What's the time?

When I was 16, I got myself a watch that I wore every day for the best part of the next decade. It was a good watch – styled a little like a men’s watch, with a metal band – only girly. It was the one item of jewellery that I was obsessive about remembering to wear, because it helped me with my ridiculous and compulsive need to constantly know what the time was. If I forgot to put it on in the morning, I would spend the entire day glancing at my wrist in frustration, fighting with my deeply rooted psychological obsession with knowing the time.

When the watch stopped working a couple of years ago, I made the decision not to replace it. I figured the best way to break my obsessive tendency was to remove the item that fed the obsession. I thought that if I couldn’t constantly check the time, then eventually I would stop wanting to.

Sadly, the removal of my watch only led to a much more annoying habit. For the next three years, I irritated everyone around me by constantly asking the time, pulling out my phone to check the time, or leaving the room to find a clock. What can I say – crazy isn’t an easy thing to shake.


Lately things have been pretty hectic at work, and keeping track of the time has become essential for me so that I can remember to do important things like stop for lunch, or go home before the sun rises. So this weekend just past, I went out and bought myself a new watch.

I would have liked to buy a super expensive watch with all sorts of second and micro second counters. A precision watch that was so fantastic that I never had to remove it – even when I showered. A watch that could tell me the time in 15 different languages and was so smart that it could read my brainwaves and knew as soon as I began to wonder what the time was so that it could pipe up and tell me without me having to look.

Alas, a watch like this does not exist. And its closest relative would have set me back a month’s wages and been like carrying a small toaster around on my wrist. So instead, I decided to take baby steps towards easing my obsession. I bought myself a watch that while functional, is primarily decorative. Four simple lines on the face of the watch give me an approximation of the time, without letting me obsess over exactly what minute and fraction of a minute the time is. It doesn’t even glow in the dark. It’s basic. And it’s a start towards becoming a normal person without an obsession with the time.

Funnily enough, only time will tell if I can stand using a watch like a normal person, or if in a couple of months from now I’m lugging around a toaster on my wrist.

Being Anti-Stalked

I like Facebook. It keeps me amused when work is slow. It feeds my scrabble addiction. It lets my best friend show me what her new boyfriend is like before I meet him.

What I don’t like about it is the school yard politics of it all. The controversy of deleting or rejecting a ‘friend’. The things that people post that they seem to think the rest of the world can’t see. The light-weight stalking that can go on.


I think I am being anti Facebook stalked. There is a girl who is a Facebook ‘friend’ who has added every single one of my friends that she has met for more than 15 seconds to her friends list. Now she is sending them all public wall posts, trying to make plans to go out with them. Without me. On Facebook. Where I can see.

It’s like the opposite of Facebook stalking. Instead of stalking me, she’s stalking all my friends and making it very clear that she is specifically not stalking me. Which in a lot of ways is more irritating than actual stalking. Because it’s hurtful rather than obsessive.


To be honest, I think she’s gone slightly crazy. She dated a friend of mine, and because of that, she thought we were best mates. She would ring me all the time and make plans to catch up without her boyfriend - which seemed slightly odd at the time, but I put it down to her just wanting to get along with his friends.

Then for a little while, she suddenly stopped calling or texting me. I didn’t think much of it, until I found out later that she was angry at me because I didn’t invite her to be a bridesmaid in my wedding. Because apparently you’re supposed to invite people you hardly know to be a part of stuff like that.


Then she and my friend broke up. That’s when the weirdness started. She rang my phone at 2am one morning and with barely a hello, demanded to speak to KJ. She demanded that he go and get all of her stuff from our friend’s place, and harass him for some money. When KJ said he couldn’t, she demanded to know why, as though he owed her an explanation for not jumping when she asked him to do something.
The next day she called me again, and when I told her that I didn’t think the phone call was appropriate, I got accused of being a bad friend. She said a lot of really mean things, and then she told me that I should be on her side. As if I want to take sides in someone’s relationship breakup!


And now the Facebook weirdness is starting. I’d like to just de-friend her, but I’ve said it before - I’m no good with confrontation. I would feel guilty about it for months.


I can’t understand people who cling to petty arguments or hold grudges for juvenile reasons. I’ve come across a few people like that in the past couple of years and I just can’t deal with them. They’re high on drama all the time. I don’t like drama ever really. I might be a little tightly wound at times, but never dramatic. And I don’t have time for people who want to turn everything into a big production.
But I always come back to this problem where once they’re in my life I can’t just cut them out, because the guilt slowly eats away at me until I feel sick from it.
I’d like to just go on with life only knowing people who are so laid back they’re almost horizontal. Instead I keep coming across these people who make everything into what feels like the script of a bad sitcom.

I think my best bet is to employ a front man - like the corporate face of Torrygirl. Someone to have all the awkward and angry confrontations for me, so that I’m just kept in the dark. That way, I can be crazy person and guilt free.

Thesaurus

I'd just like to give myself a big pat on the back for using the word 'eschew' in yesterday's post. Normally I can't use words that obscure unless I've had a couple of beers. It's one of many strange words that I've managed to use in regular conversation in the past week, including 'ergo', 'judicious' and 'fervent'.

I think my brain is stuck in thesaurus mode.

Big Boys Don't Cry....Do They?

I had a little whinge the other day about having to console some friends who have recently broken up (for what seems like the 500th time).

What I didn’t mention is that one of them is a friend as well as a co-worker. He sits at the desk next to me and at the moment, I’m kind of his temporary supervisor. By supervisor, I mean that my job is basically to give him a hard time about doing his work properly. This involves pushing him pretty hard for most of the day and drumming into him how important it is that he does things properly.

This has been made really awkward now, because during work hours I’m supposed to be the serious supervisor, but it’s really hard when at completely random moments, he will begin dabbing at the corners of his eyes with a tissue and getting all emotional.


I’ve never really had any problems separating my work from my personal life. I’ve always been good at it - I have to be, because I work with KJ, so if I couldn’t we would probably be divorced already. It gets a bit hard in this situation though, because you can’t just ignore someone being upset. But it’s difficult to be the concerned and caring friend trying to let him know that you’re there for him, then in the next breath demand to know why he forgot to do some critical part of his job. I might be great at separating work from personal stuff, but I'm hopeless when it comes to combining the two in any way.


Also, for some reason I just find it so much more gut-wrenching when it’s a guy doing the crying. It’s stupid to pretend like guys never cry, but I guess that as a female I’m aware how often women cry, but have no idea when it comes to men. After speaking to his ex last night, I was completely unsurprised that she cried for our entire half hour phone call - in fact I expected her to. And yet a few tears from him has me at a loss for what to say or do.


So, awkward times at the moment.

Shampoo

Now that I’m under no obligation to post about anything in particular, I have a decent sort of list of things to talk about. Most important on that list is my new shampoo. (It’s clearly a very intellectual list.)


I was washing my hair the other night, and since I was using a new shampoo, I had a quick squiz at the bottle to see what amazing things it promised to do for my hair.


Like every woman, my bathroom is full of beauty products – shampoo and conditioners, deep conditioning treatments; toners and face wash; face masks and pore strips; moisturisers and eye creams – you name a part of my body and I’m sure that I have some product that promises to work miracles on it, making it firmer or tighter, more radiant and healthy or some such nonsense. They all promise to make a difference to how I feel about my looks. But never in my entire 28 years of using these products have I come across one that has promised that it will actually make my hair more appealing to other people – until now.


My local supermarket was out of my regular shampoo, so I bought Schwarzkopf Extra Care ‘Straight & Glossy’. This amazing product promises to tame rebellious, frizzy hair; repair and straighten hair structure for up to 48 hours; and the big one - ‘provide alluring shine’.

There it is - dot point number two
(Excuse my dodgy phone-photography)

That’s right – it promises that it will give my hair some kind of mystical shining property that will actually make it more attractive and tempting to other people. At least, that’s my read on what ‘alluring’ means. And a quick browse around the web seems to confirm that I’m right – about the word meaning, that is, not about the mystical powers of my shampoo.

Google Dictionary says:
Alluring - Someone or something that is alluring is very attractive.

Princeton University Wordnet says:
Alluring - highly attractive and able to arouse hope or desire

and Wiktionary says:
Allure - The power to attract, entice; the quality causing attraction.


So essentially, this shampoo is promising me that if I use it, it will make my hair so shiny that suddenly men (and possibly women) everywhere will begin to look at me in a new way. My once dull hair will shimmer with wondrous shininess and people will find themselves suddenly drawn to me in a way that leaves them full of hope and desire.



Obviously, this leaves me with a few questions.

First off, do men really find shiny hair that appealing? Could the shine level of my hair really impede my ability to find a mate?

Secondly, is it possible that any product can actually make you more attractive to the opposite sex?In the end, you still look exactly the same, only slightly firmer, less wrinkly or with shinier hair.

And last of all - what am I doing wrong here? Because since washing my hair on Wednesday, I haven’t had a single person tell me how alluring I suddenly look or try to chat me up while surreptitiously attempting to stroke my hair. Maybe I need to flip my hair around more or something, like I’m in a hair care commercial.

Yes, that must be it.

Prank Call?

Just now I received what I’m pretty sure was supposed to be a prank call, but despite thinking about it for quite a while, I can’t work out what the hell it was supposed to mean. I can only assume that I didn’t say what was expected of me, or that the person who called was so stupid that just saying random crap makes them laugh. It went something like this:

Me: Hello (actually this was more involved than just saying hello because I’m at work, so I spouted a bunch of professional sounding crap.)
Prankster: Hi, can I speak to Ben?
Me: Who sorry?
Prankster: Can I speak to Ben.
Me: There’s no one named Ben here sorry.
Prankster: Er...well maybe you should try a breath mint! *laughter, then hangs up*
Me: .Um....what the fuck?

I was going to censor that last bit, because despite the fact that I swear a fair bit in real life, I don’t really swear on paper (or virtual paper, as the case may be). Virtual-Me is a lot more proper than Real Life-Me. But it’s Friday, and I’m feeling a bit less virtual-polite, so I left it there.

I spent a good 10 minutes after this call trying to work out if there was anything that I could have said in response to make that prank call make sense, and I came up with a big fat zero. Suggestions anyone?

Conversations with a Vegetarian Friend

Me: So you guys just come round after work at whatever time and we'll chuck some stuff on the bbq.
Vegetarian: Great! Do you want me to bring something?
Me: Sure, why don’t you bring a salad or something?
Vegetarian: Actually salads aren’t really my forte...
Me: ......

---

Me: I made vegetarian lasagne, you should come round for dinner!
Vegetarian: Cool, what stuff is in it?
Me: It has tomatoes and zucchini...
Vegetarian: Oh I don’t really like zucchini.
Me: ...and mushrooms and capsicum and ...
Vegetarian: Oh, mushrooms, yuck.
Me: ...eggplant and silverbeet.
Vegetarian: Yeah I don’t like either of those
Me: Are there any vegetables you do eat?
Vegetarian: I’m not really a big fan of vegetables actually.
Me: .....

Random memory from my childhood

I was about 4 years old and was playing outside. I picked up a tiny little rock, looked at it, and decided to put it up my nose. No idea why – my only memory of my thoughts at the time are that it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Unsurprisingly, it gave me a bloody nose.

That, however, is where the memory ends. I do not remember the rock coming out....



Is it possible that it’s still up there?

LOL SOS

Today someone actually said “L-O-L” to me after something amusing, as if an acronym is a real word.

Immediately I lost all respect for them. You know, because I’m bitter and judgemental like that.

But then I had the chance to think about it a bit more, and I realised that the use of acronyms in everyday life isn’t exactly a new thing. I mean, how often does someone say ‘FYI’ or ‘ASAP’? And no one ever thinks that’s weird. Unless someone says ‘Ay-Sap’ instead of ‘A-S-A-P’. That’s kinda stupid.

Although I can honestly say that I can’t ever recall using an acronym like it was a regular word myself. It just feels kinda weird, in the same way that it feels weird calling your mum by her given name.

A little while back I was in the changing rooms of a clothing store, and a girl in the next cubicle had tried on a top* and was modelling it for her friend, who was um-ing and ah-ing over it.
“Yeah” said the girl with the top “there’s something NQR about it, isn’t there?”
“What’s NQR?” asked her friend, at which the other girl proceeded into a 5 minute long explanation of how it really meant not quite right. Which kind of defeated the purpose of using an acronym.

So who is the bigger idiot in this circumstance? The girl who attempted to use an acronym in regular conversation, or the girl who couldn’t work out what NQR meant? Maybe the least idiotic thing would be for the girls to know what the acronym meant, but not be so sad as to try to use it in a conversation.

It also made me wonder if people say other acronyms like they’re real words? In particular, stuff that is used in online chat to describe actions that the other person can’t see – like ‘ROFLMAO’. And if you say that as a word, does that cancel out the need to actually roll around on the floor, laughing your ass off? Or do you just writhe around on the ground for a bit before choking out ‘R-O-F-L-M-A-O’?

I’m going to add LOL to my list of things that people have said out loud to me that I don’t consider to be real words, along with ‘Woot’, ‘Supposably’, ‘O-M-G’ and ‘Droll’.

That last one is on there because I think it sounds like it should mean the opposite of what it actually does.



*If you’re a male, feel free to imagine that they were trying on skimpy underwear instead of clothing. It’ll make what is essentially a pretty dull story seem a lot more fun.

Further to my earlier post...

How weird is not eating red meat but not being a proper vegetarian. It really removes the best parts of being a carnivore.

Bring on the steak!

Double dreams

Have you ever wondered if it’s possible for two people to have the same dream at the same time?

Last night I had a dream about someone that was so incredibly vivid it was almost real. Well, it could have been real except that it was weird and a little disjointed in that way that dreams are.

It wasn’t just visually realistic, it was emotionally realistic too. The emotions I felt while having this dream were so real that when I woke up I could still feel them, as though something had really just happened.


It seems almost indecent to have a dream that vivid about someone and for them not to have had the same dream too. I mean, my brain is putting words in their mouth and having them do things that they might never do under their own steam. It just seems wrong.

I think I’ve probably only ever had one or two dreams that were this intensely vivid, so it sort of stands to reason that it was vivid for a reason, and the only thing I could come up with is that maybe the person in my dream was dreaming the exact same thing at the same time. Is that even possible? It would help to explain some of the random things that I was doing in the dream too.

Weird.

No Thanks

To the guy who sent me the very explicit email last night:

No, I am not the Torrygirl from ‘Horny matches dot com’.
No, I am not interested in meeting up with you.
No, I can’t do that – I’m not that flexible – I’m pretty sure no one is.

The Stupidest Thing I've Ever Done

Last week, I did the stupidest thing that I have possibly ever done while driving a car. I know that makes it sound like I did something dangerous, but no, it was just stupid, and in the embarrassing kind of way.

I have never, ever hit anything while driving. I don’t find it particularly difficult to drive in a straight line and not run into anything. You know, as long as your eyes are open it’s pretty easy not to hit stuff. Those people that take 950 turns to get their license completely baffle me. The whole concept of driving is pretty easy. You point the car in the direction you want it to go, you accelerate to the speed limit and you avoid solid objects. Simple, right?

But I guess that doesn’t take into account what happens when you forget to pay attention.

I was backing out of a friend’s driveway, which is a reasonably tricky one, but not too hard if you pay attention. One side has a large tree; one side has a low volcanic rock wall. A number of people have run into the tree by not paying attention, so I’m always careful to watch out for it as I drive out. This particular day, I was watching the tree in my side mirror to make sure I had plenty of room, but was also thinking about dinner and how I could feed myself at home on nothing but 2 minute noodles and potatoes, because I couldn’t be bothered stopping at the shops to get real food. I was driving slowly, barely even walking pace

All of a sudden, there was a massive hissing noise and I felt the back of the car suddenly drop. Having no idea what was going on I stopped, moved the car forward a little and got out. Somehow, while looking at the tree, I had managed to hit my tyre on the very edge of a rock jutting out of the low rock wall. Not the car, not the rim, just the tyre! How the hell that happened is inexplicable, but not only had I clipped it, it had ripped an enormous hole in my tyre! It was big enough to fit my thumb through.

I can only assume that since I was going pretty damn slowly and since I hit nothing else on the car, there must have just been a sharp bit of rock sticking out. How the hell else do you put a hole in the sidewall of your tyre but not damage anything else?

It’s honestly the most ridiculously, embarrassingly stupid thing I have ever done in a car. And not only that, but I now have to fork out $200 for a new tyre. I could accept this if I was doing something wrong and had learnt a lesson from it all, but no. I was just thinking about 2 minute noodles with a mashed potato topping.

Stupid or what?

Mid Ring

Have you ever noticed that no one ever picks up a phone mid-ring? If the office phone is ringing, it always gets picked up between tones, never in the middle. Often, my hand will hover over the handset until a ring is completed before I grab it and pick it up. It's a very weird phenomenon.

Mobile phones have solved this problem somewhat by letting us have musical ringtones. It’s ok to interrupt a song mid-beat because it’s just like pausing your CD player.

I’m going to make a conscious effort to break this behaviour. So far I’m failing, because while typing this, I have answered the phone twice and each time I did it between rings. This could take a while.

Try it. I bet you have as much trouble breaking the behaviour as I do.

Love by Numbers

If, like me, you thought that there was such a thing as a soul mate or true love, then apparently you’re wrong.

Making your relationship work has nothing to do with soul mates or anything spiritual – apparently all you need is a handy little checklist of things to do/not do and you’re set!

Researchers have managed to come up with a bit of a checklist for what will make a relationship last. It’s a bit of a list of all the things you should share in life that will make for a successful relationship.

You can read the news article here, but I’ve condensed it all down into a simple 10 point checklist that means all you need to do is check a few boxes and you could be well on your way to marital bliss.

1. The woman should be at least five years younger than the man.
   I assume this works because older men love showing off their ability to pull younger chicks and woman are partial to a man with a bit of experience.
   
   
   
2. Share at least three cuddles and four kisses per day
   If you don’t touch each other, then it’s just weird that you’re married if you ask me. Just don’t become one of those people who thinks it’s cool to stick your tongue down someone’s throat in an everyday social situation. I’m happy if you love each other, but I don’t need to see it while I’m trying to have fun.
   
   
   
3. Share two hobbies on a regular basis.
   I don’t think the items in point 2 count as hobbies, so it probably has to be something more like hiking, skiing or some other kind of physical activity that people weirdly seem to enjoy. Does sleeping count as a hobby?
   
   
   
4. Have two romantic meals a month
   Do you think having a pizza delivered counts? I think I’m probably averaging two per year at the moment. May have to work on this one.
   
   
   
5. Make at least three calls, texts or emails to each other per day.
   KJ and I work together, so if I were to call, text or email him 3 times a day, he might begin to think that I wasn’t doing my job properly. That maybe I had lots of spare time to do things like chat online to friends or write long-winded blog posts.... hmmmm....
   
   
   
6. Say ‘I Love you’ at least once a day’
   You can do this in one of the many phone calls or text messages from point 5 if you like. Convenient.
   
   
7. Organise at least one surprise weekend away per year
   Does saying ‘Surprise! I need you to go to Adelaide for work!’ count?
   
   
   
8. Take one holiday per year
   I could quite happily live with that, as long as I don’t have to go camping. Because no matter how you try to spin it, there’s nothing relaxing about sleeping on the floor and squatting behind trees.
   
   
   
9. 3 nights per week should be spent snuggling up watching TV or a movie.
   This one is easy, since I’ve decided this could be one of my hobbies. That way I can be sharing a hobby while also meeting the requirements of point number 9.
   
   
   
10. This is the one that really gets me – You should spend two separate nights away from each other per month.
    What the?! If every month you need to fit in 90 cuddles, 120 kisses, 4 or 5 outings for hobbies, two romantic meals, 90 calls/emails, as well as holidays and surprise weekends away, all while living your regular everday life - how exactly are you supposed to find another two days to not see each other?!

Inspired by Maurice

Recently I watched an episode of Northern Exposure in which Maurice’s brother dies, and he begins to worry about who will become heir to the Minnifield empire. He tries having Chris as his new ‘son’, but it doesn’t work out. Later in the episode, he has a conversation with Joel that really stuck in my mind:

MAURICE: The Minnifield empire will not bear fruit in one man's lifetime.
JOEL: Yeah. I heard it didn't work out with you and Chris.
MAURICE: Yeah.
JOEL: I'm sorry. You know, maybe you can start a trust. The Minnifield foundation. It worked for the Rockefellers and the Gettys.
MAURICE: No. I've come up with something else, Joel.
JOEL: Really, what's that?
MAURICE (deadly serious) : I've decided to live forever.

I was thinking about this last night and it struck me that Maurice might be on to something. Like Maurice, I could protect my empire simply by living forever. Ok, so I don’t have an empire yet – but when I do, it will need protecting, and eternal life seems the easiest way to go about this.

Let me tell you why this is going to work.

Firstly, it’s a well documented fact that I am inherently lazy. I don’t exercise unless forced to for some reason. The most amount of voluntary exercise I like to do is to walk from my car to my office and back again. While this might seem like a lifestyle choice, I maintain that it is, in fact, my body’s innate nature. In fact, it’s entirely possible that my body is so lazy that it will never develop a deadly illness, never be bothered to age, never muster up enough energy to cause me to do any of the things that lead to a body’s death. So as long as I don’t get hit by a bus, I should be fine.

Secondly, I eat a lot of foods with preservatives in them. Surely this can only help to stem the flow of old age and prevent my body from decaying. If it doesn’t work quite like that, at the very least I’ll be the best preserved corpse around.

Thirdly...ok, so I can’t think of a third reason why. But no one said that explaining immortality was easy, so I guess two will have to be enough. Now all I need is my empire and I’ll be set. Although if I can’t manage to come up with an empire I guess I’ll just have to settle for living to a normal age like everyone else.

Embarrassing Illnesses (not mine, luckily)

Because, thanks to the magic of Foxtel, we have a hundred and something TV channels, last night I was able to watch a lovely show called “Embarrassing Illnesses”.

The gist of the show was that people who had what would be considered embarrassing illnesses went to see doctors who helped them out while explaining how they shouldn’t be embarrassed because these sorts of things are so common. I got to see wonderful things like bad breath, ingrown foot warts, a penis with an almost 45 degree bend (!!), a woman with a prolapse (yet another possible joy to having a baby that I didn’t need to know about) and a man with a third nipple.

Obviously the people on the show can’t have been too embarrassed by their illnesses, because they allowed themselves to be filmed and broadcast worldwide – and in particular the woman with the prolapse showed waaaaay more of her problem than I wanted to see. And yet, the man with the wonky what-not had his bits pixellated out. Odd. Maybe it was personal patient choice.

You have to wonder what kind of TV producer comes up with this stuff. Was he a man with an embarrassing illness of his own? Perhaps the entire show was an elaborate way for him to find out about his illness without actually having to see a doctor himself. And what kind of audience were they trying to cater to? It can’t just be people like me who are channel hopping and left it on while waiting for something good to start. Surely that isn’t a valid category of viewers that people try to cater to.

Perhaps I shouldn’t try to think too far into the reasoning behind it – after all, I think the quality of the program is summed up by the point where the buff and bronzed ‘Dr Christian’ took it upon himself to inform beach-goers about the risk of skin cancer and proceeded to slather sunscreen all over two young bikini clad girls.

Quality programming.

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?

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!