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Clothes!
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May. 18th, 2008 @ 12:18 am
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I worked at Myer today. It was a bit stressful in the afternoon, until I realised that I didn't have to stress, because I was the one who'd placed way too much responsibility on myself unnecessarily. Once I realised that, less stress!
I also bought 4 bras for Mum, hopefully one will fit her! and for me, a new blouse and a jumper. It's a very pretty blouse. It's white with black dots and small purple flowers print, and a tie at the front. The jumper is quite long, with a cowl neck and short, wide sleeves. I like them both. I bought them without trying them on, but with the Myer returns policy, it's not hard to return things so long as I keep the receipt and tags. But they fit well and look nice, so I'll keep them. :)
Anyway, bed time now, *yawns*Current Mood:  sleepy |
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Addressing the balance
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 11:44 pm
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I have been known to indulge in a little phwoardom in the presence of both eye and brain candy of the non-Husband variety. I would like the record to state that Husband is the first and chief recipient of my phwoardom, and indeed the only core heart candy in my life.
Although he lacks the key attribute of jealousy, he is funny, quirky, patient, clever, attractive, obscure, challenging, friendly, loving, warm and adaptive. My absolute favourite place to be is snuggled in his arms; still, and warm and safe. This may be a blow for the bungy jumping industry, but so be it.
This evening as he held me tightly in his arms he said "Yes, less wom," and I was confused. "Less warm? Are you cold?" "No, you're less wom." Rinse and repeat. It took a little time for me to figure out that he was commenting on my weight loss by referring to its impact on my wombat impression, a comedy standard of long standing in our relationship. "You're less wom, you'll have to try harder to do the wombat." I told him lovingly that he was full of bat.
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Today
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 11:02 pm
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Today I -
- Did a couple of loads of washing.
- Did a little bit of weeding.
- Explored two playgrounds with Norah.
- Finished clearing out my inbox!! Down from 1500+ emails to 14 in only three days! That's a job that I've been putting off for months. It's such a relief to finally have it done.
- Crocheted one square. Only four and a half to go. But the baby still came first. Current Mood:  tired |
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This just in
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 10:53 pm
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WiiFit is effort, man. What kind of freakin' video game gets me puffed?
(My parents bought it today. A number of the exercises/games I can do without causing myself agonies in the shoulder, although it turns out jogging is Not One Of Them and I cheated the second half of my jog just shaking the Wiimote. I feel this would be good for me, so I plan to continue.)
I have 25 minutes in my FitPiggy, and the ski jump is way too much fun, and also appeals way too hard to my competitive streak. "I get a SCORE, you say?"
It produces situations like this.
The ski jump ladder: I am in first place, Dad is in second, but my best jump is something like 144m, and Dad's personal best for a single jump is 150. I'm winning across two jumps, is all.
Me, smugly, after finishing a round and coming into third place, just below Dad in second: "Man, I didn't even beat Dad. But I'm still in first."
Next jump. 140m.
Dad: I note you haven't beaten my personal best of 150 metres, however."
Next jump. 161m.
Me: "You were saying?"
/smirk
Overall the balance games are kicking my ass, but I'm getting good at the ski jump, and on the aerobic list, I can handle the step aerobics (though I sucked at it) and the hula hoop. I figure cultivating an addiction to a daily dose of WiiFit would probably be good for me... |
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Happy Birthday!!!
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 08:41 pm
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Happy birthday to my sweetie. Thanks for the call this morning - it was lovely to talk to you even at 6:30am! And I'm sure bits of you won't really fall off now you are 40 :-)
And happy birthday to Emma's dear little baby! Many congratulations to Emma.
Current Mood:  pleased |
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squee!
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 07:27 pm
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just got back from Albany where I saw Iron Man. OMG SO COOL!
oh an MDJ is hot! |
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Emma gives birth
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 06:54 pm
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For those not on her lj-
I am delighted to announce that Emma safely delivered a beautiful baby girl at approx. 4pm this afternoon, via caesarean section. Due to being 4 weeks early, DLB is in the neonatal unit but is fine. Emma is thrilled, but dopey and taking the chance to get a well-deserved sleep.
I shall post to let you know further details as I get them. Please don't phone or visit yet - I shall let people know when she is up to visitors. She's at Joondalup Health Campus. |
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And I have the hips for it too
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 06:03 pm
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Big domestic goddess day today.
( The exciting details. Contains traces of semi-naked strapping young men. )
ETA: Some pix added, but sadly no lotto win. Or squirrel pix.Current Mood: accomplished |
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couple things...
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 03:48 pm
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Just a couple things guys;
Firstly, Terracon huts, ive been told a whole bunch of people are coming and so ive tried to organise the huts, basically there are two huts, my/teesh's hut and the jailbait hut.
Anyhow list of people: Me, Marie, Teesh, Elder, Tequila Ben, Ben Currel, Fripp, Meghan, Gavin, Bean, Chris, Trent, Jasmine, Evan, Lionel, Nick
So hut listings:
My hut:.......Jailbait hut:
Me............Evan
Marie........ Lionel
Teesh........ Trent
Elder........ Jasmine
Meghan........Bean
Gavin.........Chris
Nick..........Fripp
Tequila Ben...Ben Currel
Thats my least hassle, most people happy theory, if you've got any better suggestions/complaints, give me a yell and ill see what i can do, i just figured in this option the most people were happy.
Second part:
Im getting my hair cut in a couple hours, any suggestions, ideas, theories on what i should get done, ive been joking about bleaching/ dying my hair black, getting a mo, etc, im just owndering if there is anyone who has been looking at my hair lately and thought "i know what he can do to look better (as if that was possible).Current Music: some random music |
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To my secret commenters...
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 02:34 pm
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I have anonymous commenting enabled, since I remember way back to when I didn't have an lj and couldn't comment on everyone's posts. I don't get many, but they have always pretty much neatly divided into unsigned trolls/spam, signed comments from people without ljs, and people who just forgot to log in.
Recently, however, I've been getting unsigned anonymous comments which aren't trolling or spam (or followed by an "Oops, that was me"). Which isn't a terrible thing, but I would prefer to be able to keep track of who people are, otherwise it's hard to have a conversation. Pseudonyms are fine. And if you have an lj but are somehow scared I'll get narky at you for (so far generally mild) disagreement: really, I'm not that scary :)
If you really are only comfortable making unsigned anonymous comments, well, fair enough, don't let me stop you. But don't be surprised if I get you mixed up with my other anonymous commenters (Based on the content, I'd say there's at least two) And if you get an lj (EDIT: or OpenID, see comment below), you get notifications of when I reply!Current Mood:  confused |
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It's the end of the world as we know it...
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 02:22 pm
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... and I'm not fine, not fine at all.
In lieu of suicide, going shopping if I can find someone to drive me, because I don't have enough winter clothes.
It's nothing specific - just the overpowering threat of the years ahead, each and all weighed down with pain and loneliness and nothing ever, ever going right.
I was in bed for twelve hours last night, but I slept poorly enough that I'm still tired. And I'm in pain. I'm always in fucking pain. I'm sick of reaching out desperately for human contact, but I can't blame anyone for not reaching out to me. I'm useless. I'm in pain, I do nothing interesting, I'm boring and pathetically broken. And I'm always in fucking pain.
I think we're done here. |
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May. 16th, 2008 @ 11:09 pm
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As you've perhaps read elsewhere, A and I have broken up (such an ugly phrase). Thanks for the emails and concern; we are indeed both fine (all things considered), and neither of us have been evenly distributed amongst plastic garbage bags for throwing overboard off the Florida coast. We also aren't entirely sure what we're going to do now, but have come up with several plans, some of which have seemed like good ideas for, ooh, hours at time.
In an attempt to end on a happier note, I'd like to close with a joke.
Ahem.
Q: When is a door not a door?
A: When it's open.
No, dammit, wait...Current Music: Fiume - VNV Nation |
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GIP (sort of)
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 01:21 pm
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After many years a long time with no wallpaper change on either of my computers, I've finally decided it's time for a new wallpaper.
( \o/ )
DancingFlame is 1440x900, and the picture was 1280x900; the process of making it fit my widescreen involved me opening Paint (shutup), pasting the picture in the middle of a blank 1440x900 template and then using the eyedropper and the spraycan tools to colour match out to the edges in blended lines. Yes I am just that hardcore :3
My next task will be doing a similar thing, but for Placeholder (1280x1024). :)
And if anyone wants either the original picture or my halfassed widescreen wallpaper, I'm happy to upload them for you. :)Current Mood: accomplished |
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In which Sami discourses on topics less than varied
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 11:44 am
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Currently reading: A Traveller's History of Japan (third edition), by Richard Tames.
I'm pretty secure in this choice, by the way, because it's a history written for non-historians - purely narrative, identifying areas of disagreement among historians without discussing in any depth or advocating a point of view, providing a general outline of events with a distinct focus on the ways in which the past contributes to Japanese culture in the present. Which is what I was looking for, more or less - my knowledge of Japanese history was pretty much limited to its influence on European history, which, what with the whole isolationist thing, was pretty minimal until the 20th century. Alongside a popular culture/we studied some stuff in primary school/I looked up what shoguns were when I played Wonder Boy 3 as a child kind of awareness. Which I knew, and therefore distrusted.
It may seem odd that I, as a somewhat-trained historian, specifically wanted a history aimed at people who are untrained in historiography. The thing is, I'm not looking, at this point, to get deeply involved in the intricacies of Japanese historical study. (In fact, I'd be reluctant to do that until I'm literate in Japanese, which is a very long way off.) Therefore I want an overview, one that skips all the complexities of historical study in favour of: "This is, more or less, what happened." A lot of history is written to be written; this is written to be read, it works for me.
All of which amounts to a recommendation, especially for anyone who's made no real survey of Japanese history and is into anime/manga - seriously, there's already a lot of stuff that's making more sense to me. Japanese culture is informed by its history (as is ours, so don't judge, folks).
I was thinking about Japanese, the language, this morning, too. Sort of comparing it to other languages I've studied. I think linguistically it's pretty nifty - though I haven't delved deeply into the grammar, which apparently some early Christian missionaries decided was an invention of the Devil to make preaching Christianity to the Japanese more difficult - and the difficult point is very likely to be acquiring literacy. Other languages I've studied all used the Roman alphabet, diacritics notwithstanding, which made it relatively easy to make the transition.
Having said that, I find it much easier to pronounce Japanese correctly working off kana. I think it's the influence of fangirl-Japanese and loanwords in my life - there's a lot of Japanese words that have essentially been borrowed into English, even if only in fan-dialect, but which are horribly mispronounced. Tokyo, sushi, kabuki, karaoke, keiten, etc - I'm having to relearn the damn things.
So, some assessments of Japanese quirks, from my anglo perspective:
- Japanese has homophones. I can handle that. I had a moment of "... what?!" at words that sound alike, which you must distinguish from context, though the kanji is different, until I remembered that English totally does that and we don't get to judge.
- Japanese pronunciation is consistent. It has a syllabary instead of an alphabet. Cool. English must be such a bitch to learn - other languages I've looked at (primarily: German, French, Zulu) have consistent pronunciation (yes, even French, it just has more complicated rules governing pronunciation than, say, German). English is all: "well, yes, mostly there are rules, but there are totally exceptions. Suck it, bitches." Because English is totally an asshole, linguistically speaking.
"Got a cool word? We'll have that, thanks, but we'll probably mess with the pronunciation. Want to use ours? Well, the pronunciation of native words is sort of consistent, except a bunch of things have changed over the years, so we have a silent "K" on some words and our vowels are, well, ha. Yeah, rough and loud have totally different /ou/ sounds and dream on if you think /gh/ is consistent. Sometimes it's SILENT. Got a problem with that? Blow me."
Anyway, consistent pronunciation is kind to foreign learners.
- Distinct and meaningful differences communicated by vowel length is hard to adjust to. Lengthening a vowel seems alien to me - mostly because I'm a native English speaker, and in English, vowels aren't that important, and you more-or-less go for getting them right, and lengthening them will make differences only to intonation-type inflection of meaning.
Also, English-speakers don't count morae. They know about them on an instinctive level, as demonstrated in something I read once on obscene interjections as emphasis. The example:
- fan-fucking-tastic: correct
- fantas-fucking-tic: incorrect
It's a mora thing. But, like the average English-speaker's comprehension of English grammar, it's instinctive, not overt knowledge.
I'm liking my gradual acquisition of knowledge of Japanese, I really am, but I can't help thinking about it linguistically as well and, being me, was unhappy with working on an understanding of Japanese language and culture without having any real knowledge of Japanese history. (Yes, I do have a reasonable background in German, French and Zulu history.)Current Mood:  nemui (ねむい) |
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Classical music FTW
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 10:50 am
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My exploration of the landscapes of both Jazz and Classical music has always been at best erratic. Probably more like schizophrenic. Somehow I'd yet to hit upon Chopin... Instantly I'm in love. |
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I know that you're dying, and I know I'm unwell
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May. 17th, 2008 @ 03:17 am
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My thesis is destroying my life
( Blah )Current Mood:  sad/joyous Current Music: Movie (Never Made) - A Silver Mt. Zion |
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Today
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May. 16th, 2008 @ 11:41 pm
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Today I -
- Swam laps for 30 minutes.
- Took Norah to her swimming lesson.
- Got the mailbox down to less than 300 messages.
- Made an important phone call concerning my tax.
- Weeded for an hour.
- Went out to dinner.Current Mood: tired |
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The inevitable burger post
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May. 16th, 2008 @ 09:59 pm
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One day, now many weeks ago, I was talking to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) greteldragon, and I brought up the subject of Flipside, a "gourmet" burger bar next to "my" bus-stop, as a burger place that has a vegetarian option. They have, I think, three burgers featuring their "special" sweet potato and chickpea patty, as well as many carnivorous options. It is a deliberately hip and casual place (it is next to Mojos), and whilst being "gourmet" with ciabatta buns (which aren't technically ciabatta), tomato relish, and fresh salad, is actually pretty decently priced at $9-$11. It also has "homemade" chips with diverse dippings sauces.
Ever since then she has been bugging me to organise something. But the question is what and when. I am tempted to have something involving my house since I would like to introduce mum to my closest friends (of course that assumes that my close friends come :P) since I think that she would like them, but my house isn't actually next to "my" bus-stop (I deliberately walk 20 mins to North Fremantle so that I only need to catch one bus rather than two) and it may be better to just do something else.
I have this crazy idea of going there on the 21st of June, and getting burgers to take away and eat on the beach as I watch the sun set. This may be a cool idea, and I think that I shall do it even if it is by myself. It is, however, in the exam period, so it may not be to everyone's liking. The location is a strange place, there is this little island of antique shops, Mojos, Harvest, Flipside, and Candy Wallpaper, and nothing really else. So it is hardly a place to walk around and do stuff, unless we go looking through antique shops.
On a somewhat tangent:
My walk to and from my house is, in my view, an important and interesting part of my life, and thus I have a strange desire show people it. Though the walk is only "the walk" because it is a haven of solitude and a time when I collect my thoughts, and thus I can never truly show it to anyone. But walking over Stirling Bridge and the feeling of the wind channelling down the valley of the river to caress my hair is, to me at least, a very enlivening and beautiful experience.
In any case, what are people's thoughts? |
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bush food research
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May. 16th, 2008 @ 10:12 pm
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there is an ebay store with a packet of 'australian bush foods' seeds currently for sale. In the interests of safety, we've done a bit of research (see behind the cut for details). If anyone in Perth would be interested in sharing, there are five species (not necessarily all edible), and claims to have 30 seeds of each. I'm especially interested if someone who has previous eBay experience wants to deal with it - I'm happy to pay, but I'm a bit leary of learning how to use eBay!
( details, details )
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"Easy as Pie" is a lie
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May. 16th, 2008 @ 10:11 pm
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Rolling pastry sucks. I can never get a neat edge, and the piece is never big enough or something.
Also, it seems my pan is marginally larger than the one used for most of the recipes in the main baking book I use. My pastry didn't reach the top of my tin, that was possibly due to my rolling ineptitude. But it didn't matter, because the filling only filled half the tin so the top layer of pastry went halfway down the tin and I had loads of excess pastry around the edge and couldn't neatly put it together - so I made a kinda pastry crown.
I also forgot to glaze it. But the pastry seems to have cooked well and have held, and the pie looks edible, if a little messy.
Tomorrow I make muffins. The saying should be "Easy as Muffins", because they are. |
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