sallysetsforth

I woke up this morning with a sunburn headache and a cold. As a result, I spent most of today in bed. So having done nothing today, I have nothing to blog about (except for the fact that I slept the day away!).

Unfortunately I missed out on a 1st birthday party that I'd been looking forward to attending. The 1-year-old's mum is an good friend of mine from high school who I haven't seen in ages. Hopefully we'll catch up in the new year.

I started feeling better after about 7pm, so hopefully this was just a one-day thing. It's a busy social time of year, and we have another party on tomorrow - this time a BBQ with a close-knit group of former colleagues.

In my previous post, I mentioned that I went along to the #socialmelb tweetup for a spot of creative bartering this morning. It was held at Mr Tulk Cafe in the State Library of Victoria. And it was the beginning of a very enjoyable day in and around the city for Tim and I.

After we left Mr Tulk Cafe, we did a spot of window shopping in Melbourne Central. We were hoping to finish our remaining Christmas shopping, but had no luck in that department. So we popped into a cafe for something to eat (and had a vigorous discussion about the pros and cons of homemade versus purchased presents!).

The weather was lovely, so we next caught a tram down St Kilda Road to the Royal Botanic Gardens. Tim and I had a lovely wander through the gardens, and also stretched out on one of the lawn areas to simply enjoy the view and lounge about for an hour or so :)

We walked back to the city along the Yarra River, eventually arriving at Southgate where we had some lunch and an ice cream to go with the view of the river. We did a spot of people watching too - mostly those dancing drunkenly on their Christmas party booze cruises ;)

Our evening was a bit stressful, unfortunately, when we arrived home to discover that Roxy hadn't eaten any of her food while we were away. This is extremely unusual for a cat who's on a diet! Tim and I had taken Roxy to the vet yesterday for a suspected ear infection. She acted very subdued afterwards, which caused us some concern and resulted in further phone calls to the vet. She'd seemed to pick up overnight, but the loss of appetite was very worrying. So it was off to the vet again! He couldn't really determine a cause, but it appeared that Roxy wasn't eating because of pain rather than appetite loss. So we changed her over to wet food this evening, and happily she's had a couple of good-sized meals now. Hopefully she'll be able to eat normally again once the ear infection clears up (fingers crossed!).

The other downside to the day was the discovery that I was sunburnt! At first I just looked a bit pink, but as the evening wore on it became obvious that I was quite badly burnt on the face and forearms. I've applied aloe vera gel, but wish I had remembered the sunscreen! I think all this funny weather we've been having lately made me forget that it's summer!

The day did pick up again when I realised that my University results were due back today. I checked online and discovered that I got marks that I was more than happy with for the semester  - woohoo! :)

Tim's day appears to have ended well too - he is ensconced in front of the television, flicking channels (without any protest from me) between a zombie movie and a disaster movie. And I'm more than happy to leave him to it!

Sorry about the lack of a blog post yesterday - I was stitching to a deadline and ran out of time!

I've been meaning to post here for some time about crafty stuff - crafts that I currently do and crafts that I want to learn. That blog post is still in the pipeline, but for now I'll show you my latest cross stitch project of robots mucking around in a photo booth :) (click on the photo to see a larger version on Flickr). The pattern was created by Krupp at Mr X Stitch. I loved the design as soon as I saw it!



I've previously mentioned that I have met some great people on Twitter. A couple of lovely librarian/crafter/creator types - haikugirlOz and restructuregirl in Melbourne came up with the idea of swapping items in their areas of expertise - a creative barter (#creativebarter on Twitter). They brought crochet and pottery into the mix, and when they put out for the call for others to join in, I volunteered my cross stitching efforts.

Now, cross stitch is not one of the trendier crafts that one can do. And a lot of cross stitch designs consist of flowers, kittens, etc. In fact, I must confess that I love cross stitching flowers myself ;). But like many crafts today, there are people out there doing some pretty cool, edgy stuff with traditional crafts like cross stitch, embroidery and crochet. And happily, haikugirlOz and restructuregirl were open to the idea of some modern cross stitch :)

So I became part of the #creativebarter group. We arranged mutually agreeable swaps for our wares, and I got to work on stitching the robot photo booth, which I made up as a bookmark in this instance. I've also created a cross stitch design (my first!) of a teapot, which I'll be starting work on as soon as Christmas is over. In return, restructuregirl made some gorgeous blue-hued pottery bowls, and haikugirlOz offered an amigurumi knight and crochet lesson (amigurumi is a Japanese term for small crocheted toys).

Our first swap took place this morning (which is why I was madly finishing my cross stitch last night!) at the weekly #socialmelb tweetup. haikugirlOz took a bunch of great photos which can be viewed as a set on her Flickr account.

This photo shows some of the wonderful items being swapped. I feel very fortunate to have been the recipient of several of these beautiful bowls, as well as the super-cute knight and coffee cup pincushion :). The other awesome crocheted goodies (such as the dalek - yes, a dalek!) were made by haikugirlOz for restructuregirl.



#creativebarter photo credit to haikugirlOz (on Flickr)

P.S. Another blog post is on its way shortly to make up for yesterday's lack ;)

It's hot. 39°C to be exact.

We beat the heat earlier today by getting out this morning to do some Christmas present shopping. But now we're home, the air-conditioner is on, and you can expect very little activity (from me at least) for the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, the computer is not in the same room as the air-conditioner, which is why I'm writing this quick blog entry and then skedaddling to the cooler part of the house :)

All these Advent Calendar posts, and no mention of Christmas yet!

Well, last night Tim made the Christmas pudding. The recipe we use is slightly too big for our pudding basin (as we discovered last time when it popped the lid off!), so Tim made some mini puddings as well. They cook faster than the main pudding, and turned out absolutely delicious :)



I love having a traditional Christmas dinner, although nowadays I substitute the roast with a nutloaf or something similar. But I still enjoy the roast veges and gravy with the main meal. And who doesn't love a good old-fashioned Christmas pudding with hard sauce (brandy butter), custard and ice cream. Mmm...

I'm totally loving that Magnum P.I. reruns are back on TV!

Channel 7 had started showing them every now and then (and on a completely random basis) on weekends, but their new digital channel 7TWO is playing Magnum P.I. every weekday at 11am. I set the timer every day, and have been having a blast watching the show! :)

Tom Selleck playing Magnum is so much fun to watch. In fact, everything about Magnum P.I. is fun! The fast cars, the fashion, the camaraderie between the characters, the Hawaiian scenery, the short shorts ... And apparently I'm not the only one who still has a soft spot for the show. There's a website called Magnum Mania which still has a very active fan community.

I love the Magnum P.I. theme song too - it's probably the only opening titles sequence that I never fast-forward through, because I enjoy it so much. It really gets you in the mood for some fun 80s action TV. If you can't remember how it goes, you can listen to it HERE on the Magnum Mania website. As soon as I figure out how to upload it to my mobile phone, this is going to be my new ringtone :)

I can't think of anything to blog about today.

So I'll link to someone else's blog entry instead ;)

First Blog on the Moon - Reader's Pets (10 July 2009)

Earlier this year, Crikey's lovable cartoonist First Dog on the Moon put out a call for photos of reader's pets. I responded, and - voila! - our cat Roxy was featured on his blog! I was far more excited than she was, of course :)

P.S. If you do go and have a look at First Dog's blog, make sure to pass your mouse over the pics for more funnies ;)

We bought a new camping mattress today, one of those foam mattresses that fold up rather than roll up. Our old camping mattress finally died after many years of loyal service - it previously belonged to my parents, and to my grandparents before that! Tim and I have tried roll-up foam mats, inflatable mattresses, and those expensive self-inflating camping mattresses, but nothing was as comfortable as that old fold-up foam mattress. I hope we get a few good years out of this new one!

Although Tim and I haven't been camping as often as we'd like to lately, it's a really enjoyable way to holiday. Especially if the weather's on our side! Hopefully we'll fit in a trip or two in Victoria before we head north.

Our first holiday together, back in the summer of 1998-9, was a camping trip in the Grampians. I have such fond memories of that trip. Like falling asleep before midnight on New Year's Eve at Lake Fyans. And the shocked look from a little boy who spotted Tim's brightly painted toenails (gosh he puts up with a lot!) in the water while we were paddling near a waterfall one day :)

Since then we've done quite a few camping trips. The beautiful camp site at Johanna Beach in the Great Otway National Park is one of my favourite spots. And the underground camping at Coober Pedy was bizarre, but great fun :)

It's not always fun and games though - there was also the time we got caught out in Lake St Clair, Tasmania with a summer tent in freezing weather (in our defence, it *was* summer!). We also discovered that night that we'd forgotten to bring pillows, and that our inflatable mattress had a leak! We stayed in a hotel the next night ;)

I've just finished labouring over the job application that I mentioned yesterday. I've now sent it in, and I think it was a good effort in the end (although my chances for this position are only so-so). I'm kind of buzzing actually - a bit like the feeling you get after completing a work project or handing in a Uni assignment!

I'm also feeling very fortunate today. In the lead-up to submitting the application, I was lucky enough to receive assistance from several fellow librarians in different ways. I was told about the position by a librarian in the Northern Territory who received my contact details from a colleague here in Victoria. Another colleague gave me some advice about what the position was likely to entail. And a librarian that I know through Twitter was kind enough to offer to look my application over and provide some helpful comments :)

Although I'm looking ahead and looking forward to future challenges in Darwin, I'm also feeling nostalgic today for my previous workplace. I was invited to their end-of-year lunch today, and had a wonderful time catching up with everyone and enjoying great conversations over lunch. They really are a lovely bunch of people, who I hope to have the pleasure of working with again some day :)

Today's post is super-quick, as I've got to finish a job application tonight :)

Tim and I bottled the home brew last night and have 54 bottles of beer to show for it. We had quite an efficient production line going between the two of us as we sterilised, rinsed, primed, filled and capped all of the bottles.



We also had an electrician come around this morning to fix some lights and install an extra powerpoint in the study. Hopefully that should put an end to some of the power-related computer problems we've had in the past.

And I spent the afternoon at my Mum's house, sorting through books with one of my sisters. Mum's done a big culling of her book collection, but it hasn't had a positive flow-on effect to my own culling efforts. Today was our fourth (and final) day of book sorting, and each occasion has led to an increase in my own book collection!