photo friday: moseley square

This shot is a repeat from last Sunday... but I love the shot so much I thought it deserved a second outing... at a larger size.

Moseley Square, Glenelg at sunset. The lucky last shot (more or less) before my camera battery died for the day.

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friday meme

I had a hankering for a meme this morning, so I did the Google thing until I found something halfway decent...

  1. Flip to page 18, paragraph 4 in the book closest to you right now, what does it say?
    Actually, page 18 is totally blank, it's the gap between the prologue and the first part of the book... however, paragraph 4 of page 17 says:

    "And with his death, the bonds that tethered me withered into nothing."


  2. If you stretch out your left arm as far as possible, what are you touching?
    In a straight line, then nothing... I can also reach my digital camera, my pencil case, my multivitamin bottle and my little folder of Studio 2000 photos from way back in the day.


  3. What’s the last program you watched on TV?
    That "Fight For Life" show that was on last night... I ended up catching the last bit of it after swearing blind that I wouldn't watch it again after last week was all overly emotional and whatnot.


  4. Without looking, guess what time it is.
    I'm guessing somewhere in the vicinity of 12:15... (whoa... 12:14!)


  5. Aside from the computer, what can you hear right now?
    Blissfully nothing right now... there was the distinct drone of power tools from somewhere nearby a little while ago, but for right now, this very second... nothing.


  6. When was the last time you were outside and what did you do?
    This morning, when I went walking.


  7. What are you wearing?
    Dark red faux Denver College tee, blue jeans, white socks that probably need to be thrown away (I noticed a hole in the heel before) and red Mossimo boxer briefs... well, you did ask!


  8. Did you dream last night? If you did, what about?
    I didn't... or at least, if I did, I didn't remember anything. Like I've said before, I very, very, very seldom remember my dreams.


  9. When was the last time you laughed?
    A couple of minutes ago when a "Star Wars" quiz page that had been loading in the background suddenly started pumping out the theme tune and scared the bejezus out of me!


  10. What’s on the walls, in the room you’re in right now?
    My Herb Ritts Fred with Tyres print.


  11. Have you seen anything strange lately?
    Actually yes, a couple of things during my walk. Firstly one of the black swans was either moulting or was having some sort of wardrobe malfunction feather-wise, because it was surrounded by four or five big long feathers from (I think) the edge of it's wing. And because I have this thing about big solid bird feathers I went over and (after asking permission of said swan, who just looked at me and honked softly) took one of the feathers. White feathers... from a black swan (the bottom edge of their wings are white). Also, when I was crossing the weir there was this rat (or rat-like creature) that swam onto the string of floats they have across the river just before the weir. It cleaned it's little head, and sat there for a minute... then dived back under the water. It didn't swim, it totally dived out of view. I'm guessing it was actually a water rat, but it still startled me.


  12. If you could change ONE THING in this world, without regarding politics or bad guilt, what would it be?
    One thing in the world... not one thing to do with me personally? If we're going globally, I'd get rid of organised religion.


  13. Do you like dancing?
    Yes, yes I do. Have I been dancing of late, no I have not. Although I think the next time J is back in town and somebody or other asks me if I'm going to go out with them, I might just say yes.


  14. What do you want your children’s names to be, girl/boy?
    Having absolutely and utterly no urge to reproduce whatsoever (or be any other kind of parental unit), I've never really given it that much thought. I like Jack, Christopher or Tyson/Tyler for a boy... maybe Lilly, Katherine or Victoria for a girl (and the last one is only because that's theoretically what my name would have been had I been a girl).


  15. Would you ever consider living abroad?
    Depends where abroad I guess... America or the UK, sure... anywhere else, maybe not.
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sailboats

reflected boatssailboatsThe first of the images from last Sunday's adventures... thank you Port Adelaide Sailing Club!

It was so (mostly) flat and still... got some beautiful reflection shots. In theory I took them for Ma... but I'm fond of the whole reflection/sailing boat thing too.

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random 2wink hotness

An underwear related Random Hotness this week from 2wink Underwear.

I know that these particular shots have been all over the blogsphere, but you can never have too much of a good thing, right? Especially the guy in the black underwear!

And you can also get these two and their buddy as desktop wallpaper over at the 2wink site!

2wink underwear2wink underwear

Current Mood: mmmmmm hotness

movies: pan's labyrinth

innocence has a power evil cannot imagineContinuing the theme from yesterday of "movies we should have gone to see while they were out on the big screen" comes the other movie I grabbed at the video shop last night, Pan's Labyrinth (aka The Labyrinth of the Faun).

From the few bits and pieces I read about it I thought it might have been too violent to go to with Ma, so we never went. Sadly, it's not really THAT violent or THAT "horror"... granted I have a slightly skewed vision of these things, but I think Ma might have been alright with it.

I'm fond of Guillermo del Toro's stuff... Hellboy, Blade II... well actually that's it... although I think I saw Cronos once upon a time, but I didn't know anything about the director back then.

But he has this dark fantasy bent that really appeals to me.

Add to that Doug Jones who I loved as Abe Sapien in Hellboy and you've hit a bunch of my favourite buttons.

I will admit that I kind of went back and forth on the whole Spanish Civil War plotline... I can see why he used it, but there were times when I was thinking "yeah, yeah, get back to the fantasy plot". I also know that a lot of the symbolism that Guillermo talks about in the special features on the second disc were lost on me, but then I guess they're supposed to be the first time you see the movie... it's nice to know it's there though.

It's possibly a little heavy going in a few spots (mostly the stuff set in the real world), but all in all not bad.

yani's rating: 3 fauns out of 5

movies: the holiday

the holidayAlas... Ma and I had officially run out of decent movies to see... at the cinema anyway, so we had to settle for a trip to the video store. Thank you $1 Tuesdays!

As usual we ummed and ahhhed wandering up and down the new releases looking valiantly for something that we a) hadn't already seen at the movies and more importantly, b) something we actually wanted to see. Never easy given the amount of movies we see in a year.

I grabbed The Holiday, since I remember thinking when we saw the trailer way back when that it could be worthwhile... I mean, Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, what's not to love... but then we both ummed and ahhhed some more, thinking that it might be slightly cringe-worthy in spots, and the addition of Jack Black to the cast list didn't help dissuade said feeling.

But it was either The Holiday or Flushed Away... and I just didn't know if I was up for CGI rats and toads... so we settled on The Holiday...

Turns out it was very much the right choice to make!

Okay, so it's not the most original plot (or rather plots, since it is in essence really two inter-cutting movies more or less) on the planet... although the whole "two stories" thing is pretty original, especially since there really isn't THAT much overlap for about 90% of the movie, but it's a romantic comedy... you know going into a romantic comedy that it's going to contain a) comedy (and if you're lucky it will actually be funny) and b) a romance where the two characters in question hook up by the end of the movie.

I will say that in this case the comedy parts of the movie was actually REALLY funny... Ma and I laughed slightly like crazy people on more than one occasion (always the bonus of watching a movie at home rather than in a movie theatre, you can talk during the movie, laugh like a mental patient... and in our case tonight, stop to look at the Blood Moon lunar eclipse... which, I gotta say, from the bit I did see... less impressive here in SA). I don't know if part of it was that you were flicking from Cameron and Jude's story to Kate and Jack's story, so they both kept feeling fresh and new as a result.

I did feel like there was more time and weight given to the Cameron and Jude story... and there might have been... as far as actual screen time goes, or maybe it just felt that way I don't know, but I guess that's liable to happen in the editing process... even if you fully intent the stories to be equal length it's not going to work out that way.

It is a very sweet movie though, and well worth picking up at the video store.

yani's rating: 3 movie trailer voice-overs out of 5

blossoms

bee blossompink blossomAdding to my ongoing obsession with bees and flowers... these shots are from my excursion last week. They're possible the two best shots of blossoms (and definitely the best shot involving a blossom and a bee). I think it's partially the colour of the sky too... the perfect blue for the pink of the blossoms.

See, I said I was going to start running more photos...

Interestingly enough, being "surrounded" by bees while I'm taking these shots doesn't bother me (I nearly said "doesn't bug me", but thought better of it) even though I guess there is a risk of being stung, sticking one's camera lens right up in the bee's face as it were. I just wish more of the little bastards would have stayed still so I could get their pictures.

Current Mood:

montage monday: adventures

adventures 2007This is possibly one of the most random Monday Montages so far... but I think I managed to get a little of everything from yesterday's grand adventure in...

St Peters Billabong... check...
Mawson Lakes... concrete sphere thing, public garden, general architectural stuff... check...
Port Adelaide... rusty bus, guard goat, sailboats... check...
Semaphore... Semaphore angel... check
Glenelg... breaking waves, sunset, fullish moon, cool graffiti... check...

I don't know if it was all the fresh air yesterday... or just the fact that it was beautiful again today, but I ended up doing my full walk (as opposed to piking out at the bridge like I've been doing for some time now) all the way down and around to the weir. And double-plus, I got to leave my jacket at home again finally.

Then when I got back I got a little bit domestic... not, you know, hugely, but I spruced the place up a little, opened all the windows to let the fresh air and sunshine in (and I actually had the door open for a large chunk of the afternoon, really aired the place out). Given that spring officially starts next weekend, I think it might have arrived a week early...

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unconscious mutterings 238

I think I have a Vitamin D headache... in other news, Unconscious Mutterings...

  1. Uneven :: Crooked

  2. Wonder :: Woman

  3. Spider :: Man

  4. Emma :: Thompson

  5. Swing :: Low, Sweet Chariot

  6. Orbit :: Circle

  7. Flirt :: Shamelessly

  8. Donation :: Money

  9. Veil :: Dance of the Seven

  10. Atmosphere :: Air
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the most amazing day

amazing day... billabong, mawson lakes, guard goats, port adelaide, semaphore, glenelgI have had THE most amazing day...

But before I do the big ramble (because you know I will, so get comfortable) I just wanted to make a kind of general observation.

I don't know if it was because I spent so much time out and about, or because I went to so many places and had all these "experiences", or what, but today was the first time I think I've ever had the feeling of wishing I had somebody with me today to share it with.

I'm not talking about a whole "oh woe is me, I don't have an alternative lifestyle romantic lifepartner, boo hoo"... I'm not sure it was even a romantical feeling... it was just that by the time I got to the end of today I wish I'd shared the experience with... somebody.

So obviously I have an opening for a "somebody" in my life right now... not that I didn't already know that.

The other random observation I'll make is that I've eaten nothing but CRAP all day today. But possibly I made up for it since I've done a lot of walking.

I also think that I might need to come up with some other way of showing off some of my photos other than just the Monday Montage (which there may or may not be an instance of tomorrow) and Photo Friday. Partially because I took a shitload of photos today, but I keep operating on a Photo Friday backlog, whereby I have an excess of stuff in my Photo Friday folder, and keep adding to it, so I never quite get caught up. So once I come up with something appropriately alliterative (any suggestions?), I might start making with the midweek/some other random day photos.

Anyway, back to my day...

Today was just GLORIOUS... sunny, warm, clear blue skies, fresh breeze... perfect weather for getting outside in the world and doing things of an outside world type nature.

So after I'd read the paper and done my regular Sunday stuff (some time around noon I think) I grabbed my camera and my phone headphones and my carkeys and after trying (and failing) to find a particular spot on any kind of map actually found directions to the St Peters Billabong, so off I went in my little black teeshirt (making today and tomorrow the first times that I've worn something short sleeved in MONTHS).

I'm hoping that at other times of year the Billabong is more impressive, because it was a world of big green puddle currently... okay, maybe puddle is a bit of an exaggeration (what with the alleged "pond surface area of 1.42ha"), but it was slightly less impressive than I expected it to be. Nice and all, very biodiversity... but you know... m'eh.

When I finished wandering about I decided that it was just too nice to go home... various radio stations were pumping out very driveable tunes, the aformentioned sun and sky were aforementioning, so drive I did.

I think I've probably mentioned before that I have NO sense of direction... none... nada... zip... okay, maybe a bit... but I fluke it through nothing but pure luck more than any actual skill or knowledge of where the hell I'm going. And today was no different. I just picked a vague kind of direction and drove.

Crossed that road, turned left there, followed the road around to the right... and eventually, after many and varied roads that I had no idea where they were or where I was (other than, you know, a rough general idea) I found a road that I did know. And I figured I had just one choice to make... hills or beach...

For hills I needed to go right, for beach turn left... more or less... so I decided to go left and thus, to the beach.

There were any number of times when I could possibly have gotten off a less known road onto a better known road, but I was enjoying flying (or rather driving) by intuition and the seat of my pants, so I went with the road less travelled...

Sadly, after following this particular road over hill and over dale (poor Dale), I didn't turn when I should have turned, and ended up in a particular spot where I thought... "hey, if I turn right here I'm over halfway to Ma's place... I could drop by"... but then I couldn't get into the turning lane, so I figured the Universe had other plans... oh lordy did the Universe have other plans...

Down the road however, was the choice to turn off into one of the newer housing estates, Mawson Lakes, which I've actually never visited... and since it was the day for that "the road less travelled", I turned right into Mawson Lakes.

And of course, this is a place I've never been, so I had NO idea where the hell I was driving or where to turn or whatever (although looking on the map on their website, it looks like there's really only one major road through the whole thing, and that's pretty much where I stayed). But at some point I saw these cool concrete sphere things, so I turned down a side street and stopped to take some more photos. The spheres led to this little funky public garden thing... and then I found myself in the much cooler "hip young modern townhouse/apartment section" (as opposed to the "beige on beige on beige family home section" that I passed on my way through... yucky)... all architectural lines, interesting colours and mixed building materials... so I went on a wander to do a little architectural photography.

Just before I was going to head back to the car I saw a sign for a real estate agency saying there was an open inspection of one of the apartments, so I figured I might as well go up, take a look, do the proverbial "tyre kicking" thing (looking with no intention of buying). Actually part of me wishes I hadn't looked.

It was a cute little two bedroom apartment, possibly not really that much bigger than my current place (some, but not a lot, maybe mostly coming from the second bedroom and a little bit in the living room/kitchen... and the leaflet she gave me doesn't actually give the square footage)... and I wandered about while the agent woman spoke to this other couple... and I poked in the bedrooms and went out on the balcony to admire the view (which actually wasn't a view... since that particular apartment looked straight out onto the back of the apartment building next door). Finally the nice lady came out to say hello properly and ask me if I had any questions... so I did a bit of a dog and pony show ("I'm really just dipping my toe in the market, to see what's going on"... you know, lied through my teeth), but I did find out that the asking price was $245K... and the rent they'd been asking on it when it had been a rental property was $210, but she said they could now get more in the current market.

Somebody shoot me now...

Part of me just wished that I could have seriously considered buying it, making an offer, whatever. Although I don't necessarily know that I would have decided to move to Mawson Lakes if I'd been looking seriously, but for a brief moment I did the whole "what might have been" movie-reel in my head.

After I got over myself, I went back in the car and kept driving (actually went past a couple of bits of very groovy public art that I probably need to go back and photograph or whatever), and found my way back to a road I knew and headed up to see Ma.

I hung out with her for a little bit... saw that they were playing ET as the midday movie and was a little... I dunno, not annoyed, and not really disappointed, but maybe a little disillusioned since it was the "remastered" version and they'd so very obviously gone back and given the alien a whole CGI makeover, mostly so he could emote more... but it wasn't the same crappy rubber suit I remembered from when I was a kid. They just killed it with technology... so now I'd just spend the whole movie going "that's been altered... that's CG... they changed that"...

Anyway... I thought at one point that I could just have done the usual route home, but once again... "road less travelled"... so I decided to take the new Northern Expressway down to Port Adelaide. Which was fun... not really overly scenic, but still new (this being only the second time I've been down it) and slightly interesting.

When I got to Port Adelaide, I went straight on at one point when I should have turned right (or the other way around, I forget now) and ended up in this little backstreet area... and was so wishing that I'd been there earlier in the day, since there was this really cool looking abandoned factory, but the sun was totally in the wrong place for decent photographs. Then trying to get back to some road I knew, I went past this junk yard full of rusting stuff... including an old bus, which is what made me originally slow down and take a second look... which is when I saw the goat...

Yes... this rusty scrap metal yard had not one, but two "guard goats"... so obviously I stopped and took their picture... I wasn't completely sure what the idea behind the goats was... other than, you know, the "cartoon idea" of a goat eating a rusty tin can... or if they were a particularly vicious type of attack goat (I'm guessing not though, since they were just plain old dopey looking). Weird (especially the horizontal pupils in their eyes)... cool as all hell... but WEIRD...

I headed in the general direction of Semaphore, and as I went over the bridge I passed the Port Adelaide Sailing Club... and the sun was starting to get low in the sky, the water was eerily calm, making almost perfect reflections of the sailboats. Now, Ma has a thing about sailboats (actually Ma has a "thing" about a fricken ton of stuff now that I think about it... seahorses, blossoms, sunsets, sailboats, crosses... blah, blah, blah), so I turned down a little sidestreet and hauled ass back up over the bridge to shoot the boats.

Then back in the car again and down the road to Semaphore... and there were actually a ton of people around... obviously the sunshine brought them all out... but I got a really good carpark (yay me), then wandered down and took a few shots, particularly of the angel at the beginning of the jetty... which is hard to shoot in the afternoon since it ends up being a silhouette (oh yeah, Ma has a thing about those too), but it kind of worked out quite nicely I think. I wandered about a bit, perved on semi-cute boys splashing around in the surf (one of whom hadn't been paying attention to the "don't wear dark undies under white shorts if you plan on getting wet" lesson... which I always appreciate), bought a bottle of water since I was starting to dehydrate a little, then drove down the coast.

Every time I was out today and there was the choice of either "keep driving" or "turn here and head home", I took the first option... and ended up heading down to Glenelg.

And I did something I haven't done... actually, I don't know that I've ever done it in my car, but I think I've done it a few times with Raury back in the day... driving (well, crawling really) down Jetty Road of an evening/afternoon, window down, stereo blaring... it's such a "boy" thing to do... but it just fit in with the day, so I went with it.

I'd kind of thought about just doing the length of Jetty Road and then heading home again, but the "keep driving/going" instinct prevailed, and I parked in a backstreet carpark and wandered back down Jetty Road, maybe thinking about grabbing some chips or something for dinner... but I ended up wandering the whole length of Jetty Road (since I parked way, way, way up the road) all the way down to the jetty.

Lots and lots and lots of people at Glenelg... which always baffles me to a certain degree, since everybody knows that there are going to be crowds at Glenelg, so why do they all end up there... probably the same reason I ended up there... it's just where you go.

I decided since I was feeling all summery and beachy and whatnot, that icecream was in order (plus I'm a simple Pavlovian creature, and I saw other people eating yummy looking icecream)... God bless you Baskin Robbins and both your Rainbow Sherbet and Chocolate & Peanut Butter flavours... yummy!

I did think about walking back to the car with said icecream treat, but again, the "go forth young man" impulse kicked in, and I headed back to the jetty and hung out there for a while eating my icecream and watching the slightly creepy guy taking photos of the slightly cute and half naked boys playing with their "skimboard" (or whatever it was) along the edge of the water. Granted I think he was just trying to get some dynamic action shots and was most likely perfectly harmless... but still.

I did think about going over and saying to him "getting anything good", you know, one photographer to another... but that just seemed creepier than what he was doing, so I didn't...

By this time the sun was starting to set, so I just stayed on the jetty taking a variety of photos of the sunset. Actually it started because I was trying to get a shot of the breaking waves (which were breaking just below me on the jetty), and turned into about fifty very similar sunset shots as the sun slowly sunk down. There are a few good shots amongst them, but one of my favorites is the very last shot I took (and the one that's in the image up at the top)... looking back across Moseley Square, through the palm trees and all the people, to the sunset. Purdy.

Luckily it was about the time that the sun was pretty much set (or had hit the horizon at least) that my camera thumbed it's nose at me and the battery fell down (bastard object)... actually I only got that final sunset shot because I let the camera rest for a little bit.

And to top off my day full of bad food items, I stopped off at what is possibly the BEST fish and chippery ever on my way back to the car... Chips (not an original company name, I grant you, but descriptive), "gourmet take away". Although I made the stupid mistake of saying yes to salt... never a good plan (urgh, salt mouth)... but even so the chips were mightly tasty.

Interestingly on the side of said fish and chippery (as there is on the side of quite a few of the blocks down Jetty Road) there was this groovy piece of street art... which I'm pretty sure was done by the same artist that did the stuff I saw in town back at the beginning of the year (not the geisha, the other stuff) since that guy (or girl, I dunno) has a very distinctive style.

I also saw the COOLEST Egyptian street art mural on the side of another building on the way back to the car, but I was out of both sunlight and battery, so that will have to wait until next time.

So as the sun set in the west, as they say in the classics, I drove my very contented and junk food filled ass home... just in time for America's Next Top Model (which meant that I'd been out and about for roughly six hours)...

Best! Day! Ever! Okay, maybe not "ever"... and like I said all the way back up at the top there, it might have been nice to have had somebody along for the ride today... although given the number of random driving errors that were actually the cause for today's adventures I don't know if I would have ended up doing what I did if I'd had somebody with me. At the very least it would have been nice to have somebody with me for the icecream and sunset portion of the day...

I'm officially knackered though and could quite possibly be sunburned come tomorrow... can I fall down now?

Current Mood:

dats a big pizza pie...

What Your Pizza Reveals


You have a hearty appetite. You are likely to complain if a restaurant has small portions.

You are a very picky pizza eater. Not any pizza will do. You fit in best in the Northeast part of the US.

You like food that's traditional and well crafted. You aren't impressed with "gourmet" foods.

You are dependable, loyal, and conservative with your choices.

You are a flavorful and bold person. You should consider traveling to Spain.

The stereotype that best fits you is geek. You're the type most likely to order pizza to avoid leaving your computer.


Current Mood:

new chair

make all this... into this!Yaaay! From a pile of random rubbish to a spanking new chair!

Although I gotta say... I hate things that need to be constructed with an Allen key... I mean, who the hell was Allen anyway... and why was he obsessed with little hexagonal keys...

Okay, that's why I hate Wikipedia sometimes... ruins a perfectly good diatribe... "Allen wrench was originally a trademark of the Allen Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut, taken out in 1943"... who knew...

Now, where was I... oh yeah... Allen key... very annoying.

But thus is the way of the modern world... everything comes in a flattish box and you have to put it together yourself... at least when you're not paying lots and lots of dollars for something.

On the upside, at no point during the proceedings did I want to either tear parts of the chair apart and beat them against each other... nor did I want to gouge my own eyes out with said Allen key. Ma was a chicken, she went home before I started putting it together, just in case I got all crankylike... wuss... *grin*

So other than getting a new chair and doing everything later than we usually would due to Ma's haircut appointment, not a whole hell of a lot happened... some random shopping in town... then back here for chair construction...

Current Mood:

photo friday: graffiti

green dudeorange guy
sidewallhip hop ernieVoila! The graffiti art from Wednesday's little excursion...

It is of course no big surprise that I loves me some good quality street art/graffiti... so I was really pleased to find a whole bunch of it when I was out on Wednesday. I'm actually not sure which bits of it are actually "graffiti" and while bits are more "street art" (the difference, in my mind anyway, being that graffiti happens without the blessing of the building owner, whereas street art happens with said blessing... I'm sure some of the stuff I've classified in one camp or the other actually belongs in the other camp, but you get that).

I'm pretty sure the green alien looking dude is "graffiti", but the other bits and pieces I'm not sure about (although the grey "cityscape" is on the same abandoned building as said green alien dude, so I'm not sure about that one).

I think "Breakdancing Ernie" was "street art" though... since the whole wall had a variety of stuff on it... including a "Saturday Night Fever Elmo" actually... weird, but cool.

Current Mood:

peasant lunch

peasant lunchI love a peasant lunch...

Okay, I think technically a "peasant lunch" is soup, chunks of cheese and bread... but I've been calling this particular lunch a "peasant lunch" for... well, forever really.

I had to go out just before lunchtime and ended up parking near the Central Market, and figured that I might as well grab some lunch from there... and it turned rapidly into peasant lunch...

I hit all my favourite stalls... kabana from The Metwurst Shop, my favourite vintage cheese and a couple of fresh, crusty half baguettes from Say Cheese and to top it off, a crisp tasty Fuji apple from McMahon's...

Okay, so I also stopped off at Goodies & Grains for some dark Belgian Couverture chocolate, but that wasn't a lunch thing that was an "I love chocolate" thing.

I gotta say, I do love wandering around the Central Market... okay so sometimes there are a few too many people and you just want them to get the hell out of the way so that you can get where you're going... but it's always fun wandering around.

Back when I was working for the Courts I loved nothing more than going over to the market with $20 in hand and shopping and shopping and shopping and shopping and shopping until I had nothing but a few coins left and a massive bagful of fruit, vegetables, cheese and whatever else happened to take my fancy on the day.

Of course, then getting it all home again was sometimes a chore, but it always ended up being worth it.

And there's nothing quite like sitting down to a meal of bread, cheese, apple and metwurst. Yum!

Current Mood:

random unshaven hotness

I've had these shots in the Random Hotness folder for a while now... so long in fact, that I forget where they originally come from. I think that Sheridan is a model, but I'm not completely sure.

To be honest I just like his hair... a little scruffy, but that semi-curly thing that's very in right now... you can just imagine it spread all over a soft white pillow just after he wakes up... or is that just me?

sheridansheridan

Current Mood: mmmmmm hotness

tribal template time

tribal templateI hadn't planned on doing any of this today...

But I spoke with a certain "gentleman friend" online this morning... okay not so much with the euphemisms... it was Slick Willy...

And before I knew it I was saying "I'm on my way over".

Luckily I threw my camera in the car with me, since I had half of a vague plan of coming home via a whole other suburb (which would actually have meant that I would have been going completely out of my way, but I've been intending to do it for ages) because just as I hit the city I got a SMS from Slick saying that his parents had just shown up and we'd have to cancel.

Well BUM!

But I was already out and about... and while I could have just turned around and come back home I figured I might as well make the most of already being out of the house, so I headed off on a little photo safari.

Funnily enough I was only actually headed like one suburb over from where I live, but I ended up coming at it from the complete opposite direction.

Anyway, the street in question has a ton of painted stobie poles and whatnot so what I ended up doing was driving to a certain point, getting out and wandering up and back a bit, then back in the car and driving further up.

I also managed to find a bunch of good quality pictorial graffiti too... some of that will pop up on Friday I'm sure.

But one of the stobie poles had this really cool quasi African tribal face on it... and since I wasn't sure if photos of it taken straight on would come out well (dark pole, bright background) I decided for whatever reason to get in close, take four individual shots and stitch them together later.

Then after all the graffiti I swung down a little side street and ended up wandering up and down taking a ton of shots of the little pink blossoms that seem to be out everywhere at the moment. Partly because I have this whole obsession with blossoms and bees (and they were crawling with bees), but also because Ma made mention of the blossoms the other week. I'm not completely sure how many of the fifty-something shots actually came out well... I only flicked through them quickly earlier.

So an hour and a half after I left the house I got back with a camera full of shots and sat down to go through them (and, seriously, I can't get a new desk chair soon enough!)... and got kind of distracted by the four shots of the tribal face.

I slapped them together with my panorama program, and looking at the long skinny image with it's majority of blue I suddenly thought that it would make a groovy blog template... especially because I've been looking for something in the blue family (seeing that I've already done green, pink and yellow... scary how the cut down images in each post just keep getting longer and longer).

Next thing I know I've been fudging around for a couple of hours turning the shot into a template.... and a template who's eyes will follow you around the room too...

And, no, for the record I haven't taken the computer apart yet...

Current Mood:

uh-oh dust bunny alert

dust mask and dust bunnyOh dear... that's not a good sound...

My computer has started making a slight whining sound occasionally... it sounds like it's coming from the fan or something... like it's having to strain or speed up to catch up with itself... and I think the last time it made noises like this it meant that the power supply was not long for this world...


Of course, last time my computer support personnel weren't either in another country or else deceased...

Bollocks, bollock, bollocks, bollocks...

I think I'm going to have to turn it off tomorrow, open up the case and euthanise all the dust bunnies in there...

The fun times never stop here at Casa de Yani...

Current Mood:

short term contract

very short timeI would have said that it was the "shortest assignment EVER"... but I think I've actually worked shorter ones... not that I can remember when right now, but I'm sure there have been.

For the record I worked from 9 until 2, and had a half hour lunch break too... which, if I'd realised how short the assignment was going to actually be I would have skipped lunch.

Yaaaaaaay!

Or, you know... not!

But now somebody new in that building loves and adores me. Okay, I'd met her before when I was working there full time, but I haven't temped for her before.

Originally I was supposed to be going in to work for this new area to tell them how much work there was that they needed me to do for them...

Confused yet? Gotta love the government!

It still feels like I can't escape that building... in some ways it doesn't feel like I've really "moved on" since I was working there full time... just around and around and around in circles...

blue - you'll be okay, but this sweater is ruinedAnyway... I did get some other stuff done while I was in town... firstly I legged it down to FINALLY see the Eddie Major photography exhibition.

The legging it part was nice actually... sunshine, city backstreets I don't normally go anywhere near, a chicken and veg pie for lunch (yeah, healthy I know)...

I am glad that I made it down to see the exhibition though, the size of the images on Eddie's website don't do them justice... they're appropriately HUGE and it just works for the shots. Sadly the pub in question had them hung a little too high for the most part, so you didn't quite get the full impact that you would have done if they'd been at eye level.

But then, given the space in question they couldn't have hung them any other way really.

Now that I've seen them full sized, I have to say that this shot "you'll be okay, but this sweater is ruined" is now my favourite... I already have an ongoing nipple thing, but with the blue water and the necklaces and whatnot... loving this one SICK right now (oh lord, somebody punch me for using the phrase "loving something sick"). If I had a spare $165 laying around I'd be tempted to get one of the limited edition prints (and, to be honest, an appropriate place to display said print).

Anybody want to buy me an early Christmas present? *wink*

Since I finished work so early I decided to call Stu and see if he was up for coffee... which he was... so we killed about an hour and a half talking garbage and whatnot... which was nice.

Then I decided to walk home. Actually I stopped off at a bunch of places... JB HiFi to look at DVDs (actually, to look for the Jerry Lewis DVDs I mentioned on Saturday), and then the comic shop on King William Street just because I keep meaning to go in there, and never get around to it. Nice... as small underground (literally, not figuratively) comic book stores go.

I'd already decided to walk home, then the bus showed up right when I was at the bus stop, but it was already pretty full and everybody was taking forever to get on... so it seemed like even more of a plan to walk home.

And that's about it really...

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 237

Hiho, hiho, it's off to work I go... but more on that later... for now it's Unconscious Mutterings time!

  1. Darling :: Darl

  2. Majesty :: Queen

  3. Pebble :: Rock

  4. Fate :: Destiny

  5. Instant :: Messaging

  6. Screen :: Saver

  7. Unplugged :: MTV

  8. Dairy :: Queen (again)

  9. Benefactor :: Sugar Daddy (where the hell is MY head this morning?)

  10. Market :: Central

Current Mood:

brainteaser

You answered 24 out of 30 questions correctly!

brainteaserCongratulations! Your score is in the 91st percentile. This means that if one hundred people took the test with you, your score would rank higher than 90 of them on average.

When we analyzed your test, we also discovered that when it comes to logical ability, you measure in the 100th percentile. This score indicates you have unusually strong abilities when it comes to to solving problems with logic. There are situations that require having a very precise thinking process to cut through the array of stimuli, and you can do this well. You can easily detect the underlying logic while others cannot. While others may get confused by things that are complex or out of order, your logical ability allows you to persevere and solve multi-layered problems.

The Brainteaser Test


Current Mood:

less interesting saturday adventures

broken chairOh yay... my computer chair is all broken and stuff... just this very second (more or less).

Not like the picture obviously... but the place where the back attaches to the arm, the screws dropped out and there doesn't seem to be a way to put it back together. So I'm a world of "correct posture" right now... which I'm sure is going to kill my back later.

Actually it's kind of been on the way out (the chair, not my back) for a while now... I've had the chair for what seems like forever (slightly less time than I've had a computer... so, maybe only half of forever... some time in the late 1990's), and it's been a good and faithful chair... and now it's craptastical.

Yay... not.

Okay, so where was I?

We didn't do a whole lot of anything today... well... lots of retail randomness, but that's about it.

One thing that did strike me as odd... we'd gone to look at a bunch of DVDs that were on sale, and which they had a lot of stuff still left, a lot of the stuff I wanted wasn't there... particularly two Jerry Lewis movies, The Geisha Boy and The Family Jewels, were completely gone... not just in that one store, but EVERYWHERE in the state (I asked the girl behind the counter about them). Now I realise that Jerry Lewis isn't the coolest person to admit to liking, but I remember both of those movies from when I was a kid and they haven't played them on teevee or anything for years and years. And maybe everybody else who bought them was like me and remembered them fondly from their youth too... or maybe, you know, lots of French people invaded the state to buy them. Seemed strange to me, but then, what do I know.

I just ended up picking up a bunch of random sci-fi instead...

Hi, my name is Yani... I have a DVD movie addiction...

Scuse me for a second while I remove the wonky back of my chair and turn it into a slightly more usable, if uncomfortable, stool...

Okay... back now...

Anyway, after that we decided to wander aimlessly around town for a bit and ended up going into David Jones, which we normally don't do and discovered some things from the Whatever It Takes range of cups and plates... I will admit that I've never actually heard of this range before, but the stuff we saw were cups and plates with artwork designed by various stars to raise money for a variety of charities. It turns out that somebody that Ma works with has a partner who's nuts about David Bowie, and he has both a cup and plate in the range, so Ma picked them up for said workmate (after calling her to tell her about them).

Hey, I said it was a true story, I didn't say it was interesting...

Supposedly they'd only just gotten them in, but I wonder if they've had different ones in before or if this is the first time they've ever had any of the range in, because looking at the gallery of stars who have been involved, they've been doing this for a really long time.

Then, because we keep walking past it every week since we like to park in the nice cheap 20c carparks, we stopped off at the Migration Museum... as museum's go its not bad... a little small and perhaps a little bit too much reading stuff (I don't think either of us was really that much in the mood), but lots of interactive pull/push/move/press/open/slide bits and pieces... so, you know, worth seeing, but probably not somewhere we're ever going to need to go again... *grin*

Lord... not sure how long I'm going to be able to stomach this stoolchair... grrrrr...

Current Mood:

photo friday: bud

bud 2007This is a shot from last Sunday's ramble... something I found after I clambered down by the little weir.

No grand reasoning... I just like the colours and the shapes...

Current Mood:

random gymnastic hotness

This week's Random Hotness came initially via Oh la la Blog... 19 year old, 5'4" German gymnast, Fabian Hambüchen...

So he's short and buff and cute and flexible... now I know what I want for Christmas!

The pics that I'm using came from his official site, although these ones are slightly cut down from the originals. They're part of his ad campaign for EnBW, a German electricity company... not quite sure what one has to do with the other, but I'm not complaining...

I have to say that if I was forced to pick a couple of sports that I HAD to watch, then men's gymnastics, particularly the stuff with the horse where they swing their legs all over everywhere, would be at the top of the list. That and men's diving...

fabian hambüchenfabian hambüchen

Current Mood: mmmmmm hotness