No Interesting Things to Say

In today’s thrilling entry there will be nothing of interest.

Or rationality.

Fragment (consider revising). No thanks, I like it just the way it is. Word is so helpful.

I haven’t been doing nothing since my last entry, but all of the good stuff that has happened falls under confidentiality. Damn this working for the government.

The boys (husbandly and t’yoong man) are wondering what I look like as I have only been home to sleep for the last five days. Five midnights in a row. Blech.

I would like very much to be riding a razor scooter around the departments or some other wheeled conveyance, but it would be frowned upon.

One of our orderlies has been banned from using any kind of wheeled conveyance after riding around the entire hospital on a scooter and smacking into a few railings. Okay, I fib. It wasn’t around the entire hospital. I really wish I’d been in on the action though.

I also (often) wish we had an overhead microphone so I could make announcements throughout the labs. Just the kind of random things that make people stop and go, “WHAT?” with their eyebrows climbing into their hairlines.

Just for the hell of it.

I'll Have a Number ...

Once again bleary eyed but not too bothered.

Alex and I have spent the evening watching Wolverine and the X-Men on ABC 3 and discussing various things. Such as:

"Why is she doing that, Mum?"
"I don't know mate, she's meant to be a good guy." (Rogue has joined the Brotherhood - gasp!)

"Maybe we could watch the..not cartoon one." (X-Men movies)
"Sure we could, but not tonight."
"No, not tonight, it's past my bedtime, but we're watching this one, right?"
"Yep."

They're the highlights. It's amazing just how much conversation you can get out of Wolverine cartoons. When that got boring we played the "wish" game. "I wish Mum was ... asleep!" So I duly snore my head off and continue through "I wish Mum was ... walking backwards!" *snore* "MUM! You should be walking backwards!" "I can't right now *giggle, guffaw* I'm sleeping! *snore*"

I think I wrecked it. "I wish Mum was number 12!"
"What's that? Fried rice with a chicken chow mein?" Chortle, chortle, then laughing so hard I would have fallen over had I not been sitting down. "What's so funny, Mum?"

Laughing too hard to explain, I'll have to have number 12 again.

Bearably Silly Movies and HONK!

I was having coffee before my shift on Wednesday night and on comes Transporter 2: Let’s go to America! As action flicks go, it is undeniably silly.

I am inspired however. On my way home this morning I was tempted to try to flip my car a gazillion feet into the air, spiralling as I went, with such precision that a bomb underneath could be whipped off by a convenient crane hook. Piece of cake. When I land I won’t be a jam smear on the upholstery either. My brain might be jam-ish inside the nifty skull packaging, but so it goes.

We started watching The Golden Child tonight (Thursday). Aside from the awful synth soundtrack and clunky looking special effects (with WHOOSH! noises as appropriate), it stands as a pretty good flick. Small lad was enthralled and we have a date to watch the rest of it tomorrow (bed time intervened).

Disconcerting coincidence for this week: Facebook entry from my sister “Honk if you don’t care about State of Origin”. At work we were just discussing HONK (hyper-osmotic non-ketotic) coma in diabetics (nasty). Certainly more off-putting than medical-acronym numberplates. (Could the owner of vehicle with registration LVS-001 please return to your vehicle. The thought of the first collection of a low vaginal swab (either by or from yourself) is making our eyes water. You have also left your lights on).

I also have issues with Holden Special Vehicles. Did herpes really need a plug from a car manufacturer?

Not A Lot To Say

But I'll say all of it anyway.

The weather today is cold and rainy. It's nice to be inside and warm. I feel sorry for our cat, who I just surprised sleeping, all puffed out fur, on the table outside. Since her other choices are all concrete, I'm not rousting her from the one possibly comfortable position she might have found. I'll get up again soon and throw her inside. She's one step above (or is that below?) feral and doesn't like being inside. But it's cold and miserable enough today that she might just cool it. Poor lamb.

Yes, she only has one eye. Damn all tom cats!

It's very soothing sort of weather. I think I will go for a walk in it later just for the hell of it. Without my umbrella, otherwise what is the point?

I was at a residential school at Charles Sturt University in Wagga when the drought first started to bite in. It rained one particular day. You could tell all of the city people who eyed the sky with various degrees of scowl and tried to stay under cover. All of the country people looked at each other, smiling, walking right out in it. Cool.

Of course I was the cross-over city slicker and smiled at all the country people while I walked right out in it. It taught me something too - but it's so obvious I don't think I need to say it.

Nice that it's raining today to remind me after the bull plop day yesterday. Half of which was about my attitude rather than actual events. I like the universe.

Lucky for me. I'm sure it cares.

Bull plop!

That pretty much sums up today.

It's not worth going into the details (plus, lot more value in being all mysterious, isn't there?), but I got a reminder today that past behaviour should not be forgotten. Just because you're being all nice now but have been crap to me in the past doesn't mean you won't be crap again. Denial only works on yourself, kid, not much point in telling me you didn't say it, weren't there, can't prove anything, when it was me you said it to in the first place.

Clearly I think I have the high moral ground here (of course I do), enough said. Snort.

I think I'll go and eat worms.

Laughing Children and Adults (Acting Like Adults)

Today sees me basking in the vroom vroom noises and general hilarity of the two boys from a couple of houses away playing on their bikes. It's nice to hear kids playing.

Since I live in a quite cul-de-sac, all of the kids in the neighbourhood tend to ride their bikes and whatnot up on the road. Say that to anyone who has never seen our particular slice of nicety and they look at you like you've stepped out of a file from DOCS.

Perhaps I talk too much, to the wrong people.

Tonight I go off once again to work a shift and generally be a responsible member of society. I spent most of the weekend doing the same thing, although the responsible member of society part of it is sarcasm. It's a job.

Since that's about all I have to say for today....

Vroom vroom!

In the Red Corner

In the red corner we have barking Pomeranian crosses (who, without fail, manage to also start up at 2:15am (yes, am when the local feral cat wanders through).

In the blue corner we have the screaming neighbour. I spoke too soon yesterday afternoon - started in again around three, stopped at three-thirty, then her husband came home. Another twenty minutes worth.

I think they should square off, but I think it would be a bit much for the two dogs. I don't like cruelty to animals, so another idea bites the dust.

Do you want to be cool? Here's the definitive list.

My personal favourite on that list is "Learn to speak European". I won't make all of the obvious sarcastic comments, even though I really, really want to.

Ending on a preopisit preposition, and misspelling too! Love it? Yeah.

Trying really hard not to clone mimi smartypants, but this is just how I talk. So I give up.

Last night we watched Bulletproof Monk, or part thereof as it was small lad's bed time. We had started on My Fair Lady, but it was leaving me a bit cold. Plus I wanted to read some more of my book while t'yoong man was in the bath.

Anyway, Bulletproof Monk. I love Chow Yun-Fat in just about everything but this one was also leaving me a bit cold. I'd finished off my book by then, so it wasn't impatience.

Perhaps it's because my favourites of him are Croughing Tiger, Hidden Dragon (even with terrible American subtitles) and some of the odd Hong Kong martial arts films. The best one I ever saw was a buddy movie, no idea of the name, but he is such a goof and does it well (cue laughter). As far as Croughing Tiger, Hidden Dragon goes, if you want a real treat, hang out for the SBS translation whenever they show it again. They obviously bought the film in Mandarin so they could subtitle it themselves, because the depth to the story and beauty of the script really comes through. To wit, there appears to be a plot; I wasn't so sure on the DVD. Plus you get to see Michelle Yeoh looking splendiferous and kicking proverbials.

Bulletproof Monk, on the other hand, well, let's just say that the spiritual journeys of the young leads are a bit, well, dull and hackneyed. Yeah, they come through, yeah isn't love grand and they carry the torch on, the world is safe once more - but I just can't seem to buy it.

Since this morning as we left for school, t'yoong man decided to spill that his head has been itchy for five days, today's plan has gone out the window and instead I'm washing all of our bedlinen. There is a nit plague at school. I had a quick squiz at his hair this morning and found an egg without trying too hard, so here we go.

The most disappointing part of this is one of the other mothers had a whinge a few weeks ago about one of the kids having nits. The mother of said child got all huffy and started going on about how clean she was. Oh boy.

Really. Oh boy.

Get the point: infections (insectoid, bacterial or viral) don't care about your level of cleanliness, your societal status, your marital status, or how much money you have in the bank. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, you'll probably cop it.

Obviously for nits, the flu, tuberculosis, meningococcal meningitis, mumps, measles, you can take some basic precautions but really, if it's rampant, well, sucks. Others like Hepatitis B, C and the old horror HIV there are certain behaviours you can avoid but again, there are windows in every infection where the infected are unaware they are even sick - and can pass things on.

It's very sad that in this day and age people still associate disease with dysfunction. It's even worse - and not worthy of sad, but rather reprehensible - that dysfunction is associated with poverty, low education levels or laziness.

Yeah, sure you make the argument about sterotypes and you generally find disease in poorer areas - but try and think about it, 'kay? One, probably can't afford treatments. Two, just because you can't afford it doesn't mean you don't care.

One of the things I find hardest to get across to people is the concept of unaffordable anything. Since I work in a professional field, most of my workmates can afford what they need and, frequently, most of what they want.

The idea of literally not being able to afford to eat, wash or buy medicine is at best intellectually understood. At worst, it's a publicly politically correct agreement ("yes, yes, isn't that terrible"), while privately disagreeing ("they're just lazy" for example).

I have more, but I need to repair the creaks in my soapbox.

A lot more serious than when I started. Sucks budgies!

Screaming Children and Adults (Acting Like Children)

The best part of this post is likely to be the title.

Yesterday saw my next-door neighbour begin yelling at ten am. There was a lull at three-thirty (just in time for me to leave for work) then it began again. I have no idea what she was yelling (it wasn't in English), but it was loud enough that I could hear her from the far side of my house, with all of the doors and windows shut. She could stay at home and be the town crier for the next three suburbs. I don't know how her voice stands up.

The kids would yell out, occasionally cry (thankfully, it sounded a bit I'm-crying-to-get-your-attention-again to me), then she would yell some more. There have been times where the kids have sounded dreadful, and I've been over to see if everything is okay. Looks like another trip might be in order, although silence seems to be reigning today.

It's such a delight to see adults restraining themselves oh-so-admirably.

Bring back our Cook Islanders, who partied every weekend but sang and played guitar themselves. It was lovely to hear them, and very rarely was there a cross word. Loud occasionally, but they were all nice to each other and we could hear that in their voices. There was also the occasional interesting herbal smoke drifting over the fence; just too far away for passive smoking jollies. Dang it.

Yesterday I got asked about an expression from the Simpsons meaning bullshit that I'd obviously gone on about before. Bull plop! It was bull plop! Don't you just love the plosives in that? So much better than bullshit for general use, I think.

I also like horseshit - I generally use that one for description or judgement on a description of an event or someone's actions (as in, "it sounds like horseshit to me"). There's also some nice resonance (if only in my head) with Hayward finding petrified horseshit (ahem, a horse apple - what a wonderful term) in The Shawshank Redemption when they're all digging for Andy's chess set.

So nice to have hierarchical (and non-heretical) swearing.

It's 3am but I'm not lonely

Crashed and burned early yesterday evening, thanks to the help of some red wine.

I've had an overload of news in the last day or so and gone back to work on top of it.

One of my friends has given birth to her daughter, my sister's book arrived from North Carolina and another friend is taking a job overseas. Overload!

Congratulations to everyone.

Back in the saddle again

So, party done. Alex off to school this morning. Back to work tonight. Bleeeeeeccchh.

I was supposed to be starting a creative writing course tomorrow morning, but it has been put off for a month. I should have asked why, but the thrilling "The building burned down", etc., etc., speculation is much more exciting.

So as of tomorrow I'm back to being bleary eyes and half asleep. I'm also going a bit deaf - which makes it twice as hard to follow conversations. Which either makes me look retarded or very rude. I hope the former, personally; better to be thought a bit simple than a deliberate prick. Or prickette. I always have trouble with those. Plus I'm pretty sure I made up prickette, which sounds a lot more derogatory - a hint of condescension - than the straightforward "prick". But I digress.

I usually digress, can never tell a short story, me.

I'm also not sure this was a story anyway.

I think I should say no to red wine in future. Or at least the sparkly kind - my head is all woolly the next day.

FIVE KINDS OF JELLY!!!!

Yesterday saw the big day for Alex, who actually turns seven today. We had nine small kids running in and out of the house for a few hours, it was delightful, including the noise.

I had a couple of bright ideas for the party on Thursday and Friday. One of those was to make an ice-cream cake. A "Big Green Ugly Monster Cake", to be precise. I decided to make it blue, because I don't like green and the colour theme for the party was Spiderman (red and blue); green would have clashed. Don't know why I thought that would make a difference as most of the presents were Ben-10 and thus fluorescent green and black, but never mind.

Anyway, the "Big Blue Ugly Monster Cake" did not look like a smooth mound of cake as it did in the recipe book, rather it looked like someone had sneezed. Blue. And then its face fell off in the freezer. Then its teeth got covered in blue ice cream. I was so pleased with myself while I was making it. I made FIVE KINDS OF JELLY!!!!! while the meringue for the monster was cooking and was bouncing off walls myself. Good fun cooking.

I was worried a bit - but then I also made cupcakes and did little dragonflies on the top using white chocolate bits for the body and cut-up freckles for the wings. They looked awesome, so I think made up for blue-sneeze-as-if-a-three-year-old-had-been-at-it monster. The kids ate it, so happy day, who cares what it looked like. Plus I got a good chortle out of just how bad it looked.

The other bright idea, and this really was genius although damaged the budget rather severely, was to get ourselves a blow-up jumping castle. That was the hit of the day. Alex got up in the morning, saw Dad setting it up and was nearly beside himself, jumped in it happily for about an hour. When the other kids arrived it was part of an involved chase sequence where you went: jump on castle (plus or minus attacking anyone in there), leap out, stream around the backyard, in either of the back doors, run through the kitchen (and collide, more often than not), in to the lounge room or Alex's room, then reverse. Scream and or yell not optional from what I could gather. Hilarious.

Of course the screaming only happened for the first half-hour or so, then they ran out of puff and got a bit quieter. I had thought of games like pass-the-parcel, but we barely had time for cake at the rate we were going.

Unfortunately I forgot the five kinds of jelly until there were only three kids left, so they had a pile of it (we still have two untouched bowls of it).

Then last night, everything cleaned up, daiquiri in hand, Alex watched Night at the Museum 2 (he had a non-alcoholic daiquiri), I read my book and husbandly pottered around somewhere (he also put out some washing), I had this wonderful feeling of "This is how normal people live". On Saturday nights either I have woken up at about four p.m., am still half awake and have to get ready for work again or I am at work doing an evening shift.

Time to move on, ay-wot? Well at least get a better roster.......

It's a Thursday - Must be a Normal Day

A few days ago I got something in my work email.

"FW: On behalf of XXXXX; All Supplies Gone: Glut"

If all the supplies are gone, how can there be a glut?

Was someone being funny? Is there a whole email thread behind this? One will never know....or at least this one never will, though the speculation is fun.

I spent last night finishing off a J. D. Robb/Nora Roberts (Portrait in Death, for anyone interested) then conking out and sleeping. It is so nice to be sleeping at night and not being all bleary eyed. I got the added bonus of a small lad who didn't want to sleep in his own bed.

It doesn't happen very often, but we had been watching Coraline - great movie, not really for kiddies - so I acquiesced. Alex bailed on the movie pretty early in - I was surprised he lasted as long as he did. It's creepy. In a good way. The first time I watched it all I wanted to do was wring Coraline's neck - she is a snot at the beginning. The second time I twigged, she's just being a kid and isn't all bad. (Alex must have had me running around before the second time I saw the movie - he's a character and far too clever; I had an appreciation of where Coraline was coming from). I'm always on my toes.

I'm nearly finished posting the Desperate Food Thieves and Bemused Production Absurdities stuff from way back in 2005-7. Then I can start on the new stuff. I'm paused, because I just got to the menu I wrote when my dog, Benjamin, aka Benny the Wonder Dog, aka Bargearse (he was a big FAT labrador) had to be put down. It was cancer and he was twelve.

Have to do at least a few more - I want to be moving on.

Or twirling. Twirling toward freedom. Imagine whichever gestures and rotations suit you.

Less Time Wastage

So, I have decided to go the blog route for sheer lack of anything else to do.

Having read over mimi smartypants, I am a little scared. Ah well, God hates a coward and my readership is likely to be small. Plus anyone reading can turn me off and no loss if this sucks. Budgies.

This has to be a marginally better way of spending my time than playing games off Facebook. I also get the marvellous illusion of having an audience, and I've always liked audiences. Not in the tap-dancing in front of sense, rather the "I-can-hide-behind-a-lectern-or-overhead-projector-occasionally" sense. Besides, I only have one bra up to tap-dancing, and it's the mammary equivalent of nanna-knickers, so no thanks.

Mammary? Mammarian? Answers on postcards, please.

I go through phases with internet usage. Last time it was b3ta and their question of the week, alternating with Fun Trivia (which I still play around in). This time it's twitter, which led insidiously to myspace and Facebook. (Yes, the twitter link is direct to me....)

Tweet tweet! Tweet tweet!

Thence to blogging. I'll get bored soon.

In the meantime, I had better go off and do more than my twenty minutes of housework today since twelve children are descending at the weekend and the house is, ahem, a MESS. Those who know me are unsurprised, although lately I haven't been that bad, because I really can't stand it.

Offly glad to not be involved in night shifts for this week.