plan was made before I realised that all the oranges that I thought needed using were actually mandarins bought on Thursday.
So far all I've managed is the tomatoes bit, but I did try for the book. Readings were out so I guess I'll get it tomorrow at lunchtime. The Gug plan is happening too. Half an hour or so until I meet C at her place. She wants to drive in, which seems like madness to me, but what she says is true. She always can find a spot. I have no reason to doubt that today will be any different, despite half the city being shut down for the marathon and the other half of the population trying to see the Gug exhibition before it closes.
The time zones are whack on this thing. Think I might have sorted it out, but we'll see...
* buy The Boy a book for his birthday
* re-pot the tomato seedlings (which involves buying a pot and potting mix)
* go and see the Guggenheim exhibition before it ends today
* try on C's dress, and thereby (hopefully) solve the problem of what to wear on Friday
* do something about the state of my eyebrows
* bake an orange cake. Although that plan was made before I realised that all the oranges that I thought needed using were actually mandarins bought on Thursday.
So far all I've managed is the tomatoes bit, but I did try for the book. Readings were out so I guess I'll get it tomorrow at lunchtime. The Gug plan is happening too. Half an hour or so until I meet C at her place. She wants to drive in, which seems like madness to me, but what she says is true. She always can find a spot. I have no reason to doubt that today will be any different, despite half the city being shut down for the marathon and the other half of the population trying to see the Gug exhibition before it closes.
The time zones are whack on this thing. Think I might have sorted it out, but we'll see...
They are unaware of the existence of The Blog.
It's Saturday, it's springtime, and the six o'clock chill is just starting to set in.
The Boy and I got up and went to yoga, and I realised that actually, all that slogging away in that bright little room has begun to make a difference. My card expired yesterday, and I thought it might be pushing it to stretch to Wednesday, so Saturday Beginners it was. There's some things I can do now that I never thought I'd get any better at. Little sucesses like that make it addictive. I'm almost thinking I could make it twice a week... Wish it wasn't so far from home.
The boys are making noises about dinner, and the studious soundtrack that's been drifting over from their desks has been replaced by a playlist someone made that only stops being embarrassing after 8 beers.
Time to fire up the shiny new rice-cooker.
We haven't all been home for dinner together in so long, and the idea of it makes me so happy. Makes my heart hurt in that delicious (but admittedly rather boozy) way.
(Now the Dykes Nextdoor have cranked up their impressive collection of embarrassing tunes. Time to re-enter the real world.)
e.
The Boy and I got up and went to yoga, and I realised that actually, all that slogging away in that bright little room has begun to make a difference. My card expired yesterday, and I thought it might be pushing it to stretch to Wednesday, so Saturday Beginners it was. There's some things I can do now that I never thought I'd get any better at. Little sucesses like that make it addictive. I'm almost thinking I could make it twice a week... Wish it wasn't so far from home.
The boys are making noises about dinner, and the studious soundtrack that's been drifting over from their desks has been replaced by a playlist someone made that only stops being embarrassing after 8 beers.
Time to fire up the shiny new rice-cooker.
We haven't all been home for dinner together in so long, and the idea of it makes me so happy. Makes my heart hurt in that delicious (but admittedly rather boozy) way.
(Now the Dykes Nextdoor have cranked up their impressive collection of embarrassing tunes. Time to re-enter the real world.)
e.
Saturday, 6 October 2007
Let the cathartics begin
I used to be good at this. Well, productive at least. Reams of paper jammed into loose leaf binders, and all my uni notebooks running out of pages at the end because I'd flipped them all and started from the back.
I'm hoping writing here will help me sort some things out. I have a job. I get paid quite a lot, but I have zero motivation to do what I'm supposed to be doing. (Actually, a lot of the time, there's not even that much I am supposed to be doing.)
I worry, in endless circular ways about what to do with my life. Whether I will EVER be able to buy a place and stop paying stupid rent to my stupid landlord. I worry about having kids and whether my dodgy organs will be up to the challenge. I worry about feeding said kids. I worry (although not really, not strongly, just in a small, niggardly way) about what will happen with The Boy and I. (I don't really worry about that. I love him dearly. I know he loves me too. But how will we live? Where?)
I worry about crossing the river and finding new houses and not owning any furniture. I want to live right in the vibrant heart of a city and dress like a hipster and take up smoking again, but I won't because of the cancer. I want to move to the country and put in an orchard and feed myself from the garden.
I want to quit my job and cut off all my hair and do something fab and glamorous. I want to go to India and change the world. I don't want to wake up every morning and find myself on that walk from the station to my boring, boring job, where the only people I really want to hang out with are as unconvinced about the place as I am.
I want it to be Friday, and it is. I want to eat fabulous food and cold beer with The Boy and laugh at the luck-dragons he sees in the clouds. I want to be snug with him in our bed, in our red-curtained room. And that at least I will do.
An hour till drinks so I really should clear my desk a little. Make it look like I've been doing something like what I'm paid for.
I feel better already.
I'm hoping writing here will help me sort some things out. I have a job. I get paid quite a lot, but I have zero motivation to do what I'm supposed to be doing. (Actually, a lot of the time, there's not even that much I am supposed to be doing.)
I worry, in endless circular ways about what to do with my life. Whether I will EVER be able to buy a place and stop paying stupid rent to my stupid landlord. I worry about having kids and whether my dodgy organs will be up to the challenge. I worry about feeding said kids. I worry (although not really, not strongly, just in a small, niggardly way) about what will happen with The Boy and I. (I don't really worry about that. I love him dearly. I know he loves me too. But how will we live? Where?)
I worry about crossing the river and finding new houses and not owning any furniture. I want to live right in the vibrant heart of a city and dress like a hipster and take up smoking again, but I won't because of the cancer. I want to move to the country and put in an orchard and feed myself from the garden.
I want to quit my job and cut off all my hair and do something fab and glamorous. I want to go to India and change the world. I don't want to wake up every morning and find myself on that walk from the station to my boring, boring job, where the only people I really want to hang out with are as unconvinced about the place as I am.
I want it to be Friday, and it is. I want to eat fabulous food and cold beer with The Boy and laugh at the luck-dragons he sees in the clouds. I want to be snug with him in our bed, in our red-curtained room. And that at least I will do.
An hour till drinks so I really should clear my desk a little. Make it look like I've been doing something like what I'm paid for.
I feel better already.
Friday, 5 October 2007
(not so) humble beginnings
So. It starts. Instead of spending my hours of paid employment stuck deep in other people's (mostly strangers) lives, I figured it was about time I put my own thing together. All those emails I send myself are kind of like my diary, but it's terribly random and it scares me sometimes that if I died tomorrow, there'd be almost nothing for anyone to hold onto. A blog is hardly physical, but it's a whole lot more accessible than my email account that no one knows the password to. I am aware of the self-obsessive nature of the 'leaving things behind' idea, but people keep dropping dead around me. I know it's going to happen to me too and I'd just like for there to be something I'd created out there, to balance all the stuff in my head that I've consumed. Plus I'm hoping a little regular thing like this will encourage me to sort my shit out. To get off my arse and get back to living my life in a way that I'm happier with.
I'm looking forward to it.
I'm looking forward to it.
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