^ Devilkitteh is unimpressed about having to "hide" on top of the dressing table to escape the vacuum cleaner. Which was in another room entirely. He's oh-so-brave...

Grotesque

While cooking this afternoon, I realised how many things can look rather grotesque, whether it's just due to there being left-over juice or you've found a potato that was hiding behind things in the cupboard (the potato has since been planted outside, where it can feel free to grow its little hairy feelers).

The following pix are from today (they are, in order: eggs and cream for a quiche, cherry juice, a cherry, the aforementioned potato and a bit of a Snickers bar):







Just hope the people coming over for dinner tonight don't look at my blog before they arrive or they may be put off entirely...

Another day working for Dr Evil

There was an OH&S meeting.

Following it, we were given laser pointers.

Somewhat ironic.

Mini-Me, stop humping the laser!

^ Lamella.

Yesterday...

I meant to write about it last night and forgot, but yesterday afforded me with many moments of amusement. Some of the "highlights" included:

> Walking to work. Which doesn't sound like that much fun, except that while walking to work, I espied an elderly lady who must have been at least 85 wandering along clutching a Supre bag. Oh, and walking past a house that was absolutely blasting polka music. Loud polka music is amusing at any time of the day, even more so early in the morning.

> In the chocolate aisle at the supermarket, there were some boganesque-looking guys (with beanies!) standing in front of the chocolates singing along to that song Cruisin' that Gwyneth Paltrow sang in some movie. They sang quite nicely, actually.

> The waxing conversation.

^ Random light from last Thursday.

Once a knight, always a knight. Twice a knight and you're doing alright!

I bought another DVD of The Goodies on the weekend.

I'm pretty sure that the neighbours have been wondering what the heck is making me laugh so loud... But it's so good! And I really, really, really hope that all 74 episodes make it out on DVD at some point.

*insert begging, pleading, offers of chocolate to whoever it may be who makes these sort of decisions about putting The Goodies on DVD*

While I wait for that, here's some random quotes:

Major Cheeseburger (upon hearing that the Goodies ate the "tomato soup"): "Well I'll be hornswaggled!"
Graeme (firmly): "Your personal life is no concern of ours!"

Tim (in a mad panic upon finding out that the end of the world is nigh): "Where are my shiny shoes?! I want to die with my shiny shoes on! I'm a teapot! I'm a teapot ...!"

Graeme (to Tim, who is being menaced): "It's the giant bagpipes spider. It's deadly! Keep absolutely still. One bite from that and you dance the Highland Fling until you drop dead!"

Graeme: "To Tim, I leave my set of clubs."
Tim: "Oh great! Now I can get my own seal-skin hat!!"

Graeme (suspiciously): "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you sure you're virgins?"
Tim & Bill (dressed as virgins in white robes and wigs): "Yes, sir."
Graeme: (looking at Bill) "But she's got a beard!"
Tim: "That's why she's a virgin!"
Graeme: "Fair enough!"

Cydonia oblonga

When I was young, we picked some quinces from a tree that overhung the fence of an old orchard on the way home from a picnic at the Light River. That, until today, was the first and only time I'd tasted quinces and although I was rather young, I remembered loving the flavour and scent of the hard, oddly-shaped yellow fruit. The perfume of them and the lusciously tart flavour somehow remained strong memories.

On Friday, I found quinces at the green grocers for $2.99 a kilogram. I grabbed a bag and restrained myself to buying only five quinces, as I'm sure there are others out there who enjoy the fruit more than I do. The quinces were covered in that soft felt-like coating they grow, and had only a slight hint of the perfume potential.

This morning, I set about peeling and cutting up the quinces for stewing. I remember the way Mum had gone about it with the ones I'd had when young. I watched her slicing through the solid fruit at the large silky oak table in the kitchen back home and recalled that the quinces took a long time to cook, just simmering along slowly. Perhaps it was because they were so unique that they've stuck out in my memory.

And the ones I bought were just as tough as I'd remembered the ones we'd picked to be to cut up. The flesh reminded me of crabapples somehow - probably the dry texture. Peeling, coring and slicing them all up took the best part of a Daft Punk CD. With occasional pauses to dance around the kitchen to the music.

Tumbling the sliced quince into a saucepan and covering them with water and sugar and finally putting them on to cook was such a rewarding sensation. After about half an hour, they were simmering gently and had begun to release that glorious quince scent - I wish I could describe it, but it seems sour, sharp, sweet and musky.

After a couple hours of gently stewing, they were ready. I remember the ones my Mum made being a darkish ruby red colour. Mine aren't. They're just a goldeny yellow. Maybe it's because I peeled them? I'm not sure.

But they're so delicious it could make a stone saint weep.

Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night...

Kez and I were having a somewhat inappropriate conversation in Bras 'n Things/BNT/whatever it's called in front of the naughty nurse uniforms, etc and then turned around and there's a couple from work RIGHT THERE BEHIND US.

Which is, you know, awkward.

And yet also cause for snickering from us and all of four of us apparently making a concerted effort to avoid any eye contact at all. Strange and yet amusing. Also, BNT has sets in the exact same colour and print (pale pink with black polka-dots) as my favourite jarmies.

Also, on the way back home, we saw a burning building. Or a smokey one at least. The photo attempt is below and is terrible, in part because of it being dark but also because of the fact that we were driving past. And I was quite possibly distracted by hot firemen. There were about half a dozen fire trucks there or so, which there don't seem to be in the photo...


Then when I got home from all the excitment of such a wild and crazy night out (woo!), the devil kitty was waiting around and demanding to be let inside. He's such a strange one. But I don't blame him with how utterly FREEEEEEEZING it is out there. Gah.

From Overheard in New York:

Teacher, after seeing one of her seven-year-old students smell an empty subway seat: Sienna, there are 10,000 people a day sitting in that very seat. What do you think it would smell like? Chicken?

- Is it the WA Liberal leader Troy Buswell's kid..?

^ Vaguely obsessed with these fairy-tale toadstools.

^ Blueberry and apple pie.

A sensible lunch, if only for the fact that the filling was practically flourescent violet. Which unfortunately didn't show up all that well in the photo, but you get the idea.

On a wholly different train of thought, this was on Overheard Everywhere the other day. Does that mean that, by this "logic" and using the six degrees of separation thing, you could have shagged Johnny Depp? My officemate was disturbed by that observation.

Poor boy.

"I think it's time for a print-out!"

The IT Crowd makes me smile.

Oh, and laugh outrageously.

Shame the series is finished. Dammit.

^ Anthurium. They do seem rather phallic somehow.

Currently watching the Artists at Work profile of Lindy Lee on ABC, which is enormously interesting in regards to the working as an artist between cultural boundaries, within spirituality, etc. Also, the idea of a nine-day silent zen meditation retreat makes me curious.

Yet I don't think I could do that, mainly because I could talk the leg off a dead cast iron donkey. But would the silence force deeper artistic expression from within? Would it help to concentrate what I want to say or do or whatever? Would something like that help at all with the enormously annoying writer's block and the absolute lack of any desire to write anything?

However, who we are and how we make sense of ourselves is interesting, along with moments in time, when it comes to art expression. I like the seeming disconnection of her work and the way in which it comes together at the same time.

I wish there was more time for art in life.

^ Toadstools.

My apologies to Kristin for pranking her this afternoon with the whole Russian orphanage thing...

;)

Although I was quite pleased with the Russian accent. And I'm sure she won't mind that there are 17 orphans to be mailed to her soon, faster than you can say вляпаться в говно.

Other than that, English Russia is pretty interesting, although somehow rather depressing in a lot of ways.

Scary thing of the night, other than an enormous huntsman spider waiting for me at home on the front door (yes, that's right, right on the door, thank-you so much, nature, it was all I could do not to scream):

The guy on the "Editor's picks from ninemsn video" ads for those skanky-looking Seany B things on MSN messenger looks remarkably like a guy I know back in Sydney.

That is all.

Other than that I'm not overly fond of enormous spiders waiting for me when I arrive home.

^ I found a dead wombat in the snow this morning, lying in a trickling stream that cut its way through the thawing snow. This is why you should always think twice about drinking water from fresh mountain streams...

Also, on the way down the mountain, we counted about 90 lyre birds and nearly ran over three of them. They literally hurled themselves in front of the car as if their will to live had expired and there wasn't anything to go on for.

And now for something prettier:

^ More snowy goodness.

^ Web.

Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot...

It snowed! And such a lot. Hurrah!

In other thoughts, the bus I was on yesterday nearly ran a guy over. He just stepped out onto the road right in front of the bus and the driver slammed on the breaks, stopping literally centimetres from the guy. I think the guy was a few sandwiches, a cake, bottles of lemonade, a picnic rug and a sunny day short of a picnic. At least we didn't run him over. It would have been a bit too weird and involved too much time making police statements or something.

But the snow. The snow is way better! The whole time we were there, it snowed. Either just gently falling flakes or blasts of them that would sting your face as the wind swirled them around. There's nothing better than crunching through fresh snow, sinking down into it, kicking it around, randomly being pelted with it by the friends you go up there with...











Also, we had to keep shaking off the umbrellas or the snow would try to make them close. Surprising how heavy it is for delicate little flakes...

Du bist min, ich bin din:
Des solt du gewis sin.
Du bist beslozzen
In minem herzen:
Verlorn ist das slüzzelin:
Du muost immer drinne sin.

- Volkslieder

Ich liebe dich - ich lieb' dich so viel. Wann ich denk' an dich, mein Herz schlägt schnell, und fühlt' wie es wird auf meine Brust springen. Du machst mich lacheln. Und wann ich angst habe, ich will mit dir sein; ich will in deinen Armen legen. Ich wollte nur dich zu küssen. Ich vermiss' dich so viel.

- Should have paid more attention in German at school and practiced more when over there. I don't really remember all of the verbs or how to put them together properly any more. God, I miss doing languages. And should appologise for mangling a perfectly good language above...

^ First attempt at photo stitching.

Hmmm... I have to work on this more.

And I just saw a guy with the most enormous beard on tv. Which is rather random and yet seems appropriate for a Thursday night. Somehow it also reminds me to SMS a friend. He has a beard, although it's vastly less impressive than the one accompanying the old televised bloke.

The smell of Deep Heat reminds me of staying the night at my grandparent's house. Pappa would often put it on his knee, and in my mind the smell of it's taken on a mythical elderly proportion, but also one of cosiness, wood fires, shelves full of books and being able to sleep with the dog on the bed.

Today I bought some Deep Heat to try out on sore muscles. I'd never tried it before and wasn't quite ready for the shock of it all. Standing there in the bathroom, massaging it into the tense muscles in my shoulder, I was thinking, "This isn't too bad actually..."

It hit a few seconds later.

That agonising Deep Heat sensation that I'm pretty sure is akin to being beaten by members of the Khmer Rouge that makes you reel back uttering, "Oh holy mother of God!" in a surprisingly Irish accent that I'd say comes from no-where. Well, apart from that part of the family that is Irish and so far Mum's traced back to 1680 or something like that just through a superficial search. But it was probably more for comedic effect or something with the accent - an attempt to distract from the pain.

By the time the Deep Heat innitial sensation wears off, you've already promised to do more charity, live a life of celibacy and go to church three times every Sunday. Which is awkward, because I don't go to church even once on Sundays.

The smell of Deep Heat still makes me think of being at my grandparent's house, though. Oh, and hot water bottles that were always too hot and that strange pink woolly stuff that Nanna would use. And pawpaw ointment.

As well as steaming hot mugs of Milo, cheese on white bread toast for breakfasts, cauliflower mornay, Derek (my dog) hiding under the sofa with just his nose poked out, mountains of blankets, the imposing wardrobe in the spare room, Christmas lights and missing them both dreadfully.

Voodoo toads

After this week, a little retail therapy was in order.

Give me something shiny and I'm a happy girl for at least a few hours, obviously. Particularly if that something shiny is a CD that I've wanted for ages and finally find and buy (after doing a mini-happy-dance in the store about it). If there were such a thing as past lives, I think I would have been a crow. Which would explain the love of wearing black and shiny things. Unless I'm a Greek grandmother in disguise. Hmm.


Also, I saw tonnes of new graffiti while out and about, which just goes to prove how well those new draconian "anti"-graffiti laws the state government passed are working out. To me, they seem ridiculous (not only from the perspective that I find quite a lot of graffiti quite artistic).

Why not make a law that if caught, they have to scrub it off with a toothbrush or something? If councils are going to bang on about how much it costs them to clean it up every year, why not involve the people making the "mess" with the cleanup? Also, the $550 fine to anyone carrying spraypaint and unable to "prove" it's for work-related purpsoses? Que le eff? And anything can be a graffiti "implement." Most of the graffiti I've seen on the trains is the stuff scratched into the windows.


What about introducing more legal walls or spending money to address the root of the problem? Oh wait, I forget. It's a government. That sort of thing rarely happens. Instead, laws are created that seem disproportionate to the "crime," while if police want to deal with issues like stalking, then there's not a whole lot there in the laws to help them do so.

As for graffiti being a "blight" on our society, what about domestic violence? Poverty, homelessness and the increasing gap between rich and poor? Centrelink? The problems of educational disadvantages that result from schools not receiving enough funding to help students who genuinely need it? Overconsumption of finite resources? The abuse and destruction of land that can be used for farming to build more suburbs where all the houses look the same? Racism (I saw white power stickers while out and about today - that was deeply scary!)? Sexism/misogyny/misandry?

Hell no. It's those people with spray cans and fat black textas who are the REAL problem with our society. Along with bad shoes. And those frightening bogan-tastic plaid shirts/jackets/etc that a lot of people sport.

In other thoughts, I now have a rather cute hot water bottle arrangement, thanks to more retail therapy at Spotlight.


It's rather cute. Or at least I think so. Provided it doesn't leak, in which case it will be deeply unpopular. But it reminded me of the dream I had last night of running through the streets of Paris, looking for my dog who had run away, and asking people in French whether they'd seen him. Unusual.

Time waits for no mushroom