Eeeee! A snowdome kit! Thank you, Soulsis! <huggle>



The cubs' and their father gave me a copy of Pixar's Cars DVD, and mum made me a cushion:



Flamingos! I like flamingos... :)

We had xmas dinner at a pub/restaurant this year - Terminus Hotel in Healesville. This was my dessert. Tiramisu mousse and a chocolate butterfly. Mmmm...



The rest of the meal was delicious, as well, and it was lovely not having to cook and wash up. Mind you, we did that all on Boxing Day anyway when we met Soulsis and her chicks at Mum's.
Been a busy few days, driving hither and yon, I'm ready for a rest now. <g>

Egad, xmas is 2 days away! I do believe I'm almost ready, while the cubs are almost manic with anticipation. They know they're getting Hornby model railway bits but their father refuses to be tricked by their subtle <snort> questions and won't tell them what. <g> They'll just have to wait...

Eep! My phone's headphones broke! I checked though and it's all still under warranty so today I nipped in to the shops - nice and early, before the last-minute chaos really got started - and got another set. For free! Happy now.

I was trying to quantify exactly why it is I've never much liked the Top Twenty sort of music. With a few notable exceptions over the years, I've found that listening to the mainstream stuff (or 'hits and memories', which is old Top Twenty anyway) is like drowning in beige. Really really uninteresting. Give me Indie any day, at least that sounds alive.

Speaking of shudder worthy, Joules found this site a wee while ago... Worst Album Covers of All Time. Go and look - it'll make your eyeballs bleed, I promise! The most disturbing one for me is 'Julie's 16th Birthday'. I dunno, looks like there's some unsavoury coercion going on there...

Can't remember where I found this, but, ye gods!
"...He growled in a venimous whisper..."
Bwahahahahahah! Would a venimous have larger than normal fangs for a rodent? <snerk>

And finally - tee hee hee. My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Her Most Serene Highness Lady Lutra the Lackadaisical of Walk On Water. That's quite lyrically appropriate, methinks.
(There was a thingy on the Smart Bitches site a couple of days ago. The above was my second attempt as the first wasn't terribly inspiring.)

Anyway, chances of me doing another update in the next day or so is remote, (far more likely to put photos up at Flickr. Link at the top of the page...) so Happy Solstice! Happy Holidays! Eat well, stay safe and remember to say 'thank you' even if you don't like what you got. <g>

<blink> The S cub told me tonight that for next year's xmas list he's going to wish for super powers. He was serious.
(I should mention that both the cubs still firmly believe in Santa Claus - despite my gentle hints to the contrary.)

"Fashion" spotted today at the shopping centre: short, filmy shift things belted over black leggings. <rolls eyes> Let's party like it's 1986...

Heh, in the second last week of their second last year, the cubs finally have the proper sports uniform. That must be some sort of record.

It's taken me 6 years but I've finally realised that school concerts are not for the enjoyment of the audience, they're for the children. The kids have a great time... the rest of us just have to smile and clap like it's the best thing we've ever seen.
And this year's xmas concert was made even more special for me because I got an effing huge cramp in my leg. My own fault, I'd been sitting on the ground for a couple of hours without moving and I'd let my legs get cold.
It was agony - the muscles in my calf and my shin were cramping, as well as the ones across the top of my foot threatening to join in for good measure. It didn't matter how I stretched my leg something seized. Fortunately the cubs' father was there and he knows how to deal with cramps. He got my leg straightened out enough that I could stand, and from there it was just a matter of slowly working the muscles back under control.
I would've been embarrassed - writhing and moaning on the ground, making a spectacle of myself - if I hadn't been in so much pain. I swear, it was like childbirth: the awful inevitability of pain and knowing you can do nothing but ride it out. <g> It feels like I pulled a muscle in my calf; that'll take a little while to heal. Let that be a lesson to me! Take my slippers next time if it's going to be cold!

<suspicious> And how long will it be 'til I have to sign in to Blogger through Google...?

I got home this morning, from dropping the cubs at school, to find our front lawn being mowed by a professionally equipped person. It transpires that one of our house-proud neighbours organised the service - probly cos he finally got fed up with my laissé faire attitude to gardening. <sigh> I'm sort of used to the neighbours tackling the lawn for us themselves, but this... this was unsettling, and it took me most of the day to work out why. I have no problem accepting acts of kindness from friends and family. They're there for me, I'm there for them, it's reciprocal, it's what kin does. When non-kin are kind I get nervous cos I don't know what's expected of me. Probly paranoid, but, I like to have some idea of what the reckoning will be - and I don't believe for an instant that there won't be a reckoning of some sort. Even if this time it's just me being guilted into taking care of the garden myself. Heh, it'll be less traumatic if all I have to do is pay the bill.

Only two weeks 'til the end of the school year. Tch. I swear it was October only 3 days ago.

Sometimes, I just can't resist the lure of the merchandise...

Fortunately I think I can get a bigger memory chip thingy for my phone. 256 mb really isn't enough, not when I've joined 3's music club which means I can d/l items for $1.50 each instead of $3. That's cheaper than itunes! Excited? Oh yes... :) It's fun to browse the music lists - the new stuff is kind of patchy (considering I pretty much only listen to/am interested in indie) - but there's some really interesting older stuff lurking about.
Like tonight I checked what they had for Adam & the Ants, just cos, and - blimey! - not just the 'hits' I expected but the B-sides of those singles and tracks from the Dirk Wears White Sox album. See? I need space so I can nab all this good stuff.
[Currently listening to Beat My Guest which was the B-side of Stand and Deliver. (Shame on me I had to look that up. Tch, call myself an Antperson? Heh, not for a good few years, though I still think the logo would make a cool tattoo... I did remember all on my own however that another song I nabbed - Physical - was the B-side for Dog Eat Dog. {and poking around for the lyrics I find that Nine Inch Nails covered it! Neat, have to track that down as well. Bet it's a real sleazy version. Hee})]
In the past couple of days I've also grabbed copies of Kate Bush's Sensual World single (gorgeous!); Starlight - Superman Lovers; Rip it Up - Jet; Belleville Rendezvous from the soundtrack; Dear God - XTC and Chris Rea's Let's Dance. That'll do to go on with, don't want to blow out my phone budget. <g>

December 1st we put the xmas tree up and now KittenKong has something else to threaten to get my attention. <shakes head> Little madam.

Eeep. The Snupin Lurve Secret Santa has started. The entries are apparently being drawn from a hat and posted at random so I have no idea when my piece will go up.

And I finally got to watch 2001: a space odyssey. Wow. My gods, the detail - it really deserves to be seen on a big screen. (preferably as a double with Alien. <g> The fantasy and the - likely - reality of space travel.)
The ending didn't make a lot of sense but, from memory, neither did the book, and I was surprised at how visually dated it wasn't. Well, dated, but only on a very superficial level. There was a lot of tech that's familiar now. Need to see it again...