photo friday: back to back

I wish I knew why, but since we did the job reshuffles at work I've been insanely busy. It's not even like I've been doing any of the additional work yet... it just seems like suddenly everybody wants a piece of me.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy having a lot of stuff to do, but it wouldn't hurt to have a few less things... or just less things all at the same time.

Especially since I'm about to have to work through a job application for said job... which is equal parts exciting and terrifying.

I haven't done a lot of work on the Doctor Who cross-stitch this week... I did get quite a bit done last weekend, and I worked out that I can easily finish off one of the figures in a single night, so since there's only three figures and some text left I should be able to knock that off with plenty of time (even with a job application to work on).

Last night I went off to the Organic teeshirt show at Espionage Gallery... I'd already pre-ordered the Cameron Brideoake shirt that I wanted so it was really just a matter of paying my money and picking up the shirt. It was definitely a different look for the gallery, without artwork on the walls the space actually looked taller somehow, not to mention the dry leaves, branches, wooden boxes and whatnot that were strewn about the place.

My Lego Minifigure Character Encyclopaedia arrived at work yesterday as well... complete with the exclusive toy soldier minifigure which is so damn adorable.

And that's really about all that's been going on this week...

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lifescouts: childhood month

Ahhh... childhood...

While a number of my previous Lifescouts badges have been acquired from things that happened when I was a kid, this month is definitely the most badges I've been able to claim in a single month (in fact there were only two I didn't get this month, roller skating and baking cookies... and the cookie one might be something I address sometime soon) and all but one of the stories are directly related to my childhood.

So behold, the Early Years of Yani...

Birthday Party

I'm sure that I had more than a few birthday parties, but as with a number of these badges, there's always that one strong birthday party image that leaps straight into my mind. Possibly because I have photos of it.

I'm not sure how old I was... possibly around 7 or 8... it's definitely a single digit birthday. It was also something of an atypical birthday for me in that, going from the photos at least, I only invited boys. Not sure what the hell that was about given that for my whole life my best friends have almost always been female. Maybe it was only boys in that particular photo. Maybe I was going through a phase that birthday, who knows.

And it looks like the majority of the party took place in the backyard, which is always the advantage of having a birthday in March in Australia.

Just before my birthday we must have gotten a new refridgerator, and I'd saved the box or been given it to play with, which was awesome because the box was MASSIVE. Not really surprising given what it contained.

At some point during the party me and the half dozen or so other little boys all piled into said box and had our photo taken. You can kind of tell which one's me in the photo since I'm the one who doesn't look happy about the situation since I'd been really, really careful with the box, making sure I didn't damage it. But as you can imagine 6 little boys hyped up on sugar weren't all that careful and while the box didn't get completely trashed, it was in much worse shape after the party than before it.

It's also weird that I remember that more than I remember anything else about the party.

Kite-flying

I don't know that I really did much kite flying as a kid beyond the odd paper bag kite we may have made in school.

And I've documented all my kite flying experiences in the blog already.

I'm just a little bit sad that the kite shops all seemed to have gone out of business, or else gone to an online only version. There isn't even a proper kite shop presence at the Kite Festivals anymore. I would have thought they would have done a ton of business at those things.

Just thinking about it makes me want to fly a kite again... and maybe investigate one of those ones that's really simple to put together... the one I have at present it really beautiful but a pain to construct every time.

Camping

I'm not one for The Great Outdoors.

I would much, much, much rather enjoy myself in the Great Indoors... I don't mind the odd excursion, but I never really saw the point in sleeping outside in a full body straight jacket under a flimsy bit of nylon when there are places with roofs and beds and hot and cold running everything.

Essentially the only time that I've ever been camping in my life was through school.

And I can only think of four instances of that... three involving tents and one involving a big cabin divided up into individual rooms.

Basically all my camping memories revolve around rain, cold, putting up tents which takes forever, unappealing food and being glad to be home again.

Trampolining

When I was young there was a kid who lived down the street and around the corner from me who had a tramampoline (Simpsons reference). I guess I must have known him from school... although all the memories I have of him are trampoline based so it's possible he was just a neighbourhood kid.

I think that may have been the only reason I was really friends with him... like you do when you're a kid. He has a trampoline, you don't... ergo he's your friend for as long as he stays in the neighbourhood and lets you play on his trampoline.

Or, in this case, he was my trampoline friend until La Cousina came over to his place to tell me it was time to come home and he was really nasty to her and sent her away without me even knowing she'd been there. After Ma came to get me and told me, I didn't have a trampoline friend any more. Not because she made me, but as much as La Cousina may have annoyed me, she was still my cousin and while I could complain about her, as soon as anyone else said anything it becomes about family and that's more important.

Bike riding

I don't actually remember how old I was when I learned to ride a bike... but I do know that it had one of those banana seats popular in the early 80's which was dark blue and had a slight glitter effect if it caught the light.

Somewhere around the place there's a photo of me learning to ride the thing, assisted by our across the road neighbour, I'm guessing while Ma was taking the picture.

I would ride that thing all the time, especially in summer. And a certain points I had some of those things you attach to the spokes, the little bead things... and I may have done that "put a card in the back spokes so it makes a cool noise" trick.

The bike that replaced it when I was 12, almost 13, was a big black multi-geared mountain bike type arrangement. It was also the reason that I broke the only bone I've ever broken in my life.

I was riding through a ditch at an angle, the back wheel took on a wobble... suddenly the bike went left and I went right and I fell off and snapped my arm clean through just above the wrist.

I don't think I really spent all that much time on bikes after that.

Yo-yo

I was a kid in the late seventies and early eighties... so of course I had a bunch of yo-yos... although the one I remember most was an orange one with the Fanta logo on the sides.

Unfortunately I was never particularly great at doing tricks... I think I managed the occasional instance of "walking the dog" but for the most part I was happy if I could just make it go all the way down and then all the way up again without getting it all twisted.

Tree climbing

In the house we lived in when I was a kid we had a giant apricot tree in the corner of the back yard. And one of the branches came out from the main trunk parallel to the ground and was big and thick enough to support my weight.

Granted the bark of the tree wasn't all that comfortable for long periods of time... it's a really rough bark... but I spent a lot of time up in that tree during the summer months.

Skipping

I'm not going to lie... I spent the majority of my childhood spending time and being friends with girls much more than boys.

So naturally enough, it's not really surprising that I've partaken in the ritual of skipping. In all likelihood I did a bunch of skipping with La Cousina, since that seems plausible, and I have no doubt that they made us do some sort of skipping related activity in primary school as part of PE.

But my major skipping related memory is spending time with my other female cousin (the one from Second Christmas, who isn't actually my biological cousin at all, she just happens to have the same father as one my actual cousins) with a skipping rope tied onto the side of the carport so we could recreate the effect of having two people working the rope while one was skipping even though there was only the two of us.

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random warwick hotness

Today's Random Hotness features the boys of Warwick Rowing in their Naked Calendar.

For the 2014 calendar, the guys not only want to get their kit off again, but they also want to raise money for a new sports-based campaign to combat bullying and raise awareness in schools about prejudice and particularly homophobia.

And to accomplish this very worthy goal they've turned to crowd-funding. As I write this they've reached 88% of their £5,000 target and they still have 46 days left to go.

So if you fancy some naked English rowers on your wall, check out their Crowdfunder campaign.

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open day saturday

Sometimes a last minute plan turns out to be the right plan.

We did the usual supermarket thing this morning... no big surprise there.

Except Grindr Supermarket Guy was right there at the front of the store and it was impossible to avoid him... not that it was an issue, I said hi, he said hi, we had a moment of eye contact, that was about it.

Sadly his pants were slightly too baggy for me to really check out his ass as I walked past him.

He's slightly cuter than I was remembering him I think... which is pretty much a guarantee that beyond seeing him at the supermarket every week I'll never hear from him again. Had I decided I wasn't interested, I wouldn't have been able to get rid of him.

Anyway... we finished the shopping portion of the morning, and the unpacking and whatnot and then headed into the city to check out the Moonta Street Markets in Chinatown. We actually got there a little too early, and there were only about ten slightly pointless looking stalls, so we decided to take a wander.

We ended up wandering from the Central Markets almost all the way down to North Terrace to check out the street art that I blogged about the other week.

The Jam Factory was also having an open day... actually kind of two open days... one at the actual Jam Factory and a "Meet the Makers" event at The Old Queens Theatre. This was the last minute plan part of the day... which turned into A Very Good Idea.

The Makers Market wasn't that great... yeah, there was a bunch of stuff, but almost all of it was stuff we've seen at other markets. So we didn't spend very much time there... just one circuit of the stalls.

Then we headed over to the Jam Factory... I fully expected that we wouldn't spend that much time there but it ended up being the main thing we did.

First we hung around in the shop area watching a woman throw a massive porcelain pot. Other people came and went as the pot progressed but we stuck it out and watched the whole thing come together. It was really interesting actually, especially given the number of times I thought the pot was seconds away from spiralling out of control.

From there we went up to the glass studio viewing area and watching some very attractive guys making some very attractive glassware. It was interesting to see them all work as one big team to bring multiple copies of the same piece to life... one guy seemed to be the lead guy, he was in charge of properly shaping the pieces, then there was a guy who was in charge of finishing them off, and they both had assistants, then there was the guy who was prepping the tubes.

They were a well oiled machine... and it was a little bit hypnotic, I'm not actually sure how many of the bottles we watched them make, but it was quite a few. And I very nearly bought one of the bottles, except they were really expensive... gorgeous though.

Then we wandered through the rest of the Jam Factory, having a good look around, checking out the work by various artists, stopping to chat with some, until eventually we were all done.

We then hiked back up to the Central Market, checked out the Moonta Street Market very briefly (and by "checked out" I mean walked past everything once), grabbed something to eat really quick from the market and then called it a day.

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photo friday: tall ships

The blog has been quieter than usual this week, partly because not a whole lot has been going on, but mostly because I've spent every evening this week working on a Doctor Who cross stitch pattern to give to Ma for her birthday.

At this point I'm most of the way through the TARDIS, and then I have the Tenth Doctor and four of his companions (Tyler, Jones, Noble and Song) to do. And two weeks to do it in. Nothing like leaving everything til the last minute. It looks pretty good so far, although I did realise as I filled in the white windows on the TARDIS that I think my fabric is a little too close to white. It should be okay though... it looked better once I started to fill in the blue of the TARDIS.

When I was laying in bed this morning I suddenly heard a little beep noise which didn't register at first, but then it happened again and I realised that it was the noise that the smoke alarm makes after it's gone off and you hit the reset button. It then continued to do this for another five minutes or so until I had to get out of bed to investigate. In the end I got up on my little step ladder and opened the box and pressed the reset button and after one final beep it stopped. Whether the backup battery is finally running down or not I don't know... I'll have to have another look when there's more light and I haven't just woken up but I couldn't even see where you would change a battery...

Seriously, all I want in life is peace and quiet in and around my apartment and if it's not noisy neighbours, it's dripping taps (which has been quiet for most of the week with the odd lapse here and there) and now suddenly it's a dying smoke detector.

FML! (Yes, I know, it could be 1000 times worse, but let me have this little bit of drama).

Work has still been fairly chaotic this week... I swear, there's an extra person around who I'm giving some of my tasks to, I'm not actually doing any of the extra tasks I picked up when we shuffled jobs around, and yet I'm still chasing my tail all week long. It's nuts. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being busy, but every now and again I'd just like a little less crazy time.

I also went out to the suburbs with H-San to give a presentation... and I was the navigator... now I maintain that I got us to where we needed to go, twice. If you have a meeting request that has a particular location listed, then it makes perfect sense that that is the place that you direct the driver to, even if it turns out that Google Maps points you to the wrong place.

If someone decides to put the wrong address in the location field but the right address in the body of the email, I don't think I can be held responsible for that one.

I did then find the correct address and get us there... a little bit late perhaps, but nobody but H-San seemed particularly bothered. It will be some time before I hear the end of that though.

I came home tonight to find my Ridge front pocket wallet in the letterbox... I think it's going to take a little bit of getting used to, especially with ease and speed with which I'll be able to access the right card at the right time... but I've been putting my regular wallet in the front pocket of my pants for a while now (when I remember at least), and it just takes up too much room, so this should be a nice alternative.

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random garden hotness

Curly haired, shirtless and a little bit unshaven this week's Random Hotness, actor Jonny Weston, is exactly who you'd want to find in your garden on a warm summer afternoon.

These shots are by Kristopher Kelly for YVY Mag.

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low key saturday shopping

One of the things I hate most on a Saturday morning is waking up and being convinced that it's a week day.

I suppose waking up on a weekday thinking it's the weekend is worse, at least if it's actually the weekend you have that moment of relief.

Which is pretty much what happened this morning... and then I went back to bed for another half an hour.

Eventually I got up and had a brief moment of "where the fuck is that and how the hell did I manage to lose it in this tiny apartment" about the cross-stitch supplies I bought ages ago to make a Breakfast Club piece. I still don't know where they are, although I'll look again later.

Then once Ma arrived we headed off to the supermarket.

It was only when I got there that I remembered about Supermarket Guy... I'm pretty sure he was there, but I didn't go out of my way to give him the opportunity to say hello, so nothing really came of that. I'm not especially bothered to be honest... let's just say that he's not really my type.

Anyway, shopping was fairly average... as was unpacking said shopping.

We didn't really have a plan, but Ma wanted to look at a couple of things in the city, so we headed in to do that. The majority of our time was spent in Harris Scarfe looking for a new quilt and quilt cover for Ma... although I did find a Lego lunchbox for about 40% off, so I snapped that one up.

Then we stopped off for second breakfast (or possibly lunch) at Colin & Co and that was pretty much it for the city.

When we got back to my place we checked out the couple of possible hotel options for Melbourne and ended up booking one in Chinatown that looks like it'll be pretty decent.

And that was that.

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photo friday: splash of colour

This has been such a long, busy, crazy week that by the time I left work this afternoon, I was, to paraphrase Captain Mal Reynolds from Firefly, aiming to misbehave.

The actual form of misbehaving didn't amount to anything particularly newsworthy, but it was a different way to spend a Friday afternoon. And it meant that I wandered through town much later than usual and ended up having dinner at Zambrero on Rundle Street before heading home a different way than usual.

My week improved somewhat after Wednesday... I didn't have less stuff to do, far from it, I currently have a to-do list that's about three quarters of an A4 page, albeit with a number of things crossed off. However I was able to pass some of the more generic tasks off to the new girl, which freed up my time so I could concentrate on things that needed my personal attention.

Last night I headed over to Tink's place to get my hair did. At some point a couple of weeks ago I'd noticed my hair in the bathroom mirror and work and suddenly had a revelation that the blonde we'd been using was just too blonde, so I asked Tink to take it a couple of shades darker. I think we just ended up with the colour we used to do. It's a slightly warmer blonde, a little more honey than the other colour.

Other than that we just made with the chatting... and as usual we covered a range of topics... it's always an enjoyable evening.

My tattoo related discussions with Owl Girl continued this week, seemingly the closer she gets to getting her tattoo, the more I get kicked into gear regarding mine. And weirdly, one of the artists that I was planning to email with a description of the piece of artwork I want just messaged me on Twitter... so clearly that's supposed to be something that happens tonight.

So if you'll excuse me...

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random warhol hotness

Sometimes it's not until you hear two names on a project that you go "well DUR... of course".

Today's Random Hotness is one of those moments. I'd seen a couple of these shots of Bel Ami/Kinky Angels pornstar Kevin Warhol around the interwebz for a while, but I didn't realise they were by Rick Day until I decided to use them for today's post. But really, why would you not get one of the premier photographers of hot manflesh together with a company that has access to so many hot young gentlemen.

And they all came together in Coitus Magazine for their Diary Days of Summer spread.

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wednesday musing: fractured lego tales

"Yes, I've created a monster... but I'm not sure about the green..."

It's been a hell of a week, and it's only Wednesday...

Work has been completely insane, not only was I running around kind of doing the work of three people for the first two days (okay, maybe two or two and a half at the most), but today we got a new staff member and guess who's looking after her... yep, me.

She's a lovely girl though, so it could definitely be worse. It has left me a little bit frazzled though.

"Come here you horrible wolf and let me show you what a big axe I have!"

On the up side tonight I booked the flight for our trip to Melbourne in August... I also started looking at hotels and bought tickets to see the Hollywood Costume exhibition at ACMI.

It's only four days... well, two whole days and two half days... but we haven't been to Melbourne since the beginning of last year.

Now I just need to work some Google-Fu and see if there's anything else on at the same time that could be fun to do.

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shopping adventures with added fork on the road

It's been a long day, but surprisingly cruisy. And clearly it ended with us going off to Fork on the Road... but more on that later.

Although I always hate that moment when you wake up on a weekend at the regular weekday time and it takes your mind a few moments to remember that it's actually the weekend and that you can actually go back to sleep for a while.

It turns out that I didn't need to worry about weirdness from the guy at the supermarket, he wasn't even there... which actually was a little disappointing, if only because it would have gotten any potential weirdness out of the way (maybe... I'm not sure if it will make things more or less weird to be honest).

After we hit the supermarket we headed down the road to see the Honey Man... it's been a while since we headed down to see him, and there were sadly very few honey options... previously he's had about six or seven different varieties, but today he only had three. Supposedly it's been a bad season, which is unfortunate.

Since the news broke that Spring Gully was in financial trouble, we've been intending to head down to their factory store to show our support. With one thing and another we've not managed it until today.

It's actually much closer than I thought it was... just down at the end of Prospect Road (which we were already most of the way down due to supermarkets and honey acquisition) in Cavan. It's also a much smaller shop that I was imagining... but we picked up a few things that were slightly cheaper than they are in the shops, which is nice, and we also had a bit of a chat with (I'm guessing) Mrs Spring Gully.

Then it was back to my place to unpack and whatnot... and for Ma to open the Warrior Woman minifig I got her (which she quite liked).

We didn't really have much of a plan for the remainder of the day, other than the fact that we were headed to Fork on the Road at 4pm, but Ma wanted to head into the city to look at a couple of things... and half a plan is better than no plan at all.

After seeing my Series 10 minifigures Ma decided that she wanted to pick up her own Sad Clown, Bumblebee Girl and Sea Captain... so after we got into the city we headed off to Myer.

Thankfully they'd put out a whole new box and Ma actually found all three herself. I did confirm them all for her though, and it also didn't take a whole lot of time which was good.

We did some other random wandering and ended up in the food court in the new Rundle Place. We were both a little thirsty so we stopped at Fresh Junction to get something to drink.

I decided to try the sugar cane juice... just because it sounded so damn weird. I don't think they've been selling all that much of it because the woman upsized me for free. Unfortunately a large serving was way, way, way too much. Don't get me wrong, it was nice... but in very small doses. I'm not even sure the size I originally ordered wouldn't have been too much... I think a small size would have worked, since I only drank about a third of what I had.

After we'd finished wandering around the city we did a quick detour to Bowden to scope out the location for Fork on the Road and then came back to my place to kill some time.

We ended up watching Up, and by the time we were finished with that and the special features it was time to head off to get our Fork on. Thankfully the weather held off... although the sky was incredibly ominous and there were half a dozen spots of rain.

This particular Fork on the Road was partly for the opening of part of the new development at Bowden... it was slightly odd... there was a whole separate "private party" going on at the same time as Fork, which was weird... and the Premier gave a speech, which I only paid attention too long enough to snap a photo before wandering back to the food.

We did the usual trick of getting a little bit of stuff from a range of places... and mostly we shared it out between us...

We started with a couple of pastizzi from Archie, then shared one of the most awesome toasies ever from Little Big Cheese Co and a passionade from The Little Van That Could.

Then we got a trio of tacos from Tacocat, and some fries and yummy dipping sauce from Chimichurri Grill. So much yummy food!

We finished it off with some gelato from Giro Gelato, chocolate for me and honeycomb for Ma and picked up some of the yummy brownies from Four Seeds (which is also where I snapped the guy with dreadlocks and the Lego Spaceman teeshirt).

So even though Ma isn't interested in doing things for Mother's Day, it was nice that this kind of synced up together and we did something fun.

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