Blu Ray Tuesday #17

This is from a Blu Ray Tuesday, about a month ago that I never got around to uploading.

The movie: Conan the Barbarian

The menu: Subway!  Of all things.

I am a number 1 fan of action adventure movies.  Especially great, cheesy action adventure movies.  This had potential to be such a movie. 

Mr Conan was super ridiculously buff and attractive.  Although thanks to ‘Game of Thrones’, he will always be Kahl Drogo to me.  The storyline of this movie was so silly that the only way I could really enjoy this was if I pretended it was a prequel to ‘Game of Thrones’ and this was the coming of age story for Kahl Drogo.  Alas, it was not.

The baddies were flat out crazy with a ridiculous plan to take over the world and chewed the scenery at a delightful rate.  The action was good.  The scenery lovely.  Costumes awesome.  The romance suitably lame- they HATE each other at the beginning and then what do you know?  Love blossoms.  The movie even had blooming Morgan Freeman narrating the beginning (for no apparent reason)!  It was a winner on so many levels.  Unfortunately it tried to take itself too seriously and there was its downfall.

Plus, I had a big problem with ‘the girl’.  She was some nun who in the first scene she was in was attacked by some bad guys and she totally holds her own in the fighting- the girl has some moves.  Which are then never seen in the movie ever again.  As soon as she gets rescued by Conan, she totally becomes the damsel in distress and it’s dumb.  I think we’ve come a bit further than that in our storytelling, Mr Hollywood producers and writers.  AND THEN… to make matters worse- and this was the bit that really got me, *spoiler alert* at the end, Conan drops her back off at the convent and is all like “so… I guess I’ll see you around but probably not because I’ll be off doing adventures and stuff” and she’s all like “oh well, I really liked you but no hard feelings, I understand”.

Recommended?: Despite all my misgivings, I would recommend this one.  Although it tried too hard, I gotta reward the movie for making a valiant effort.  And despite my feminine justice rant in the previous paragraph, I’m honestly a 14 year old boy at heart and sometimes it’s just cool to watch a young boy chop off a man’s nose and then years later find him again and stick his finger in the crevasse where the guy’s nose used to be.  Because he was a baddie and totally deserved it.

My week in Instagram

I’ve seen this post floating around the internet and so I’m catching on with the trend.  But I didn’t take these photos with instagram… except one of them, so it’s just regular photos on my fancy phone that has a camera.  And only one isn’t animal related.  Also, warning for slight vomit at the last photo.

Bear with me.  It’s been a while since I’ve had the internet.

My pug puppies.  Seriously, you’d think that *I* gave birth to them, the way I’m flashing this picture around.

I went to go grab myself a snack after a hard afternoon’s reading whilst lying on my bed.  I come back to find that Buddy has worked his way under the sheets and is all cuddled up, but has left himself a peep hole so that he can keep an eye out for me when I come back.  I miss that little guy already but I’m sure he’s happy that his family are home now.

I have no idea how girls take engagement photos of their hands… although maybe the boy that just proposed to them takes the picture?  It’s darn hard!  This is a gorgeous ring that my mama brought me for Christmas and I finally had it resized.  So beautiful!

We had a dog boarding at work who is an absolute sweetheart.  I helped to come in on a Sunday to check in on her and clean her cage.  I stopped by before church and decided to be nice and spend some extra time with her because I felt bad that she was stuck in the clinic, despite the fact that I’d finished all my chores.  I sat down on the floor and we spent a nice half hour, just cuddling.  I thought to myself “hmm… better get going if I want to make it to church on time”… when she promptly vomited all over me.  This is as much as I could get off me.  Also, I just spotted the bonus vomit in the right-hand corner of the picture.  I had to run home, change and then hightail it to church!  Haha, I still love that girl though!

Wordy Post of Wonderment

On Wednesday, I was called back to work because there was a pug coming in who had been struggling to give birth for a few hours. Generally, if mum has been struggling to deliver for 1-2 hours, it’s an emergency and usually the puppies will be dead. The mum had had one stillborn puppy in the wee hours of the morning and we saw mum at about 3pm. The caesarean was only really being performed to save the mum’s life at this stage.

I was pretty much freaking out. I was excited, SO excited but also freaking out because *I* was in charge of the operation. Little old me. The other much more experienced nurse was out the front, handling the rest of the consults… and then I was out the back. Not only would I be monitoring the mum under anaesthetic but I would have to attend to any puppies that came out. Luckily it’s the vet that I’m friends with and she gave me the lowdown on everything and I was so glad she was the vet and not my boss vet because I would have been so nervous if it had been him and would have flubbed everything.

I was starting to feel really anxious about it all and one part of me was hoping that the puppies would be stillborn so that I wouldn’t have to deal with anything else. As the vet made the opening incision into the dog, I don’t know why but the scalpel wasn’t cutting as it should have done and she had to rip the layers of tissue and muscle which made the grossest noise and I then started to feel really faint. My head starting getting all fuzzy like the last time I almost fainted, but I just concentrated on monitoring the patient and it went away. She opened up the uterus and found the puppy that had caused the blockage. She opened up the placental sac and as she did, she felt a movement and promptly passed it to me, saying “This one’s alive, it’s yours”.

Such a little bundle, it fitted snuggly inside my hand and I feverishly rubbed it’s chest, trying to bring all the amniotic fluid out of its mouth. My one was the one that had been stuck all day and his poor little head was a very odd shape. I hadn’t felt any movement, so I stopped. No movement. I opened the mouth to try and see if there was any more gunk inside, there was. I cleared it some more and as I did, the puppy opened its mouth and wriggled its front legs. Still alive! So I kept going. I don’t know how long, I worked on this little puppy. I was praying the entire time too! Every time I stopped to check for signs of life, there was no movement and then he would slightly move after what seemed a lifetime and I’d get back to rubbing the chest, trying to stimulate some more movement and life. I even gave him mouth to mouth to blow some of the gunk out… which then got in my mouth. Ick!!

While I was working on this little guy, there were two more puppies inside that came out and were resuscitated enough to be left alone by the other nurse. Mine still wasn’t crying. I kept working and working and the other vet came out the back. He had literally just said to me “You want to have them crying because then you’ll know he’s going to be ok” when my little guy let out this pathetic little mewling noise. I seriously nearly cried myself! And then he wouldn’t stop :)

But then I had to go and monitor the mum, who’d taken a bit of a down turn while the vet was finishing the operation. However, she pulled out of the operation fine and now I present you with some pictures. They’re not the greatest but (unfortunately!) the owner turned up to collect the dog before I could get my camera.

Mum and her hour old babies: two girls and a boy



And then this next one’s not great either but you can see the mum’s feet compared to the babies feet so you can get an idea of scale.

Testing, testing...

Ok, I think people should be able to leave a comment now. Thanks to those that let me know that there was a MAJOR flaw in my new blog layout. I hope I have fixed it, I hate fiddling around with code because I have zero idea of what I'm doing.

So... please comment and let me know if this does in fact work. Thank you!!

I always forget that Australian summers = monsoon weather. Cue a whole week of major downpour. Me = sad.

Still under construction

Look how pretty my new blog is. I think it has taken me honestly about 4 hours to do this and all I had to do was copy and paste a template. I am exhausted and my header still looks nasty but I have had enough. It irks me that I will be leaving my blog in a state of undress during the week I'm away but I can't spend any more time on this without tearing my hair out.

Have a good week everyone and I will see you next Monday. Might sneak back for a sneaky Blu Ray Tuesday. It has been too long!!

I’m back… sort of

The people I am house sitting for are back for one night before they go off again.  The little dog I am sitting for, Buddy, is so cute!  I definitely heart him.  He is a little clingy and anxious which I secretly enjoy because it means he follows me everywhere I go in the house so I feel very loved.

His owner said that he wasn’t really allowed up on the sofa but if he tried to jump up, to pick him up and put him on the sofa as he has a bad back being an old man and all.  Buddy *has* to be everywhere I am… unless he’s in a really deep snooze… or can score a better seat due to the fact that I moved.  One afternoon I was reading on my bed and I went up and when I came back… look who was in my spot!

I haven’t been doing too much recently, just catching up on sleeping, reading and my shows.  My boss has upped my hours.  It’s only every second week that I get my extra hours but it’ll do.  My boss wants to train me up because he thinks I’ll make a good surgical nurse.  That made me super happy!  I love/hate doing surgery.  It’s exciting because it’s life and death but it’s also stressful because it’s life and death.  I look forward to getting some more training in that area, so I end up hating it less.

This is Buddy helping me change the sheets on the bed.  I put the sheets in the wash, came back and Buddy had tucked himself up underneath the doona/comforter/duvet (just translating for everyone!). 

Remember how the first day I was house sitting, it was also my ten hour shift at work?  And remember how I was like “that day is just going to suck”.  Well it did.  And partly it was my fault.  I start off in the morning and all is going fine.  I woke up early to pack but that’s fine.  Anyway, I have to make two trips to load up the car because I have all my stuff to go straight to the house after work.  Well… I made the first trip and loaded up the car and then as soon as I shut the door behind me I realised my mistake.  I had locked my house keys inside the house.  I had also locked my house sitting keys in my house.  As well as my bag with my phone and wallet inside.  I was so annoyed at myself!!  I tried to pick the lock with my bobby pins but it was not as simple as they made it look in the movies and I ruined one of my pins.  So I had to go to work- work all day til 7:00 (and we had two walk-ins at 6:50 which we had to treat!) so didn’t get home until 7:30… had to drive all the way home (which is like ten minutes… so it’s not really a big deal), knock on the door til one of the Roomies answered… pick up my stuff and then drive all the way to the other house (which again, isn’t very far away at all so I shouldn’t complain).  Which meant I didn’t get there til like 8 and the owner had been calling me since 6:30pm wanting to know if the dog was ok and she was really worried because I hadn’t been answering because I didn’t have my phone.  Such a frustrating day!!!!

And goodbye until Monday from me (and Buddy… can you tell I’m obsessed?!)

Goodbye again!

Wow, just as soon as I get back into blogging, something comes up!  It was all very unexpected and was supposed to be *next* week but I am house sitting for two weeks as of today.  The family had to go away the week beforehand as well so I am stepping in.  I will also be looking after little Buddy, a cute dog so I am looking forward to that. 

I am not looking forward to going to work at 9am, leaving work at 7pm (but really more like 8pm once I’ve closed and cleaned everything) and then heading over to the house.

The house is crazy close to my work so that is a bonus.  Buddy seems to like me even though I have held him whilst the vet does terrible things to him. 

I won’t have internet for the two weeks that I will be away.  I will feel so out of it but I shall look on this as a blessing in disguise.  However I will most likely be popping back from time to time to my own house for dinner and the like so I will definitely be trying to catch up with you all when I have the chance to.

This picture has nothing to do with anything but I absolutely adore it and want something very similar in my future!

Another parcel post.

Seriously… how cool is the internet?!  It opens my eyes to new things and lets me meet amazing people that I would never get the chance to cross paths with in ordinary circumstances.  One of those people is Abigail.  And I am not just saying that because she sent me a parcel in the mail.  I can’t even remember how we met but her blog is one of the first ones I check every day to see if there is a new post.  I love hearing about how her school life is going (which makes me thankful I am done with education!!) and what she’s getting up to in Seattle or her musings on things in general.

I sent her a parcel which you can read about on her blog here and I can’t believe that it has taken me this long to write about the one she sent me!  Shame on me!!

My heart just sank when I saw that sticker on my parcel because I’ve had things confiscated before.  Luckily nothing was taken.

And this is what I got:

A lovely book that I am still to delve into, a Christmas card and some yummy things.  They were pomegranate seeds covered in dark chocolate- SO AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I think that Abigail has gotten herself into trouble now because I *need* these things in my life like every day stat.  I am only half-joking when I say that she needs to send me a care package every month!  Ooh and chai tea.  I only very recently got into drinking tea other than ordinary black tea so this was a great present for me so that I could expand my horizons, tea-wise anyway.

I had so much fun sending and receiving parcels with Abigail.  We’ll definitely have to do it again soon… mainly because I need my fix of chocolate covered pomegranate seeds. 

Ira Glass & a Giant Wall of Text

Two of my favourite things from the internet converged on Thursday night when I met up with Danielle and her mum to go and watch ‘An evening with Ira Glass’, the creator and host of This American Life, one my favourite podcasts. 

Picture found here

I love listening to podcasts almost as much as reading.  I have a few ‘must-listen’ favourites on my list, of course including This American Life.  I love how each show has a theme and expands on that theme.  For example, one show entitled “Fear of Sleep” has a whole range of different stories, such as a sleepwalker tells of his sleepwalking adventures (which are absolutely hilarious!), a now grown man talks of being too afraid to sleep for two years after watching The Shining as a kid and people in an apartment block in New York talk about their infestation of bedbugs and cockroaches and being unable to sleep because of it- and that’s just for starters.

We met up with Danielle and her mum before the show.  We went to a little pizza place that I’d gone to before.  The staff seemed a bit put-out that we hadn’t made a booking and shoved us into a corner of the courtyard as punishment but we loved it!  We sat underneath a hanging tree and a wall covered in lights and lanterns, who wouldn’t love that?!  The food was absolutely beautiful.  We had a pancetta and fetta pizza and then a zucchini, tomato and beef pizza.  SO good!!!!!!

The show started in the dark with Ira coming out onto the stage and talking.  He talked about how intimate the radio was.  And it’s true.  I mean, I do most of my listening as I drift off to sleep.  So it’s usually me in the dark, listening to Ira talk, when I am at my most vulnerable.  It was a great way to start the show with us getting to ‘see’ Ira as we normally do, just a faceless voice in the dark.  When the lights went up, he was like “hi” and talked about how now we could finally see what he looked like and he could see what we looked like.  He then looked out into the crowd and had total eye contact with my mum. I was super jealous!  After the show I was talking about that and Danielle’s mum sympathised with me and said that I should have worn a bright colour, like my mum.  Next time I will be wearing bright fluorescent pink to outdo my mum and Ira Glass will make eye contact with me!!  

He wandered around the stage with an iPad, talking and pressing it to start music or excerpts from the show.  He said that people after watching his stage show were all like “Oh, so that’s how you do the show in real life” and he was like “Uh, no, that would be crazy- me sitting in the studio and pressing buttons at certain times” and everyone laughed.  Except for me who TOTALLY thought that’s how they did the show!

I loved when towards the end his iPad started playing up and he started trying to verbally coax it to work.  That made me laugh because it’s such a human thing, to try and talk to a machine to make it work.  I like that the great Ira Glass talks to inanimate objects too!

He talked about how This American Life is different to other ‘news’ shows.  When America first invaded Iraq, the press were invited onto a big aircraft carrier in order to get a story on how America was fighting the war.  Ira played a snippet of the CNN story that ran.  It was very dramatic with exciting music playing underneath, as the reporter listed the vast size of the ship, how many planes they had on, what nuclear devices they had, and so on.  Then Ira played an excerpt from the This American Life story.  It stated that the average age of the people serving on this ship was 21.  And how basically, the ship was like a giant college dormitory.  They followed one girl whose entire job was to restock the vending machines on the ship which she did in her twelve hour shift.  They focused on what were the most popular chocolates and which were the least popular and how she tries different techniques to get people to choose the least popular candies so she can clear space for new stock.

Ira talked a lot about the art of storytelling and how it can be used.  He had a whole bunch of tips that at the time, I was like “I need to write this down before I forget”… and now it is too late.  

I spent most of the evening with a huge smile on my face.  It was just such a wonderful experience to have.  And my crush on Ira just grew like crazy.  As Danielle said on the night, there’s something about a man who reads through every one of Obama’s speeches to see what he specifically said about the GFC and in nearly the same breath, talks about how he watches Gilmore Girls or Gossip Girl with his wife.

And oh there were so many hipsters there.  SO MANY.  There were skinny jeans, beards, black-rimmed glasses, vintage dresses, tattoo sleeves, artfully created bedhead.  My mum commented on the fact that there were so many ‘artsy fartsy’ people there.  I informed her that “Mum, the word is hipsters”.  Which she then used at every opportunity.

And now my mum and Danielle’s mum are going out for coffee some time soon!  We are friend matchmakers!!!  As soon as I got into the car on the way home, I turned to mum and said “How great is my friend from the internet?!!”.  So thanks Internet for a great night out.

New Year, New Blog

Does anyone have any advice on how to pretty up my blog? I've been blogging for a while and I've noticed that my blog looks exactly the same since Day 1. I've also been in a blogging slump recently so I though a makeover might help. Any tips?

A Weekend in the Life of Me Part 2

Here we are, the first day of a brand new year.  And because I am actually doing stuff… I forgot to take pictures for a few things!

This is the time that I woke up.

 

This is Woof, my little bedtime companion.  He’s pretty cool.  I thought he should make a cameo.  I feel bad for him though, he usually ends up in the gap between my bed and the bedside table so to make it up to him, he gets his own picture on the blog.

Had some tea and did some Bible reading, think it was Galatians.  Good stuff.

Then it was time to drive to my mum’s house, about an hour away.  We were going out for my grandparents’ 57th wedding anniversary.

Look at that!  Isn’t it beautiful?!  Not a bad way to start the year off.  This is the view outside the window of the restaurant.  It was a fancy schmancy restaurant and I felt bad taking photos so I didn’t.

And then my mum took a photo of me and the grandparents.  And then she felt left out so she took a photo of herself.  My mum is the cutest!

Then I had to have a food nap in order to digest all my food.  I am reading a book that Boy Roomie got for me for Christmas.  This is one of my favourite authors and I’m loving the story so far.

Then it was time to head off to meet my friends, Kristy and Meaghan.  And here I was an idiot and totally forgot to take pictures!!  I had such a nice dinner and such fun with my friends and I forgot to document it :(

We went and saw the new Mission Impossible movie and it was so good! Not really a fan of the series but the movie was great.  Very action packed.

Just before the movie started, I can’t remember how it happened but we started talking about Thor and that lead onto the new Avengers movie coming out this year.  Kristy hadn’t seen Thor and I reminded her that she needed to see Captain America too… because it’s awesome.  And just as I said “it’s awesome”, Meaghan was like “it’s terrible”.  So we had a domestic in the cinema about which was better Thor or Captain America.  And then we decided that we couldn’t agree to disagree, this was too much of a serious issue and we decided to no longer be friends.  Because Kristy had seen neither movie, whichever movie she liked the best, that one would be the winner.  She’s now since seen both movies and is staying very politely on the fence.  Me and Meaghan have stopped our quarrel because if Captain America and Thor can team up and be in the Avengers, we can put our differences aside too.

And then I didn’t get to sleep until 5 in the morning.  I have no idea why.  I just couldn’t sleep.  I just lay there listening to podcasts.  Ugh, horrible.  I was a mess the next day.  Hopefully that will be my one sleepless night for the year.  Got that out of the way!

A Weekend in the Life of Me Part 1

I thought it would be fun to do a day in the life of post and then I got over excited and decided to do the last day of 2011 and the first day of 2012.  It is SCINTILLATING stuff.  But I need to do a post to play catch up, so here it is.

This is a screencap on the first day that I took of Emily’s blog where she’d talked about how to take screenshots of your iphone.  I’d tried to do it and it wasn’t working, so I had to go back to Emily’s blog to read the instructions and see if I was doing it right.  I was, but my iphone had decided to be tempermental.  But it was good enough to take a screenshot anyways.  Waking up at 6:30 on a weekend is not recommended.

I then read whilst in bed for a while.  Had to finish this book before the day is out.  Had to obey the title!

Then I took my two little friends for a walk.  Please note that Tessa likes to take herself for a walk and always has to carry her leash in her mouth.  I always get the weird ones.

Getting artsy for the last day of the year!  Then I dropped Katie off as she’s an old lady and can’t do big walks and then Tessa and I went for a huge walk and I accidentally wore her out, which I had previously thought was impossible.

Then I discovered I had an email from Jenna and I read it and loved it immensely.  We pretty much talked about books and TV shows.  PS Everyone must watch Once Upon A Time (which we are shortening to ‘Time’, FYI)

Then I got dressed and I wore my ‘inside’ skirt because I knew I would be spending 95% of the day inside.  This was one of my favourite skirts.  It is black which means it goes with everything and I used to wear it all the time.  Then one afternoon I noticed a stain on it.  A stain RIGHT on the front (of course!).  At first I thought, I’d dropped chocolate on it.  Then I thought I’d got my period on it (TMI?!) and then I realised what it was.  A bleach stain from when I was cleaning the bathroom.  So this is a PSA… don’t clean your bathroom, it ruins your clothes.

Then I ate breakfast and watched the first of many, many episodes of ‘Happy Endings’.  Please note my fancy new teacup that my mum got me for Christmas.

This day also coincided with a ‘fat day’ in which my brain tells me I am horribly fat and therefore shouldn’t watch what I eat because I’m fat already and then I proceed to eat everything in abundance. 

Remember how sunny and lovely it looked in the earlier photos when I was walking the dogs?  As a result, I assumed it was safe to do some laundry.  It was not.  You can’t really tell from the pictures but it was doing some serious rain.  Also- bonus pictures of my underpants!

I brought everyone inside because they are idiots who like to wander out in the rain.  And also because I was lonely.  And it was time for crafting.

My mum got me a super cute present of a recipe holder book.  And then she gathered all these recipes from my relatives and put them inside.  And she photocopied all these handwritten recipes from my great-grandmas!  Can’t wait to try them out.  I then spent the rest of the afternoon adding all my own recipes to the book.

Then it was off to look after a cat for my second job.  Cutest kitty but she was a bit over being kept inside.  She’s an outside cat and for the last few days, would just sit beside the door and cry to be let out.  For some reason that night I didn't lock the door as I normally did and when I came back from cleaning the litter tray- the door was wide open and Kitty was gone!!!!!  I just about died!!!!  It was the last night of the job as well so I had no time to hope that the kitty would return.  I ran out into the garden and started calling.  I then heard a little miaow from underneath the house and I called to her but I didn’t think she would come now that she had a taste of freedom.  Luckily, she decided not to be a normal cat and actually came when she was called.  I scooped her up and put her back inside.  Crisis averted!!  Then it was back home for countdown to the new year.

I ended up watching the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, which is a bunch of military bands from all over the world performing.  I started watching ironically and then ended up really enjoying it.  Also, there was a bottle of wine involved.  And no glass.  Classy lady that I am.  I told you this was an ugly day for me to document.

This is Tessa reacting to the news that there was a Dutch Bicycle Corps.  She was not as into it as me.  She is resting her head on the top of her bed.  I however thought it was the coolest thing in the world.  Dutch people with giant instruments strapped to their bikes that they then played.

Then luckily afterwards there was a special of Stephen Fry at the Opera House which I watched.  He has such a lovely voice that was lulling me to sleep, although that might have had something to do with the wine.

And this is as far as I got on New Year’s Eve.  I hope everyone had a more exciting one than me!  The next day was slightly more productive and I shall bring that to you asap.