14 September, 2011

A peek at moi?

One of the things that brings people to my blog, seems to be a picture of David Tennant from the Roflrazzi site. This is the post I mean.

Well there's a new site for Doctor Who fans (that would be me!) - For the Whovians - and I'm loving it! I found this one a moment ago:



I can't link directly to the page unfortunately. Check out the site though, some quite funny captions there.

Another site I've found recently is Kondoot.com - a site that lets you broadcast your videos. It seems to be a little like Facebook and You Tube mixed in. Anyways... if you'd like to see what I look like, go here! The video is not great quality unfortunately - my webcam is just an el cheapo.

01 September, 2011

oops

Have I seriously not updated this blog since July? Naughty me...

I've been setting up Bloglines again, to make it easier to catch up with my favourites. I had it set up years ago but it's quite different now. Does anyone use another setup to keep up with their blogs?

I'll update soon - have been busy with a trip to Queensland and then home again to get sick for two weeks (still not completely well). Plus it appears I generously shared my illness with Chickie and J. Oh the angst of trying to explain to a 9 year old, that having some Ventolin might help him a little.

I will update soon... I promise!

19 July, 2011

The things you see...

I went grocery shopping today.

I'm still annoyed about actually doing the shopping to be honest. You see, I discovered the joys of online shopping back in February this year. It was great to be able to log on, click a bunch of things and have them delivered to my door a day or so later. I didn't get everything online - I preferred picking out my fruit and veg personally, and some things were never on special online (Coke Zero for example). All in all though, I was very satisfied.

Then they changed the available delivery time slots. The supermarket, I was going through, had a range of delivery slots costing between $13 and $5. I'm no longer working so I'm enthusiastically embracing the inner cheapskate (whilst trying to placate my inner lazy sod), therefore I always chose the $5 slot. Suited me beautifully - until the supermarket removed that time slot. They still had a couple of $5 slots but both clashed with school pickup or dropoffs. Colour me very disappointed.

I looked into a competitor but they didn't have any cheapie delivery slots either. They did have an option to choose your groceries online and then you pick it up. My inner cheapskate cheered! Unfortunately, it turned out the closest place that did this was really too far to make it worthwhile (at about this point my inner lazy sod cheered - well all right, she would have if she had the energy for it).

What it left me with though, was a return to the weekly trudge to the supermarket. And what I saw today...

Wild Krill Oil.

Wild Krill Oil.

It got me to thinking - is there such a thing as Tame Krill Oil and if so, how the heck do you tame krill?

24 June, 2011

Not the most hated mother on the planet!

I've managed to escape being 'hated' by Chickie this week. You see, a month or so back, he'd brought home two notes from school. One for swimming and one for dancesport. I merrily signed both and sent in the required cash and thought all was good. Oh boy was I wrong!

A couple of weeks ago, I picked him up from school and he had an absolutely thunderous face. He took one look at me and said "I hate you* - you made me go to dance. I had to dance with GIRLS!". Turns out, the dancesport note wasn't compulsory - just an 'if you're interested' type of thing. Silly me didn't realise that, and had condemned my long suffering 9 year old boy to dancing with a girl. For four weeks...

Last week was the same - he hated me again and not only did he have to dance with all the girls, but he had to hold their hands (oh, the horror!).


This week I was pleasantly suprised to find he liked dancesport. Turned out that, this week, they were taught how to moonwalk. Not only did he enjoy himself but he and a friend discussed how cool they were for being able to get the idea of how to do it, when their teacher told them it took her several months to perfect it herself. All the while I was trying very very hard to keep a straight face.

I heaved a huge sigh of relief though. It was nice not to be the most hated mother this week.


* I know some people have an issue with their kids telling them they hate them. I don't personally, as I feel it's just a way of Chickie dealing with his emotions. I see it as a learning curve and sometime will tell him that it's a way of knowing I'm doing my job as a mother and not giving in to everything he wants. Other times I'll tell him that I might dislike his behaviour but never him. He normally calms down soon after then comes and apologises for saying it anyway.

01 June, 2011

Chickie is 9!

Hard to believe my little baby is growing up. It's his 9th birthday today!

Bit of a coincidence but he woke up earlier this morning - at 12.45am exactly, which just so happens to be the moment he was actually born. He was quite tickled by the fact that he woke up at the exact moment. I thought it was funny that he woke up then as well.

I wasn't quite as happy that he then woke up at about 4am - ready to start the day. J and I sent him back to bed, only to be woken up again at 6.15am! We gave up and gave him his pressie. At least he had plenty of time to play with his new stuff before school. I suppose I can't be too surprised at his eagerness.

28 April, 2011

Discworld convention was awesome!


Well, I had a fantastic time at the convention. There were lots of cool events ranging from Viking armour displays (yes I did get to wear a chain mail shirt, Viking helmet and brandish a sword) to more Discworld flavoured stuff like a mock trial of Lord Vetinari (for being a tyrant), plays based on Discworld characters, costume parades, games of Thud (Chickie loved this game) and much much more. I also got a book signed by Sir Terry himself (yes that's me in the photo), and after the closing ceremony I was able to get a photo of Chickie and me with Sir Terry, we also had a very quick chat.

We stayed in the hotel that is sort of attached to the convention centre, which happened to be where Terry, and his assistant Rob, also stayed. We saw him around quite a lot - breakfasting at the table next to him etc. Some friends and I had a quick chat with his assistant Rob one evening as well. They both seem like such lovely people. You can see that Terry's Alzheimers is affecting him - during his speech at the closing ceremony he seemed to lose track of what he was saying and mentioned that he has problems with short term memory loss. Quite sad to see this in one of my favourite authors.

There were quite a lot of people there but thankfully there were some cafe's and restaurants downstairs so getting some chillout time wasn't too hard.

After the convention we also went to Jenolan Caves. Talk about stunning! I have a thing for caves and the various formations, and the two caves we visited did not disappoint one bit! We saw the Lucas cave and the Temple of Baal cave. This pic is from the Lucas cave. This photo - and the others we took, have made us realise that we really need a better camera. This is a pretty basic camera and it's getting on in years too. I'm thinking a basic DSLR might be nice, but really have no idea where to start! So, a question - if you have a DSLR, what do you have and what do you like/dislike about it?

04 April, 2011

excited but also freaking out a bit

This weekend J, Chickie and I are heading to Sydney for the Terry Pratchett convention Nullus Anxietas 3 and I am so excited!

Terry Pratchett is one of my all time favourite authors. I just love the Discworld series. The list of events sounds like so much fun and having the actual Terry Pratchett there as well.. icing on the cake!

On the other hand, I'm also dreading it a bit. One of the reasons I left work, was that my supervisor moved me to a different desk and I discovered that I have a bit of a phobia of being surrounded, or being in a crowd. I found I can manage for a while but the thought of being in that mindset 8 hours a day, 5 days a week was just a teensy bit overwhelming.

For years I sat at a desk on the outside edge of the room - windows behind me and most of the time no one in the desk next to me (with barriers between the other desks around me). I also found that I have hearing loss in the upper and lower registers that made it difficult to hear when there is a lot of noise around me (and in my old position the barriers, and having windows behind me meant I didn't notice it so much). I asked to be moved back, that request was declined, so that (and several other reasons) gave me the impetus to leave after eleven years.

I always had a problem with Christmas crowds and tended to do it in dribs and drabs (and then having to courier presents to my family because I took too long to send via Aus Post!). Not sure why I never did more online shopping (I think I will this year). Anyway, last weekend we went into the city centre to check out Angus and Robertson and Borders (to see if they had any good closure sales) and it only took a couple of hours until I started feeling a bit antsy. That was a couple of hours in a crowd, the convention is three days with heaven knows how many people (I'm thinking a lot!).

Anyone deal with similar issues? Any tips on how to deal with feeling freaked out?

26 March, 2011

Almost forgotten how this stuff works!

It's been so long that navigating around Blogger's settings requires a bit of thinking, but I do believe I'm getting there.

I've gone through my links and deleted those that are gone or blogs that have been made private. There are a lot of bloggers that have just stopped (like I did), but since they're still up, I'll leave them in my list for now.

If you'd like to be linked, feel free to let me know. If you know a blog that I absolutely *have* to read, then also let me know!

I'm hoping to update a bit more regularly (well more than once or twice, every 18 months), and since I'm now a stay at home mum I should have time. Having a computer to do it on, is another thing... mine died last night! It was probably the shock of me blogging again, to be honest. Anyway, long story short - because it is a long story, trust me! - a Dell tech is coming out sometime next week to try to resurrect it. In the meantime I've commandeered Chickie's computer. His keyboard has a slight configuration difference though and, well put it this way - the backspace key is getting a good old workout (as is the key directly to the left of it, since I keep hitting that one by accident too!).

25 March, 2011

Caramaena who??

Hi there! I have no idea if anyone ever visits any more but I thought I'd post anyway.

I don't know if you noticed, but I pretty much stopped blogging. No real reason why. Things got busy and you say to yourself "oh I'll post something tomorrow" and the next thing you know, it's a year and a half later.

A fair bit has happened since I last blogged, but I won't put everything here in detail since I'm sure I'll need topics later!

Short story, Chickie has had braces, but now has a plate/retainer instead and I've quit my job to be a stay at home mum. J's still at the same job, we have new nieces and nephews, his sister got married and his brother may be posted to *very dangerous place* overseas (he's in the armed forces) and my family's all (mostly) well.

So, if anyone's still reading my blog, feel free to catch me up with your life in the comments. I haven't had the chance yet to go through my links etc.