On the tube

I finished watching Season 3 of “Battlestar Galactica” over the weekend, which was suitably dramatic and fabulous and exciting - man, that’s a good series. I’m awfully depressed that the 4th season will be the last, and that it’s screening at the moment in the US which means that it will be forever until it comes out on DVD and I get to see it. Unless commercial TV over here screens it in the meantime, which seems unlikely. Or unless I get impatient and resort to illegal downloads, which is more likely. Because man, there is so much stuff I want to know. I already knew Starbuck wasn’t really dead, despite appearances, which made her death episode a bit less devastating. And dude! The final four! So who’s the fifth? And how the hell are they going to wrap all this up coherently? I think they’ve got 22 episodes to do it in, which gives them a bit of leeway.

I’ve also been watching “Weeds”, a comedy about an upperclass housewife turned drug dealer, which is terribly funny - I was thinking about recommending it to Mum but decided after watching the, er, tennis-racquet-insertion-scene that it was too rude. And then there were a whole lot of other rude scenes that compounded my decision. I’m sure you will agree that one’s parents shouldn’t watch anything on your recommendation that contains sex, masturbation or any implied naughty bits. It’s inappropriate.

And in the completely addictive trash basket, “Australia’s Next Top Model”. I can’t resist a show that puts a whole lot of young women in a house, watches them form cliques and have fights over trivial things, and then sprays water into their false-eyelash bedecked faces while demanding that they show “a bit more emotion in the eyes darling, there’s nothing there at the moment”. Yeah, because you’re spraying water into them. My favourite is Belinda - she’s kooky! She’s from the country! She’s far too mad to win, but she’s actually likable, which makes her stand out for me.

More practice

My mum flew down for a visit over the weekend, so I spent a lot of time with camera in hand, taking photos of family and various flora and fauna that she identified for me. Mum and her partner are both Super Bird-y Garden-y Experts Extraordinaire - I go to them with all my random horticultural and wildlife questions. “What is that bird? What is that tree? What animal is making that strange scratching sound in the chimney?” They’re better than Google, they are. Oh, and they think it’s a sugar glider up the chimney. (Awwww!)

So I put my big zoom lens on the camera and clicked away all weekend. The day we went walking in Lamington National Park I got irritated by the grinding noise of the lens as it focussed on the dimly lit rainforest, and switched it over to manual focus. I regretted that after I spent quite some time deleting about half the blurry photos I took. I am crap at manual focus, especially when I’m using a lens extended out to 200mm.

I also need to get better at framing my photographs and taking them in appropriate light - I spend a ridiculous amount of time post-processing in Photoshop with every batch of photos I download onto the computer. Part of that is my preference for the rich saturated colours I can get with a little adjustment in Photoshop, but part of it is poor framing in the first place, or taking photos in bad light. It’s a good reminder, I think, that before I start saving up for a new lens I need to get better with what I have - practice, practice, practice.

The 20s is not my era

I really hate it when you tell people in a jolly happy fashion that you are going to the hairdresser, implying that when you return you expect a lot of admiring noises to be made about your new haircut, and then you hate the haircut, and have to fend off people who are trying to convince you that it looks fine.

That was a convoluted way of saying I hate my new haircut. It’s probably my own fault for deciding that my super-expensive hairdresser was probably not a necessary component to a good haircut, and I should try a place that charges half as much. “Ha!” said the Universe, rubbing its hands together gleefully. I figured, though, that when you hand someone a picture, and say “like that, please, and I will read my magazine” that they’ll stick fairly well to the picture, including the length. Alas, when I looked up from the magazine the length had already been taken off. And I pretended to be happy about it, because it was a bit late for her to do anything, and she’d kept me waiting and seemed extra-eager to please.

I hope that once I attack it with the hair straightener that it will be a bit more to my liking. And I know it will grow, and it’s not the end of the world, and I don’t look like a swamp monster (much). It’s just really not the look I was going for.

*sigh*

Internet Travels

kiwords endures a rather embarrassing conversation over Sunday lunch:

“Hey, you know what happened the other night?”

Oh lord, I thought, freezing, my hand clutching my spoon in midair, no no no, he’s not going to -

“Dad was jumping on the bed!”

Oh no.

“WHAT?” said Raphael. “I’M not allowed to jump on the bed.”

Charlotte Otter puts together a collection of very amusing quotes from her 3 year old son:

Mummy: “Wouldn’t you like to walk now, Ollie? My back is getting a little sore.”
Ollie: “No. But fank you for the kind offer.”

I can’t look away from this recipe for Pistachio Cherry Oatmeal Cookie bars at Baking Bites. Mmmm. Ooh, and this lovely recipe for a brioche loaf. Gorgeous.

A Bird’s Nest discusses life with brand new twins:

Upon discharge from the NICU, we were handed one sheet of instructions per baby. Each item was basically phrased as “Do (or Do not do) X, or else YOUR BABY WILL DIE.” My previous placidity has been forever ruined by these little yellow pieces of paper, as every time I violate a precept (OMG baby slept on its side, not on its back!!1!), I have visions of the jury that will convict me of killing my children.

O Mighty Crisis wrote an hilarious entry about a birthday gift:

“Shucks and bother, but birthdays are nothing but a vexation. I am graveled that you pay them any mind when you know full well tomorrow’s washing day, and we’re plumb out of lye.” My mind, to tell you true, was cogitating on what a tight scratch it would be to hamper a new school marm into crossing the Mississippi and taking on that passle of ne’r-do-wells in the one-room schoolhouse.

And a really fantastic birth story:

To this day, I don’t know who was right in that debate at the high school, but a part of me hopes God and Darwin fled the building and settled the argument afterwards by kickin’ it on the curb and drinking a couple 40’s of malt liquor.

And finally, Kiko learns a new word at A Was Alarmed:

Mammy: (fooling about with the microwave, trying to enter the cooking time but repeatedly mucking it up) Oh sh- (notices she has a small person beside her, watching her with acute interest) shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh……….. (tapers off)

Kiko: (helpfully) Shit?

Fire

You know how in the movie “Office Space”, Milton keeps muttering, “I could set the building on fire,” every time his evil boss makes him move his desk again or steals his precious stapler? And then at the end, he finally does, and everything burns up in a glorious conflagration, while the audience chuckles with satisfied glee?

If Nightmare Client doesn’t stop being the worst client I have ever dealt with, I think I will set their file on fire. If they are there at the time to be caught up in the deadly blaze, so much the better. I am not sure why Nightmare Client even has lawyers, they are so determined not to do anything I tell them. Maybe if they were ON FIRE AND BEING CRUSHED TO DEATH BY A BURNING FILING CABINET, they would learn to listen.

I am breathing slowly and deeply. I am remaining calm.

Not for kittens

I haven’t been terribly inspired writing-wise recently. My mind’s been occupied with a project I can’t really write about here, and I’ve been focusing on other things, like my Italian CD (io parlo molto bene l’italiano!)

We spent a few hours cleaning the house on the weekend and dealing with Horace’s latest habit of pissing in the corners of rooms rather in the litter trays. Dear god, cat piss has a particularly rank odour. I settled down with Google for a while, and after decided that he was pissing and not spraying (the distinction seems to be the amount, and squatting versus standing and cocking a leg) we concluded that he was upset about our new bookcases. Yes, I know that sounds odd. But we had three enormous bookcases delivered last week, and spent some time filling them up with all our books which was terribly exciting (the Prince keeps laughing at me for wandering into the lounge room and smiling delightedly at all my books). And because we’re not the most well-organised people, the living room spent a week or so looking like a bomb site, filled with books and the old bookcases which we had just shoved into the middle of the room. Apparently cats don’t take too kindly to new furniture arrangements, and I think Horace was venting his irritation on the floorboards. However, after spending some time cleaning with white vinegar, and cleaning up the living room, he seems to have gone back to utilising the litter trays, much to my relief.

I’m particularly pleased that we’ve got that sorted out now as my mother is coming to visit next weekend, and as she’s not particularly fond of cats I’d prefer not to usher her into a house soaked in cat urine. It’s just a little fancy of mine.

One thing I find rather hilarious about owning cats is their perfect expressions of disdain. Dogs don’t do disdain, but cats have the sneer down oh-so-well. Horace in particular has a look of freezing disgust that he bestows upon us when we try to prevent him from doing something he would like to be doing, like snacking on food that is NOT FOR KITTENS, as I seem to bellow at him several times a day. “Cherry cake is not for kittens! Liquid echinacea is not for kittens! Hair straighteners are not for kittens!” (He likes the bathroom cabinet). He glares at me, and I then completely spoil any discipline I might have instilled by picking him up and cooing, “Awwww, who’s a widdle woozy kitten? Is Horace a widdle woozy kitten?” and other such nonsense, while he purrs loudly and thinks, “One step closer to world domination.”

A good metaphor

“I’m just calling because I left you a message on the weekend and you haven’t got back to me and you haven’t updated your blog and I thought perhaps you might have a broken leg or something,” said my mother.

My legs are intact, but I have been rather busy this week, due to some particularly demanding and long-winded clients who have become somewhat personally attached to me judging by the number of emails and telephone calls I receive from them every day. Not to mention the messages to call them that I receive after managing to successfully dodge their phone calls.

I had to spend over two hours in a meeting with them yesterday while they talked at a barrister, being terribly vague and taking about a minute to get a simple sentence out due to the number of “ums” and “wait a minutes” and “let’s think about this for a moments” that they dot their speech with. I spent most of that time nodding seriously and thoughtfully (a skill lawyers must perfect) while visualising hitting them over the heads with a large heavy object. It was thoroughly satisfying.

I’m a bit disenchanted with my job at the moment, can you tell?

The latest drama in the workplace today was the news that raw sewage was flowing into our basement storage rooms, covering boxes of client files and seeping into the walls, and no-one was permitted to visit the basement under any circumstances. I’m not certain why they felt we would want to visit the basement and wade through sewage, but I guess they thought they’d better warn us off such activities, just in case.

Dilemma

A dilemma I was faced with in the supermarket yesterday - Woolworths Organic Pasta vs Barilla Pasta.

I feel that buying the Woolworths brand supports organic industry, and encourages supermarkets to stock more organic products. It’s also cheaper than Barilla, so it’s affordable organic produce and makes my grocery bill more palatable. However, I think that by buying it I’m contributing to the elimination of smaller brands in Woolworths, and I end up picturing a future supermarket where nearly everything is made by the house brand, organic or not. Barilla has more variety, it’s more expensive, and it’s not organic. I think it’s a good brand of pasta, but that’s an automatic snob opinion based more on the box it’s packaged in - I doubt I could tell any difference in the flavour or texture of the pasta.

I have similar dilemmas with organic house brand flour, and fancy Italian flour especially for cakes (not organic, and imported). I like buying fancy cake flour when I’m making cakes, but I often feel guilty and buy the organic flour (again, usually cheaper than fancy cake flour), so I have a bit of a mixture in the pantry. Yesterday I went with the organic pasta, but I buy a bit of Barilla as well. I suppose it depends on your personal priorities, which for me are supporting environmentally friendly products - ie try not to buy imported stuff, buy organic stuff - but also supporting small businesses, or at the very least not monolithic businesses, and having my groceries be affordable. They’re not always particularly compatible priorities, hence my dilemmas in supermarket aisles.

I don’t think supporting small business is really possible when you’re shopping in Woolworths - if I was serious about that I’d be shopping at little independent stores - but I think supporting businesses other than the Woolworths brand is worthwhile. I read an article about supermarkets in the UK that are completely dominated by the house brand due to them undercutting the competition in price, and I’ve noticed a trend in that direction in the two big Australian supermarkets (Woolworths and Coles) over the past few years. The house brand is always cheaper, which is tempting, but I’d prefer to still have a choice between several brands for each product.

What are your priorities in the supermarket?

Bene, bene

The removal of the evil cat grass caused both kitties to bounce rapidly back to their usual selves, and they spent the weekend galloping madly around the house and eating enormous amounts of food. Abigail’s stitches were removed without incident, and I’m terribly pleased at the prospect of not seeing the vet again for several months, by which time it will be Horace’s turn to be de-sexed.

I spent Saturday playing games at the baby shower, and taking photographs of my friend’s pregnant tummy and a conveniently cute baby, who was busily crawling around, a balloon attached to his ankle. It was a great occasion for photography - a bright sunlit room, and no-one paying attention to me and my camera, so I curled up on a couch and busily clicked away. The pregnancy we were celebrating hasn’t been particularly easy so far, and a premature birth is expected - I patted her tummy and told its contents to stay put for the meantime.

***

I’m having another go at my sporadic and repeated attempts to learn Italian - I think I may have found a magic combination in putting Italian podcasts on my mp3 player, listening to them while driving, and talking aloud to myself in the car. While driving to the baby shower, I learned to say “I speak a little bit of Italian” and “I am going to the pizzeria”. Oh, and I can do the usual exchanges of “Hi, how are you, I’m good, how are you,” except I can only describe my mood as “good” or “bad”. It’s a start, and it seems to be sticking in my memory much better than when I read a lesson. Here’s hoping this isn’t a fortnight’s phase like all my previous attempts!

Beyond rectangles

Abigail has recovered well from her operation - while I had to whisk her off to the vet once so he could check a swelling under her stitches, a few days of trying to keep her quiet helped, and it looks nicely healed. She has an appointment tomorrow to have the stitches taken out. Unfortunately, both she and Horace presently have little appetite and have had a few bouts of diarrhoea. I eventually realised that this had coincided with their special treat of a pot of cat grass from the nursery over the weekend. I presume that something in the potting mix or on the leaves of the plant is bothering them, and am hoping that after the removal of the pot they will get back to normal. Cleaning up sloppy cat poo is not my idea of a good time, and the lack of appetite is so at odds with their usual voracious hunger that it makes me quite nervy.

***

One of the secretaries at work is learning to knit, and I’m thinking that it’s getting cool enough to dig out the old needles and start on a few projects for the winter months. Doesn’t that sound impressive, like I’m planning to whip up a wardrobe full of jumpers and hats. I confess that all I can really do is knit rectangles. Big rectangles equal wraps, smaller ones equal scarves. This winter, though, I’m determined to progress a little future - perhaps to knitting in the round (I own double-pointed needles, but have never used them), or maybe knitting something with ribbing. I’m going to my first baby shower this weekend and am presently still puzzling over something vaguely original to take as a gift - what a pity I didn’t get the urge to start knitting a little earlier in the year. I have actually knitted baby booties before - the one non-rectangular project I’ve ever completed.