OH HOLY SHIRT!

Official Twilight teaser trailer released! HERE!

I introduced eneit's youngest son to the pleasures of licking the bowl after someone has baked something sweet. At under one, just, he has been corrupted.

eneit and I were baking - her famous chocolate mudcake (viciousdisorder, in that post is my chocolate cupcake/muffin recipe*) and orange muffins. I dipped my finger into the bowl a few times and fed Daniel some of the mixture.

After the baking was complete, and we had moved onto the mudcake, we walked away from the table for a few minutes. eneit was mixing the mudcake, and I was ... well, I was probably checking out LJ.

eneit turned back to the kitchen and burst out laughing. Daniel had leaned as far forward as possible in his high chair and grabbed the bowl that the orange muffins had been mixed in, and the spoon, and was licking both!

Smart child.

*I keep wanting to mash the two words together ... but I don't like cupmuffin, and muffcake =X is just downright wrong. lmao!

I wanted to tell you about a dream I had last night.

I dreamt I was at the dentist (no, this does not mean I was having a nightmare) and for some reason they asked me to turn on my side and breathe in the happy go-to-sleep gas (which I never recall taking in the dentist's chair, lol, only in the operating theatre of hospitals).

Anyway, I wasn't frightened or uncomfortable. There were lots of people in this dentist's room. They were all wearing the usual medical hygienic masks and hats and robe-y things.

They gassed me, and the room buzzed and throbbed and went black - much like it did when I was actually gassed in hospital those three times for the surgery on my feet.

I "woke up" in my dream later. Then I actually woke up properly at 7am when my alarm went off.

Weird. Ass. Dream.

But it was fun! The gas is fun! The gas was fun for real, and in my dream, lol. If I ever have to have surgery again, they have to gas me. The needle is too scary and I think I would feel panicked and upset because it would remind me of putting Wuffy to sleep. ... Yep. =| They can needle me after I pass out from the gas =X

But it was a good dream - fun! More please =D

I am having a bad mail moment.

At the end of November, the family I was staying with went overseas to China for ... well, until January some time. Before they left, we agreed that they would pass on my contact details to the housesitter so I could arrange to collect my mail.

A week after they left, I called the house phone six times over two days and in the end I just dropped by the house. I met the housesitter when I stopped by because she just happened to be home. I picked up my mail, chatted to her, and wrote down my contact details - mobile, home number with my aunt - asking her to call me if any more mail came.

I told her I was waiting for tickets to the Adelaide Big Day Out and I was worried about them. She said she would let me know if anything came in for registered post.

The next day I received a notification from Big Day Out to advise that my tickets had just been posted.

That was three weeks ago now. I have tried calling this lady, I have driven to the house several times (twice yesterday!) and left a note in the door asking her to call me about my mail (the first time, the second time it was gone - either blown away or collected). No response.

Before you ask, she is not the type to steal the tickets or anything. I think she's just forgotten or something similar.

I am driving there tonight before dinner in the hope that she will be home and I can just drop in.

But, dammit - why is she uncontactable? Why is she never home? Why won't she call me, since I can't call her! (She didn't give me her mobile or work email or anything). Dammit.

Big Day Out tickets - that's a couple of hundred dollars right there. I'm worried. I'm annoyed.

Lunchtime search for a copy of Jane Eyre so I can brush up while watching the mini-series (which might only be 2 parts, but still worth reading up again for). My old copy is in Adelaide.

Oh. My. Gods.

You work in a bookstore and you don't know of Jane Eyre? You aren't even a young SF/F-only kid or other sort of person I might have expected to maybe not know Jane Eyre or who wrote it.

Oh. My. Gods!

This is like the time I went to several bookshops looking for My Country by Dorothea McKellar ... and not one single salesperson of several in any of several bookstores knew who she was. Not one! And not one knew the poem either!

I think my head is going to explode.

If any one* of you so much as asks "who is Dorothea McKellar" ... so help me ... I will break something conveniently nearby (my work computer? who knows!).




*Admittedly I don't expect people outside of Australia to necessarily know Dorothea McKellar or her works - hence the links for your (and others', I suppose, lol) reference.

Edit: I forgot to mention they didn't have a copy of Jane Eyre in the end. And another salesperson came in who did know Jane Eyre. ... I didn't try my luck with Dorothea McKellar - I thought I might be pushing it =X

Over the weekend, someone thought I was from New Zealand. Because of my accent. What on earth?

Apparently, an Adelaide accent is as foreign as to Sydneysiders. (*snerks*)

It looked like it was going to be one of those lunches where frustration gets the better of you and ruins it.

I was being bothered by flies, and managed to knock my knife onto the floor. How could I leave my food to get a new knife?

One of the waitresses came to my rescue. Before I'd even thought about standing up to go and get a new knife, and without asking what the issue was, she arrived with a new knife.

I tipped well when I left (25% of the cost of the meal), and told her that she had rescued me - and how brilliant my dining experience had been because she had anticipated my need before I'd even voiced it.

Today has been a pretty awesome day.

I got the free newspaper that is released at close of business each working day. It's a gossip and rant rag mostly. There's a section where people can text or email thoughts on topics, or respond to previous ranters.

There is also a section called "Here's Looking At You".

I would like to draw everyone's attention to the following comment:

THIS IS FOR YOU:
To the girl with curly hair, wearing a black top who took
the 6pm train from North Sydney to Central on Tuesday. I
hope you pick up today's mX and read this. You are
gorgeous.
PG, Petersham

For the nosy, I was running late finishing at work on Tuesday and caught the 6pm train from North Sydney to Central, before changing to the light rail to Lilyfield. I had my hair out and natural. I was wearing a black top. I was juggling shopping, my handbag and a copy of the mX. Too many coincidences? I hope so*.

That is all.


*seriously though, do you think I'm clutching at straws? Is my vanity and ego kicking in in assuming it was me that this message is to? I don't always grab the mX, often in a hurry or too late and have missed the hand out ... but today I got one as I entered the North Sydney station chatting to a girlfriend in Adelaide on the phone.

Huge electrical storm last night. Huge! For the most part of the duration of the storm, the light was almost constantly flickering with sheet lightning or the light from above-cloud strikes. When I say flickering, I mean 3-5 flashes every 1-2 seconds! And huge bolts of forked lightning. Amazing.

I'm not so good with storms. I may have mentioned this before. I've managed to work out what it is that frightens me - it isn't the storm itself, or the lightning. It is the extremely loud noise of the crack of thunder, and the rumbling sounds of rolling thunder.

I become jittery in a similar way if crockery or cookware is dropped as well - makes a large crashing noise. Sigh.

I did find a way to make them significantly less scary. Sometimes just having someone with me for company will do it, but it doesn't always work. What does seem to make a huge difference, is leaning my back against someone else to physically feel my companion's presence. It's sort of the equivalent of backing into a corner so that you can see all other corners and areas of a space, and only need to protect to the front. Except, there's a second person looking out for The Scary Things That Come At Night/In Storms/Live Under The Bed/Hide In Swimming Pools. Waaaaaay better than just plain and simple company :X

Oh yeah, am I odd, lol.

Eeek.

OMGSQUEE!

This time next week, I will officially be living with k1ng_n0th1ng in Sydney.

I have taken nearly everything over to Sydney already, just a few things remaining to take over this weekend. And then the cat who will follow in a few month's time (when we are settled in our own place, etc).

Plus also, because I don't think I've mentioned this enough (possibly not at all) - it's my birthday next weekend. I will be 23!

I had a very weird dream last night. Sort of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets my house and me. For some reason I was a slayer, and a new girl to my school had come over for the afternoon - I guess to study or something. She ended up chasing me up the main stairs and down the side stairs in our house* and trying to bite me! I through a pumpkin, a vase, and a shoe at her, and then managed to stake her with a lead pencil (not sure why that worked, since the point is the lead, not the wood ... but hey, at least I'm not a vampire this morning, lol).

For some reason she only wanted to bite me, and not my mother who spent the whole time just standing in the kitchen trying to work out what was going on.



*My house is two levels, the top level can be walked from the west end to the east end of the house without stopping (that is to say, all of the rooms have doors in them that form a sort of corridor through them). At each end of the house (more or less) there is a set of stairs. You can effectively run laps in my house.

I have new eyes! I can seeeeeeeeee :X

Monday saw (more visual speak! ha!) me going to the optometrist to get tested. I came out with new contacts (30 day, sleep-in), new frames ordered, and new sunglasses. The end result is that apart from adjusting to the new strength and type of contacts, I'm going well. I can see!

Also, I've never spent more than $20 on sunglasses before, and I now have $340 Versace sunglasses. I had better not drop these or sit on them :X I'll take a picture sometime - they're kinda cute.

I guess this is the beginning of my descent into hell as a spoiled and privileged rich, private school girl 0.0 lol

Just this week a friend from many years ago signed into AIM. I was so excited I dropped the phone and had to try to IM her immediately. Unfortunately Anna couldn't reply straight away, but when I next signed on (the following day) and IMed her again to see if she was there, she replied straight away telling me that she had sent her response just a moment too late - I signed off before she hit send.

I haven't spoke to Anna in about 3 years, but she was one of my closest friends when we were in regular contact. I don't know entirely - I'm pretty sure it was to do with my changing email addresses and her computer dying but I do think that the loss of contact seemed to come from her side.

I have always added Anna's AIM sn to every new login that I created, just in case! And over this weekend, the just in case occurred! Yay! I filled her in on the happenings in many of our mutual friends (or friends from that time period). She was interested to know that so many had married or had children, and that many of the marriages had come about between people who had met through the organisation we were all involved in.

I expect, from our conversation, that she will be online a lot more now - having finally remembered the password to her AIM sn! lol.

I currently have 25 giant Christmas stockings made of felt on my desk. And 23 name tags, one for each person who works for this company.

Said to my boss just before leaving at the end of the day, yesterday -

Sari: Hey! I need a payrise. I mean, since you changed my role from customer service consultant to Santa's Helper Elf ... Also, does this mean my dress code has changed?
The Boss Type: When you come into work dressed appropriately for your new role as Santa's Helper Elf, we'll talk payrises then.


I think I've mentioned before the strange things that seem to come under the control of my department.

(I'm seriously tempted to turn up to my next review in a Santa's Elf costume. lol.)

Only last night I was lamenting to myself at the lack of interesting things to post in my journal. Much of what has been happening lately in my life has been of a negative tone, so I haven't really wanted to share it with you all - in the interests of not dragging others down and maintaining the "my journal is a fun read" for everyone involved (myself included).

And then.

I got up to tell the Spanish exchange student that I was going to go to a shop on the weekend that sells Ugg boots. He has been wearing (well, we both have, actually) my brother's Ugg boots ... and I thought a nice thing for him to be able to take back home would be a pair of them. I need some myself. J said in fact that his mother wanted him to wear shoes or slippers in their house but he didn't like it, but he found that he very much liked the Ugg boots. Perfect! ;)

Anyway, that's the back story. The rest of the story is that I saw the Italian exchange student N exiting the bathroom and saying goodnight to J, so I assumed he was in there brushing his teeth. No such luck - he was stripped to his boxers and preparing for a shower. I got such a shock that I went red, laughed and put my hands up to screen everything of him except his head ... only from laughing and shock I couldn't look him in the eye and had to go out of the room for thirty seconds before I could go back in to talk to him.

So, yeah, we're going to buy Ugg boots on the weekend. w00t!

Luckily for Joella, lol, I was planning to post something today :P (It's ok hun, I know you did it just because you missed me, and I'm not offended ;)

Well, the holiday went as well as it could have. Considering the toilet blocked twice in the first hotel we stayed in, and didn't work from the outset in the first room tried in another hotel. Also, weddings generally seem to be high pressure events, and not only did my father and I have a spat, the groom's father collapsed and had to be rushed to hospital. More on that another time. Also, photos later when I am less tired and less rushed.

Since getting back, I've been pretty well exhausted. I haven't had the energy to post, or log into an IM programs. Also, to be honest I'm avoiding someone who has been a bit of an irritant lately - if I don't speak to this person every single day, I am met with "OMG YOU EXIST!!!!!" when I next chat to them. What they fail to understand is that my life does not revolve around entertaining them, or even saying hello to them, and the minute it becomes "have to" I don't want to or don't enjoy their company. In fact, I don't want to speak to them.

I have also been both sick, and emotionally drained. I am at what I might refer to as "rock bottom" for the kind of person I am now - which is to say, generally (I think/hope) quite happy. Or at least compared to when I was finishing high school. I have avoided a lot of things - work, people who drain me through our friendship, and just people in general (because I need to focus my energy on myself for the time being). I'm not worried about getting over this - I'm just focusing to do it, and being exhausted is all that has made it crop up or a little more difficult to close the door on.

So, I'm exhausted, and have a few things going on with my body (yes, the bleeding is still going, and I now have the nausea and tenderness that the doctor warned me about to boot). The dog is still blind, deaf, and as incontinent as ever (I've cleaned up his messes five times this week), and it appears the cat has diaorrhea ... I washed him yesterday because there was no other way to deal with it matted all through his tail and bottom fur. He was one angry and skinny-looking cat at the end of it all, lol. But he forgave me pretty quickly.

So, back to the exhaustion ... I'm not sleeping well, and when I am, it's disrupted by my brother treating the family home as a youth hostel/night club with his mates, coming and going at all hours of the night and day. Part of that is related to Australia's progress in the World Cup (hooray!) but relative to the fact that other household members are not on holidays ... one would think a bit of respect would be given then.

Apparently not. Example: last night was the lead up to the Australia-Croatia match at 4.30am. At 1.30am my brother comes home from wherever he's been and bangs around in the kitchen and living room and settles in to watch whoever is currently facing off. I stick my head out of the room - having been distrubed from sleep (I went to bed at 9.30pm in a state of exhaustion) - and ask him to make less noise as I am trying to sleep. He unwillingly complies.

At 3.30am, his phone rings and vibrates through the entire house (wood carries sound and motion so well ...) which takes a while to wake him up and when he does wake follows with much loud discussion with the person on the other end. He then crashes around apparently getting dressed to go out (although it sounded more like re-arranging his furniture) to watch the Australia-Croatia game with his mates. He goes downstairs for a minute then returns upstairs. After 15 minutes of noise, I am now fully awake. I get up, open the door to my room and say to him (his room is above mine) "J, I am trying to sleep. You may not have anything else to do today and can sleep after the game, but I have to work! Can you please make less noise, like I asked earlier!" I wait for a response (he eventually grumbles some kind of acknowledgement) and as I do so, I realise one of his friends is sitting on the couch outside my bedroom, face flaming, and desperately looking in the other direction.

In my sleep-induced stupor (actually, I was trying to retain a level of zombie-ness so that going back to bed would not be difficult) .. I have jumped out of bed, and stood stark naked in front of his friend while scolding my brother about the amount of noise he is making.

Fortunately, this friend of my brother was very polite and the minute he realised I wasn't dressed, looked elsewhere. He has not mentioned it, and I don't believe will mention it to my brother or myself. That's fine. I'd like to pretend such an event did not just occur, too :x I think we're both happy with that.

And that brings me to today. I am at work. I'm not functioning anywhere near 100% (or even 40%) ... but I'm here. Thank all that's holy that it's the weekend after this :D

Smells are very evocative. They don't even particularly have to be attractive smells. They are smells that are bound to memories of a time or place or person.

On Saturday I was in the stairwell of a carpark and it smelled the way I remember Malaysia as smelling. It made me remember places I had been (the back streets of my father's hometown) and things I had seen (millions of fireflies on the riverbanks), and even things I had eaten (like noodles in a hawker stall near my father's hotel) that did not smell like the stairwell, but were linked to the smell of "Malaysia".

And this morning in the car park at work, the smell that lingered there and the freshness of the air and weather ... in the grey and sharp light of morning - it made me remember Paris in November, where I wandered through the Latin Quarter with my brother.

Music has the same effect on me. Listening to Linkin Park's In The End makes me remember the soft darkness of the cabin on the plane the first time I travelled to Italy. It makes me think of catching the bus early in the morning while my breath still created puffs of steam* in the cold air, and watching the sun rise as the bus wound its way up to the medieval city where I went to school.


Edit: *I'm not entirely sure if it's steam ... but it's condensation, right? Anyway my non-scientific brain is about to implode from thinking about that too hard. We'll go with it being steam ;)

Exerpts of conversation with yayheaven:

kittygopounce: oh shit.
asillyruca: hm lol
kittygopounce: I forgot how to spell Australia. Austrailia. Australia. Austrailia.
kittygopounce: EEK!
asillyruca: lmfao



asillyruca: oh I've been meaning to ask you too how you came up with your LJ name
[...]
kittygopounce: oh!
kittygopounce: red = Hong, and Yu = jade
kittygopounce: so ... it's my Chinese name ... sort of ..
kittygopounce: since my Chinese name is actually Hong Jue (Jue meaning double jade, not just jade, like Yu)
asillyruca: o0o0o0o0 I should touch you
kittygopounce: I know, lol!
asillyruca: you're the super lucky lucky charm*
asillyruca: what an awesome name!
kittygopounce: d00d, I am super protective w00t!
kittygopounce: super lucky!
kittygopounce: super cool!
kittygopounce: and twice as precious :X
[...]
asillyruca: no wonder you're so vain ;)



*the other night we found information on the purported properties of jade (according to traditional Chinese lore).