The house smells like the oriental lillies, really strongly. But it's so nice. And they were on sale, looked gorgeous, the house needed something to brighten it up... There's always excuses for spending money on pointless things.


It reminded me of a bag I made for a friend years and yeeeears ago. Took a photo of it when I was at their place on the weekend.


Not too bad for my second (and final) attempt at sequin work. Should do some more one day, but I do have some sort of feeling of prejudice against craft that bubbles to the surface on occasion. Usually when I think about doing craft stuff. Or look at the second (and final) knitting attempt I made, which is taller than I am.

Buuut... When it comes to painting, I'll work for as long as it takes to get it done, and the house is still crowded with paintings even though a whole lot of them are still at a friend's place due to the fire stuff.

Maybe time to start selling 'em.

^ Light and shadow through the blinds this morning.

Well, I certainly didn't need to see this today:


*covers eyes*

> I finally bought a photo frame - quite possibly the most overpriced one ever for the quality of the product, etc, but it was shiny in a delightfully matte way - for the first time in my life. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Have decided to stop at one, or my house will end up being packed with photos in frames I feel somewhat ambivalent about. For now, photos will continue to be blu-tac'd to the shiny, mistmatched doors. Also need to finish painting the mini hallway. As you can see in the photo, it's still rather unfinished and Soviet.

All of these thoughts aside, Tuesday-night television is uninspiring. With the DVD and CD collection still evacuated to a friend's house from all the fire stuff, I now realise just how truly woeful television has become on most nights of the week. It's a bit depressing, as I thought I had a love for tacky TV. Apparently not.

So I renounce TV for books.

I bought about 10 new books while evacuated (needed distractions and there's no better escape than in a book). The problem is that there is literally no more space on all three bookshelves. And that's without unpacking the big box of books that got evacuated, and a few bags full.

Must. Join. Library.

Although the local library seems to have more magazines than books, and that just seems a bit wrong for a library. Maybe it's because they spent the rest of the budget on Mills & Boons.

^ The mystical garden.

Right before a whole lot of the crystals fell off.

Not quite so mystical now.

I tried drawing a stoat with a blowtorch to go with the warning about not touching the mystical garden (on pain of death at the hands of rabid stoats with blowtorches).

The first attempt didn't work out all that well...


Oops.

"Woooah, this stoat is on fiiiiiire..."

^ Growing a Mystical Garden. Wooo.

^ Burnt bits behind town.

I haven't laughed so hard in ages.

What the hell!?!?!?

ANOTHER earthquake!?

This time it was a very bizarre rumbly, bumpy, shake-you-around sort of one, which was followed by a stronger tremor about a minute after the first one. That's the second earthquake incident in just under two weeks.

One of my friends thinks we'll have a flood next.

How special.

Officemate's now singing, "I feel the earth move under my feet..."

Cookie!

Today at work, someone described me as "the woman who makes the best choc-chip cookies in the world."

I think that's a hint they want more of them...

Hmm!

On the whole, I'm impressed no-one who's eaten them so far has slipped into a diabetic coma/had visions brought about by chocolate and sugar/etc.

Thinking of making a big batch of them for Kez's birthday. Either that or truffles. Chocolate in one form or another usually satisfies people and makes them feel more cheery. Well, I guess it wouldn't if they're being waterboarded with melted chocolate. But you know what I mean.

> Is It Just Me by The Darkness cheers my heart beyond belief today and I'm not sure why. But I LOVE it and have decided I want to form a tribute band. Although that decision may be revised when I have had more sleep.

> Kristin stayed the night at my place, which was hilariously fun. Lots of laughs and little sleep. I'm so sorry for nearly making you choke while having dinner, though, Kris! I need to be more careful about when I make people laugh. Like the other week where I made the copyeditor laugh so hard she nearly drove off the road.

> This morning, a guy from the water company came to fix the leaking pipe and knocked on the door just as I was getting out of my jarmies top. It was okay - I had a singlet underneath! But I went to the door, which Kris had answered, and had wrangled the jarmie top half-on, backwards, and the guy just stared. I have bad luck with tradespeople and their timing I think. Or my timing. But anyway. After we closed the door, we were in fits of laughter about what we SHOULD have done *giggles* Then when we left for work, we held hands while walking past the guys... Ahh dear. We were in fits of giggles by the time we reached the car.

Poor water people.

Also, I'm jealous - Kristin rocks my zebra-print long coat way more than I ever could. It's just a shame I don't have a hat with a big feather in it to go with it.

^ At one of the hotels from life on the run...

Guilty pleasure for the evening: Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities.

And no, it's not because of The Accent.

It amuses me how there's the character who looks like he's channeling Richie Benaud.* Admittedly, it's not the most accurate representation of what went on, is pretty violent and focuses on things that destroyed the lives of dozens of people (and that's without the drugs). But it's eminently watchable. And the retro fashion and architecture is great. It would have been enjoyable to be part of the wardrobe and set team.

In other thoughts, I'm so tired after all this fire stuff. Now it's more or less "safe," it's weird to suddenly be able to stop and start to get back into routines and living a normal life. I want a week off to actually get to rest or something. And on top of that, I've been battling that delightful post-stressful-situation-'flu thing.

One thing that's surprised me is how much I still want to be here after everything that's gone on. During the whole bushfire crisis, I'd felt that I'd be packing my bags and running away as soon as it was safe to do so. But now I'm unsure - everything is greening up already, the mountains are beautiful again.

The mountains had been very ominous while the fires were basically just behind them. In the time of the month of life on the run, the mountains loomed over the valley in a very threatening way, taking up almost all of the horizon. Now they've subsided and look small again, quiet, green.

Strange. All of it.

Still have to get everything back home again at some point.

*sigh*

* And it amuses me even further to think of what things would be like if the real Richie were all Underbelly ("Tony, I want you tew take Bill out the back and give him tchew from a ta-wenty-tchew..." "But... But I carn't do that, Rutchie!").

Finally loaded stuff from my camera onto the computer and found these. The top leaf was burnt by the insanely hot weather we'd had in January/Februray. The second leaf is from the Black Saturday fires and was blown over from the fire front.

Rain, walking and ultra-chocolate

What an insanely odd day. To say the very, very least.

Copious amounts of rain and being squished on a train with the entire population of the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, all of whom were heading to Sound Relief. Although it was comparable to the trip last week after work where there was a really uncomfortable half-hour of being at eye-level with someone's groin.

Could have done without that, thanks Connex. Do not like your idea of more standing.

Anyway.

I got rained on on the walk home, and felt oddly not too bothered by it. It was just nice to be getting rain and even nicer to be able to actually walk. After so long of not being able to safely put much pressure on the ankle, it's nice to (slowly) wander.

Now that I'm home, I'm being all domestic and baking chocolate-chip cookies of such supreme chocolate-y-ness that it makes your teeth ache just looking at them. And to be honest... shhh... don't tell anyone... But I've never made cookies before in my life. And I cannot emphasise enough how very, very chocolate-y they are. And you can thank Nigella Lawson for them.




Ultra-choc Cookies

250g plain chocolate
125g soft butter
125g brown sugar
130g plain flour
30g cocoa
1tsp bicarb
1/2tsp salt
1tsp vanilla
1 cold egg
250g chocolate chips

> Preheat oven to 170 degrees c.
> Beat butter and sugar together, and then add the egg. Melt the 250g plain chocolate and then beat that into the sugar/butter mix.
> Mix together all the dry ingredients, then beat them into the sugar/butter/chocolate mixture, along with the vanilla.
> Mix through the chocolate chips by hand.
> Use a tablespoon to scoop out spoonfuls of the mixture, ball it up and then put it on a baking tray. Bake for 15 minutes/as long as necessary. They firm up quite a bit when you take them out of the oven, so you don't have to worry if they're kind of moist when you remove them.

They're nice. But just one of them makes me go, "Woah, too much chocolate. Is that even possible?! It seems so wrong!"

Update: All done!

The clouds looked really promising for lots of rain when I left work this evening, which led to the following happening:

Me: God, please make it rain! *looks up at sky*
*huge drop of rain hits me right in the eye*
Me: Argh! Warn me next time!
Officemate: *laughs. At me. Not with me*

At least we did have some good rain. But also some lightning and that's led to a fire about 20kms away from here. A bit close, but not so close as the other fires, so it's all about context, I guess.

In other thoughts, I re-found my essay from uni on "The changing face of cannibalism in fairytales" *squee!* It's much better than I'd remembered and reminds me of why I enjoyed all the academic stuff, even though it sometimes involved staying up late, typing like a maniac and hoping the end result was sane and coherent.

Particularly that final major assignment that was worth an entire subject mark... Don't really remember the final four hours of writing that (apart from thinking, "Type! Type like the wiiiiiind!"). But it was awesome and finished within half an hour of the deadline.

Random musings

It's late.

*sigh*

I'm sitting in the lounge room with a mug of peppermint tea listening to a random selection of music and staring at the orgy of clothes spilling out of the two suitcases in the middle of the room. Yes, still living out of suitcases, even though I'm home. The fires around here are only contained, not yet controlled, so it perhaps pays to be ready to leave at any time.

However, in spite of all of that, I've started trying to clean the house. And I mean a thorough, serious, uberclean. While ransacking the house for things that I seriously wanted out of here and knew could absolutely not be replaced when the fires were really a worry made me realise how unimportant much of my stuff was and how the house was cluttered with a lot of junk I didn't need.

Therefore, the Salvos or St Vinnies can have it!

And that's what I started on today. At least just in my bedroom. Which is why the sofa is now buried under a mountain of "yes or no" decision items to deal with tomorrow. Horror of horrors, I flung all of the shoes from the shoecase into a drawer in the red cedar chest of drawers. So there's no more shoecase. It's back to its original purpose of holding books.

Dusted, swept and cleaned like a maniac as well as sorting through everything. Found a whole lot of poetry I'd written at the insistence of Nym a few years ago and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. But I'm not a poet (he tried to encourage me to do more poetry again recently, to which my reply was, "Roses are red, my heart is black, if *home town* burns, I'm not going back"). Also got annoyed at myself for buying so many pointless magazines. I could have bought a small African nation by now instead.

I mean, French Vogue? I barely read French.

The spare room is to be tackled tomorrow. There's another challenge... Ugh. I need to work out what to do with the Glassschrank, which is a monstrous item of furniture and about as practical as the Pope's testicles. If anyone wants it and has a small army of people they can employ to carry it up Teh Driveway of DEATH (TM), then they're welcome to it.

Tonight's other additional moment of strange has involved contact from someone I went on a couple of dates with when I was about 21 or so. He's oddly parental, which is the biggest reason why it ended with a couple of dates and never progressed any further. Still, he's sweet and it's nice to still be on friendly terms. There were some things I found (and threw out) from when I was seeing the guy I dated for the longest today and realised that because of all the drama, there's a good reason we never stayed in contact. My God, the drama. It was all ridiculous.

Anyway.

Really should sleep so I'm able to tackle all this joyful cleaning in the morning. What fun that shall be! Oh hurrah.

So first we have fires.

And now we have an earthquake!?

Bizarre.

*wishes for snow*

Squishy things = awesome!