street art that watches you back

You know what I worked out this morning...

It's a month until Christmas.

And I don't feel in any way particularly organised or ready... not that I generally need to do that much to get ready (and Ma is sorted presentwise, barring any late "must have" additional knick knacks and the traditional bar of nougat), but by this point last year I'd already had Ma's calendar printed and bound... and done much more Christmas shopping and was generally more in the appropriate seasonal mood. But I feel a little disconnected from it all this year... Christmas just seem to have almost appeared out of nowhere.

With any luck this weekend's bout of ritual self flagellation that is Putting Up The Christmas Tree will help to get me into the appropriate spirit.

On an unrelated thought... is it weird that even when H-San and Sugarmonkey make me completely and totally crazy I can't imagine being anywhere else... which is both tragic and somewhat bad for me, because eventually this will come to an end.

Speaking of unrelated things...

I made chicken Muzburgers for dinner tonight... and then served them with a nice bean and tomato salad (it was supposed to have baby bocconcini in it, but I forgot).

It's an interesting recipe... maybe a little on the dry side, but that was probably my fault because I added more breadcrumbs than I was supposed to. And because they're coated in breadcrumbs and then cooked on the George, well, they take freakin ages to brown up and had a pretty solid shell once they were done. Maybe doing them in oil in a frypan would be slightly better, if not as healthy.

Tasty though, what with the chilli and the pepper and the extra basil I added... definitely one to tweak and try again. And maybe come up with some tasty sauce to go with them...

Current Mood:

blindsided tuesday

You know those days that come out of nowhere and blindside you? Yeah, today was one of those.

I've been trying to avoid having anything to do with the training that we do (hence the trained seals on the right)... but there are some days when you just have to suck it up and roll up your sleeves.

Fortunately I only had to be there for a couple of hours, since I was essentially backup for Sugarmonkey... and now he owes me one (although I haven't tried that one out on him yet... I'm sure he'll disagree).

The training stuff itself was fine... I just had to wander around at the back of the room and keep an eye on what everybody was doing, and make sure they didn't seem to be confused or doing the wrong thing or whatever. There was one guy that just wasn't getting it, but once I got him caught up with everybody else he seemed okay (at least until he screwed it up again).

Slightly more problematic were the two taxi drivers I had... the one on the way there was overly talkative (the weather, road, political sex scandals) and although it wasn't completely his fault because of the roadworks, he seemed to be taking forever. The guy on the way back was even worse... he seemed confused about where we were going (although he did get there without much problem or prompting) and wouldn't shut up about the roadworks.

My own fault... I didn't sit in the back seat and completely ignore them.

So I left work around 10:30 and didn't get back into the office until 1pm. And as you can imagine, it meant that the rest of my day was pretty much a write-off. I ended up editing a document for H-San and a couple of other bits and pieces, but it was all a little bit vague...

Then I came home and made Chicken with Tomato and Mango Relish, the first time for the season... damn that stuff is yummy!

The major downside for my day was the discovery that Nestlé is discontinuing the Polly Waffle chocolate bar... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

"Younger people admit to only a vague knowledge of the Polly Waffle and most are unaware it is uniquely Australian and not available anywhere else in the world."

Stoopid younger people... I love me some Polly Waffle action! They can't discontinue it... maybe if they actually advertised it every once in a while people might buy them!

I can see that there may very well be a Peanut Butter KitKat type excursion this weekend... must buy an obscene amount of the Polly Waffle...

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 356

I'm not sure what's worse... having somebody comment that you've lost weight when you know the opposite is true... or having lost weight and nobody noticing.

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Marathon :: Ancient Greece
2. Debt :: National
3. Turn :: The other cheek
4. Image :: HTML
5. Sofa :: Little Red Sofa
6. Envelope :: Letter
7. Cart :: Before the horse
8. Process :: Policy
9. Question :: Answer
10. Rumor :: Bruce's kid

Current Mood:

busy sunday with brunch and calendar

Oy... what a day! Not bad, just busy for a Sunday.

I spent most of the morning tidying up around my apartment... while I hadn't let it go the entire time it's been hot, it was looking the worse for wear after the last few days, so I put some things away, sorted out some papers, made a V flavoured jelly (which could be a symphony of wrong), put the fan and the cooler away for the time being (in fact today was the first day in a good long while that I haven't had both of them running all day and night) and generally sorted out my living space.

Then after I'd had a shower and was about to sit down and fiddle around with Beast, I got a call from Ash. We'd arrange to meet for brunch while he was here, and he was in North Adelaide... actually he was at the end of my street. So I went down the road and we had some bunch in the cafe on the corner.

It was good to catch up with him, even if, as I mentioned to him, he seemed shorter than I remembered (which was mostly because I think this is the first time that I've ever seen him in such low shoes)... I think quite possibly I talked too much, but conversation was never difficult as it can sometimes be when you catch up with somebody you haven't seen in years and years and year.

Once we were done I wandered off to get a paper and some mid afternoon snackage (as well as rescuing a poster for Bison from the wall as I went past), then spent most of the afternoon working on Ma's 2010 calendar....

A very different format this year... new font, new orientation, the whole deal. Actually switching over to having images arranged horizontally was a bit of a bugger, because I'd taken a bunch of shots in Melbourne that were specifically portrait orientation to use for the calendar... but since Ma doesn't actually use the dates spaces as actual dates I figured this looked pretty good.

It also means that I finally have to hook my multifunction printer/scanner/copier up to Beast so I can print it out.

But now it's suddenly 6pm and have no idea where the hell the day went too...

Current Mood:

"so it begins again" saturday

Well, the stores all seem to have their Christmas decorations up and we officially started doing Christmas Shopping today, so Christmas will be upon us before we know it...

After waking up confused about what day it was (I was in the midst of moving stuff around and making the bed at 5am when I realised it was actually the weekend so I gave up and went back to bed), and only having four hours sleep on top of that, it's been something of a tiring day.

And a grey day with occasional showers too... woohoo!

Anyway... Supermarket Safari... it's always easier to have a vague plan for what you might want to eat during the week when it's not going to be 8000 degrees... and at some point this week I'd like to try Muz's After Gym chicken rissoles...

I also bought a little basil plant at the supermarket, because I'm tending to use quite a bit of the stuff at the moment and rather than buying it at a couple of dollars a pop, I thought I might attempt to grow some of my own. How well that ends up working is anybody's guess.

Once we were done trawling the supermarkets and had picked up a couple of seriously marked down Clothes Airers (I have to try and put mine together later), we came back here, did the unpacking thing then headed into the city to begin The Shopping of Christmas.

Oddly, Ma doesn't have an awful lot of things to get on her list, which is good, because the only things we ended up getting in town were things for us... well, things for Ma really...

Namely a Nintendo DS with accessories pack and game... one of the attractive yet tattooed freaks in JB HiFi was very helpful and Ma had something of a brainwave that we could automatically trade in the free game that came with the DS and use the refund to buy Dr Kawashima's Brain Training game... of course now I want to be really evil and get her some completely fluffy game as well... but that will have to wait until later.

We also went looking for the Snow Bunny Harajuku Girls perfume, and because we didn't just cave in at the first store that had it for 15% off, we also managed to get free gifts out the whazoo... well, a set of pencils and case as well as a set of little vials of fragrance. But Ma bought that for herself since I already got her the solid perfume Harajuku faces.

She's going to have more of that fucking perfume than she knows what to do with I swear! But the fragrance woman in Myer did suggest the idea of layering the different fragrances... which could be interesting.

Once we'd finished wandering around town (or at least run of out things to wander about looking for), we decided to go down to West Lakes for no real reason... but there was more wandering around when we got there, once we'd had lunch anyway. Ma did pick up a couple of bits and pieces for people, and we looked at a bunch of stuff, but all in all the only thing I really got from West Lakes was sore feet.

On the way home we called into Bunnings to get a plant pot and soil so I could repot the basil plant... which I did when we got back here... so now it's all red and shiny (the pot, not the plant, because that would be unhealthy and wrong).

So a tiring but somewhat productive day...

Current Mood:

photo friday: wet and dry

This shot pretty much sums up the last couple of days... or it would if you could see the raindrops on the dried up roses more clearly...

It's been dry... and now it's wet...

Things that brightened my day:

• The fact that it's Friday
• Cargo Shorts Guy at the traffic lights wearing one baby blue and one hot pink ankle sock
• Epaulette Shirt Guy on the bus who was listening to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack (homo much?)
  
• Bare calves (the leg kind, not the bovine kind), long torsos, dreadlocks and boys in fedoras
• The four guys gambolling in and out of sprinklers like puppies first thing this morning... two of them were shirtless and one had his pants hanging down below his ass
• Work Bear Guy... even if he does essentially wear the same outfit every day (see my earlier point about calves and fedoras)
• Summer rain... big fat warm raindrops
• H-San and Sugarmonkey picking on me (weird but true)
• Blonde Hipster Guy at the supermarket in a red teeshirt and lowslung tight jeans with rips in interesting places
• Finding #2-5 of the Buffy Season 8 graphic novels on the doorstep when I got home
  
• A random early evening hookup who's on his way over as we speak
  

Things that did not brighten my day:

• An email at work from a woman with way too much time on her hands who we assume had been fired from her job and now wants to make "trouble"
• Coming home to a stuffy house
• People who can't put correct links into webpages
• Getting caught out in the big fat summer rain, and the humidity that followed
• People being all in my way and stuff either because it's raining or because we've passed the Christmas Pagent and entered the stupid season
• CSS
• Who the hell leaves a parcel on somebody's doorstep the whole day... especially a day when rain was forecast... but really, anybody could have come along and walked off with it, and there goes $95...
  

Current Mood:

bison

Last year Focus Theatre came to town for Feast with Lachlan Philpott's Blowing Whistles... this year they return with another one of his plays, Bison...

It's a very different play from the last one... there's no linear story, in fact the whole thing kind of feels like this free association chorus... particularly the very beginning of the play (which doesn't really make any sense until the very end of the play).

Just don't ask me what the hell the title is about... bison are mentioned a couple of times but it's all a little vague.

The promotional blurb says that Bison "follows four guys as they search for that illusive special something in the gay hunting grounds of Sydney and beyond"... which is both true and misleading. Like I said... it's non linear... there's something of a story thoughline for each character, but they're drawn broadly enough to be architypes... the freshly gay boy, the guy who can't get over the ex, the sexpig and the old guy.

Since there are only four actors on stage, they take turns to fill out any other characters that are needed which definitely adds to the feeling of architypes.

While the writing is very funny in parts, and particular dead-on as far as the gay scene is concerned in others (or sometimes both), the play didn't affect me anywhere near as much as Blowing Whistles, mostly because of the lack of a story I think.

The four actors are exceptionally good... Quinn Gibbes as "Tom" (running from his ex), John Turnbull as "IT Dick" (the old guy), Christopher Tomkinson as "Simon Size-King" (the sexpig) and Vincent Hooper as "Just-Out Jason" (the transformation scene from "closeted and suburban" to "uber princess" is scarily accurate)... they're each very different from a physical standpoint but each guy inhabits their role well... particularly Turnbull (the bar scene between him and Hooper is quite sweet)... although my particular favourites were Tomkinson and Hooper... both very engaging and funny as well as being, in their own very different ways, cute as proverbial buttons. Which is not to say that Gibbes wasn't good as Tom, but I just never really connected with the character.

Sidebar: Vincent Hooper was also one of the stars of The Twink & The Showgirl which I didn't get a chance to see at the Cabaret Festival... is it incredibly juvenile and shallow that I'm pleased that when I finally did get to see him in something, I got to see him naked?

Although, granted the nudity is right at the end of the play and if I'm being honest, beyond the "ooooh peen... big peen and uncut peen and little peen and old peen" moment it actually wasn't overly sexual.

Oddly the whole play was a little bit like that... sexual, but not really. To borrow from the televisions ratings people, I think it was more "adult situations" than "sex scenes" if that makes any sense. Even the sexpig story with the video camera and dropped trou was more troubling than erotic.

Still worth seeing though... its a well acted, well written if sparcely produced and non linear bit of theatre.

Current Mood:

random cooling hotness

Mother Nature has saved the best for last and the final day of hot weather before the cool change is peaking at 43°C (pretty much as we speak)... so I decided that I needed a Random Coolness instead of a Random Hotness...

Enter angelic faced, long haired blonde model, Justin Zabinski all wet and drippylike...

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