Drought-Affected

You know that the government’s water saving message is getting through to you when you’re watching the shower scene from Psycho and your first reaction is annoyance that the shower is left running after she’s dead.

DNA

Apparently it’s now possible to live in a CSI-themed house by having your DNA sampled and printed onto a canvas. They’re pretty cool looking, and I’d almost considering hanging a canvas like that in my house, but there’s just the tiniest little voice deep inside me that has watched too many sci-fi shows and is whispering in my ear about government conspiracies and how I should never lick envelopes if they have my return address on them.
It would probably make dating a lot easier too - just take a quick look at your date's DNA and if you don't like what you see, just make a hasty exit.

I quite like the fingerprint art too – it would make it nice and easy if a crime was committed in your house for the detectives to separate your fingerprints from those of the criminal, because it would be magnified right there for anyone to see(can you tell I watch too much crime TV?).

The lip print art I'm not so sure about, because really - no one has lips that look like that. At least, not without the kind of surgery that involves injecting your butt into your face.

Random Facts as Promised

Yesterday I said that I would share something random about myself that most people wouldn’t know. At the time, I hadn’t really thought of anything, but thought to myself - really, how hard can it be to admit that I’m a weirdo? Apparently not that hard at all, because it turns out that I’ve already shared most of the random things about myself that other people might find odd, such as:

• My freakish and totally inexplicable love of Eurovision
• My embarrassing inability to wink
• My extreme dislike of exercise (yes, apparently that makes me weird, although I’m still not sure why)
• The fact that I might possibly be the only person ever to admit that they enjoy painting their house
• My high level of social retardation and the fact that I’m incapable of making small talk

But I did manage to think up another couple of things that I’m willing to confess to that might make you laugh (at me, of course – not with me). I can’t, however, make any guarantees that they’ll be any more interesting than my previously confessed random facts. But then again, I never promised anything interesting, only truthful, so here we go.

Random Fact #1
I don’t wear socks. Ever. In fact, I rarely ever even wear shoes that require socks – if you don’t do any exercise you never need to wear runners, so it’s not really an issue. I’m not even sure if I own a pair of socks at all.

Random Fact #2
I am hopeless at learning song lyrics. For a period of about three years I sang loudly along to ‘April Sun in Cuba’ with absolutely no idea what the words or the title of the song were. Since ‘April Sun in Cuba’ doesn’t actually sound like any other sentence, I just sang nonsense words. I was actually a little disappointed to find out what the lyrics were in the end.

Random Fact #3
I can fold an origami paper crane without any instructions. Also an origami hat, but that’s not quite as impressive. It’s as a result of reading ‘Sadako & the Thousand Paper Cranes’ when I was about 7 years old. I remember that reading the book made me immensely sad in a very un-7-year-old kind of way, and to this day whenever I fold one I still get a little teary.


There, now don’t you feel like you know me a little better and like you might want to confess to a few random facts of your own?

Coincidence & Sharing

Coincidence is a weird thing. How weird is it that of all the blogs that I could be reading worldwide, one that I read regularly and happened to be reading on the weekend is about the same totally random TV series that I had just started watching that exact same weekend? Freaky. Ok, maybe not that freaky, but it was still kind of surprising to me to see someone else talking about an almost 20 year old TV series that I thought everyone except me had forgotten. You have to admit that’s kind of a weird coincidence.


Life is full of odd little coincidences like this, where you discover that some completely random thing that you like and think that no one else could possibly like too is an interest shared by someone you never would have expected.

I recently discovered that an acquaintance of mine shares a similar and equally sad passion for Arnie Movies - in particular ‘True Lies’, which I have seen a very embarrassing number of times. This led to him lending me ‘Pumping Iron’ which I had never seen before. And despite the fact that I probably won't ever watch it again, if we hadn't discovered a common interest i would never have even known it existed. Body building is a sport that no matter how frequently and fondly I hear it described in that fantastic Austrian accent, I will never understand.


Maybe these kinds of things happen more often than we realise. Maybe secretly, everyone is a big Arnie fan or loves watching Northern Exposure but everyone is just too embarrassed to talk about it, because they think they’re alone in the world. We might be missing out on all sorts of cool stuff because we never told anyone that we liked out-of-the-ordinary things.

Having said that, I’d like to encourage everyone to share a random interest this week on their blogs or maybe in their everyday lives, because you might find out something interesting about someone you know. Tomorrow I’ll share something completely random about myself. That’s not a promise that it will be very interesting, of course, but it will most definitely be random.
And possibly embarrassing.

Premature Congratulations

Someone from an opposition company just rang up to congratulate me because he heard 'on the grapevine' that I'm pregnant and about to give birth!!!! What the...?! This is news to me since I'm not pregnant and as such NOT ABOUT TO GIVE BIRTH!

I didn't speak to him directly, so I'm not sure what kind of messed up grapevine he got this info from, but I'm very tempted to call him back and yell down the phone 'Are you calling me fat?!!!' Just to see what reaction I get. I think he would be so horrified that he would forget that we've never actually met in person so there's no way he could possibly have anything to say about how I look.

V8 Longing

I miss my V8. Even though I know that saying that probably makes me seem like a bit of a Bogan, I’m willing to accept that, because my car was like a member of the family. I still have the old car, but recently I upgraded to a new one – a little 4 cylinder i30. It was the sensible, grown up thing to do, but all the same, I can’t help but miss driving my old car. It was a beautiful 1977 Aussie muscle car with all sorts of completely endearing old-car faults that were all over-ridden by the joy you get from driving a classic car with a whopping big V8 motor.

Last night I was driving home in my i30 (wondering if it was still running because it’s so incredibly quiet) when I came up behind a slow moving van. As I put my foot down to overtake, I was suddenly struck by an incredible sadness and longing for my old car. In a 4-cylinder, overtaking is a chore. In my V8, it was fun. Every drive was a joy because you could feel the car sticking to the road. You felt every bump, every curve and you didn’t have the luxury of sticking on the cruise control and zoning out completely.
On a hot day, you would wind down the windows and drive as fast as you dared because there was no air conditioning. On cold days you would have to wipe down the windscreen every time you stopped at a light so you could see out because there were no demisters.

I guess it sounds like a bit of a pain, but I was very attached to that car, and I guess that’s the reason it’s still living in my garage instead of being sold off.


I wonder if I could fit a V8 into the i30?

The Soppiness Machine

Super-Facebook-Soppiness makes me want to vomit into my handbag and mail it to the guilty party with a note that says “since we’re sharing...”

How do people not understand that Facebook is a public space, not a private place for them to spew fountains of gushiness at their loved one?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-affection – everyone gets a little gooey like that on occasion (whether they’ll admit it or not). It’s just that I very firmly believe that it’s a private thing between you and the one you love – not you and the 400 people you’ve added as friends because you might have brushed past them in the hallway of a random building somewhere once back in 1972.

I have one particular friend whose girlfriend churns this stuff out as if she were a purpose built sop-machine. No matter how obscure and unrelated to her my friends status updates may be, she invariably comments in some way about how much she loves him and misses him and wants to kiss him.
If he comments on the football, she tells him she loves football as much as she loves him. If he comments about being tired, she gives a long winded speech about how she hates it when he leaves her in bed and that she’s cold and lonely and wants him to come back and hug her. And everything is followed by xxxooo – as if she can’t string a sentence together if it doesn’t have a big line of hugs and kisses trailing off the end.

Someone really needs to explain to her that Facebook’s real purpose is to keep you amused and distracted when you should be working and to give you the tiniest sense of satisfaction when you ignore a friend request from some girl who was an evil bitch to you in high school.

I'm Not Alone

So a while back I blogged about how I had no idea what any hand signals meant, and how if I was in the army, I would probably get shot pretty early on because I have no idea what all that hand signalling rubbish that you see in movies is all about.

Well according to my site stats, my page was recently found by someone from a US Armed Forces computer who was searching for ‘army hand signals’. Turns out even the people who use them have no idea what they mean. That, or there’s some person in the Army out there who, like me, is concerned that understanding hand signals might be important at some point. Good luck with that, Army person. Let me know if you work out what the hell all those weird gestures mean.

Some excuses to start the week

So you’ll have to forgive me for being slack about posting last week, but it’s been quite a busy one. It was my mother-in-law’s wedding and a friend’s 30th birthday - and to top it all off, I got a fantastic almost-migraine that had me in bed all through Friday and Saturday and left me feeling ill all weekend. Fun times.

Ahhh, there’s nothing like starting the week with excuses. But I’m trying to make up for it by posting twice today. Does it count as twice if one of those posts was supposed to be Saturday’s?

The wedding was a Sunday night thing, which is fine, but in all honesty, I am absolutely stuffed this morning. It finished up early – about 10:30 – but a wedding is still a long day, even when it’s shorter than average. And because I’m still not well, I was kept up all night by these crazy dreams about running around the airport about to miss my flight because I’d lost my bag with my ticket in it. Perhaps the headaches mean that I’m going nuts.

After thinking the dress dilemma through on Friday/Saturday, I decided on the pretty one rather than the sexy one and it was definitely the right choice. I had a whole lot of strangers tell me that it looked really nice, so that’s got to be a good sign. Actually, they weren’t strangers; they were relatives-in-law. I think. To be honest, I have no idea. They’re the kind of people you see maybe once a year, and when you do, you can’t ask their names because they all remember your name and you’re stuck in that kind of awkward conversation that goes exactly like this with every single person:

Them: Hi Torrygirl!
Me: Oh, hi....er, ah...(giving up on trying to remember their name) How are you?
Them: (as if we’re long time friends) I’m great! How have you been, I haven’t seen you in quite a while!
Me: (not quite believing we’ve ever met before) Er, yeah, it’s been ages hasn’t it?
Them: How are your parents? And your brother and sister? And that cute little niece and nephew?

And that’s about where I give up and try to sneak away from the conversation without them noticing - which mostly ends up with them thinking I’m really rude, but since I only ever see them once a year, I’m not that fussed about what they think.

Except, of course, for the bit where they tell me I look nice ;)

I Missed It!

Oh No! In the chaos of the wedding weekend, I didn’t get around to blogging on my absolute favourite holiday of the year!!!! Saturday was International Talk Like A Pirate Day and I missed it!!!

I was going to blog like a pirate today using this tool

and Google stuff in pirate speak here

But instead we ran around all day preparing for the wedding and going to a 30th that got rained out (actually hailed out to be more precise).


What I had been hoping to share with you on International Talk like a Pirate Day is a little insight into accents that I had. Despite the fact that I missed the day, I’ll share it with you anyway, because let’s be honest, Pirate stuff is interesting every day.

Whenever you watch documentaries about movies and stuff, Actors are always saying how an Australian accent is one of the hardest for them to imitate. In fact, I have yet to hear a convincing Aussie accent from anyone in Hollywood. Thinking about talk like a pirate day, it struck me that the American accent is a lot like a pirate accent. All of the ‘r’ sounds are pronounced like a pirate style ‘arhh’, whereas an Australian ‘r’, on the other hand, is pronounced more like a terrified yelp - ‘ahhh!’

So basically, if you’re an Aussie who wants to sound American, try a bit of a pirate accent and if you’re an American who wants to sound like an Aussie, just sound a bit terrified when you speak and that should do the trick!

Happy belated Talk Like A Pirate Day everyone!

A Two Dress Dilemma

With my Mother-in-Law’s wedding coming up this weekend, I find myself presented with a bit of a dilemma. It is a two dress dilemma.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a dress to wear to the wedding. It’s a short-ish, halter neck, figure hugging sort of thing that would most definitely fall into the category of being a sexy dress. It’s not slutty sexy by any means - it’s tasteful sexy, but a bit revealing and short none-the-less.

I had a bit of time to think about it after getting home and began to wonder if a sexy dress like that would be appropriate for the wedding of my Mother-in-Law to a Church Minister. Is there an expectation of a certain dress code dependent upon the type of people getting married? What sort of people would be at the wedding of a Minister? And what will my family-in-law think of me if for some reason they’re all wearing full length turtle neck dresses and I’m wearing an incredibly hot little dress?

With this little seed of doubt planted, I found myself shopping for another dress. The second one I ended up with would fall more into the ‘pretty and girly’ category of dress. It’s a floaty silk dress, still only knee length, but definitely appropriate for any occasion.

The dilemma I face now is that after trying them both on one after the other, I’m torn! The first dress is definitely more revealing, but it’s HOT and in turn makes me look pretty damn good.
But then the second dress is pretty too and will be comfortable to dance in. It also has the benefit of being a nicer colour than the first dress – it’s a deep aqua colour, where the first dress is a pale pink-ey/beige-ey colour.

What to do? Pretty vs sexy. Which should it be? If I was single it would be an easy decision – sexy would win hands down. But I’m not, and to be fair, if I was I wouldn’t be going to this wedding.

Am I missing anything here? Is there a valid reason to choose one over the other? If I can’t come up with something, I’m going to have to make a snap decision on the day and possibly risk making the wrong choice. Maybe I should return them both and just buy something else.

Old

You can tell someone is getting old when they waste half the day banging on about the answer to one insignificant question. I think it might be time to get a new job.

Gold Class

On the weekend, we went to the Gold Class Cinemas to see ‘Funny People’. The movie was kind of blah, but I love, love, love, LOVE Gold Class. It’s like watching a movie in your lounge room – if you had a cinema sized screen and waiter to bring you food intermittently throughout the movie. We had a three course meal, plus the mandatory popcorn and coke. The chairs are these big reclining suede seats which you can incline back until they’re almost horizontal.

It’s a pity it’s so bloody expensive, or I would go more often. We pretty much only go when someone gives us vouchers, because it’s a bit hard to justify forking out that much just to see a movie – especially since you have to pay for your food and everything on top of it.


There was only one thing that put a bit of a downer on the experience - I really can’t watch Eric Bana in Hollywood movies. The reason? Poida.

Poida was a comedy character that Eric Bana played years ago, and ever since he made it big in Hollywood, I can’t watch him without thinking of Poida. How can I take him seriously when I keep imagining him with a mullet and a packet of cigarettes up his sleeve?
The character he played in this movie reminded me of Poida even more than usual, firstly because he was playing an Australian, and secondly because he was playing it up quite a bit, so he came across as almost comically Australian, which is very much what Poida is like.

This is the main reason I have never seen movies like ‘Hulk’, ‘Troy’ or ‘Black Hawk Down’ and why I am very upset to find that he is playing Henry DeTamble in ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife' which is being released later this year. I read the book not long ago and loved it, but how can I ever watch the movie when all I will be able to think of is this...?:

Weeds

I'm watching a guy try to weed the empty lot next door in 100km/h winds. Quite unsurprisingly, he's not having much luck. Did you know it was possible for a person to be standing up while almost horizontal?

Photo5 has arrived!

My Photo5 box arrived last night! Woohoo!

Because I’m a giant dork, I got very excited and did a little dance when I discovered it in the mailbox. It was such a cute little box with a whole bunch of flaps that folded out to tell you what each brief was. You can check out what the box looks like here (not my photo).


There are 5 briefs all up (hence Photo5), each with a focus on a specific aspect of photography.

1. Shutter Speed –Paint Powder – take a photo of liquid in motion
2. Close up - Hundreds and Thousands – all about taking a macro shot
3. Bokeh - Star Lens Hoods – getting awesome star shaped bokeh
4. Portraiture – Spectacles – pretty self-explanatory I think.
5. Open Brief - Low light – taking a photo in a low light situation while still maintaining details.

I can’t wait to get started on it. At the minute I’m just trying to come up with some clever ways of using these things to take some great photos. My biggest issue at the moment is that I don’t really have a proper tripod, which makes the bokeh effect and the low light image difficult to capture. I have a crappy little tripod that is a bit of a hassle to use, so I think I’ll either have to mess around with that or borrow one from somewhere.

From what I can gather, the creativity of the photo idea is equally as important as the quality of the photo, so I think a lot of brainstorming is in order. I’m lucky that the two lenses that I own are pretty well suited to the tasks, one is a super sharp 85mm f/1.8 and the other is a macro lens, so at least I have the versatility to take the low light and macro shots. The 85mm takes an excellent portrait shot as well.

Time to start the brainstorming – butchers paper and textas at the ready!

Remastered

The release of the Beatles’ remastered Albums has meant that all day today it’s been non-stop Beatles music on the radio, which has been awesome. Since i got into the car to come to work this morning it’s just been one big Beatles-fest. The only problem with this has been that since I arrived at work and put the radio on, the guy who sits opposite me has been whistling along to every single song from start to finish.

Not cool. If there’s anything that could ruin a day of the Beatles, it’s being trapped in a 4m x 4m room with a man who whistles incessantly. Seriously, who whistles the ‘Na Na Na Na’ section of Hey Jude? And what kind of person can whistle for six hours straight without getting some kind of mouth cramp?!?

This new release of CD’s seems like as good a time as any to replace my copy of the White Album, which I lost in a bet to a friend quite a few years ago. It wasn’t even an interesting bet that I could blog about; it was just something stupid that I can only vaguely recall now.

Even better, I might go home and listen to the record, because no matter how cool digitally remastering something is, nothing will ever sound as good as that scratchy old record noise that somehow makes the music all seem more real.

It's here!

Finally, Finally, FINALLY after years of waiting I have it! Fast internet at home. Those of you who scoff and say that fast internet isn’t especially exciting – you have never had to pause a download so that it doesn’t kill your regular internet browsing. You have never had to wait half an hour to receive all of your emails. You have never had to go and make a cup of coffee and still have time to bake a cake to have with it while you wait for a YouTube video to load.

Now after 3 years of messing around, we are now in the fast lane instead of driving in the emergency lane like a confused old lady who can’t see the road ahead of her. I don’t know what to do with myself. Where to start? The internet is a vast and magical place filled with large files waiting for me to download them. It is a wondrous place filled with videos to stream and games to play.

Where to begin...?

Pirates, Salami and Walking to Work

Apparently last Friday was National Walk To Work Day. Now as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not particularly fond of the whole exercise thing, so I can’t say that the idea of walking 25km to work was something that appealed to me in any way. At all. Even a little bit.
I do, however, have some nutty friends who think this kind of thing sounds like a fun idea. In fact, one particular friend walked about 20km to get home from work. Craziness!!! When he mentioned that he had walked that far to get home, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Walk to Work day isn’t actually until October.

This ridiculous act of madness (and also this blog post) got me thinking about the crazy holidays that people invent. My particular favourite is International Talk Like A Pirate Day (coming up soon!) Which I intend to celebrate in the most piratey fashion I can think of - or to be more accurate, in the most piratey fashion that I am willing to commit to in public.


**Can I just interrupt this post at the moment to say that my spell/grammar check just wanted to change the words ‘most piratey’ to ‘pirateiest’?! I didn’t realise that spell checkers made up words the same way that people do. You would think it would have suggested piratical, which is the correct word, but in my opinion (and obviously the spell-checker agrees with me) piratey is a more suitable word.***


More on International Talk Like A Pirate Day on September 19th.

Every day is a bizarre holiday that has been invented by a random stranger, and the fact that a day is already taken by a wacky holiday doesn't really seem to stop people coming up with more. Today, for example, is ‘Salami Day’. Wednesday is Wonderful Weirdos Day. I wonder if there’s an ‘International Invent a New Holiday Day’? I’m thinking of inventing my own holiday, but I’m not sure if I could come up with something wacky enough to catch on. Although ‘walk to work day’ is a very simple, yet totally insane idea, so really it couldn’t be that hard.

Happy Salami Day everyone!

Photo5

This has been the absolute dullest week I’ve had in a very long time.

The only redeeming thing about this week is the fact that registration for the Canon Photo5 competition opened on Monday.

Without going into too much detail, the general gist of the Photo5 competition is that it’s a photography contest where Canon sends you out a box with 5 mystery items in it and you can take and submit 5 photos, each featuring one item.

I’ve been taking photos for quite a while as a bit of a hobby, and late last year I finally got myself a new camera – a Canon 40D. At that stage I had just missed out on registering for last year’s competition, so I’m pretty happy to be able to give it a go this year.

I should get the box in the next couple of days and hopefully that will kill some of the dullness around here. I can’t wait to get started!!!