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!!!