photo saturday: my place

I took these in May just after I moved into this apartment but never got around to posting them... they were supposed to be part of my "exposing my apartment" series (which included instalments from 2006, 2008, 2010 and the "new bookcases" post from 2013).

So why now?

Because my land agent called me on Thursday to tell me that the owners aren't going to be renewing my lease when it expires in February.

Once again (even though we're talking about completely different owners to the last time this happened) this isn't that much of a surprise... I haven't mentioned it in any of the blog posts, but the agent called me before Christmas and said that the owner wanted to have another real estate agent through to give a valuation. Weird, I admit, but they did the same thing around the same time the photos in this post were taken, and nothing came of it... so I thought maybe it was something they just did from time to time.

The agent came, with an offsider (who it seemed was just there to write a lot of things down) and I basically gave them a rundown on all the things that really should be fixed up... all those niggly little things that I was quite happy to live with, but that would be nice.

And then she called me to tell me she wanted to come back, along with the owner and "her painter" to look at some things to, as she put it, "spend money on".

So I finally met the owner... which was fine... slightly weird but fine. And I told him directly that they had a tenant for as long as they wanted one.

Turns out they only want one until February.

So I'm left, yet again, in the unenviable position of needing to find a new place to live. Which is all the more of a pain in the ass because, for the few faults this place has, and any of the minor complaints that I've had in the two years (like the occasionally noisy neighbours, the fact that the gas meters are both inside the house), this place is about as perfect as anything I could have hoped for. There's a ton more room than the old place, it was essentially only two streets away so moving wasn't overly complicated, the view of the city is amazing, the fact that the slightest breeze runs right through the apartment and that I finally had space to put artwork on the walls.

And now I have to leave.

I spent the majority of Thursday after I found out in that same state I was in the last time... somewhere between feeling like I want to throw up and wanting to break down in tears (and yes, I'm aware how much of a First World Problem this is, but it's the only world I have). Which is great when you're trying to be a productive member of the world.

But I've bookmarked a number of places which all have open inspections next week and I know after last time that if needed I can pack up my entire apartment in nine days.

And once I have a new place I'll book the nice guys from MiniMovers again, get them to deliver a stack of boxes and then start deconstructing my life.

I was only thinking last week that I really need to clean out both the wardrobe and the kitchen cupboards... clearly that was a matter of being careful what you wish for.

Stay tuned for further updates. Oh, and keep your collective fingers crossed for me.

The only, very, very tiny positive is that my agent agreed that the inspection I had scheduled for next Tuesday is essentially pointless and we cancelled it. Actually he's been great through my whole tenancy, and one of the first things he said to me after he told me the bad news was that he's already had a look on their books to see if there was anything else I would be a good fit for. Which, although there wasn't, was very sweet of him.

Unsurprisingly, everything else that happened this week seems inconsequential... but last Sunday morning I managed to break one of my favourite glasses (as in drinking, not eye), plus I wanted to take my netbook to Crumpler to check the size of a camera bag that I looked at last week (but never blogged about because I wasn't sure if I could be bothered going back).

So first I went to Crumpler, managed to shove my netbook in the "iPad" pocket of the camera bag, bought it (it's pretty damn nice, and I still have room left over to actually put my glasses in there, or a bottle of water or something)... then headed off to IKEA to buy a couple of replacement glasses. And I walked out with both them and a "moose head bird house"... I don't know how else to describe it... fuck knows what I'm going to do with it, but it's cute.

I don't think there's much of anything else that happened during the week until the aforementioned phonecall.

Oh, there was one other thing, when I called into the main branch of my bank in the city to pick up "all the coin bags"... turns out they have a coin counting machine... but more on that in a little bit.

This morning was a little slow... but as usual, I got myself downstairs just as Ma arrived. The supermarket excursion was pretty damn average... and we didn't really buy all that much stuff... especially since I managed to live on leftovers for three days (well, three days including the original meal).

Our regular checkout girl was finally back, so we were able to give her the Christmas goodies we'd put to one side for her. It's always amusing to see how appreciative people are about getting our goodies... I assume I'll have a similar experience when I take the batch to Tink next week.

After we'd come back and unpacked, I filled up one of my backpacks with loose change (well, not filled, but it was certainly very, very heavy given that it contained the oddly precise 1270 coins of various denominations)... I wasn't particularly precise, I just emptied between half and two thirds of each of my money boxes into the bag.

Then we drove into the city and Ma dropped me at the bank so I could make use of the coin counting machine. The rest of the bank was shut, so it was just me and the machine (well, initially it was me, an old dude who was also using the coin machine and his dog)... and then I filled it up so much that the machine went "nah, that's it, no more" but because I was trying to do about three things at once, all while there was an alarm blaring away somewhere in the bank for some unknown reason, I somehow rejected the entire first attempt and had to start over from scratch.

I did manage to get all my coins through though, but it seems like he machine is only capable of coping with between $500 and $600 before it needs to do the rest as a new transaction. It doesn't tell you that though... it just lets you dump all your coins in and then vomits the ones it doesn't want when you're done. But in the end I deposited $1087.50, which is slightly less than I was expecting, but every little bit helps, especially since I'll have to shell out for a bond and the movers and all the other little incidentals that comes with moving house.

From there we dropped into Swatch so Ma could get a new battery, and that was really about all we needed to do... we did wander down to Zing so I could put a preorder in for the new Assassin's Creed Pop Vinyl toys to go with all my other AC boys... and we poked around Spotlight and Lincraft... and grabbed a drink... and that was pretty much it.

Short, sharp and shiny as they say.

Current Mood:

leaving number sixty one

By the end of tomorrow, I won't live at number sixty one any more.

I still remember the very first time I set foot in this apartment block... I'd tagged along with Lownee when she came to inspect the place. Interestingly though, it wasn't this apartment, it was the apartment right in the corner of the block and it was so very dark and dingy I'm really not surprised that she didn't want it.

The agent later offered her this place and she took it. But coming from a big old share house she never quite settled into the apartment, I think it was just too small for her and made her a little bit stir crazy (she did end up visiting us a lot). So when Ludo decided that he and I really shouldn't live together any more (without consulting me on the matter first I might add), the plan was hatched that we'd swap... I would move in here and Lownee would move in with him.

That was 1996, give or take. Lownee and Ludo disappeared off into the ether circa 2002, but I'm still living here... until tomorrow at any rate.

Even though Lownee only lived here for about six months, I still have a couple of fond memories of hanging out with her here... although, to be honest, they're pretty much all from the same night. That was the night she spilled pasta sauce on the carpet (the stain is still there under my bookcases)... and then later that night we invented the modern Pantheon of deities (and blessed be to Rental Agreement, God of Housing for the boon he granted me with this new apartment... and I also offer up a little prayer to Schlepp, God of Moving for tomorrow's festivities).

I remember the day we swapped apartments too... not the date or even what time of year it was (although my brain says that it was summer, or possibly early autumn... I have a feeling it was between Christmas and my birthday) but I know that it was the first time I'd met Lownee's parents and her dad gave me a hand-crushing handshake... I remember we had to move her furniture outside the apartment first so we could get my stuff inside. I remember that once everything was all done, Ma went and got Chinese food while I took a shower (and the first shower in a new place after a day of moving is a little like having really good sex) and we watched something on my little tiny TV with it perched on the kitchen bench because the rest of the room was too full of boxes, bookcases and parts of my old modular lounge.

And there were only four pieces of furniture left that came with me on that move... and I'm not taking any of them with me, they'd all been relegated to the communal dumping area outside (and have since all been snapped up by people wandering by). In the seventeen years I've lived here, I've replaced everything else at least once.

As I look around the place, I can see the apartment both as it is right now (ie somehow both full of cardboard boxes yet also feeling quite empty) and how it was that first night, and almost every point in between (there's even photographic reference for 2006, 2008, 2010 and earlier this year).

I remember sitting on the old green rocking chair when Mouja the cat wandered into the apartment... I remember spending a lot of time talking to Raury and Sheba and J on that big ugly modular couch... or in the case of Sheba, deconstructing the couch somewhat so we could enjoy a floor picnic every Wednesday evening. I remember the first time I ever had Indian food was also with Sheba during said floor picnic.

And I remember when I got my first computer here, well Raury made it for me to be honest... and those first adventures on a quite young internet... then the upgrade to the computer I used to start this blog. And then bringing the laptop out of the bedroom with the arrival of Beast.

I also remember sitting at that second computer when BlueDragon was visiting and him coming to stand next to me wearing nothing but the cute little Bonds (I think) undies I'd bought him. Actually the two stronger memories from his week long visit are the image of him sitting on the floor packing on his last night while we had a conversation about a whole lot of shells we'd collected and the fact they wouldn't survive the trip in his luggage and then there's the memory of sitting up in bed with him resting against my chest and drawing me a floor plan of his house. Okay, there's also a couple of memories about the sex in there too.

Speaking of which, one thing that this apartment has seen probably more than it's fair share of is sexual encounters... there's been a lot of random strange through that door. There was The Best Sex of My Life, there was Marc, and Phoenix, and that incident with the spanking... and way back at the dawn of time there was the threesome with Ant and Whatshisname (seriously, why the hell can't I remember his name... I probably have it written in a notebook somewhere, but my whole life is in boxes at this point... update: found it, Dax)... the very physical session with Hot Sweaty Monkey Boy in which no words were spoken, but I just threw him bodily around the bed and everybody got to their happy place... right up to Alex who has become something of an irregular playmate of late and as of this afternoon also has the dubious honour of being the last person I'll have sex with in this house.

There have been guys that were memorable, guys that were forgettable, guys I wish I'd never invited over, guys I was happily surprised with when they arrived and guys I wish had come to visit more than they did. I'm not even going to attempt to do the maths... partly because I know that I wouldn't actually be able to come up with an accurate number but also because it'd be a reasonable sized number... but perhaps not as large because I'd only be counting guys who came here.

Anyway, I've had a lot of sex in these four walls over the past seventeen years, let's just leave it at that.

And of course I photographed a whole range of young gentlemen in various states of undress within these walls... on a strictly (amateur) professional basis of course.

I've lived here through at least three different landlords, and a vast panoply of neighbours. The original folks who were here when I moved in... the slightly goth gay gentleman with the great furniture... the old guy who went off his medication one weekend, spent far too long on my doorstep talking to Lownee when she was visiting, then broke someone else's window the following day and was hauled off later that week by the police and an ambulance... the girl from upstairs who occasionally had really, really noisy sex with her boyfriend in their bathroom and who I spent a couple of hours with once when a bird crashed into her window and she didn't know what to do with it... the short, dark haired girl from next door with the really gorgeous boyfriend who I nearly invited in after they'd had a massive row and she'd thrown him out of the apartment. Through to the Asian student with the guitar who lived upstairs... the annoying guy with the skateboard who used to ride up and down the courtyard... the hot wog boy with the motorcycle who gave me a beer while we chatted on our respective doorsteps... all the way through to the tide of inconsiderate and frustrating neighbours I've been putting up with for the past seven(ish) years.

I'm hopeful that Rental Agreement has seen fit to gift me with a building full of neighbours who are much easier to live with. I'm pretty sure there's at least one other gay in the building (if the rainbow flags on one of the cars in the carpark is to be believed) and there was a very cute boy filling a car with a bunch of stuff the day I was there for the inspection... so I'm hopeful that I'll have better or, at the very least, more attractive neighbours.

This place has also seen the birth of a whole bunch of routines in my life... from the fortnightly movie night and the Saturday shopping adventures with Ma, to my morning walk.

But you know what, even though both the current landlord and most importantly my neighbours have driven me crazy and the apartment is falling to pieces in a hundred little ways (and has been for a while since it was always an uphill battle to get the landlord to do anything), I'm going to miss this place. It was the first place I ever lived alone, it's seen me through most of my twenties and essentially all of my thirties (bar three months), it's seen the rise and fall of relationships with a number of very important people in my life and even to this day I still find myself walking in and saying "Hello Little House".

I'll miss the bright yellow countertops and the view of the sunsets and sunrises and the big wall of windows and the feeling of snugness and the ability to stickybeak on everyone as they come and go and the sense of contentment I get walking through the door... and even though I'm taking them with me, I'll miss the memories that every square inch of this place brings flooding back, even now as I sit here surrounded by cardboard and the detritus of my life.

So there's really only one thing left to say... Goodbye Little House and thanks for the memories.

Current Mood:

my art collection

One of the good things about having time on my hands currently is being able to go down my mental "I'll do that one day when I get around to it" list and checking things off left, right and centre.

From putting together bookcases, to baking cookies, to clearing out excess junk from my apartment... and the latest item was photographing my art collection and creating a blog to house the photos so I can keep track of it all.

And it felt like that was almost all I did yesterday. Granted I didn't start until after 10am when the light in my living room was perfect for taking photos, and it took me a couple of hours to unpack or unwrap or get each individual piece of art in position (and there were a couple that I forgot to do, so I had to add a few more this morning).

Then after lunch I went through and processed all the images, set up a private second blog and spent the whole afternoon going through old blog posts, receipts and the listing of Espionage's former shows so I could get the dates, prices and everything right.

While I said last week, in my post about the aforementioned Espionage's crowdfunding campaign, that I somehow became an art collector without exactly realising it, it isn't until I laid out everything in the blog (and there are four extra pieces that got added this morning) that I really realised how true that is.

Between commercial available prints, limited edition pieces, originals, commissions, vinyl toys and even wearable artworks, the collection runs the gamut of both artists, styles and media. Having said that, both Gary Seaman and Cameron Brideoake feature rather prominently (and I would never have discovered Cameron if it hadn't been for Josh at Espionage).

And interestingly, while I keep thinking that it's all packed away, after a quick head count just now I actually have about half of it out on display. Granted most of the stuff that isn't on display is the big stuff.

It also made me wish I had more than just the one Benzo piece, since that was really the one that started it all.

Current Mood:

my billy bookcases

In May 2010 I had a plan! A plan based on a desire for new bookcases, which I'd had for a while, but it came together as a plan three years ago.

It took until January this year for me to actually take the next step in turning the plan into a reality... buying the bookcases.

And they've stood in their flatpacks, taking up space against my bedroom wall, since January. Yes, I've been going through all my books and my DVDs downsizing my collections so that I could finally put the bookcases up. But all I really accomplished was living with what seemed to be an ever expanding collection of boxes...

Then last week I lost my mind a little bit and dumped my old bookcases outside, which led to me finally being able to get things into gear and put the new bookcases together over the weekend.

It started at 6:30 on Saturday night... just me, a set of tools, the required IKEA instructions and several hours.

I won't lie... between lugging bookcases, screwing screws, hammering, lifting, bending, moving boxes and arranging books, DVDs and tchotchkes, my whole body is sore.

By the time I'd put together the first four bookcases it was 9:15, and the first thing to take pride of place was my Lego R2D2. And because I'd had the foresight to pick up a couple of the battery powered LED lights I was able to give him his own personal lighting.

I'm hoping they still have those lights on sale, because I need about about a dozen more.

I could have left it at that, but I was highly motivated, so I went through and put all my DVDs in place (and found that using some of the packing material from the bookcases behind each row put the DVDs at the perfect level).

If I'd actually kept the DVDs in their boxes in alphabetical order, that would have been a MUCH easier process... but they were spread all over everywhere and it took me a while to get it all together.

Weirdly, there really isn't any rhyme or reason to the placement of the DVD's... they're still in alphabetical order, but half of them are at the top of the shelves and the rest are halfway down. I like it though.

Then yesterday morning I got up and marvelled at the fact that I had new bookcases for a few minutes before getting back to it.

After attacking all the flatpack boxes with a craft knife so they weren't quite so unwieldy, I started with unpacking some of the books, mostly to give me enough boxes and space to tackle packing up the rest of the books, getting rid of the last remaining old bookcase, vacuuming the prehistoric dustbunnies from behind it (bless the dust masks I bought on Saturday, they've been a big help) and constructing it's new replacement.

Then all books I hadn't already found a spot for got laid out on the floor and there was much musing and shelf repositioning and attempting to keep some things together and whatnot.

Other than the DVD's, the shelf positioning is pretty arbitrary... for the most part I put shelves in at the appropriate level to hold the books, but there are a few that may need adjusting over the coming weeks as some of them ended up with extra space.

Once I got all the books in it was time for a shower and then lunch.

After lunch I started going through my tchotchke boxes... I'd already put a few key pieces in as I was going along, but this was unpacking all the rest of my Lego and vinyl toys and general knick-knacks as well as some of my artwork.

Normally this is the bit that I'm the best at... making everything look all pretty-like, but I think my brain may have been a little fried by that point. What it actually felt like was me picking up various bits and pieces and putting it on a shelf and either shaking my head and taking it off again or going "yeah, that'll do".

So by around 4:30 that afternoon, I had this...

I'm still kind of getting my head around the fact that this is what my apartment looks like now.

The Billy bookcases are all so much taller than what I used to have, and I'd had all those old bookcases for a much longer period of my life than the portion of my life before I got them (if that makes any kind of sense), so they literally were part of the furniture.

This is an adjustment.

The "art gallery" bookcase on the right side needs some stuff on top of it (possibly more artwork, but I'm unsure what at the moment, possibly the Benzo piece that really kickstarted my current art fetish.

The Lego beachhouse set in it's box is only there until I get around to putting it together (maybe later today, maybe sometime later this week) and the James Dean painting of the drummer is only sitting there until Christmas as there's another Lego set that will fit right in there. And once I get the final artwork for my tattoo design that's going to replace the framed piece on the second shelf of the art gallery.

I also think that it's time for my ticky tack painting to go off to the happy hunting grounds... it's mostly what to replace it with given the wall in question.

But for the moment I'm happy with the way everything looks.

However when I finally gave up at 4:30 yesterday the rest of my apartment looked like I'd been playing with something unstable and thermonuclear, and I was too shattered to really care.

Thankfully a second long phonecall from Ma (she called me around lunchtime and I'd been sending her progress photos since I put the first bookcase together) gave me enough enthusiasm to at least make everything else look mostly presentable, fill my car with as many empty cardboard boxes as I could manage and clear the bed so I could actually use it.

My apartment is still full of stuff though... stuff that needs to go away, stuff I need to work out what the hell I'm going to do with, stuff that still needs sorting (like my CD collection, which I mostly don't care about, but still need to go through).

But the bookcases are up, the apartment is possibly the most organised it's been for a while and it's all making headway. I need to live with it for a while now, make adjustments so that it all works for me.

Current Mood:

things i like

I realised recently that I have a tendency to use this blog to complain about things that annoy me... not always, but I feel like there's a degree of it that has crept into my writing.

So to counterbalance that I'm going to take a leaf out of my own book and revisit the second ever post I did for the blog.

And, essentially, remind myself of all the things that make me happy.

Some of it is the same as the old list, but a whole bunch is new.

Things I like...

• Guys who fill out a suit nicely.
• Getting parcels in the mail.
  
• Songs by Josh Pyke.
• Casual Friday.
• Accidentally exposed underwear/skin.
• Silence.
• Artwork by my favourite artists.
• Farmers Union Strong Iced Coffee.
• Well shaped hands.
  
• Movies with great dialogue.
• Discovering new pieces of street art.
• Homemade fruit salad.
• Seeing the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House in Sydney.
• Pale redheaded guys with freckles.
• Getting three stars on Angry Birds levels on the first try.
• The smell of old books.
• A good double cut roll.
• Tanned blonde guys.
• Getting good seats for shows.
• Sunset over the ocean.
• Crisp red apples.
• The laneways of Melbourne.
• The curve in the small of a guy's back.
• Playing with Photoshop.
• Pogo's movie/real world remixes.
• The smell of rain on hot concrete.
• Lamb Rogan Josh with naan bread.
• Thunderstorms.
• Piercings, especially nipples and eyebrows.
• Snapping the perfect photo.
• The colour red.
• Haighs chocolate.
• Bookstores.
• Good kissers.
• Guys in hoodies and not much else.
• People who make me laugh out loud.
• Clean sheets.
• Burger Theory burgers.
• Stationery stores.
• Tall, lanky dudes.
• Hot showers.
• Scarf weather.

Current Mood:

exposing my apartment: part trois

I've "exposed my apartment" twice before... and while the general layout doesn't change at all, the details do... picture here, picture there, random tchotchkas shuffle around...

Although what's strange, even to me, is that even though I put 28 litres of stuff in a box yesterday (which is now loitering under my head), when I put the reduced amounts of stuff back in place last night, the shelves are all still full essentially. Which pretty much tells me that they were seriously overstuffed before I started.

I'm so not designed to do the minimalism thing though... I'd go nuts...

But I really do want new bookcases. My only problem is the same problem I have with replacing anything... what the hell do I do with the old ones. Or rather, if I want to give the old ones away, how the hell do I get them to where they need to be.

Ah well... it'll all come out in the wash...

Of course now everything else looks untidy by comparison...

Current Mood:

photo friday: exposing my crumpler

I'm taking a leaf out of photographer Jason Travis for this week's Photo Friday... I saw his Persona series on Flickr and fell in love with not only the concept but the way he chooses to lay out the objects...

So this is my homage... oddly though, it shows that I carry a lot more shit around with me in my bag than I thought I did...

It's been something of an odd day... I spend about three quarters of it working on a workflow process structure flowchart... and I wouldn't mind, but it's not even for our group... but if I'd left it up to the group in question it would have ended up being distinctly half assed.

I also got my hands on all but a couple of episodes of Dollhouse... so very excited about that, not that I don't have enough unwatched teevee shows on DVD already...

Now... serious question... if it just me or does anyone else ever get the overwhelming desire to bite the neck of the person in front of them on the bus...

Okay, just me then...

But if a very attractive gentleman will get on the bus, sit directly in front of me in an otherwise empty half of the bus, then it's not my fault...

Moving along...

I spent far, far, far too long making ring tones for my iPhone last night... I got a program from one of the girls at work which allows you to choose a particular 30 section of a song to turn into a ringtone... but I didn't realise until this morning that I could actually do it with things in iTunes (or alternatively I was scared off by the intensely stupid "Artists" folder system)... so there will be more ringtones to be made...

Anyway, I really need to go and make some food...

Current Mood:

thoughts on rage

Once upon a time, back in the early Jurassic period of my life, Sheba presented all of the regular crew with these little bottles of essential oil blends she'd whipped up herself in that Earth Mother/Voodoo Priestess way she had.

While I don't remember the actual blend of oils she used in mine, I do remember that I had to apply it at my temples and the soles of my feet. When one of the others asked her why the soles of the feet, she said it because I was often "walking rage".

Sadly, it was a pretty damn accurate assessment. No, make that present tense... it IS a damn accurate assessment.

I just seem to have this immense well of rage in me that so easily tapped into. It's just incredibly easy for me to go from calm to wrathful in very short order. Especially when I feel like I'm being ignored or when people annoy me.

It's not all the time though... sometimes I can control it easily (or at the very least, I can remain at the "gentle simmer" rather than the volcanic explosion), but other times it just comes out of nowhere and surprises even me. How the hell people around me deal with it I have no idea... other than just assuming that I'm being a dick.

I just wish I knew why. I mean most of the time I know what sets me off, but I have no idea why I have this smoldering furnace of rage at my core.

Because maybe if I knew the "why", I could make it stop.

Current Mood:

photo friday: still life with beast

Still life with Beast (2009)

*contented sigh* Okay, so I officially have the full and complete weight off my mind re: The Beast.

Everything was running smoothly, except for my FTP program... I was using a shiny new program and it just wouldn't connect to the web space. Cue me all despondent and a little bit cranky. But today at work I tried with the old and classic FTP program I've used forever... and lo and behold it worked. I wasn't sure if it was going to work for me here at home, what with the what wireless router thing (I read a few things online that seemed to suggest that might be the cause of the problem), but I figured it was always worth a try. So try I did... and it worked first time. Woohoo!

Once that was done and I'd deleted everything from the old space, I sent off an email to my old ISP, essentially telling them where they could go and stick their overseas call centre amongst other things.

Just in time too... because in theory my old account expires tomorrow.

So now I'm all set. It does mean that every single one of my mood icons (bar the one on this post) is cactus (I probably could have left them up until they killed off my old account, but that might have only been another couple of days, and I wanted a clean break). So I'll get around to fixing them up... sooner rather than later hopefully.

It's been a hell of a week in general really... it seems like it's gone on forever and ever and ever... partly because so much stuff has been going on, but also because like a stupid bunny I've been staying up way past my bedtime each night, fiddling around on the laptop. Tonight was the first night that I was actually able to just come home and relax... Tuesday was the movies, Wednesday was the visit from J, yesterday was my haircut... like I said, I'm sure there should have been about three more days in there somewhere... it can't only have been three days ago that I got connected to ASDL.

So now I can officially switch over and start freaking out about the Melbourne trip. Fortunately it does mean that I can really only freak out between now and Wednesday...

And to be honest, at present I'm too freakin tired to bother freaking out.

Work was incredibly dull today... like mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly dull... there were no emails, no phonecalls, no nothing... but lots of going through a document and updating it. BORE-RING!

And when it wasn't totally boring, H-San and Sugarmonkey were giving me grief about getting a Facebook page... or rather because I have absolutely zero interest in getting one. Seriously, I've never seen the point of them. If I've lost contact with people, it's usually been for a reason or completely on purpose from my part... and I'll be honest, I prefer to keep all the different parts of my life separate from one another. Yes their are some overlaps, but mostly work, home and play do not and should not overlap.

I'm not exactly sure why I feel that way... maybe it's part of the whole gay thing... having to compartmentalise who you are and exposing different sides of yourself to different people. If I'm being completely honest though, it's mostly because I just don't like people that much. Specific individuals, sure... but people as a whole, not really.

So there will be no Facebook for yani, not now and not ever. And given how hard it is to delete one, that's probably a good thing.

For the record, any Facebook junkies can save their breath about trying to "convert" me. As anybody who's spent any time around the blog should be able to tell you, I am a particularly stubborn and bloodyminded individual... and the more people tell me that I "absolutely HAVE to" do something, the more stubborn and bloodyminded I'm going to get.

If nothing else, having said that "aloud" will make me even less likely to do it... which is good.

I do like YouTube though... all those pretty videos...

But as always I digress...

The weather currently, is shitful... according to the little weather icon on my Google Desktop tells me that it's 11°C right at the moment... although it was 9 and raining like a mofo earlier. And it's supposed to continue for the rest of the weekend. I'm hoping that we get some decent weather for the trip... although I can live with clouds so long as it doesn't rain.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to try and do my shopping on my own tomorrow morning... which would mean that I need to pull my finger out of my ass and do some tidying up tonight. I'm kinda leaning that way, but then I have no idea what the hell Ma and I will end up doing for the rest of the day. We pretty much have everything sorted for Melbourne (at least I think so anyway)... so it'd be a whole world of not very much. We'll see... so long as we're out of the wind and weather, I'm happy.

So, yeah... that's about it really... I'm pretty sure there were other things I was intending to include in this post, but my mind has devolved into chocolate custard right now... as you might have been able to tell by the fact that I've been babbling for the last ten minutes...

Hopefully some food will help... mmmm homemade ham and pinapple pizza...

Current Mood:

photo friday: green cubed

Exposing my feet... well, kinda... it's my feet in socks... does that count?

Good Things About Today

• It's Friday!


• Getting an extra hour of sleep (even if it did mean that I skipped my walk)


• Having a left-over Apple & Walnut Scroll to take to work


• Brand new lime green and black striped knee high socks (as above)


• The hot, new(ish), very bearish staff member who has awesome calves (he was wearing shorts... bless you casual Friday!)


• Finding out all about ISDN2+ and a potential new ISP


• Haighs Cappuccino Bar, Marshmallow Bar and Peppermint Truffle Bar


• The SYTYCD Finale (even if it's sad because it means no more SYTYCD and I won't be watching it until tomorrow)


• Attractive young gentlemen as seen on my lunch break


• Reading my first Stephen Fry novel


• A quiet (some would say positively dead) day at work


• People who know more than me and are willing to share their knowledge


• Hot redheaded guys (Ginger Pride is alive and well and I'm seeing them everywhere)


• Having Trev the Goldfish kiss my finger (bless!)


• Fresh tomatoes and basil... whether I turn them into pasta sauce, pizza or bruschetta (I'm thinking pizza)

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my little art gallery

Jamie, in situ (at least for now)

See I told you it was big... that's 72cm of artistic goodness that is... although the frame does makes it seem extra huge. And I can't even tell you why, but there's something about this photo that I really like... probably because it shows off my books and DVDs as well as Benzo's artwork.

There's not a lot else to add beyond what I said yesterday... not about the artwork anyway.

In other news... I did manage to relight my hot water heater at 7am this morning (the fun never stops around here, I swear)... although it lit, then just switched off for no apparent reason, so I had to hang around out there for what felt like hours (I'm guessing that it was no more than five minutes) before I could try again. I would hope it's still working now, as soon as it went on and stayed on I came straight inside and had my shower and haven't used any hot water since (of course now I'm going to have to check that... soon as I get up anyway). But at least I know I can do it now, however annoying it might be... if only the bloody pilot light would stop going out...

And my computer has been even more incredibly annoying than usual today... the browser kept freezing up for extended periods whenever I asked it to do anything (although not all the time, just when it feels like it). It got so bad that I ended up turning it off for a while because I really was getting the shits with it.

The sooner I can trade it in for some sleek, fast and reliable laptop action, the happier I'll be... plus I'm sure that I will end up with a lot more time on my hands, because it won't take about twenty minutes for it to do the tiniest little thing.

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exposing my new bed

While I can't honestly say that I had the worst night's sleep of my life last night... I've definitely had better.

By the time I crawled into bed last night it was pretty late and I was totally exhausted, so you would have thought that my body would have just crashed out. But instead of sinking into the lumpy softness of my old mattress, I felt like I was laying on a sheet of timber.

And I was SOOOOO high up... I don't think I mentioned, but this new mattress is a full foot thick... it was totally able to stand freely on it's side before we put it on the bed yesterday. And the frame is about a foot off the ground too... so that's two feet above the ground.

I'm pretty sure that my old bed would quite happily fit under this bed with a little room to spare (as it is I discovered that all the shoes I've previously had lined up along the front of the dresser will slot nicely under the end of the bed, plus I've got a couple of rollaway containers under there with all my different sets of bedding in them, so now I have space in the top of my wardrobe... which will result in some sort of cleaning/reorganisation frenzy at a later date).

So anyway... very, very high up by comparison.

Add to that a new set of pillows (which weren't too bad actually... but still new), and I had trouble getting comfortable.

I also seemed to overheat really easily last night which resulted in me waking up from time to time, which meant that I would roll over and then have to get comfortable... but considering how I felt when I woke up (and still feel now), I think that the overheating thing was more about the cold or flu or whatever I had yesterday really kicking into high gear. So if I'm being honest it probably wasn't a fair test of the new bed, since I'm obviously not well.

It's still a very imposing piece of furniture in the bedroom though... but I can't get back far enough or fit enough into a shot to really show it, so you'll just have to take my word for it (and for the record, the bed is in the north-west corner whereas my computer is in the north-east corner of my snug little bedroom).

Yes, that is a toy lion in the middle of the pillows... it's not a permanent fixture, but it just seemed right when I was making up the bed yesterday. And in place of artwork, I have my kite hanging over my bed... plus the first ever look at the incredibly dodgy curtains I crafter a couple of years ago...

I'm just glad all the messing about is over with now and I can settle in and start getting used to this new bed. But given that it's so radically different, I can tell that the first time I have sex on it is going to be a whole new adventure...

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exposing my underwear (drawer)

Quite possibly we can file this under "Waaaay Too Much Information" (and if so, please feel free to run screaming into the night)... but what's blogging if not an exercise in too much information?

I haven't done a proper "Exposing Myself" post for a while now... and when I was looking for pictures online to go with my post on Sunday, I discovered two things... the first was that a number of people have actually posted photos of their underwear drawers onto the internet, and a number of them seemed to have very particular ways about arranging said underwear drawers.

To be honest, up until Sunday afternoon, I've always been a "just throw the new stuff in on top of the old stuff" kind of guy. Sure you end up with certain things that get buried at the bottom of the stack and don't get into regular rotation for a while, but you do eventually get to that "all my favourite underwear is in the hamper" moment and you have to go with that you've got... or you rediscover things you haven't worn in a while.

But I thought I'd give this a bit of a try... not completely sure how long it will last, it does involve a degree of folding (although probably a bit less than is involved in bundling up a pair of socks).

As for the type of underwear I have... well the entire left column is varying types of Bonds trunks... some with waistbands and fly fronts, some with internal elastic and no fly, and a few of what I tend to think of as the "fancy variations". The few pairs on the front left are the overflow (so to speak) of those Bonds trunks.

The right side is of the boxer brief genre... predominantly Calvin Klein, but not exclusively... those are usually in the "not so often" category... the other kind are just more comfortable.

Then we have the other genres towards the back in the middle... g-strings (which I seldom wear) and my Bike jockstrap. I also need to stop collecting the Canteen bandanas... I have three of them at the very back and I only ever use them for tying back my living room curtains in Summer. And under all that stuff I think there's a red beanie...

And thus we come to the end of the tour of my entire underwear collection (bar the pair I'm actually wearing of course). There are one or two people I wouldn't mind seeing take this on themselves (and one in particular who seems to have a prodigious amount of underwear and swimwear). And a couple of people I'm sure who won't (*grin*).

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montage monday: toy soldiers

A Monday Montage with a difference... this is my toy soldier collection...

The glass ornament (bottom left of the left hand set of four), the red and green stocking and the nutcracker giftbag are the only things from before this Christmas (actually there is another giftbag that has "proper" toy soliders on it, but I'd prefer to have Ma use that for my presents), everything else is new. Which is impressive, yet scary!

I have noticed a theme developing though... first off, they have to be red. Toy soldiers and/or nutcrackers seem to come in red, green and blue (as per the giftbag and the card at the bottom of the post), but for me they have to be red. I don't know if that's part of my ongoing obsession with scarlet or not (or just some part of my brain going for what it considers to be historical accuracy), but if they're not red then they're just not right as far as I'm concerned.

And there also seems to be a theme towards drums. Partly that's incidental, because a number of them just come with drums (however the Jim Shore drummer/soldier at the bottom right of the right hand set is one of the drummers from The Twelve Days of Christmas... which also explains why he's not in red)... but if I had a choice between one with a drum and one with a different instrument, provided they were both red, I'd go with the drum.

Now that I've kind of "bulked out" the collection this year, I'm going to be more choosy (in theory anyway) about what I get from here on out. I'd like something in the soft toy genre (actually, what I'd really like is a little fat knitted soldier, so I might have to hit the craft markets next Christmas), something in a snow globe, maybe a coffee cup and something involving clockwork. But given how hard it was just to rustle up these ones, I think I'm going to be lucky to get that specific.

It'd be nice though...


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exposing my comestibles

Eddy started it... Tom did it a week ago... I once showed off the outside of it... but today we have the contents of my refrigerator...

The photo is actually from Saturday afternoon, once my fridge was all chockers with post-shopping goodness and nothing-has-been-eaten-yet fullness...

1. Thar be meat in tham thar trays! While I know the middle one is a big chunk of mince (because I'm having it for dinner tonight, turned into chili con carne), I couldn't tell you what the other two are without going to look... or what's on top of them (I think one of the things is pita pockets, and there's probably some frozen chicken stock in there too). Actually, this is the spot that is supposed to be for the ice cube tray with the little drawer underneath so you can catch the prepared cubes for later use, but my freezer is usually too full to give up valuable real estate to an empty space.


2. Honestly, I'm not completely sure what the hell is in this pile... I know there's leftover pasta sauce (and ravioli) from Friday night kinda in the middle there and the box on the far right has frozen fish in it, but other than that it's all a mystery (I'm betting on there being more chicken stock though, my freezer is lousy with chicken stock).


3. Sara Lee Rocky Road Overload Icecream (mmmmmmm), demolished while watching Cars on Saturday night... and behind it somewhere (currently hidden) is the blue coldpack I bought when I blew out my knee.


4. All those narrow looking things standing up behind the bread rolls are various left overs (curries, pasta sauces, stews, casseroles... things that are gloopy in other words), popped into Glad ziplock bags (I tell you what, I couldn't live without those little baggies now), frozen flat and then stacked thusly.


5. Once something is frozen laying down flat, you can stand it however you like... just like this gravy beef (the perfect meat for the aforementioned curries, stews and casseroles)... and there are more Glad bags filled with leftovers stacked up behind that too.


6. Frozen chicken breast, slightly frostbitten frozen chicken breast (really need to use that one), frozen chicken breast, half a frozen chicken breast, frozen chicken breast (have I mentioned that I eat a lot of chicken?) and a spare margarine.


7. The seldom used "Chiller" section of my fridge complete with a take-home pack of Beyond India Lamb Rogan Josh... that will probably be dinner on Thursday with a bowl of steamed green beans on the side.


8. Rolls of film and printer cartridges should live in the fridge, don'tcha know... and there was a can of Black V in there that I got free in town on Saturday... demolished on Saturday evening with pizza.


9. King Island Dairy Chocolate Crème Dessert... Yummy! First of all, it's King Island Dairy, hello (expensive but tasty)... but damn this stuff is good (and just crying out to be licked off somebody's nipples or something)... and even better when eaten with strawberries. Also on that shelf there's cheese (the stuff I bought from the Market the week before last), a couple of different brands of jam and a jar of Beerenberg crushed garlic.


10. You want sauces? I've got sauces from here til doomsday... I've got sweet chilli sauce, I've got two types of barbecue sauce (Heinz BBQ with Honey & Black Pepper and Beerenberg Coopers Ale BBQ), I've got regular tomato sauce (which kinda gets turned into my own slightly more exotic blend, because I add some sweet chilli and some BBQ sauce to it as I go), I've got sweet chilli and sesame sauce for pouring over veggies (not really THAT impressed with that one though), I've got oyster sauce, fish sauce and soy sauce for those Asian cuisine moments... and there's some American mustard and Heinz Salad Cream in there somewhere too.


11. My collection of plain yoghurt, for use in Smashed Broccoli... I keep forgetting how many tubs of it I have, and end up buying extra ones and thus having way too much. And just behind it is the really nice Moo Yoghurt, Rhubarb and Raspberry flavour (although their Passionfruit flavour is nice too).


12. The tart-tastic Nippy's Tangy Lemon Drink (one of my three or four favourite beverages ever)... I can go through two litres of that in just a couple of days... I think it lasted maybe half an hour after the photo was taken, but in my defence there was only a little bit left.


13. Water bottles... there are always some of these in the fridge... come rain, hail or shine... but I really should be using them more often (although I do tend to use the one on my desk at work a lot, so it's not all bad).


14. All my veggies, safe and secure in their little crisper (emphasis on the word little... it's only about half the depth of the fridge, and has a tendancy to fall out at just the wrong moment)... pressed up on display against the plastic are way too many Royal Gala Apples (my current fruit of choice), a head of broccoli (no prizes for guessing what that was for) and the big bag at the bottom that's gone all condensed for some reason, that's full of the aforementioned green beans... I LOVE green beans!


15. And last, but by no means least, Sunday's ration of Farmers Union Iced Coffee, and next to it a 600ml carton of the Strong variety that got demolished with dinner last night.

Current Mood:

exposing my apartment again

Actually this really didn't start out with the intention to be another "Exposing Myself" post, at least not on this scale anyway... I just wanted to show off the placement of my Ticky Tack painting now that it's up on the wall...

But the last time I did this was September 2006, so there have been at least two "post-Christmas major change-arounds" since then... okay, major is perhaps not the right word... it's not like I can move any of my big furniture around... it's like jigsaw puzzle pieces... no matter how you try and squish it in a spot, it will all really only go together properly in one configuration...

But I changed some stuff around after Christmas 2006... and again this year... as well as the fact that all my tchotchka got taken down and dusted and rearranged this year. And I also put up my new cheap Ikea star lights in place of the pre-existing fairly lights (actually the set I took down was a different set from the ones in the original photo... same principle though).

There's also one of my first attempts at painting, Safari, down at the bottom of the bookcase, and I haven't actually noticed since I changed the lights over, but it used to look really groovy when the fairy lights were lit, because they fell behind it, and it would kind of glow from within.

I'm thinking about maybe doing a revisit of my DVD collection once I get back the ones that Ma borrowed on the weekend... especially now that the collection is spread across three cabinets (well, four technically, but three together in one spot)... we'll see I guess...

Current Mood:

exposing my handwriting

I think this week may be a little light on actual blog content... unless of course something terribly interesting happens... which I kinda doubt, but you never know.

I mentioned last week that I went hunting for new and unusual memes... and it's kind of scary the number of things you can find when you put "blog meme" into Google... lots of references to the "book tease" meme though...

Anyway, I found this over on Logtar's Blog and it jumped out at me as not only a good meme, but also a good "Exposing Myself" style post... even though lots of you have already seen my handwriting...

Go ahead and get a piece of paper, then write the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." Sign it with your first name or your handle (not your signature) and take a picture. Then post this and your picture on your blog! It is that simple...

Big and girly and very printed (I did learn how to write in cursive, honest, but once they stopped making us write that way, I stopped doing it)...

Oh, and I haven't bothered dotting my i's for, ooooh, years and years and years and years (I actually don't know how long I've been doing that)... I do cross my t's though... otherwise I'd just have l's... straight legs on my y's... and usually big scary loops on my little f's, although that one is kinda tame...

And if I hadn't been going for clarity in the photo, it probably would have been in pencil, since I write almost everything (with the possible exception of birthday cards and mailing addresses) in pencil.

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my christmas decorations

Given that thus far this week all the posts have had a vaguely Christmas vibe about them, and just to prove that I do actually do something vaguely seasonal at my place (since I don't have room for a tree)... these are my decorations...

There's the two hot guy cards, which I actually bought myself and which come out every Christmas (well, except for one year when I couldn't find the damn things)... the shirtless Santa is from Lip International and Rudolph is by Glen Hanson... and while I think Santa came from somewhere cool and groovy in the city, Rudy was found quite by accident in a newsagents in the middle of suburbia...

The purple baubles are actually one of the things Ma and I bought last year to add to various parcels this year... but when I got them out I figured I could make better use of them by leaving them in the box. Plus, purple...

The longlegged Santas and snowmen came from Target a couple of years ago, marked down during the after Christmas sales... in the case of the snowman in the bathtub, he was originally $19.99, but was marked down to $2.49... gotta love a bargain...

And finally, my little neon Christmas tree... which is just so tacky I think it goes all the way around to cute again... the tree part is green, the star is red... so cute, so tacky...

Oh, and in amongst the rest of the Christmas sales items, Ma found two additional sets of fairy lights that she'd gotten for 60c a piece... so I was able to replace my now defunct lights... yaaay.

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what's on my fridge

Andrew always seems to find the best visual meme's... I guess it must be a Flickr thing...

You've already had a half-assed view of the stuff on my fridge when I showed off the photo of my kitchen, but this time you can actually see what's on there. Given where it is though, there's really not any good place for getting a shot of the fridge... it always ends up too dark... and there's only so much brightening you can do in Photoshop to things that are white...

Anyway...

1. Joe Phillips "Little Bear" dress-up magnet... he's currently undressed because I realised he was getting a reverse tan line and his arms were paler than his body from the sunlight...
2. Elephant magnets... and the one on the right is holding up the flyer for my street's big dumbass Christmas party, so I remember when it is, and can avoid it like the plague...
3. Lifeguard magnets... these are really old... at least fifteen years... and I may or may not have stolen them originally, I don't remember...
4. Flat bottom taco magnet which came with some other Mexican brand food item... it's holding up the scribble drawing J did ages ago and I stuck on the fridge, and a flyer for the Dolphin Cruise that I picked up in Port Adelaide...
5. Cybertart Bunny Bones magnet I got from Melbourne, which has the name of the Indian place Stu took me to for lunch a couple of weeks ago under it...
6. My Wish List...
7. Photo of Mouja the cat...
8. Random magnetic hotness from DNA magazine...

I also have some stuff around the far side too (but trying to get a photo from that angle would have been near impossible)... three goldfish (for luck/prosperity), a little movie poster magnet for Teenage Monster, another magnetic hotness from DNA and a magnet with "useful numbers" on it... Police, Gas Emergencies, Lifeline, stuff like that...

So, yeah, that's my fridge...

Current Mood:

exposing my apartment

I'm taking another leaf out of the book of Eddy again today...

You've seen my favourite things, and what's on my bookshelves.... what's in my DVD collection and then where I blog...

Today I'm exposing my loungeroom/kitchen...

Since Ma and I have busted a proverbial gut over the last couple of weekends cleaning all the filth out of the kitchen, I figured now was as good a time as any to take a photo and blog about it... granted that also lead to me reorganising one of my kitchen counters on Monday night so that the stuff that has been cluttering them up (although it was still tidy) is now away in one of the cupboards.

And while this shouldn't come as a great shock to anyone, I will say up front that I am so NOT all about clean lines and surfaces (unlike some people I could mention... you know who you are)... I'm all about the tchotchka baby! Although I have to say, that what I have now is a totally stripped down version to how it used to look...

I actually shot these yesterday morning, which was good, because the last two mornings have been very sunny and pleasant, but today was a world of grey (although still pleasantly warm, which was good)... and much less worthwhile for taking photos...

My apartment has three rooms... my loungeroom and kitchen are one room, my bedroom is the second room, and the bathroom is the third. So the loungeroom shot was taken with my back (literally) up against the shelf on the back wall of the kitchen (I was half sitting on the countertop actually, since I was using the tripod)... and the kitchen photo was taken from just in front of the teevee and stereo.

This is my loungeroom...

Most of the stuff in here that would fall under the interesting banner has already featured in the other Expose posts I did... but you can also see the painting J did for me in it's new home atop the bookcase...

The poster for A Midsummer Night's Dream is actually from around the time of BlueDragon's visit... I got tickets to the preview upstairs from where I used to work and they gave me the poster at the same time... it also serves a second purpose in that it covers up a hole I made in the paintwork when I pulled down the previous poster (damn that sticky BluTack). It's set at exactly that height because I used to have another four foot bookcase in the gap between the six foot ones, and it came exactly to the bottom of the poster.

The skinny dark brown thing on the wall above the DVD bookcase is an "African" dagger... I don't know if it's actually from Africa or not, or even, really, how it came to us, I think it was sent by some random relative to somebody in my family, and it ended up with me. I've always had a fascination with it ever since I was a kid... it's bound in leather and has a little leather tassle at the bottom... the blade is as dull and rusty as all hell, but I still like it.

And the thing hanging in the top right corner is a wooden model (one of those build it yourself kits actually) of a pteranodon, that I've now had in all four houses I've lived in, which would make it about fifteen or so years old... he's hanging by fishing line from the top of the curtain rod, and only has enough wing space to rotate about halfway around fortunately, otherwise I'm sure I would spend all my time looking at dead-dino-butt...

For the record, my bedroom door is between the walking staff in the loungeroom photo and the three photos on the wall in the next photo... it just didn't actually feature in either of the photos properly...

And this is my kitchen...

The freshly cleaned, newly organised, incredibly spotless kitchen...

Unfortunately there isn't really a way to get a well lit photo of my kitchen (although I did think later that I probably should have switched on the kitchen light when I took this shot... d'oh), since it's not really possibly to get a full shot from inside the space, since it's less than a metre wide.

I've mentioned the matching yellow countertops and door knobs before... the wardrobe and dressing table (which is also topped with the same yellow top) in my bedroom have the same knobs, and my showerhead, toilet seat and bathroom mirror surround are all the exact same yellow colour...

Well, what do you expect, there's a date stamp inside my wardrobe that tells me that the place was built some time around 1965...

Just to the left of the shot is my front door... you can actually catch a glimpse of all the crap that hides behind my front door at the extreme left of the image, although I did spare you the full view.

And the dragon that sits on top of the counter on the left is supposed to be good feng shui... supposedly, it's good to have a dragon to the left of your front door... but since my whole apartment is basically to the right of my front door, this was about the best I could come up with...

On the short wall of the shelves you can just make out my Joe Phillips calendar (the other one is actually inside my wardrobe)... and on the fridge you can just see my 2006 Wish List...

You will probably also notice Blossom and Cartman in amongst the clutter on the shelves... and very sharp eyed viewers may notice that the glasses between the pasta jar (possibly the gayest pasta jar ever, since I stuck a rainbow flag sticker on it) and the Grolsch bottles (mmmm... Grolsch) have superheros on them... god bless Nutella (although the last two have Donald and Daffy Duck on them, and were actually presents I got for my 21st from a girl I worked with at the time)... what you can't see from that angle are the Snoopys (in random "native dress" from various places around the world... I did have most of the set, but culled it down to just the places I liked the look of) and a couple of the X-Men and the small handful of Mister Men... oh hush...

If you look carefully over the top of the microwave, you can just see the top of the magnetic lion I mentioned on Monday...

And, for the record, there aren't strange things sticking out of the top of the green chair... there is actually a small bookcase (that I keep all my photo prints in) behind there... and, like all other bookcases in my house, it has stuff on top of it.

So that's my house...

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