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Last week of term. Woot!
I was looking forward to days off and lie-ins... but the diary is already looking pretty full. Tch. It'll all be fun stuff with the cubs, however.
Scienceworks is having a special exhibition, based around Star Wars!
Melbourne Museum is hosting A Day in the life of Pompeii [squee!].
We'll be going up to Mum's for a few days.
There's movies to see! Transformers! Star Trek! (again : ) Ice Age 3... and of course the rest of the Harry Potter franchise for me. (Speaking of which, saw Chamber of Secrets last weekend. Had only seen it on DVD. The spiders were even scarier on the big screen!)
And the cubs are having their birthday and party in the middle of it all.
I'm sure I'll be able to squeeze in a nap or two somewhere.

~=o>

Penny had a Winter Solstice (afternoon) party on the weekend. There was sooo much food that neither the cubs nor I had the slightest bit of interest in dinner that night. There were competitions, too! Rocket came second in the 'Eat the salada biscuit the quickest' - winning a Darryl Lea giant freckle - and I came first in the 'Guess the songs', winning a Penny-made Beelzenef hand puppet. 'Twas fun. : )

~=o>

Driving this morning I saw a bumper sticker on a huge, 4WD ute-monster thing:
"My other toy has tits."
.... nice. >: /
But what really makes me cross is that if I'd made an objection I would've been a humourless dyke/feminist. Tolerance goes both ways, shit-for-brains.

Joules has been very positive in her comments about the UK series Being Human, so I squeaked happily when it was advertised over here.
Watched the first ep tonight and loved it! Good, solid characters right from the start, plus a smattering of back-story to be going on with along with a scary potential menace = yep, got my attention. Looking forward to the next one. : )

~=o>

A little while back I finally got 'round to watching the movie version of Mama Mia. I'd heard a lot of good stuff about it but ultimately it failed to charm. I didn't think Meryl Streep's singing was anything extraordinary and the majority of the characters just made me huff in irritation. (I don't care about you, get over yourselves!) Except for Harry (Colin Firth); I liked him, and, I have to admit the - literally - Greek chorus was a fun idea, but... meh. Won't be going back to that one.
Unlike Across the Universe! Being based on the music of the Beatles gave it a BIG tick to begin with but combined with the excellent casting and performances and excellent use of the music to move the story along I was sold on it completely. Definitely going to get hold of a copy all for my very own. And probably the soundtrack as well. Hmm, and I really do need to replace my Beatles' vinyl eventually...

~=o>

Ooh, I'm not as young as I used to be and if there's anything that'll bring this sharply home to me it's the not being able to stay up really late without consequences rippling on for a couple of days. Case in point: last Saturday night, instead of trotting off to bed between midnight and 1 a.m., as was sensible, I hung around watching Rage until gone 3. To be honest it wasn't because I was enjoying the music, it was more of a omigod, can't look away train wreck sort of thing. The theme last week was Retro Dance and we were treated to such gems as Batdance, and Vogue, and, gods help us, Love is a Battlefield. Not to mention Thriller and U Can't touch this. [shudder]
But anyway, I thought I'd be fine cos I had the buffer of Sunday to recover, it wasn't like I was staying up late on a school night. Heh, Monday rolls around and I still slept in past the alarm and ended up dragging myself through the day 'til I got home and had to nap. Tch.

~=o>

In the lead up to Half-Blood Prince my local cinema (which is actually part of a huge chain) is running all the previous films in limited re-release. I went to see Philosopher's Stone last weekend; tomorrow I'll be seeing Chamber of Secrets. Hee.
Yes I have the dvds and yes I've watched them a lot but there's something special about seeing them on the big screen.

~=o>

This past semester, instead of doing boring old sport, the cubs' school has had the year 8's involved in learning dance and circus tricks. Yesterday evening there was a performance...
I've definitely seen worse! But seriously, the kids looked like they were having fun and it was obvious they'd been working hard on the routines. Good job, y'all! : )

I haz a sick [coughs].
Well, all right, I'm almost better now, but I've just had a week off from practically everything - except cooking - cos I couldn't move without violent coughing. Eh, just a cold, albeit a nasty one, and not in the least bit flu-like.
Apparently there's now over 700 people in Victoria confirmed as having the N1H1 virus. What's not been made clear, however, in allllll the news reports and statements, is whether they are actual cases of the swine-flu, with symptoms, or just people who've tested positive. There is a difference, surely?

~=o>

[snerk] Knicked from Undunoops by way of blpaintchart...

Fish - The Freshmaker!

Enter a word for your own slogan:

Generated by the Advertising Slogan Generator. Get more fish slogans.

~=o>

Borrowed a copy of the Speed Racer movie from the library. Once you get past the 'oh my god, my eyes!' reaction to the hyper colours, there's really nothing in it. It's a bit clever in a couple of places, I suppose, and the smattering of slash potential kept me vaguely interested (Racer X/Taejo yes!) but at the heart of it, it's just a race movie [snore]. Cubs loved it, unsurprisingly. It does deserve to be seen on a big screen though. Even one of them new-fangled plasma tellies'd do the trick.

~=o>

25 years of Tetris!
Have you seen this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0LtUX_6IXY

Well, I've been prodded! See, I've got the bruise an' all...

Sooo, it's been months since I last updated, has it? Goodness, how did that happen? [Look! Fleeing haddock! -> >@ >@ >@ ]
What have I been up to? School. And school. And r/l's minor crisis and irritations. And school. What I haven't been doing much of is writing - which I really do miss, as evidenced by the increase of graphic dreaming - but I find it difficult (really difficult) to switch between the necessarily different mindsets of writing and study. Let alone updating a blog...
~=o>

So yeah, 2nd year of the Library Studies has been pretty full-on. Class work's fine, and I'm not having any problems with the content but, ye gods! The homework! Fair enough, it's entirely my own fault I haven't kept on top of it, but there is significantly more work to do than last year. Still, I'm enjoying it, and I'm still convinced this is what I want to do. :) (Though some of my classmates have got it in to their heads that I should be teaching. [eyebrow] I don't think so. I have taught, in the past. Don't want to do it again. I tried to explain my lack of enthusiasm for teaching thusly: when I think of library - or archive/records management - I get a warm, happy buzz. When I think of teaching there's a huge, welling bubble of disinterest. Just because I can teach, and could be quite good at it, doesn't mean I want to.)
~=o>

What else have I been doing? Reading a lot of books, a lot of books, and seen quite a few movies, the most recent of which was Star Trek!

Do I need to warn for spoilers? Ok, consider yourself warned.


Squeee! [happy dance!] Marvelous! No matter how smooth the later series of ST were TOS was always my first love. It was wonderful to see the uniforms, the ship's corridors, the bridge! The characterisations were spot on, too, and I found the whole thing entirely plausible. Alternate Reality? Sure, why not? Star Trek, like any Sci-fi worth its salt has always entertained - if not actively explored - the possibility of alternate universes. :)
I want to read some fiction now, but there doesn't seem to be much about. Well, not in the places I trust to host decent stuff.
~=o>

Season 3 of Torchwood will be airing soon! Andandand, UKTV over here will be showing it around about the same time 'twill be airing in the UK. [bounce] I won't have to wait for the DVDs to see it!
~=o>

Ok, that's it for now. Given my track record I should be posting again around - what? - xmas? [smirk]...

[glowers at Lutra] If I remember rightly you did say you had some news and reminisces and maybe a few photos to post... This is me PRODDING. I know you're busy and have a lot to get done but honestly! No post since January? C'mon, if I can continue while writing three books, surely you can post the occasional quickie bit of news...?

Three days in a row of 40+ heat and society is falling apart! Srsly! Transport, electricity and the 'net have all had 'difficulties', and by 'difficulties' I mean severely disrupted train services due to buckling tracks; large portions of the state blacked out by an overloaded electricity grid; and my webz server falling over. [grump]
Lots of people are going to the beach, apparently.
... why? Don't they know how hot it is out there? Sheesh. Wouldn't do me any good - I don't need 30+ UV protection to stop the sunburn so much as spakfiller! I look at the images of people baking on the sands and I don't see healthsome frollicks, I see melanomas and skin like leather. [shudder]

~=o>

Egad, cubs go back to school on Monday! There's so much to do! Cos of course I've been putting it off all holidays cos there's been plenty of time. Oops. : )

~=o>

This article caught my eye: "Sexy swimmer denies Thorpe relationship". It amuses me that her surname is Beard. [snerk]

Cubs are sleeping over at a friend's place tonight. Not the first time they've been away from me but I'm really missing them this time. Eh well, they'll be home tomorrow and then their (boy) cousins will be staying over with us for a couple of nights.

~=o>
The cubs, their dad and I went to see Valkyrie this afternoon. It was quite good, gripping in places with believable performances, even from Mr Cruise. Amazingly, the cubs' father had no quibbles about the accuracy of uniforms, vehicles etc; one of his bugbears in historical fims. I did have a quibble however, about one of Stauffenberg's justifications for Hilter must be deded!!!1!!, but, after consulting with the resident military historian (cubs' father) we concluded that it could be within the realms of possibility, just not very likely. Anyway, I was kind of chuffed I picked it up.
Cubs' father and I did have a few reservations about taking the cubs to see this movie - it was the first non-comic/tv show 'M' rated movie they'd seen at the cinema. But it wasn't too graphic, or gruesome, and they enjoyed it, declaring it 'awesome!', though I suspect that was because of the explosions (and military hardware) rather than the emotional and political ramifications of Hitler's assasination. : )
What I really enjoyed though, was sitting with the cubs and their father afterwards discussing potential 'what ifs...' of European history. [grin] So cool...

~=o>
And, yay! I'm all safely re-enrolled for another year of study. Good news, too - all our workbooks this year are included in the 'materials fee'. Phew! That'll be about $300 I won't have to find...

Joules prodded me. "Don't you think it might be time for a blog update?"
Oops, well it has been a month...

~=o>

Right!

Xmas: very quiet. The cubs and I went with Mum and Soulsis et al, to a restaurant. Food was good, though the cubs and their (boy) cousins hardly ate anything of the set menu. Alas, they were too old for the 'kids' menu so couldn't have chicken nuggets and chips. [rolls eyes]

New Year: crowded. Niki, Soulsis and I took advantage of the free (therefore crowded) public transport to go in to (crowded) Melbourne for the free 'family-friendly' fireworks on the Yarra. Show only went for 15 minutes but it was fun. Been a long, long time since I've seen live fireworks...
Then we - plus the rest of the families - squeezed our way out of the (even more crowded) city and on to the (even more crowded trains) as the non-family party people tried to squeeze in. Won't be doing that again in a hurry.
Made it back to Niki's before midnight, though, so we toasted the new year in there.
Resolutions? A few.

School Holiday: ongoing but rapidly drawing to a close. Cubs and I have managed to get out and about a bit.
We went to the Melbourne Aquarium! Penguins! Fish! Happy Lutra!
We house sat for Niki. Cubs really enjoyed having a room each. And I finally got to see Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. It was so laughably awful! And very clever. I've been to Romford; I'm sure I don't remember there being a spooky moor... (And having watched the program I finally got to read Joules' fics. So funny, and so accurate! [snerk])
We went to Nana's for a few days. We had a ride on the Healesville Trolley, and a visit to the Blue Lotus Water Garden. Nice.
We've seen movies. Madagascar 2 (better than the first. I laughed.); Bolt 3D (excellent animation, ludicrous plot); and Igor (amusing, bordering on witty in parts but otherwise not that engaging).

Upcoming: busyish. I'm re-enrolling for the second (final) year of my degree course in a few days. Woot! I haz new stationery and a cool metallic Batman (not Dark Knight) contact with which to cover my student diary! I'm all set.
Also, I've promised Joules a slashy fic for her birthday in February... Better get on with that then, eh?

~=o>