Forecast: 16-27°
Attained: 16-24°

Suddenly, winter!

Sort of. :) It's not actually cold enough for slippers. That won't happen for weeks yet.
Mind you, it's good to have a decent amount of rain, enough that it washes the dust off my car instead of just turning it to mud. (Possibly an insensitive comment given the flooding etc up North.)

~=o>

Forecast: 13-26°
Attained: 12-28°

As it was their first day back today I offered the cubs a lift to school. The catch was they had to be ready around 8am cos I still had to go to work. They declined, and managed to get themselves in on time on their own anyway. :)

~=o>
Misread yesterday from something vaguely inspirational/aspirational about personal management/getting ahead in life.

"Organize and execute pound puppies..."

[snicker] The actual quote was:

"Organize and execute around priorities..."*

[*Googling the phrase brings up sites refering to '7 Habits of highly effective people', by Stephen Covey. [shrug] I wasn't paying that much attention until I was directed to execute the puppies...

~=o>

Forecast: 16-20°
Attained: 15-21°

Heh, cubs are back to school tomorrow, starting Year 12.
Are they ready? Dunno, I've mostly left it up to them to get themselves sorted out. So if they don't have clean uniforms, or their lunches made, or their bags packed, that's their problem...
Mean mum? Perhaps, but they're not going to learn to look after themselves if I do everything for them. My job as a parent is to teach them how to do without me! :)

~=o>

Forecast: 14-24°
Attained: 16-24°

New radio. Digital, though it's also able to pick up regular AM/FM. :)
Interesting, this thing about making new tech look old.

The dial is purely decorative, alas, but it does look kinda cool. I remember my grandparents having radios with tuners just like this.

This purchase was pure indulgence, admittedly. I'm replacing an old radio/cd player that still works perfectly well, though the new one takes up much less space.
(I'm also getting rid of the toaster - hardly ever use it - and contemplating getting rid of the microwave. Probly not yet, the cubs use it a fair bit. Eh, if it's still functioning if/when they move out they can have it. :)

~=o>

Forecast: 15-22°
Attained: 15-23°

Cubs and I went to Sarah's 17th birthday party today: cubs as guests, me as primarily support for Penny. :)
Was a lovely day for it, too. Not hot, and not rainy.
Sooo much food...

Pics!

Rainbow themed!

Aftermath of the cake cutting...
(Cake was very nom.)

Mixed signals from a cat.

:)

~=o>

Forecast: 15-23°
Attained: 16-21°

Oztraya Day!

I celebrated by eating lamingtons and listening to the Triple J Hottest 100 Countdown. :) Over 1.5 million votes registered this year, woohoo!

Of the ten tracks I voted for, five were in the countdown, with another eleven - from my 'short list' of 40ish - also making an appearance.

In no surprise to anyone, Macklemore's Thrift Shop was No. 1.



~=o>
This is the reason I don't chase some spiders out of the house...

(Hah hah! Take that, wasp!)

~=o>

Forecast: 26-31°
Attained: 26-31°

I have a list of biggish things-to-get-off-my-arse-and-do this year; one of them is to get my eyes checked again. It's been four years.

So, did that this afternoon after work. I knew there'd been changes in my eyesight, but still...
I'm long-sighted, which means I've needed glasses for close-up stuff, but my long-sight has deteriorated too. I can still see fairly well but it's been getting harder to focus on things like street signs. Interestingly, the prescription I had for reading is now juuuust about right to correct the deficiencies in my long-sight, which explains why my glasses have been comfortable to wear around in general, but not so useful anymore for close work. Heh.

Long story short: I'll be wearing glasses full time. I will in fact be getting... multifocals. [dramatic chord]
When I heard that my heart gave a little thump cos multifocals is one of those things I've always associated with old people, like my mother. :)

I've picked out some nice frames - pale pink and fairly subtle. I did try some bolder colours but as soon as I saw the pinkies I squeaked, and that was that. I'll be able to pay them off, too, which is a good thing cos damn, having no private health cover makes it awkward.

(The optometrist discovered a couple of potential problems, specifically, there's a smidge of an inkling of a foreshadowing of possible glaucoma. Perhaps. A little more in-depth testing will be carried out soonish.)

~=o>
One of my favourite Umbilical Brothers sketches...




Of course, it's completely ruined Pachelbel's Canon for me. :)

~=o>

Forecast: 15-36°
Attained: 15-36°

I found this on the floor of the library this morning. I suspect some doctor is missing their adorable sleep mask...

It was a bit weird going in to work this morning. I was at one of the outer campuses, and I was driving in to a pall of smoke. Fires in Gippsland, apparently, which is way east of where we were but the smoke drifted...

~=o>

Forecast: 16-26°
Attained: 17-23°

Hm, it only got to 23° today. Felt hotter. Perhaps it was me...?

~=o>
No invertebrate life and death dramas being played out in the kitchen today, for which I am grateful.

~=o>
Cubs and I watched Brave this evening so now of course my inner voice sounds vaguely Scottish... :)
(Excellent movie, btw. I laughed, I cried, I meeped.)

~=o>

Forecast: 17-25°
Attained: 18-25°

Life and Death in the Kitchen...!

So there I was, doing the washing up, minding my own business, when I see one of the huge orangey Australian wasps dragging an almost full grown, paralysed huntsman spider up the kitchen window. (On the outside, fortunately.)
Fascinated yet repelled I wasn't quick enough to grab my 'phone and take a pic but that wasn't a problem cos the spider was obviously heavy and the wasp dropped it - I heard the thump! - only to struggle up the window again a couple of minutes later.
That's when I got the pics.

For size comparison, the wasp's body is over an inch long (about 3ish cm).*

The wasp dropped the spider about seven times in all, and I mused that it was going to be mush by the time she got it back to her nest.
Anyway, next thing I'm watching the wasp drag the spider inside. Squeaking ensued (from me, duh) but they dropped behind the freezer and didn't reappear. There was a good chance they'd fallen foul of the daddy long legs that live down there and I thought no more of it...

Until half an hour later when the wasp was flying around the house, freaking us all out. No spider in sight but one of the cubs casually mentioned he'd seen a huntsman in front of the toilet. Feeling very brave I took a peek - yep, paralysed spider sprawled on the floor, wacko - then made asked the cub to take it outside for me.

And then a bastard European wasp came inside to check out the kitchen. These things really bother me, but I managed to catch it, more by accident than design, yay for almost empty icecream containers. That went straight in to the freezer, where it could expire relatively peacefully without sending up a distress signal to the rest of the hive. [shudder]

[*I did try to find out what sort it was but the stuff on google images was making me twitchy so I stopped. :) ]

~=o>

Forecast: 15-29°
Attained: 17-24°

Cubs and I went to see the rerelease Monster Inc 3D this evening. The 3D made the backgrounds really stand out this time and the door chase scene is just wow. :)

Bonus: I was entitled to a free ticket for renewing my movie card membership plus, I'd racked up enough points on the card to get a second ticket free!

~=o>
Earlier today I took the cubs shopping for their back-to-school stationery. Went smoothly: the cubs had worked out their own lists, and picked up their own bits and bobs so all I had to do was fork out the money, the place wasn't too crowded and there was Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing. All good. :)

~=o>

Forecast: 14-26°
Attained: 15-24°

Heh, I've been using the momentum left over from the inspection cleaning to Get Things Done. :) It should last about a week, or until the next stupid hot day.

~=o>
Just cos. :)

~=o>

Forecast: 16-22°
Attained: 17-23°

I am re-enamoured of my recently dusted shinies.

Yay, dusting... :)

~=o>

Forecast: 25-29°
Attained: 26-30°

(It got down to 26° last night at 2am. By 5am it was back up to 30°, but from there the temperature steadily fell throughout the day. Much nicer...)

Yesterday when I got home from work, I opened the front door and felt a wash of cool air. Sure it was 30° inside, but that was 10° cooler than outside.
Tonight when I came home I opened the door and felt a wash of hot air. 22° outside but still almost 30° inside.
Not complaining, just commenting. :)

~=o>
I've been watching some of Justified, season 2. Consequently my inner voice has a bit of a Kentucky drawl goin' on. :)

~=o>
Rubbish picture of moth inside the loos at work today. (It's a Southern Old Lady moth, apparently.) Had about a 4 inch wingspan, quite large.

No, I didn't rescue it, because I am a bad person.

~=o>

Forecast: 17-39°
Attained: 16-40°

... 16° to effing 40°...

So!
Inspection came and went and all's well. Even though the cubs had to drag themselves out of bed at a ludicrously early hour - 8.30am - to be ready. :)
Well, one of the cubs did, the other was still asleep when the agent arrived and barely stirred, apparently, when agenty person glanced in to his room. (I hasten to add, this was done with his permission. His brother asked him and got a grunt of acknowledgment.)

Cubs and I went to the Piggy Place for dinner, to celebrate, then we came home and watched Captain America. Yay! I finally got to see it! Thoroughly enjoyed it, too. :)
(Oh, Hugo, you am awesome...)

~=o>

Forecast: 15-26°
Attained: 15-25°

Welp, the house is as ready as we can be bothered make it. Just a smidge of tidying up before I go to bed and I. Am. Done.
There's a bottle of cider left over from NYE: I contemplated having it tonight but think I'll wait until tomorrow. The forecast is for stupid hot so I'll probly need it more.

~=o>
Hey look, I got a double-yolker today! Been years since the last...

~=o>

Forecast: 12-29°
Attained: 13-26°

Kitchen's sorted (omg, there's a table!) and I'll wash the floors tomorrow night.
Cubs have been very helpful though they still have a fair wack to do. Eh, doesnae matter: the house is presentable enough as it stands, what's remaining is cosmetic fixes.

~=o>
This has got a squillion hits cos it's apparently connected to Assassin's Creed, or something, but I'm bowled over by the visuals. Song's growing on me, too. :)




Annoyingly, the track isn't available in Oztraya. Hmph.

~=o>

Forecast: 14-23°
Attained: 14-21°

Took one of the cubs to the dentist today for his first filling. He said yes when I offered to sit in with him. :) It's only slightly less traumatic being in the same room watching someone having a filling than having a filling yourself. Spent most of the time with a reassuring look on my face, and fluttery anxiety high in my chest. But, it was over quickly then we went and had milkshakes.

~=o>
Spent the afternoon tidying my room. Little bit of rubbish, and more stuff for the op shops. The cubs, on the other hand, turfed out huge amounts of junk from their rooms while tidying up. [scowl] If they'd picked up the rubbish in the their rooms everytime I suggested it (and I do, regularly) it wouldn't be this bad.
Pfft, yeah, I can talk. :)

Next biggish thing to sort is the kitchen, but that should only take a couple of hours, can do that tomorrow after work.

~=o>
German electro-goth, with visuals from various Vampire animes. (They're listed in the credits on the youtube page.) It's a good match.



~=o>

Forecast: 16-20°
Attained: 16-21°

Got a rental inspection later this week so spent a few hours today blitzing the lounge room. Looks much better now.

This is the sewing/spare desk. You can almost see the desk top! Considering it was piled 3 feet high this is definitely an improvement.

Also managed to sort out more stuff for the op shop, stuff that I've been hanging on to for spurious reasons. Is good. :)

I'll need to do the same with my bedroom tomorrow on my day off but the rest of the house won't take long.
And then there's the cubs' rooms. Again. Doesn't help that they've been at their dad's all weekend, but they're home now and know what's got to be done. :)

~=o>
Poking about on IMDB today, as one does, I discovered that Mr Hiddleston is slated to play the lead in the film 'Black Wings has my Angel', based on a 1950's crime novel by Elliot Chaze.
Being an obsessive sort I immediately went in search of the book and found an ebook version on Google Play. It was only $1, of course I bought it! Unfortunately, it's scanned-page rather than flowing text so it's awkward to read - a little bit of the text is missing down the side of each page - but not impossible. Even with the few pages I've struggled through I have to say that I'm impressed; the writing is excellent. I may have to see about getting a print copy cos I think this is going to be one that I want to keep.
But anyway, I can absolutely see Mr Hiddleston as Tim Sunblade. Now I just have to exercise patience and wait.
[fidgets]

~=o>

Forecast: 17-24°
Attained: °

Penny and I went to see The Hobbit this afternoon.
Second time around it was just as exciting plus I was able to pick out more details, like the texture of Gandalf's cloak, and his faaaabulous silvery scarf! Also, there was Bilbo's adorable patchwork dressing gown and his lovely waistcoats. :)
You can say what you like about the elves - I do! - but they use the best fabrics, and goodness, weren't Saruman's robes rich yet understated, the show off. Hmph.

~=o>
I don't have many love songs* in my music but this is currently on high rotation. I sing along with it, especially when I'm driving; it makes me smile.



[* Of the 700+ songs on my 'phone there is 28 in the 'Torture' playlist. :) ]

~=o>

Forecast: 19-37°
Attained: 19-38°

The thing is progressing. :)

~=o>
I had planned on doing useful stuff online tonight but somehow wandered in to the Tom Hiddleston tag...
2 hours later.
And now I have to go to bed.

~=o>

Forecast: 12-26°
Attained: 15-25°

Patience... :)



~=o>
Dammit, Snape's birthday was yesterday!
Happy birthday, Sevvie! [wondering if it's possible to duck an Avada Kedavra...]

~=o>

Forecast: 13-20°
Attained: 13-20°

From 30+° to cold and rainy. Yay, Melbourne :)

~=o>
Hee, helped with the new interns' race around the hospital today. Didn't actully involve much, just sitting in a room with one of my colleagues and giving a short spiel about the library to each group that came in before directing them to their task of interpreting ECGs. When the group was finished, we stamped their 'passport', gave them a mark, and sent them on their way...

~=o>
Odd and weirdly pointless but it's beautifully atmospheric, and the horse is pretty.




~=o>

Forecast: 18-31°
Attained: 19-30°

Made it through my first day back at work, getting there early on top of a patchy night's sleep. :) However, new year, new batch of interns. I spent a few hours this morning processing registrations.

...

Why can these people not write clearly?!
By the time I'd reached the end of the pile I wanted to scratch my eyes out after repeatedly trying to decipher some of the archaic scrawls. 'Is that an S, or a J? 5...?' [sob] Anyway, mostly done now, just have to brace myself for the med student registrations in a couple of weeks...

~=o>
ROFL! This is gorgeous...



~=o>

Forecast: 17-32°
Attained: 16-30°

Cos I'm going back to work tomorrow - back to early starts - I had planned on getting up relatively early on this, my last day of holiday, to sort of ease myself in to it.
Pfft.
Slept through the alarm and eventually dragged myself out of bed at 11 a.m. [sigh]
Oh well, we who are resigned to using the horrible secondary alarm for the next few days, salute you...

~=o>
Instead of dropping the cubs' booklists off at school this year, we were given the option of taking them directly to the book supplier. Finally got 'round to doing that today. There were a couple of minor hitches, though. First, was learning that the orders will be ready to be picked up the day before the cubs go back to school. Fair enough, that could've been my fault for not getting the lists in earlier, or not, I really don't know what the policy was. In previous years we had to pick the orders up from the school quite late in the hols so...
Second, they needed credit card details, or a cash deposit. [sigh] I don't have a credit card and didn't think to ring and check for any peculiarities beforehand because everyone uses EFTPOS, right? [grump]
True, I could've trekked all the way back to the shopping suburb to get some cash, but was mighty reluctant to do so as I'd just come from there, and it was sodding hot again today and I just wanted the day to end. However, book supplier was happy for me to leave the lists with them and I'll go in on Saturday and hand over the deposit. I didn't have to eviscerate anyone with my teeth, or burst in to tears. It could've gone either way today.

~=o>
I started a thing today! One of the crafty things on one of my abundance of lists.

This was four hours worth of work, with a ridiculous proportion of that time going in to threading the needle and finding the holes in the canvas. [sigh] Really need to get my eyes checked again.
But! It was an entertaining four hours cos I was watching episodes of Rome at the time. :)

~=o>

Forecast: 17-29°
Attained: 17-25°

The next door neighbour's dog seems to spend a lot of time barking at my cat. Of course I suspect that KittenKong, being a cat, is something of a cow to this dog and lolls about near the fence, teasing it.

This afternoon there was the usual barking, and then a screaming yelp that sounded like the dog was being knifed. I glanced outside and saw the cat puffed up but relatively unconcerned - the dog had taken off - so concluded that dog must've stuck its nose through a hole in the fence and been given a swipe. Perhaps now it will know not to bother with the cat. :)

~=o>
Not all that fond of dogs, to be honest, but how can you not smile at such exuberance.



~=o>

Forecast: 20-25°
Attained: 20-25°

Gah! I'm back to work on Tuesday! Has been a good break though :)

~=o>
A couple of different takes on iconic pop songs.
First, from Joules, a Swedish Goth Metal band does ABBA.





And now a balladic version of KISS from a pair of Australian singers.



~=o>

Forecast: 23-41°
Attained: 24-41°

OMFG at 11pm it's 35° inside the house. It's also 35° outside the house. One of these days I'm going to live in a house that can be heated/cooled adequately without racking up the equivalent expenditure in energy as rent. [grump] (Though to be fair, these ludicrously hot days are not common, they just feel interminable while they're here...)

In other news...!
Cubs and I took their dad to see Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Astor this evening. Hee, it's still such a fun movie and I'm very glad the cubs got to see it on the big screen.
Would anyone be surprised to know that I was quoting along with the script, and sound effects, in my head while I was watching the movie? Anyone? No, didn't think so. :)

~=o>
Found on Joules' favs list. A slinky on a treadmill. For 3 and a bit minutes. I couldn't look away...




~=o>

Forecast 2/1: 16-24°
Attained: 15-22°

Forecast 3/1: 14-36
Attained: 14-37

(Forgot to post yesterday. Too distracted by tumblr and AO3...)

So, today!
Prised Lured the cubs out of the house today with the promise of new phones. :) They've been sharing one for several years but they're big boys now and can have one each, especially since we were able to spread the monthly cap from their single phone between two. They've happily spent the afternoon customising their new toys.

~=o>
The song is cute but the extras in the video clip should have been more closely supervised!



~=o>
This is the super pretty comb Joules gave me for xmas. :)
It's lovely to use.

~=o>

Forecast NYE: 12-27°
Attained: 14-24°

Forecast 1/1: 15-26
Attained: 15-25

NYE was understated but fun; a delicious dinner at Niki's then episodes of Black Books until we watched the relatively uninspiring countdown broadcast. (Not sure if it was cos I didn't have my glasses on but at certain points of the broadcast, the fireworks reflecting off the buildings made it look like the city was burning. Bit disconcerting...)

Bye, 2012, it's been interesting.

~=o>
And today I took the cubs and their cousins to see Wreck-It-Ralph. I expected it to be fun, I didn't expect it to be good, a well-scripted, clever story. :)

~=o>
I've managed at least to start the new year having completed some niggly naggly tasks that have been put off, and put off...
Behold - lights, in the lounge room!
(Thank you, William, for being a: tall and b: on had to change the light globe for me. We also have light in the loo again.)
Egad, I can see the keyboard...

~=o>