InBlogNito

So in the end I completely forgot about the last day of blogging!! Oops… anyway, it’s still friday in some parts of the world, so lets just pretend it still counts.

Back to the christmas card story. A couple of years ago I cross-stitched a couple of xmas cards I found online and sent them to each of my grandparents. I like doing those sorts of crafty things, but I don’t want 600 cross stitches on my walls at home so it’s good to have projects to give away. My Granny got hers framed and has it on the wall in her lounge permanently. The next year I received the one I sent my (other) Grandma back in the mail. I was a little puzzled till I read the note saying it was such a lovely card she wanted to receive it every year. So I signed it, sent it back and now year 2 has rolled around. Yesterday I received these in the mail:

The one on the left is for me, and the one on the right comes with a stamped envelope to post it back once again! Last year I was a bit like ‘um.. srsly?’ but I figured I can humour my grandma for a few years. Maybe in 5 years I can stitch a new one and send that instead.

Also, I finally found a way to get my Flickr pics on my blog! Yay! Thanks to this post. Yeah, I know I’m the last person in the world to figure it out, but so happy I don’t have to upload twice anymore!

Because I make the rules around here, today is the second to last NaBloPoMo post for me. I can’t believe I managed 20 posts in… *counts* 26 days, go me! I’m not sure what the new schedule around here will be next month… I haven’t found daily blogging a complete chore, but some days it’s a struggle to think of something to write about that isn’t totally boring. Taking part in more meme-type posts has made it easier, so I’d like to keep taking advantage of those, instead of thinking ‘yea, I’ll get round to that soon’ and never doing it.

Anyways, for today, some random points I’d like to share:

• I watched a really great movie last night, Breaking and Entering, with Jude Law. At first I thought he was a bit of a prat, but once I saw a few of his movies I started really liking him. The great thing about this movie is it’s not famous or great simply because he’s in it. It’s a great movie and he is good for the part. Plus he’s not looking like his usual self, in some scenes he looked comparatively awful in fact! But good movie nonetheless, I really enjoyed it.

• Today marks the two-week countdown to my departure from my current job. It also marks my one-year anniversary in the job. After 6 months in any position you are supposed to get a pay rise. Today I finally received that pay rise. Only 6 months after I should have. Am desperate for the back pay, I’m pissed that it didn’t arrive before I moved house, because in the mean time everything’s gone on the credit cards and now I need to pay them off!

• Today I got my first christmas card. I’ll share that tomorrow, cos there’s a story behind it all and I can’t be bothered telling it and uploading to Flickr right now. I also found some great instructions that I think might actually work to insert a Flickr pic directly to my blog posts. If it works I’ll let you know. I’ll also post more often, because pictures aren’t the easy way out of a decent post right now. It’s very time consuming in fact.

• Am doing ok but also struggling with the cooking for one thing. Had mexican 3 times and still have mix leftove. That went in the freezer in the end. I’m fine with cooking two portions and having leftovers for lunch, but sometimes it’s hard to get motivated to even cook at all! This week I’ve had home made pizza (don’t even get me started on the supermarket debacle that entailed!), burritoes (twice, plus once for lunch!), satay beef, and tonight I’m thinking spag bol. I’m not enthralled by that option, but a) it’s easy and b) it’ll reheat well. I prefer chicken over beef in my dinners, but I can’t stand reheated chicken, it tastes so gross, beef reheats better.

A short and sweet activity (aka personality/psychological assessment!) from Shai. Feel free to join in if you wish.

• Today, I… spent all day filing emails at work because I leave soon *yawn*.
• My favourite part of… the day is my morning shower, so hard to get out some days!
• It’s okay if… it rains, I like the rain, even if I have to go out in it.
• Maybe it will be… a really great christmas this year, some recent ones haven’t been as magical as when I was little, lots of old people and boring food. This year I have three cousins under 10 years old coming for christmas, so I think it will be awesome.
• I like it when… I live alone! Someone asked me if I’d got lonely yet, which I didn’t think was a very nice question anyway, but the answer was no! And maybe I will one day, but for now it’s absolute bliss.
• Never ever… say never.
• There’s no way… I’d ever skydive, I’ve bungy jumped, but freefalling through the air not attached to anything? No thanks!
• The best… things have happened to me this year, I finally discovered why I was suffering severe fatigue and had surgery, then getting a new job and a place of my own have been a mountain of icing on the cake. I’m going out on a high this year!

As promised, my second post for today.

Shai tagged me for this meme, which is great, because it gives me another day’s topic for a NaBloPoMo post!

Here’s the instructions in case you decide to do it (consider yourself tagged if you’re reading this and haven’t already done it!):

1. Find your 6th photo folder (hard drive or online)
2. Find the 6th photo in that folder.
3. Share the photo on your blog and give the details of the photo.
4. Tag 5 folks to do the same.

I went to both Flickr and my hard drive (so I could choose the best one!) and ended up going with my hard drive. As it happened, every photo in that folder was of the same thing, so I will admit to cheating and using a different (better) photo, but the story is still the same.

As much as I love my jewellry, I very rarely see something and think ‘wow! I love that!’ (my gold collection is actually pretty small!) but one day when I was out shopping with my BFF we came across a boutique jewellry shop and I saw a necklace in the window. It was a butterfly, and I have a thing for butterflies anyway, but it was a really unique design for butterfly jewellry. My friend ended up going in to find out how much it was, and found out it was WAY out of my reach. However the lady said they could do it make me one in a 9ct (the display was 18ct) version, with cubics (instead of diamonds) and it would be a lot more affordable. In the end I went with diamonds (so glad I did!) because it was the type of setting that made it expensive, not the stones being used, but just switching to 9ct gold bought the price down to almost half what it was. So I ordered it and paid it off over a couple of months. In the mean time I moved here (almost 3 years ago to the day) and once it was finished they shipped it to me. When I opened it up I was disappointed to find that they had substituted the finer double chain for a thicker single chain - apparently they couldn’t source a double chain. They put an extra diamond in to make up for it, but it really bugged me, I’d rather have had the double chain, because it really finished off the necklace - the lady in the shop had even used those exact words about it. I have intended ever since to have another jeweller make a new chain for it. I don’t see how they couldn’t source one, just find a finer chain, get a length of it and double it over! I could do it myself given the chain, a catch and some tools - I wouldn’t do a great job of course, but I don’t see how hard it could be. However, the money was never there for something that really wasn’t urgent, there is a perfectly good chain on it and I wear it a lot. I’ll be coming into some $$ soon as some pay issues have finally been straightened out at work - maybe now is the time to do it? Anyway, here is my beloved necklace, which I still think it gorgeous despite the chain issue:

If I decide to get a new chain for it, I’ll show it off again. And of course I’ll have to buy a new pendant so I can recycle the old chain .

I missed a day of NaBloPoMo! But I promise I wrote this on Sunday, then on Monday I couldn’t log in to publish, so I will post twice today, once now and again after work

One of my colleagues at work called Nutrimetics "nutrimetrics’ every time she says it, cracks me up everytime… anyways, I had another party yesterday, my third in a year to claim the free $100 worth of goodies for doing this whole thing. So I bought a few christmas catalogue things and spent my $100 (which has to be on full priced stuff). I really didn’t care about the whole sales thing, in fact I was hoping people wouldn’t buy a whole lot. But they did. Between four of us we managed to spend $600+ (most of that was by only 2 of them!) and one of them booked another party. Then came the catch… I could get another $270 worth of stuff for a fraction of the price if one more person booked a party. I was hoping that this wouldn’t happen, but I couldn’t pass up all that free stuff! So one of the girls from work and I are having a joint party in January. I was so hoping this would all be over! But now I have attend another one in December (for the first person to book one) then co-host another one. However… it was totally worth it because now I have not one, but three facecare sets coming my way (cleanser, toner and moisturiser) which will last me at least a year total, plus a powder compact, 3 soaps (lemon meringue and cherry blossom scents, yum!), 2 shower gels, a lip gloss, a nail polish and a bubble bath (a cute wee ducky, it’s going to be a christmas present). All that for about $135 total, pretty awesome! I can’t wait till it all arrives, I’ll take a photo of it all and share. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I would never pay full price for any of their stuff, it’s good stuff, but not that good. So the fact that it was ‘worth’ something in the region of $400-500 is kinda irrelevant - it’s not worth that much to me, but that was some pretty good bargains right there. Even if I bought the J.ohnsons or D.ove or N.utrogena brand stuff from the supermarket, it would still cost me at least as much to keep me covered for a year.

I am very interested to see how one particular product goes though, it’s supposed to even out your skin tone, and the lady told me that her and all the other sales consultants are having to change the colour of their foundation because this product is actually working so well. Of course, they’d say almost anything to make a sale, but it still sounds promising, and see as it was practically free, I thought I’d give it a go. I’ll do a before shot in case it works so I can let you see if it does work.

I finally got the new cover on my bed today, only problem is now my curtains look awful! The ones in my spare room are a much better blue colour so I’m going to swap them tomorrow. It’s 350 thread count, all soft and kinda shiny! Here it is:

I also made the most perfect poached eggs for dinner tonight:

Yum! Have a great weekend.

I had this very strange moment this morning. I was at the lawyers hanging out my washing (no washing machine at my house yet) before we both went off to work, and he had to go to work for a very important meeting (he’s playing boss at the moment) and so we said our goodbyes and ‘have a nice days’, then he kissed me goodbye as I was hanging out my washing and went off to work, then I cleaned up a bit and did the same. It was all very civilised and domesticated.

And I hated it!

All I want is to get married and have babies, but this morning, strangely, just put me off for a while longer again. So while that’s a good thing with a lack of suitable prospects for such activities, it was also worrying… somedays I think all I want is to be a SAHM and play house all day, and other days I think ‘ick, babies and no work, I’ll take my career thanks’. Who knows what will happen? I’m sure kids are on the horizon, but it may happen a lot later than I ever imagined growing up and heading into my 20s.

Also, I’ve finally caught up on all your comments! Sorry, my bad, I didn’t realise it had been soooo long since I replied. I will endeavour to keep on top of them by replying to them each day before I write my post.

Even though we all speak english, there are a lot of words that differ around the English-speaking world. In my writing here I haven’t come across too many issues, and often I use the american word for something to avoid any confusion that might occur. Maybe it’s because I’m blogging more or maybe I’m just thinking less about it, but I’ve had two questions this week: what are pegs and what’s a trifle? I just thought pegs and trifles were pretty universal, although on reflection, trifle is probably more a British thing though.

Pegs, short for clothespegs I guess, are for hanging my washing outside. I hate a whole lot of clotheshorses around my house with clothes at various stages of drying hung all over them, and try to hang my clothes outside whenever possible. At the moment that is impossible regardless of the weather, cos somebody stole all my damn pegs! They’re cheap enough to replace, and if it was a handful of pegs I wouldn’t care. But I had purchased a specific peg-bag to go with them and just topped up with two more packets the week we moved. So I want my damn peg bag, with pegs, back! I’m now holding some mail I picked up from the old place ransom in return for my pegs.

Trifle’s are something your grandmother usually makes, and most often at christmas. Usual ingredients are sponge, sherry or brandy, jelly, fruit and custard. I was never a fan of trifle, most likely because the only one I’d ever had was my grandma’s and it wasn’t good. You soak the sponge in the liquer after arranging pieces of it in a bowl. Then you add the fruit (most often canned peaches, ick), then pour over jelly (more ick, not really a jelly fan), then top with custard (home made custard that kind of solidifies, further ickiness). It’s all too random for me, 4 different things, each a dessert on their own, but all mixed together, and a whole lot of horrible textures. However, technology has advanced and you can now purchase custard in a carton, the kind that stays nice and thick and doesn’t set in your trifle. And people tend to omit the jelly and often the liquer too. I’m happy enough with the liquer, but ditching the jelly was a great idea. The one my friend made last night was with frozen berries and fresh strawberries, the sponge and then the custard on top. She may have done something else too, but it seemed to be berries, custard and sponge mostly.

So… now I’ve explained, what are the words you use for pegs? And do you have something similar to a trifle? What’s it called?

Well… maybe not top of the whole class, but I’m definitely feeling on top of my game. I got an A- in my Honours paper this semester, which I’m very happy with. Last year when I was plagued with endo/fatigue and numerous other stresses, I only got a B and a B+ so a definite improvement. While I could have it all wrapped up by June next year with some hard slog, I’ve decided to take it slow, especially with my new job, so I’ll be doing one paper a semester till mid-2010. That sounds scary, but I know time will go fast. That’s all I have time for tonight, I’ve just had a couple of friends over for dinner, my first dinner guests. I served up roast veges and lasagne. A bit of an odd combination I know, but I really wanted to try out a recipe for the roast veges and I really wanted lasagne, so I figured what the heck, why not just have both! And my friend bought a yummy berry trifle for dessert. And left the leftovers behind. She’s a keeper. Might be trifle for breakfast tomorrow! There’s something about leftover desserts for breakfast…

So this weekend, just for fun, I went to an island and climbed to the top. Paid money in fact to do so. Crazy, yes, but it was also very fulfilling. We arrived at around 9:15am, but it was 10am by the time we started walking. Only about 50 people are allowed on the island for the day, and if you don’t climb to the top, there’s really not a lot else to keep you occupied till the boat comes back at 3pm. So off to the top we went, up the steep slippery track, ignoring the recommendations of the guide (who basically said don’t climb the steep track and if you’re old, don’t climb any tracks - so helpful). Eventually I gave up trying to keep up with the couple of people I started out with and took a rest, and then lots more mini-rests to get to the top, but was only about 5 minutes behind in the end, so that was good, plus I still beat heaps of other people who know how to pace themselves (I’m a one-speed kinda person - all or nothing). I took a few photos from the top, but we couldn’t see anything really, it was an overcast day with lots of misty, cloudy crap. We got down just before 2pm, so it took less than 4 hours total. I think that was probably about 2 hours up, half an hour at the top and just over 1 hour back, or thereabouts. I don’t really have many more exciting things to say about it, so I’ll just lead you to the pic’s, click on the weka below to go to Flickr