Looking Forward to a Year of Socks

I feel a little bad about abandoning my blog last year but there's not a great deal I can do about it now except attempt to write more often this year. It was a pretty incredible year which saw my Dad getting remarried and three new family members as a result. Here's hoping they'll actually be able to join us in Oz on a more permanent basis soon!

Otherwise I spent a lot of time looking after myself as I'd gotten run down. This meant baking, lots of tea, some knitting and the rediscovery of sketching and jewellery making. So I have many reasons to look forward and now seems as good a time as any to start moving ahead with some projects.

2011 is being touted as the "year of legs". So in celebration of that I've decided to make it a year of sock knitting. So far so good!
I cast on the left sock of Twisted on Christmas day using a skein of my stashed Araucania Ranco Solid yarn in green which is looking gorgeous so far. The tiny 2mm needles have been proving a bit hard on my hands so it's been slow going. I've just gotten to the heel flap which I made a slight error on due to misreading the pattern but having solved that I seem to have discovered that I need to start over anyhow as the sock is a little too tight. ARGH!

Dad's Thuja socks, also cast on on Christmas day, are flying along. The 4mm needles are bliss to work with and Panda Magnum Soft is truly as it's named (soft that is, not a panda). Just turned the heel of the first sock and am a quarter of the way through the foot.

I also found the socks I had started to knit out of my pretty yarn from Norway. For the last two years they showed up around the house, I'd look at them, think how pretty they were and then lament the loss of the pattern and the broken needle. Finally the day after Boxing Day last year I decided that I could reverse engineer the pattern from what I had done already. After all I had one completed sock and 13 years of knitting experience. Armed with a stitch book and a new set of needles it took me a grand total of half an hour to work out the chevron pattern.

The final sock pattern that I currently have on the go is the Adirondack Socks which are my current crochet project. I'm making this out of a ball of Moda Vera Noir that's been in my stash as well.

Phew, that is a lot of socks! I do like working on several though as I find it easier on my hands and my interest levels. at this point I'm working on a different pair/pattern each day and it's entertaining me marvelously. I'm also really looking forward to making socks with Fi as we embark on some KALs this year.

Here's hoping I have a wonderful collection of socks by this time next year!

Two months in a nutshell

As seems to be the case far more often than I'd like it to be, I've had good intentions of writing but failed to put those intentions in to practice.

April in Brisbane passed fairly quickly and uneventfully after I worked out how to ring the bell on the bus.

My "silver jubilee" was pleasantly quiet and spent doing grocery shopping, laundry and studying French. Just what I wanted really. A normal day catching up on things that I wouldn't otherwise get done during the week.

I've read far less in the last few weeks than I had when I initially arrived. Big crocheting projects like blankets and jumpers saw me spending much more time in front of the television. I'm still very much in chick flick viewing mode but I am hoping to move into arthouse again some time during the week.

A few weeks ago I was in Melbourne visiting Mum & Dad and it was sooooo good to see them. There was much excitement in the house. I've never seen the dogs run around quite like that when there isn't food involved! It was a short visit as I had to head back to work but I'm glad I went down to see them anyhow.

There's a bit of traveling about coming up next month with hi-jinx in Sydney, and another trip to see my folks before the crazy festival life takes over till mid-August.

I had planned to write more but I'm going to save that for another day when there's more to tell.

Environmentally Friendlyish

We've had some delightfully "cool" days up here with the maximum temperature varying between 25˚C and 29˚C which made work feel much more pleasant. No air-conditioning required, just open up the doors! We even made it to a low of 15˚C some nights. Rumour has it the camping store has sold out of thermals.

I've made quite a few trips to the supermarket in the short time I've been here. It seems to be my hang out of choice when away from home (Woolies is no match for Carrefour in terms of random items that you don't need). However the green bags just never seem to be in stock... so while browsing the aisles I found a few balls of mercerised cotton yarn and hey presto, an environmentally friendly bag was born.



So now I'm taking my bag, book, hook and left over yarn, off to find myself a patch of park to make my own for the afternoon while I wait for the sun to do it's work and heat up the solar panels for the hot water system. Tonight is looking good for the first hot shower in three days!

Staples & Yarns

Today started as many do with Mum & I on the couch knitting & crocheting. Admittedly mine started much later than hers did as I was attempting to catch up on the sleep I didn't get over the weekend.

After a quick lunch we headed back to the hospital to catch up with the surgeon for the latest round of results. Oh and to get the staples/stitches removed. Having never seen staples being removed from a wound (or surgical staples in general) it was interesting and odd all at the same time. I think the removal of stitches was more painful to watch and I'm not sure why...

So the important news is that the results are looking pretty good. Fairly normal in fact. There are still a few cells that they're concerned about but it's looking relatively good. They'll do another biopsy and try to get a few more cells but if the results are still inconclusive I think they'll just monitor the tumour. So far there's no treatment required. Mum's pretty happy about that part!

Staples removed we hit the shopping centre to pick up some wool (because clearly we needed more). I'd accidentally bought the one ball of the wrong wool for a blanket that I'm crocheting and as I'm halfway through... I've also started working on the Sudoku throw rug that Mum and I are making for the couch. Photos soon I promise!

Happy Beanie Smart Cookie

Yesterday was Gene's birthday. I was not as prepared for celebrations as I'd planned to be as it's been a big week at home. (I keep saying that but the weeks seem growing exponentially).

I started and have already failed my attempt for 1 photo per day. No matter it's the quality over quantity thing I say! I will share two photos though.

The view from my window:


Dad's first finger-knitting experience:


Dad learnt how to finger knit earlier this week and what you're seeing in the picture is a headband he made for Mum.

Further finger-knitting explorations have been put on hold as Mum went into hospital on Friday. Turns out she has a lesion or tumour on the head of her pancreas (might not be diabetic after all). So she went in for surgery on Friday where they removed her gall bladder (neither of my parents have gall bladders now) and bypassed the ducts that had been blocked by the growth. Sadly they couldn't remove it as there were too many surrounding blood vessels. So they took a biopsy and we'll know the results today or tomorrow. It's looking like she'll go for radiotherapy when she's better. Mum's still in hospital, probably till the end of the week but she's recovering well with her sense of humour well in tact.

While I'm sure other things happened this week I can't recall them. Priorities and all!

So it was Gene's birthday yesterday and I was unprepared. The space invader socks have proven far more time-consuming than I had bargained for and I had to start again with finer wool and less time. The short-row knitted beanie that I'd started for him was gigantic. It was looking a bit disastrous. I had to resort to plan B - making it up as I went along. In the end there was a large cookie cake (think two cake sized cookies with chocolate-cream-cheese icing) and a crocheted beanie. Why the cookie-cake? When I was at uni in Ballarat in one of my end of semester assessment interviews the topic of Gene came up and one of my lecturers said that Gene was a smart cookie (I was a good fish apparently). As for the beanie it was crocheted quickly in Gene colours as he said he'd lost his Barcelona beanie.

Happy Beanie Smart Cookie! I hope you still had fun even though you had to work last night!

Things Beginning With the Letter "s"

Festival Fina closed on Sunday with some delightful weather and crowds after a wet and windy start. Definite favourites for the festival were (in no particular order) Quidams - Herbert's Dream, Group F, Guo Yue, ERTH Dinosaur Petting Zoo, Ulik and Le Snob and the memorable installation of Méchanique Vivante's Song of the Sirens. It was great to see all the performances run smoothly and even better to see people showing up in the Melbourne weather. Yay for Nick and Nomi coming to say hi!

I must say that's one thing I love about Melbourne. Weather is no barrier for the arts/festival loving people. They just bring their umbrellas, jackets and rugs and huddle together to enjoy the show. It's great and very much appreciated when you're totally soaked to the skin and still have at least 8 hours of your shift to go.

After a swift load-out of the bulk of the festival life's been slipping back to craft heaven for me. Mingled of course with large doses of Final Fantasy XII and season 1 of Buffy.

This Sunday we'll be getting ready to farewell Naomi with a lovely picnic and what was going to be some blues dancing that I was very much looking forward to...

Sadly I slipped down the bottom half of the stairs yesterday and landed (well but painfully) on my knee and ankle. It all happened a bit quickly and involved the dog stepping on the back of my pants causing the fall as I was holding my laptop... Laptop is in tact but my leg is still a little sore when I put weight on it. I may have to take a rain check on the dancing for a bit.

So I've decided to spend my restful time making scarves to bring to the picnic on Sunday in the hopes that they might find a good home. I'm slowly making my way through my stash of pretty yarns that have been hoarded over the years. It's good for me :)

I've also almost completed Gene's socks which he's happy about... Just having some troubles with the heel (namely I misread the pattern when I made the first one and now have to decide what to do with the second one). Yeah, post-festival life is complicated.

I'm sure I'll live though.

A Complete Day

Well now that Superman's returned safe and sound so we can all get ready for the next cheesy installment of Pirates of the Carribean. Mmmm bring on that Captain Jack Sparrows :)

It's been a great day today. A complete movie experience this morning.

For the price of an adult movie ticket, a complete movie experience includes:
1. Something going wrong at the start of the movie session. eg. subtitles being off screen, movie being out of focus, sound not working or in today's example starting half an hour late with no apparent reason. (When asked the cinema folk apparently replied, oh you're here for the 10:45 session? Hasn't that started?)

2. Junkie snack food with no nutritional value but plenty of chemicals that make you fill "full" - travel style pies. This is an additional cost to the movie ticket and also comes in a combo with drinks that are sized to make you wish there was a fifteen minute interval.

3. Kids. Kids running around the cinema. Kids clambering over the seats. Kids playing with the screen. Kids asking for icecream. Kids refusing to go to the bathroom before the movie starts. Kids going to the bathroom 3-4 times on average through the movie. My favourite though is kids asking "what's happening?" after sitting with their back turned to the screen looking at other people. I love school holidays.(I mean what parent in their right mind would take an eight year old, let alone a group of them, to sit through a 152 minute movie?!)

The movie was enjoyable and I was excited to discover that I actually knew some of the people in the credits. Think I still have their numbers. Oh yeah... I'm special I know. A couple of the guys I worked with at my last job were stunt guys. Didn't realised that they'd filmed it locally. Just goes to show how in touch with the entertainment industry I'm not. *sigh* I should work on that.

After that we came home and enjoyed some of the many left overs in the fridge for lunch. Dad's been going all out with dinner lately and I'm thinking I need to get some exercise if I want to keep up the eating. Especially with the proscuitto wrapped shrimp we had the other night. Mmmmmmm

I'm doing much better on the crochet front with my top. It kinda looks a little huge though but it's at the correct finished size so it's probably just me. I'm pretty small though and I'm about a couple of inches smaller than the smallest size. Guess it's going to be a slightly loose top on me. I've finally made it past the nightmarishly simple waist section, finshed the bodice and now I'm onto the incredibly repetitive sleeves. I may yet complete the top...

The night was capped off with dinner at one of our regular family dinner restaurants, Straits in Wantirna. Excellent Hainanese Chicken Rice as well as Malaysian cuisine. Highly recommended. There's on in Doncaster as well. Try their Har Mee.

After a good feed we headed to Borders to enjoy the end of financial year sale. I ended up with Hanging Out with the Dream King (not obsessed, just focused), The Eyre Affair and Death: At Death's Door (marvel at my focus!). There is plenty of reading to be done tonight! Happily I can read and crochet. Two favourite activities in one! Just need to work out how to blog and do theatre stuff at the same time as well and my non-social life will be complete!

Frogging

Lisa's beret is almost finished. Just a couple of minor additions to finish it off. About 9 hours of knitting but happily no frogging (knitting/crochet lingo for undoing the knitting).

My crocheted top however is not doing anywhere near as well. I just can't seem to get the fabric to look right. I've unpicked the waist section three times since yesterday and it's a little frustrating. I could go on but then I'd have to live with knowing and being able to see the faults in the top everytime I wore it and that would drive the perfectionist in me nuts. I'm getting good at frogging.

I'm currently armed with the 2006 edition of the Lonely Planet's Europe on a Shoestring book and I've almost made it through the "A" countries. Favourite so far is Andorra which seems like a cool mix between France and Spain. I also think we'd be able to afford some time there which is even cooler.

You see the way I figure it, if I can keep the excitement of travel in the foreground of my mind then I'm more likely to be able to save. If it's tangible then I'll save better. It's worth a try right?

Geeky combinations

Still no headway with Herman. Even though I feed him every day and bring him various presents we're still barely acquaintences. *sigh* I've even started to try and make sure the presents are old bits of clothing so that he can get used to my scent (that sounds weird doesn't it?). As of today I'm going to start just spending more time in the room with him. It's hard now that he's not in our living room! I think I missed the alpha rat boat when he bit me the first time and I just got upset. A little pathetic really on my part, but I felt really betrayed by our little Hermoine when it happened because we were good friends and he used to just climb out of the cage and into my hands. Then puberty hit and the hormones took over and our friendship was strained. I've never had this problem with larger animals. Dogs, cats, cows and even goats have been easier to gain the affection of and understand. Yet I am so totally lost at how to win the friendship of a rat. Go figure.

The knitting and crocheting goes well though. I learnt a wonderful new technique which is foundationless double crochet (US terms). In a nutshell, in case anyone cares, it's a method of starting your work where you don't need to work a foundation chain before starting. You do it at the same time as your first double crochet row. Much more efficient in my opinion. That and I hate crocheting into a foundation chain.

So far I've made a capelet and I've almost finished my decorative belt. Just miscalculated on the yarn so I'm going to have to sneak out of the house to Lincraft before Gene gets home. He took the car so I have to wait for Mum. Shhh... don't tell Gene. I also want to pick up some more yarn to make Gene a Linux Scarf. It's geeky but not too crazily geeky. It uses a technique called illusion knitting which means that you can only see the image at certain angles. So this scarf will just look like a normal striped scarf except at certain angles you can see the Linux penguin. Très cool! I've been having lots of fun over the last couple of days trawling the Internet with Mum for new patterns and inspriations. It's great to have someone else who's excited about geeky knitting & crochet stuff.

Also helps that she's willing to watch sci-fi with me. We ended up watching Startrek: Next Generation last night (the one where Picard's the arbitor for the installation of the next Klingon leader). We drew the line at the original series though. I still can't quite bring myself to watch that. I did watch the Trouble with Tribbles episode (or at least that's what I think it's called) which was great with all the furry rocks and all. Gene's insisting that now I've seen that I need to watch the DS9 episode where they go back to that episode. Sounds like a plan!

I've almost finished reading Gloriana
by Michael Moorcock. It really shouldn't have taken me this long to read it but I got distracted by my geeky obsessions. Well worth a read if anyone wants to borrow it. Kind of like Gormenghast but kinkier and a bit lighter. I think I'll start on Mother London next.

Tonight I'm meant to be catching up with Nick and Claire but as no details have filtered back to me yet, that still t.b.c. Gene's planning on making rice paper rolls for dinner so I should start getting together a list of what I need to buy at the supermarket so we don't have a repeat of my last supermarket outing.

Happy birthday Naomi (from Gene & Herman too)!

Battlestar Galactica meets crochet

What a week it's been so far!

A weekend of crochet-madness, a wedding and yet another long night of crocheting and here I am. Let's not forget to mention the week of Battlestar Galactica either. My Mum is very disappointed to hear that she has to wait until 16th August for the next season to come out on DVD.

Saturday night (and much of Sunday morning) was spent sewing the pieces of my latest dabbling with knitting & crochet, free-form. I shared the wee hours of Saturday with David Attenborough and a multitude of plants and animals. I'm glad I've finished it. To be honest as much as I love the style of free-form, I'm not sure I have the patience to sew together so many pieces to make things. I guess it comes with the territory. I was very grateful for the large quantity of wool that I used for the wrap because it was damn cold up in the Dandenongs at the wedding!

The wedding was beautiful and I look forward to seeing the many photos that I know were taken. It was good to catch up with people again, some who we hadn't seen since we finished our time at Monash.

After the wedding, I started crocheting at shawl for Gene's Mum for her birthday (today). Sadly the small amount of champagne combined with the four hours sleep I'd have the previous night meant my pattern reading and coordination skills were at an all time low. I started the shawl three times that night before giving up.

The next morning I woke up and was ready to give the shawl another try. After another three failed attempts to make the shawl I swore loudly and rather strongly suggested to my Mum, who was making the same shawl for Gene's Auntie Dot, that we change patterns as we'd both had trouble with the pattern given the short timeframe. Word to the wise, mohair is a lovely yarn to work with but a bastard to unpick. We found a pattern for a moebius shawl which I've been wanting to make for awhile now so we started that. It wasn't the best written pattern I've read. The measurements & size information was at the bottom of the pattern and the pattern was repeated at random. The pattern itself was hidden among and split between paragraphs making it difficult to follow. The garment that was pictured was made differently as well. Can you tell we were frustrated?

Anyhow, we crocheted furiously while watching Battlestar Galactica until 02:00 this morning before slinking off to bed. We finally finished the shawls at 17:00 today when we had to leave for Cathy & Dot's birthday dinner.

So, what am I doing after I finish this blog? Well, I'm going to settle down on the couch with my latest crochet project (a mohair capelet that I've almost finished) and watch Startrek: Next Generation with Gene. Why? Because I love my sci-fi shows and making stuff while spending time with my man. :)

PS.

Gene says writing in French is hard.

Flat

I haven't really achieved anything that I planned to achieve today, but I have achieved other things. All in all I'm not sure how I'm feeling about the day.

Slept in until midday after waking up every hour or so having fallen asleep at about 04:00. I ended up having a bad dream, possibly induced by too much Final Fantasy X and the noise of the garbage truck outside our house. I have vague recollections of a bird twittering loudly outside the window. Don't think I've ever felt so negatively towards a bird before...

Ended up getting out of bed with the best intention to get some laundry done. On the bright side I finshed hanging up/drying the last of yesterday's load. No progress on the remaining laundry to be done though. I'm still trying to garner the enthusiasm to start a load of handwashing. Oh yeah!

I did end up calling Vic Roads & Queensland Transport about my license though. It's almost time for me to say good bye to the P's and hello to driving everything up to a 3 tonne truck. Not that I'm planning to drive a 3 tonne truck any time soon. I have enough trouble seeing over the steering wheel in most standard sized vehicles. One day I'll drive one though. Promise that, if I can, I'll give everyone ample warning before I do so. :)

Crocheted Gene a new beanie tonight. It's pure wool and brown with three orange stripes at the bottom. I think he likes it. At least he's wearing it while playing Final Fantasy X right now and it's not that cold inside.

Tomorrow we're going suit shopping for Gene. Something about a wedding on Sunday and no suit to go in. Luckily it's sale time in Melbourne so we should be able to pick something up.

Might also catch up with Matt to talk about a show for next year. Need to see what's required before I can commit, especially as I'm not sure where I'll be next year. I'd really like to work with Matt again though. Haven't done so in years, not since The Wiz and I loved working on that.

I guess I'm feeling a little flat today. Tired, despite having not achieved very much. Still, I'm sure tomorrow will be a better day because I'll be getting out of the house and doing something.

I really should go and finish off my wrap for Sunday...

Guilty Post

I've been home for a week exactly now and still only have 93 of my photos uploaded and my bag is still half packed. Damn those addictive knitting & crochet patterns! Not to mention Final Fantasy X (oh yeah, re-living the ol' days).

So I thought I'd give you all the heads up that when I finish off the big Japan post I'll change the title so it no longer says "draft". In fact it won't look anything like its current title. For one, it'll be in Japanese :)

I do promise I'll finish it off soon. Possibly this weekend. I need to get it all out of my head so that I can think again and get back to the life.

Nothing new to report except for a pleasant round of social outings coming up. I'm using the wedding as an excuse to finish my free-form crochet wrap. I've got about 20 something pieces to finish for it...

We're all set to go to Brisbane, departing on the 8th July and returning on the 7th August. We'll be staying at Somewhere to Stay - The BEST packpackers accommodation in Brisbane, Australia!, which sounds great. Salt water swimming pool... we get our own ensuite and even a balcony for part of our stay.

Okay back to the crochet, I'm working on a warm wrap for one of Mum's friends for this weekend.

A New Year, a Big Day and an odd odour

It's been an excellent weekend overall! I just can't believe it's Monday so soon! Friday night I had a lovely dinner at Mr Wolf with Nomes, Nick and Caroline consisting of some delicious pizzas. I sense it would be an expensive dining experience if I brought Gene there though... although it would actually allow me to finish the fabulously rich chocolate mousse... Hmmm...

I arrived home to two very tired and hungry pugs who were happy to see me... or at least their dinner bowls full, before spending the rest of my evening working on my crochet dress.

Saturday morning saw me unpicking the previous evening's crochet work because TV is less good for my counting and instruction following capabilities when tired... Apparently I have limits.. pfft!

Being Chinese New Year my folks wanted to ensure that I didn't miss out on seeing them even though they are in Singapore so they headed to Wisma Atria and stood under the web cam and called to say hi which was really sweet. The evening was spent with the Nic(k)s deciphering our Chinese/Western zodiacs and it was hilarious! On occassions crazily accurate and other times just crazy. It was good fun.

My very first Big Day Out was much fun if a little warm and muggy. The V Invigorate Tent was a real winner for me with the misting spray and bubble machine providing entertainment for not just the patrons but the security staff too. The Silent Disco was awesome! A definite favourite of the day with Gene & I dancing like maniacs to songs that were being broadcast through headphones to all on the dance floor. The Lord Mayor John So seemed most amused at the sight although I don't think he joined the dancers.

So a little tired and a little sunburnt I jumped into the car today to head into town for work to discover that school holidays have just come to a close. Despite having left the house 15 minutes early I ended up 15 minutes late... and $21 poorer for the parking fee. Not happy.

It was a slow day in the office. Mainly waiting for people to get back to me. Tomorrow's looking better with lots of paperwork to process. I love my paperwork!

The most interesting thing that happened today was the discovery of a dead mouse under my boss' hi-vis vest... Good reason not to leave stuff on the floor of our current office really. :)

Last minute evening

Yay for definite tentative plans! I'm definitely tenatatively going to dinner with Nomes now and it'll be a wonderful way to start the weekend. It's just a matter of getting out of work early enough to get there...

Not much to report other than that. Spent the day chasing paperwork (not literally in most cases) and now I'm home madly crocheting a bag that I've been working on for the last week or two and have suddenly decided would be a great gift for my Grandma in Singapore... the only catch being it has to be finished tonight so Mum & Dad can take it over to her. Wish there was someone to help organise me sometimes :)

Hot water, textbooks and comments

Hazaar! We have hot water again! Okay, we always had warm water (which is better than some people have I know) but today the lovely plumber came and fixed our hot water system so we now have decent water pressure AND lovely hot water. It was amazing, he just turned a couple of knobs and hey presto we had scorchingly hot water. I can't wait to have a shower tonight. It'll be the first time in a week and a half since we've been able to use the cold tap in the shower.

Double hazaar because I got two comments on/from my blog in the last two days. I feel all special now!

Suddenly I'm concerned with my spelling of hazaar but I've been finding that I'm not confident in my spelling at all lately and Dictionary.Com isn't working as well as it usually does... it's just not loading!

Anyhoo, today has been less productive than I would have liked but I'm on strict order by Gene not to crochet until the pain goes away (damn sensible boyfriend). So having nothing better to occupy my time with I was just going to have a lazy-in-bed-reading day until I realised that I start uni on Monday and have no textbooks from which to study. I was about to dash out the door when my phone rang. It was the wonderful plumber trying to arrange a time to come and fix our hot water. It was destined that I would have to get out of bed today. So I sprinted out the door even faster and jumped on the second tram that I saw (the first tram I watched as it left the stop as I arrived). Due to the Anti-VSU protests a the trams were diverted from their usual travels. But more on the VSU later. I visited three bookshops for two textbooks and arrived home with just one textbook and a case for my Palm (yay!).

Today I relieved the joy that is being broke after buying your textbooks. It's my first "serious" textbook in a while... Australian Business Law. Part of me considered getting the study book that goes with it but the $60+ price tag dissuaded me.

Okay VSU. While I'm not a student who's going to a physical university campus, I strongly believe that the services supported through the payment of these general service fees are incredibly important to the well-being and enjoyment of students at universities. I suppose it's hard for some people to see the services that are supported through these fees, but I certainly wouldn't have gotten to where I am now without them. When I was at Monash I was a highly active member of the Clubs & Societies (mainly the theatre ones, but I did join a couple of others), I saw the counsellors, took advantage of the medical facilities more than once, enjoyed having many serves of nachos at the various food places and that's just the things that I can think of off the top of my head. Oh wait, there's the whole student union fighting for friends who, due to an admin bungle, had not received their re-enrolment details and then when they went to challenge it on the date specified in the student diary (another subsidised resource might I add) were told that the date printed was incorrect and they were no longer a student there. Hundreds of students were affected by this, but with the support of the union and their legal staff these students were re-instated. Without the extra-curricular activities students are really missing out on what makes uni the "best time of your life". I still remember when I was in first year uni I caught up with some friends from highschool and we were talking about our experiences at Monash & Melbourne Unis. I mentioned that I'd made lots of new friends through the Clubs & Societies while my friends who hadn't really looked into it yet were just heading to class and back home and wondering what all the fuss was about. Yes, you're at uni to study and hopefully that means studying something you're passionate about, but when you get out into the wonderful scary "real world" you need other things to make your life complete. Hobbies, socialising, outside interests to help you wind down after a busy and sometimes stressful day at work. These interests set you apart from others when you look for work or even just when you're meeting people. Clubs & societies at Monash provided me with the opportunity to explore different enviroments and activities. I really with that I'd taken advantage of things like the Skydiving club. While students should be given the choice of how to spend their money, I think that a general fee to maintain these services and give students the choice of using these services is crucial to maintaining student life and culture. Like they said in the meeting I attended earlier in the year, think of it as if it's personal tax, it helps to support the infrastructure that we enjoy in our everyday lives. It's a matter of the greater good versus the self.

Okay I'm almost done with the ranting... While I'm really excited about going back to study. There's no way it's going to be as fun without the other stuff to keep life interesting. I'll definitely miss ambling down the corridor to Student Theatre to see who was there and who was free to grab some food/coffee.

Herman's loudly crunching away at his kibble which is a signal that he wants to be fed. So I'd better do so before he starts throwing a tantrum (it's amazing how much noise a rat can make with one food dish).

Yay for hot water, textbooks and comments!

RSI

Stupid RSI. I'm in the mood to write today however my enthusiasm to finish crocheting my rug/blanket has rendered me in pain (my wrist/forearm is playing up again). Now if I was sensible I'd see the doctor (last time this happened he said I did good by coming and getting it treated because if left untreated, the inflamed tissue could scar causing permanent damage) however I'm lazy and between walking to the video store and the doctor... Well let's just say I'm looking forward to watching Gosford Park!

I went shopping today to buy actual food to cook (as opposed the the usual junk Gene & I buy). Speaking of junk food, Gene's decided he's not allowed to eat chicken munchies any more because they make him sick. I'm glad he's finally seen the link. These chicken munchies secreted juices that stained our nice white baking dish permanently. I doubt they can be good for you!

Having bought some actual food I've done some cooking. This is an achievement for me. Aside from the sore arm which makes it a little harder, I have a tendency to not cook/eat if there's only myself at home (just can't be bothered usually). Today I made a large (4L) stock pot of soup, minestrone-esque in style and caramel date pudding. The smell of the pudding is permeating the house and I'm trying very hard to save it until Gene comes home to cut it... trying being the operative!

Loving the Palm still. Enjoying writing lots of notes and lists and appointments (like try and help Naomi move house on the 11th September). Discovered I can even keep notes on conversations with people in a history folder... Solitare is good too. Okay. Arm hurts and ibuprofen hasn't kicked in yet. Ouch. I go.

Sarah shall sleep no more!

Apparently I'm doomed to not sleep through the night for a while. For the last week I haven't slept through an entire night, but keep waking every two hours, three if I'm lucky. I'm tired and I just can't seem to get enough sleep.

It is giving me a great amount of reading time though. I'm coasting through Ilium at the moment and I really want all my myth/legend loving friends to read it. In fact all my literary friends... I think they'd really enjoy it! I'm loving the ideas that are coming through the novel and the story's fantastic to boot. It's making the sleepless nights more pleasant in some ways.

I discovered shortly after yesterday's post that I miscalculated on the wool front, turns out I only needed ten balls of wool so I picked them up today. I've got one ninth of the rug crocheted together and about half the squares I need. I just need to finish another square and I've got two rows (two ninths of the rug in a near finished state). I'd take a picture and post it but I'm too lazy.

Picked up my now good-as-new boots today. Apparently I'd broken the metal shanks that were supporting the arch of my foot with the heel and that's why they were wobbling a bit. Also turns out that the heels were falling off. Anyhow $80 later I have lovely to walk in boots again. The shoe repair guy suggested getting new shoes but I explained to him that I have rather small feet and shoes are hard to come by. The guy who I picked up the shoes from agreed with me and suggested that I should buy shoes overseas. It sucks being small sometimes! Kids shoes don't last and adult shoes don't fit. Oh well, at least I have shoes... well boots...

I'm slowly getting over my fear of shoe repair guys after the last nasty experience with a shoe repair guy (hereafter referred to as SRG) which ended with me having a chat with the police about him. I didn't freak out or have to bring Gene along with me. I even went to two different shoe repair places and conversed with one of them! Apparently my boots needed specialist attention. I'm still nervous that the same nasty SRG will suddenly appear behind the counter of the place I'm getting my shoes fixed at. Well not suddenly as much as appear... but I just don't want to see him ever again. So I guess it will take time before I'm not nervous at all around SRGs but it's a start.

The house is still relatively clean. Only some dishes to do that I should really be getting to except that we're leaving for Geelong soon. We've got a party tonight and I've got some nice new stockings that I'm fairly sure Gene will approve of... it's just a question of fish nets or sheer stockings. I wonder which he'll choose?

Rug Talk

The new chocolates that they've brought out for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are delicious! I'm limiting myself to a maximum of three piece per day. Well, I'm trying to anyway...

Still no success in the getting out of bed in the morning, except on Monday when I had that job interview. I think it's a total lack of discipline. That and I've always preferred to sleep late and rise late-ish. For some reason I'm still getting migraines even though I have been wearing my glasses when necessary, ahem , and I haven't even been reading much. Actually I've taken two days off reading and I'm now torn between finishing off the rug I'm crocheting (and by finishing I mean I'm only just over half way there) and picking up my book again. I think I'll keep going with the rug because I need to get more wool and it's a good excuse to get me out of the house.

The rug I'm making has 81 squares in total and should cover our queen size bed if I calculated correctly. It's mainly purple and blue squares, some solid and some mixed, and I'm planning to finish it off with a navy blue border. According to my calculations, I need fourteen more balls of wool to finish this rug. I could off course be somewhat wrong, but I think I'm fairly on track for this. Averaging about 1 square per hour when I get into it, closer to 1.25 hours per square right now because it's been a while since I've crocheted, I have 38 squares to go... which means I've only got 38-47.5 hours of crocheting to go... Potentially I could have this finished within a week if I really got into it... probably more reasonably within two unless I speed up. Hmm the possibilities.

Well, that rug's not going to make itself and I'm boring myself with the writing today so ciao!