girl plus everything else

New Obsession

2012-02-24T20:12:00.002+10:00

As a joke at work, whenever I walk in and there’s a cat out the back, I always say “This one’s mine?”. Today when I did my ~~hilarious~~ joke, the vet said “Yeah, this one actually can be yours”. I was like “WHAT?!?!?”.

Yesterday, some people brought in a cat to be put to sleep. They had been renting a place and keeping a cat there which was not allowed. Once the owner of the place found out about the cat, the people were told to get rid of the cat or move out. So they brought the cat to our workplace to put it to sleep. I don’t really understand why they didn’t just surrender it to an animal shelter. The vet was a little reluctant to put a healthy animal down so they said that they would take it and try to rehome it. The owners were very grateful.

It was a really sweet cat so yesterday was spent calling around animal shelters but nobody was willing to take it. And I think the plan was to put her to sleep today but then when I came to work, I was like “NOO!!!!!!”. And so now she is living with me.

Can you spot the cat?

I may have blackmailed Boy Roomie into letting us have the cat by sending him a picture of the cat and basically saying “They are putting the cat down this afternoon unless I can take him”. So we have little Millie on a trial. She already has everyone wrapped around her little finger and it’s not even been one full day yet. The big test is whether Millie will get on with Nilly, the dog. I’m not sure what will happen but at the moment, we are taking it slowly and making sure that Millie feels safe and comfortable.

I have already taken about a billion photos of her and can’t wait to go to the shops tomorrow and buy lots of fun stuff for her. So I apologise if future blog posts are cat picture heavy. I am obsessed.

It’s been a while

2012-02-23T08:36:00.002+10:00

My friend came and stayed for a long weekend. It was a lot of fun and I’ll be posting pictures in a bit. Probably later this afternoon. I dropped her off at the airport and went straight to work, so it’s been non-stop. Today’s a day off in the middle of the week and one I am very grateful for.

I thought I would welcome myself back by posting a video that Boy Roomie took on his phone last night. We’d been eating chips and Nilly had been drooling and begging for one so we decided to leave the last chip in the bag and put the bag on the floor. The resulting video is what follows.

And you get bonus audio of ALL the people that live in the house. Boy Roomie, Girl Roomie and moi. I am the one that cackles “Why is she going backwards??”. I promise I don’t sound like that in real life. It was just hard to talk between giggling.

February Photo A Day Catch Up

2012-02-17T07:30:00.002+10:00

I hadn’t realised I’d gotten so far behind! And since I’m away this weekend, I thought I’d better post something.

Day Eleven: Makes You Happy

This is the dog that I petsat last weekend. She is preggers and even more adorable than last time I sat for her. I love her so much!!! I hope that when she gives birth I can be super rude and invite myself over to see the puppies :)

Day Twelve: Inside Your Closet

This is my teeny weeny closet. It is about as wide as me. I can only have one season’s worth of clothes in there. So right now it is summer clothes and all my winter clothes are at my mum’s house. It’s such a pain.

Day Thirteen: Blue

Watching movies cuddled up to my favourite movie companion- even though she always falls asleep during the best parts.

Day Fourteen: Heart

This is me in my work uniform. I love getting to wear a scrub top and I ADORE getting to wear- and use- a stethoscope. It makes me feel like I’m on a medical TV show… although our patients are much more cuter and hairier!

Day Fifteen: Phone

This is the phone at work. It’s practically vintage. I hate it so much, I’m always living in fear that I’ll hang up on someone when I put them on hold. And flicking between the two phone lines? Forget about it!!

Day Sixteen: New

The start of a new craft project that I originally turned my nose up at but I really think it’s going to look great!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend. I’m @Skaramouche on instagram, feel free to add me. I want more pictures on my feed so that I can have something to look at when I get bored :)

Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe!!!

2012-02-16T13:40:00.002+10:00

I am not a baking person. I do like to eat baked treats though and sometimes that means attempting to bake. My attempts usually end in disaster but sometimes the recipes are so easy that even Anti-Chef Laura can’t muck it up.

All praise and respect to this website here for bringing this into my life. BUT even more praise and respect to *this* website for being the original creators of this yummy baked goodness.

I used my own tried and tested choc chip recipe so I’ll share that with you guys today. There was a different one on their website but this one seems simpler to me and the simpler, the better!

Here we go!

1 cup plain flour

1 cup self raising flour

1 cup caster sugar

1 cup chocolate chips

125g butter, melted

1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 180C. I’m not going to give the Fahrenheit version equivalent as payback for all the times that I have had to google the Celsius equivalent. But off the top of my head, I think it’s 350F. But can you trust me?!

Add all the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix well.

Add all the wet ingredients into a different bowl and mix well.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry mixture and stir to combine.

Roll the dough into balls (I made 22 with my mixture but you can get away with making more). Chill the dough balls in the fridge for about 30 minutes because apparently it makes it easier to form the stuffed cookies. That’s what the website says and it worked a treat for me.

To form the stuffed cookie, flatten two dough balls to just larger than the diameter of the Oreo cookies and make a sandwich with the Oreo cookie being in the middle. Pinch together the edges to seal in the Oreo.

Chill the cookies for at least an hour in the fridge. I think I did for about four hours.

*Straight from Rock Recipes blog* It is very important that the dough be very cold before baking. In my opinion this recipe actually works best when baking the cookies from frozen dough. We freeze all of the formed cookies on a parchment lined cookie sheet, then transfer them to an airtight plastic container with layers of wax paper or parchment paper separating the layers of prepared frozen cookies. You can then bake as many or as few as you like and have fresh baked cookies ready whenever you want.

Then bake the cookies for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown, swapping the trays halfway through cooking. Because these cookies spread, I ended up using two trays to make 11 cookies.

Allow to cool. And then eat! It’s magical- eating three biscuits in one. The perfect lazy, greedy snack :)

Blu Ray Tuesday #19

2012-02-15T11:25:00.002+10:00

The movie: Crazy Stupid Love

The menu: Red Rooster (Aussie KFC- for all you foreigners!) and Cold Rock icecream.

This was last week’s movie and it was just me and Girl Roomie. I’ve wanted to see this movie for ages and had heard it was good and that I would ‘absolutely love it’. So I was preparing for another disappointment like what happened with me and ‘Bridesmaids’. BUT this movie was so much better than I thought it would be and what the trailer made it out to be.

I’m sure everyone has already seen this movie and I’m preaching to the choir, but it was so good!

I’m probably the only person in the world who doesn’t love Ryan Gosling. Like, I can see that he’s attractive but I’m not attracted. The internet however is trying to change my mind by putting clips out there like Ryan reading actual ‘hey girl’ memes or wearing a onesie on the Ellen show. And then magazines print pictures of him carrying his dog. It’s like the world wants me to fall in love with him. When we were watching the movie, I said to Girl Roomie “You know what? I think I love Steve Carell more than Ryan Gosling”. She gave me the look. You know, the “you are crazy” look. But it’s true.

And now to finish on some “hey girl” memes. I spent far too long looking at these and picking the best one. Ok, ok, maybe I like Ryan Gosling.

Source

But this is my favourite. Girl Roomie sent it to me yesterday.

Recommended? Of course! But you’ve all already seen it so whatever.

And I also discovered this whilst searching for pictures. It contains some swear words so maybe not safe for work. But watch it when you get home. And then watch the “Drunk History” videos. They are hilarious.

Drunk History Christmas with Ryan Gosling, Jim Carrey and Eva Mendes from Ryan Gosling

My weekend

2012-02-14T06:27:00.002+10:00

Wow, I feel like I haven’t been on blogger in forever! In my last post I said that I was going to try and have a proper weekend instead of doing nothing like I normally do. I actually managed ok.

Saturday

I got up in the morning and went and visited the dog I am pet sitting. She is such a delight. I was convinced that she was going to have the puppies during the weekend I was looking after her. She did not, phew!!

Look at that little face :) I love bulldogs, so ugly that they’re cute.

I came home and baked. I think I will put up the recipe for it but just to whet your appetite (pun!!!!!!), here is a picture.

Chocolate chip cookie stuffed with Oreo. YUM!!!!!

Then my lovely friend Kristy came over and we went to see a movie with Girl Roomie. The movie was rated R and I got carded. I am 26 and I had to show my ID to prove that I was over 18. I *will* be thankful of this once I’m older!

We came home afterwards, had dinner and a couple glasses of wine and then did what normal people do when they’ve had a few glasses of wine. Stalk people from high school via Facebook. Then we got bummed out because everyone was saving the world in exotic locations /engaged/ married/ had babies.

Sunday

I was all pumped to go to church but I literally have no idea where the time went and by the time I was ready, church would have been half over :( Went and visited the dog again.

Came home and hopped in the pool, it was a beautiful sunny day and I floated around and read my book. Boy Roomie’s extended family came over including his little nephew, who is always terrified of me when he turns up at the house. But by the end of the visit, he was loving me because we played together in the pool and I played soccer with him afterwards. He has an impressive kick already!

I got major burned in the chestal area. I hadn’t intended to be in the pool that long but I got sidetracked playing with cutie pie. Thank goodness my face moisturiser is also sunscreen. I hate getting burned, it’s so bad!!

And that was my weekend. I'll post my 'February' photos soon

Day Ten

2012-02-10T20:54:00.004+10:00

Day Ten is a “self portrait” picture. Which I totally accidentally deleted. And then had to rummage around in the recycle bin for.

Dear self portrait, why you so unattractive!?!?!?! Probably should have brushed my hair… and also had a nap before this piccy was taken. Oh well, I guess this is the real me :)

I’ve also decided to DO STUFF this weekend. I normally just sit on my bum and watch TV or read books but I’m going to go out of the house this weekend. I hope I actually follow through on these plans. Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Also, edited to say- the owner of the pug puppies sent us a picture. SO cute!! One of the puppies is on her back, fast asleep with a big fat belly and her tongue poking out. Makes me so happy!!

Day Nine

2012-02-09T21:26:00.002+10:00

Day Nine is “front door”. I love our front door. Actually, I love the whole house. It’s an older style house and has all these beautiful touches to it to remind you that it’s fancy and old. Like for example, the doorbell is in the centre of the door and you turn it to ring the bell.

I love the picture I took. Everything came together really beautifully. It makes my life look super cute.

Plus Nilly is without a doubt, the hardest thing in the world to take a photo of because she never sits still but she is perfect in this one.

Just to the left of the door, can you see the stained glass window? Here’s a better shot of it.

It reminds me of ‘Beauty & The Beast’. Also nerd fact: sometimes when there’s only two people in the house, we’ll take the opportunity to have a ‘Beauty & The Beast’ dinner where we sit at opposite ends of the dining table and light fancy candles in the middle of the table. And sometimes, someone (aka Boy Roomie) will drain liquid from a bowl by raising it to his lips. Then that really *is* a ‘Beauty & The Beast’ dinner. No singing cutlery though.

Day Eight

2012-02-08T21:15:00.003+10:00

Well, we’re a week down and I’m still going strong! Day 8 is “sun”. Today was a strange day in which it was stifling hot… and then went into intense monsoon weather. This photo was taken from my car window as I got back to work, driving over flooded roads. Not fun.

The sun is peeking out through the clouds and the rain. It was fun to pretend to be artsy with my photography skills!

Had to share another photo that got sent to us from work. This is of some patients that made a full recovery.

The dog in front was kicked in the head by a cow and the owners were worried about neurological damage. Everything was ok. Unfortunately later it turned out that the eye had been affected and had to be removed via surgery. That was fine and healed beautifully. We removed the stitches in the morning and then in the afternoon, poor sweet doggy came back to us because he’d been attacked by two dogs! The wounds weren’t too bad but the little guy had to be stitched up again.

Both dogs were absolute joys to treat- and the owners equally lovely. I wish we got sent more photos like this. It’s no fun getting to only see the animals when they’re sick, I want to see them happy and healthy too.

Blu Ray Tuesday #18

2012-02-08T07:32:00.002+10:00

The movie: Peep World

The menu: Pizza

You’ve never heard of this movie? Don’t worry, us neither. However, this movie will go down in history because this is the movie that Girl Roomie chose and with that decision, she joined Boy Roomie and myself in “The Worst Movie Pickers Ever” club. It’s taken almost a year but she has finally joined our illustrious ranks.

This movie blowed. It tried too hard to be a little indie black comedy (and don’t get me wrong, there were some funny moments) but it just wasn’t.

This bit needs capital letters because it’s important. DON’T FALL FOR THE FACT THAT IT HAS ALL THESE GREAT ACTORS IN IT. DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE WE DID. Just because it has Dwight from The Office, Dexter from… Dexter, Sarah Silverman, Judy Greer, that chick from American Horror Story, that guy from Alias doesn’t mean the movie is going to be ok. They were all good, don’t get me wrong. They just couldn’t save the movie.

Recommended?: No. Just… no. Although there were funny bits, they were far and few between. What they fell between were some horribly awkward bits where characters’ situations went from bad to worse. There was so much painful second-hand embarrassment and frustration that I said on several occasions, “I can’t watch this. I can’t watch this”. Don’t watch this.

Day Seven

2012-02-07T21:22:00.002+10:00

Day seven is “button”. I spent quite some time trying to think of a creative variation on this prompt but I ended up going with my first thought.

Completely uninspired but I went with the button that turns on my laptop. I absolutely love blogging and the internet and all the wonderful people that I get to meet and interact with on here. I hate trying to explain to “normal” people what blogging is and what I get out of it. They just don’t understand!!

And then I found this photo of me and my friend Kristy on the Mummy Returns ride at Universal Studios in 2008 (I think). This photo looks completely staged but it’s totally not. Kristy and I had literally just looked at each other going “How lame is this ride?!”, when suddenly the cart just shot off into space with zero warning, hence our hilarious expressions. Anyway, the picture still makes me laugh as hard as it did the day it got taken.

Day Six

2012-02-06T21:13:00.002+10:00

Day Six is “dinner”. I was paranoid I would forget, as I did with yesterday’s “10am”. I did not forget!!!!!!

Yum, lamb chops and roast veggies. And starring my mum’s wonderful George Foreman. We love him so!

Whooo are you?? Who, who, who who???

2012-02-06T21:03:00.003+10:00

And so goes the theme song to CSI. I admittedly don’t watch it anymore and I only really ever liked the original one (Las Vegas PD forever!!) but CSI was such a huge part of my life in high school. Completely obsessed. So when I heard that there was a CSI exhibition in my home town, I was all about getting there. Ok, so despite my eagerness it took me three months but I finally made it. And dragged my mother along.

It was so great! Admittedly, it was probably for younger children (low teens and over) but we had a ton of fun. We got to view a fake crime scene with a dummy, take notes, look at bugs under microscopes, do DNA analysis, compare tyre tracks, watch an autopsy on a dummy. And we had to present our case to Gil Grissom himself. I was genuinely scared I would get it wrong and Grissom would be disappointed in me :)

But never fear, me and my trusty companion saved the day and brought the right perp in for questioning. And we got a certificate to prove it signed by Grissom!

It took us about an hour and I got to wear a lab coat throughout the whole thing so I felt super official. They took some great photos of me and my mum as we worked on solving the case. There was a fab one of us hard at work in Grissom’s office, it genuinely looked like we knew what we were doing. Shame we couldn’t take our own photos as their photos were so expensive. But then we ended up buying up big in the gift shop anyway!

My mum was chuffed with her cop notebook and I love my CSI thermos cup. I want to use it as work and it’ll make me feel super official when I have to do lab tests!

And this is me with a crime scene outside the building.

And this is my mum not being sure how the camera works.

Day Five: 10am

2012-02-05T22:19:00.002+10:00

Um… I completely forgot to look and see what the prompt was for Day 5 until about 12:30 pm… completely missing the 10am mark!

So I took a screencap of the passage we were going through in church, which was what I was doing at 10am this morning. A bit of a boring picture, sorry guys! I guess this is why I should at least look at the prompt before the day of!

In other news, I went to see The Muppets today with my friend Kristy. We borrowed her cousin so that we could have a child with us whilst seeing the movie. Unfortunately we have been borrowing her cousin for years so we have an “excuse” to see kids movies but now her cousin is starting to get a bit old for this ruse!

It was such a sweet movie and I laughed and smiled the whole way through. I totally recommend it. However it did dredge up a few feelings from the past as I remembered why I couldn’t watch a lot of The Muppets stuff when I was younger.

I find their stuff quite frustrating- that’s a negative word and I don’t really mean that word, I just can’t think of the correct word to explain the feeling I get. Like I vaguely remember a sketch where one muppet was looking for another, say Gonzo was looking for Rizzo. Gonzo would come onstage and be all like “hey have you seen Rizzo?” and someone would say “Nope, haven’t seen him”, so Gonzo would go offstage and Rizzo would immediately come onstage and say “I’m looking for Gonzo, have you seen him” and someone would say “yeah, he was just here, he was looking for you”. So Rizzo would go offstage, looking for Gonzo and then of course Gonzo would come back onstage. This would go on for a few more times and as a kid I could NOT stand this, I would just have this frustrated, anxious feeling in my stomach and I would have to turn the TV off. I can handle that feeling a bit better as an adult but I ended up fidgeting in my seat a little at the final culmination of the movie as their plan to save the theatre hinged on one single thing and I got that same anxious feeling in my stomach. Weird, right?! I can handle it in any other movie but when it’s Muppets, I get all fidgety and anxious.

Anyway, I keep forgetting. I want instagram friends!!! My handle is Skaramouche. I look forward to seeing your daily photos.

Day 4

2012-02-04T23:13:00.002+10:00

Day 4 of the February photo challenge. “A Stranger”

This was a cute little hipster couple that I spied in the supermarket. I actually pointed the girl out to my mum to show her the hair colour and to tell her that this was now a trendy hair colour. My mum was like *pauses* “No”, *another really long pause*, “No, no….no”. I don’t know when or why cotton candy pink and grey became a cool hair colour but it is here.

Anyway, when I spied the couple again whilst we were having lunch, I just knew that they were destined to be a part of my project. I felt super stalkerish taking the photo, hence it is from the behind and quite far away.

Day Three

2012-02-03T20:36:00.002+10:00

Day 3 of the February photo a day challenge is entitled ‘hands’. Here is a picture of mine.

Please note the cut on my hand. It occurred just after the run in with the mean lady on the phone. I was thinking up revenge schemes comparable to anything a villainous mastermind could envisage whilst unpacking some stock. I was so busy in my thoughts that I cut through the box and straight through to my hand. Blood everywhere! Serves me right!!

The things I’m up to on the Internet

2012-02-02T19:11:00.002+10:00

First up, is Comment Love! Sarah and some other bloggers have organised a great way to get your blog out there and get some comments in the process. We all love receiving comments on our blogs and this scheme asks you to comment on three blogs every day until Feb 14th. And there’s the chance to win prizes :) And there’s still time to get involved!

Next project I’m doing is the “photo a day during February” challenge

Due to the hashtaggery business going on, I assume it’s a twitter thing but I’m bringing it to the blogosphere. And hopefully it means I will be able to start getting into the habit of using the camera on my phone.

Day One: My view today

This is the view from the laundry door. Tessa is furiously wagging her tail, wondering when she should start barking. She usually waits 0.35 seconds before barking like a maniac- she’s offended that she’s being ignored. Honey, give me some time to actually get out of the door and reach you before you start barking. Then Katie’s hobbling over for some cuddles. She is a cuddle ho. She is about a million years old but will barge everyone and everything out of the way if she thinks there are some pats to be had. Then there’s little Nilly who doesn’t care about anything if there is food to be had. In the photo, she is licking an empty food bowl… just in case there are some crumbs. I love that this photo sums everyone up perfectly.

Day Two: Words (because I’m in Australia and we’re in the future)

These were the words I read today from Matthew. And it fits in nicely with the word I have chosen for this year: Light. Good words to live by.

Dear oh dear!

2012-02-01T07:11:00.002+10:00

I had my first run in at work with a lady who is notoriously rude. I’ve never previously had a problem with her and have quite happily served her in the past but yesterday she called me up to complain and was just plain mean to me on the phone. I tried to explain but she started off mean and just got worse.

I am dotting happy things throughout the post to soothe my nerves which are rising as I write!

As soon as someone is rude, my hackles start to rise- even if the rudeness isn’t directed towards me. I’m not very good at confrontation and I get flustered and want to cry or punch people in the face which is not very Christian or the best kind of customer service in the world!!

Anyway, I got someone else to ring her back because she wasn’t happy with my explanation of the problem. And she was nice as pie to the other girl on the phone! And she told her “You should really watch Laura, you need to have a talk with her and tell her not to say such silly things over the phone”!!

Next time she comes in, I am going to kill that witch with kindness! That’s really the only thing I can think to do. It constantly surprises me when people are rude to customer service people. You want help? Don’t be rude to the people that are going to help you!

Any tips on dealing with mean members of the general public? And especially, any tips on how to keep your cool (and not cry!) would be much appreciated.

Blu Ray Tuesday #17

2012-01-31T21:02:00.002+10:00

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

2012-01-30T18:24:00.002+10:00

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

2012-01-26T19:28:00.003+10:00

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...

2012-01-24T16:41:00.002+10:00

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

2012-01-23T13:48:00.002+10:00

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

2012-01-22T14:38:00.002+10:00

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!

2012-01-17T07:01:00.002+10:00

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.

2012-01-16T18:09:00.002+10:00

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

2012-01-14T08:37:00.003+10:00

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

2012-01-09T10:40:00.003+10:00

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

2012-01-04T20:54:00.002+10:00

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

2012-01-02T16:48:00.002+10:00

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.

Blu Ray Tuesday #16

2011-12-28T07:14:00.003+10:00

First up, a warning. This is my most favourite of classic literature. The way the rest of the world feels about ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and Mr Darcy is the way I feel about ‘Jane Eyre’ and Mr Rochester. I love it a LOT.

The movie: Jane Eyre

The menu: McDonald’s

The audience: Me and Nilly.

I don’t think Nilly really enjoyed the movie. She fell asleep half way through and I kept accidentally waking her up when I would sigh dramatically and say “I can’t stand it anymore” in regards to all that tension or when I would squeal at something romantic. I think she found me annoying. So it’s probably very good that the Roomies were also away this week!

I, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed it. The costumes were amazing, the sets and scenery were gorgeous and the two leads of Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester (played by Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender) were outstanding. They are two of my favourite fictional characters, so real and layered and the actors completely brought them to life. The support of Judi Dench as the housekeeper was great, it’s a thankless role but she’s Dame Judi Dench and she rocked it. And then there is recently re-discovered (in my eyes anyway) grown up Billy Elliott aka Jamie Bell who was unfortunately hidden away behind a HUGE pair of sideburns. Shame. But probably just as well.

I really liked how they told the story in flashbacks. Haven’t seen that before so it gave something new to the story that I know so well. Obviously it’s hard to tell such a long nuanced story in the length of a movie (and the movie fades in comparison to the 2006 miniseries) but I thought the movie did a great job and I look forward to watching it again. They messed up a couple of things though. Pilot the dog was completely wrong. I’m not sure if he has a breed in the book but in my head, he is a huge black shaggy dog. Also, I super love the epilogue of the book which got cut out of the movie.

Recommended? If you love period dramas and all that jazz, then I’ll think you’ll like it. It’s fairly slow and a lot of the movie is about what is NOT said but it’s in the hands of good actors so it’s not painful. I loved it times a million but I realise that it’s not for everyone.

Geez, sit on the fence why don’t you, Laura?!?!

Hello!

2011-12-22T21:24:00.002+10:00

Wow, I have been a terrible blogger and commenter in recent times. Work life has gotten crazy, I've been doing ten or eleven hour shifts and then I come home, sleep and then get up and do it all again. It's because I am covering for another nurse who has just had an operation. I am very grateful for the experience and I am amazed at how much my confidence has grown in just a short week or so of doing full time nursing. BUT I can't wait until I go back to my piddly short shifts of five or six hours!! I am sick of being exhausted!!

And it's nearly Christmas and who knows when I'll be back to blogging properly. So as a gift in case I don't see you again before Christmas, here are two of my favourite youtube videos of recent time. Enjoy.

Writing challenge

2011-12-17T10:27:00.003+10:00

I was really sad when my NaNoWriMo project fell by the wayside. It was silly of me to even think about doing it because I was trying to finish my nursing course, have my birthday (and party), work and see my family. Even though I had very valid reasons, I still felt discouraged and failed as a writer when I realised that there was no way for me to finish NaNoWriMo.

At that very moment in time, Sarah at Desirous of Everything entered my blogging world. I don’t even know how I found her blog but she was also doing a NaNo project. But it was different, more realistic. She was writing 500 words every day. 500 words is manageable.

I have loved following her project. The pure joy she gets when she goes on an inspired word spree, the frustration she feels when the 500 words just come plodding out. I’ve loved reading about the mundane-ness of this writing project. Just sitting your butt down and writing 500 words each day.

So here we go. I left a comment on her blog and she suggested I blog about the challenge and my progress so I feel a bit more accountable. I’ve also totally stolen her idea of writing out my wordcount on a chart and placing a rad sticker on the dates I’ve completed. I’ll post each week. This is it so far.

At the moment, I’m not entirely loving my story and I’m not sure where I’m going with it. My plot is a little weak and as I’m writing it, I’m thinking to myself “That would never happen”. I’m also completely uninspired, I just sit and write my 500 words a day. BUT they are 500 more words than I would normally write so I am counting it as a victory.

Did someone go into my brain?!

2011-12-15T21:09:00.004+10:00

I had this whole other blog post planned and then I was surfing the internet and this ad popped up on my sidebar and I was transfixed.

Dragons are basically my most favourite creature ever (even though I hate their counterpart of dinosaurs- go figure!). I would LOVE to see this!!!!!!!!!! Since I will never be seeing a dragon in real life, this is definitely my best chance to see them. I'm so excited that they're starting the tour in Australia. It's probably so they can work all the bugs out of the system before they head to America and Europe, but still! I'll take it.

I love that this is coincidentally my desktop background at the moment:

Did anyone see the 'Walking with Dinosaurs' stage show? That looked fabulous!

Blu Ray Tuesday #15

2011-12-14T06:55:00.003+10:00

The movie: The Losers

The menu: Pizza. It always comes back to pizza.

This movie was recommended to me by Danielle and since my first choice of ‘Jane Eyre’ was out (and I didn’t think I’d be able to coerce the Roomies into watching it anyway), we decided to go with this one. Foreshadowing, Danielle is a self-confessed terrible picker of movies, but maybe that’s why we are friends because we share similar traits.

The first ten minutes of the movie were spent picking what was going to happen. We were correct in our assumptions. The Roomies and I do like to guess what the next line will be or pick what the shot will be.

Just have to talk about the poster for a moment. Aisha (the girl one) has her hair in that style for quite a bit of the movie and it annoyed me immensely. The reason you put your hair up in a ponytail is to keep the hair out of your face and if you are a super cool badass fighting lady, that is an important requirement in a hairstyle. WHY WOULD YOU LEAVE TWO STRANDS AT THE FRONT THAT ONLY SERVE THE PURPOSE OF GETTING IN YOUR FACE?!?!?!?!? I couldn’t get past that whilst watching the movie.

The movie in itself was ok. It’s about a black-ops team who has the chance to clear their name and get their lives back by doing one insanely tough mission. I really, really, really liked the villain. He had a lot of the best lines and was suitably unhinged. Also, luckily for this movie, my Captain America boyfriend Chris Evans dropped in to play his usual goofy sidekick character, which he does ever so well. He made this movie a lot more palatable for me to watch. I think my enjoyment of the movie was ruined by the fact that I do not believe in Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a tough dynamic leader of the group. Which is a shame because I absolutely heart him and know he can play tough and dynamic.

Recommended? Um… ok. If you want to. I’m not going to tell you to watch it but if you come across it and there’s a choice to watch this or something else- at least now, you will know what you get with this one.

And I leave you with a direct quote from the house as we sat in silence as the credits rolled, trying to work out if we liked the movie---

Me: 96 minutes? Oh well. I’ve wasted more time on longer, stupider movies.

Girl Roomie: That should be your review.

Skype Missed Connections

2011-12-12T21:11:00.003+10:00

I’m currently sitting waiting for my friend Shelly to talk to me on Skype and I thought I’d take a moment and write about her- because I probably won't get to speak to her. There was a little mix up due to time differences because I didn’t realise that I was one hour behind her, so (in my head anyway) she thinks that I’m an hour late. It’s showing that she’s still logged into Skype but she hasn’t answered my calls or messages. And I’ve left a message on facebook and one on her phone too. But no answer. So I feel like she must think that I’ve forgotten her!

Shelly is one of my best friends. She’s a year older than me and is kind of the cool big sister I always wanted. We met in college and lived in the same dorms. I desperately wanted to be BFFs with her as she was already doing one of the same degrees that I was doing (ancient history) but I bided my time until I was a cool second year and then made my move. She always knows what to say and do which means she’s great in a crisis or if you need advice. We even spent six weeks travelling together and I know I cried like a baby when she left to go home and I stayed on.

But now we live in different states and I miss not being able to go over to her room in the dorms and stay up late watching movies or reading books aloud to each other. AND she is a grown up and just got engaged!! Here is a collection of photos that sum up our friendship pretty well.

This is us recreating a scene from ‘Highlander’. The castle was used in exterior shots in the movie. This is why I take Shelly with me when I can, she asked a random lady to take this ~~embarrassing~~ super cool photo of us.

This is Shelly trying to take a FB profile picture of herself and the gorgeous Scottish countryside. I decided to photobomb her. She couldn’t stop laughing when she turned the camera around and saw the picture that she’d snapped.

This is Shelly scolding the British Museum for stealing the frieze on the Parthenon in the early days of archaeology and then not giving it back to Greece when they asked for it. I am doing my “I’m so disappointed in you” face that I intend to use on my future children.

I can’t believe in this day and age that technology is keeping us apart! Maybe I should write her a letter instead?

What shenanigans do you get up to with your friends? And who's your oldest friend that you still keep in contact with?

Hair today, gone tomorrow

2011-12-09T17:55:00.002+10:00

I am so punny. I have been putting off writing this post for a while, it’s about a week and a half old. Last Tuesday I got my hair cut. I’ve actually been growing it for a while, in order to donate to charity. I originally wanted to donate my hair to ‘Locks of Love’ an American charity but because the postal system is so finicky, I decided that sending it within Australia might be a better idea. It probably took me the entire time that I was growing my hair to actually find an Australian organisation to donate my hair to. The Princess Charlotte Foundation is one that raises awareness and money for alopecia sufferers, particularly focussing on young girls, most of whom find the sudden hair loss understandably quite traumatic. They have a side organisation called “Tresses for Princesses” where people can donate their hair to be sold by the foundation to people who make wigs for medical hair loss. The money that the foundation makes is then used to buy wigs for those unable to afford them.

This is my before picture, please forgive the squinty expression on my face. And also note the shopping trolleys in the background. My dad will not be hired to be this blog’s full-time photographer.

Looking at this picture actually shocks me at how long my hair was. It’s crazy! Must be getting used to my new haircut.

And this is the moment of truth:

Probably just as well you can’t see my face. I put on a brave face because everyone in the shop was freaking out and watching me, but inside I was squealing!!

I actually didn’t mind this haircut. This is what I looked like straight after Wendy the hairdresser chopped my ponytail off. Oh, and this is 40cm of my hair.

And this is the finished product.

And this is me and my hair, just chilling in my room.

And I now have instagram, I feel like I am finally a blogger. Seriously, that was a big week for me- new haircut and I got my very first fancy phone. I am a whole new person!

Answers to Trivia Tuesday

2011-12-09T17:20:00.002+10:00

The answers are as follows:

1) Custard apple (I’d never heard of it either but Girl Roomie knew what it was)

2) Rhubarb

3) Peanut

4) Papaya

5) Olive

6) Chestnut

7) Pumpkin

8) Corn

9) Star fruit

10) Tomato

There was HUGE controversy over the answer to number 4, as most teams (including ours) put down ‘pawpaw’. People were yelling at the poor woman who runs the trivia night. In Australia, we tend to use the terms ‘paw paw’ and ‘papaya’ interchangeably. But apparently ‘paw paw’ is a yellow flesh and ‘papaya’ is an orangey colour. And then people were arguing that the picture looked yellow.

Blu Ray Tuesday Hiatus

2011-12-07T11:18:00.002+10:00

Oh, this breaks my heart!! I have recently started working a shift at work every other Tuesday that finishes late so I won’t be watching a movie on Tuesdays :( Wahhhh!!!!!

However, I bring to you a new segment in lieu… Trivia Tuesday. In which I recycle questions from the Trivia game I go to on Mondays. I guess this is the part where I say, pictures are supplied by the trivia company (whose name I will get next week) and are not owned by me. Trivia company, please do not sue me, I love going to trivia and I love your work!

Place your answers in the comments and I’ll let you know how you guys went in my next post.

Trivia about the trivia: Number 4 caused HUGE controversy. There was actual yelling. It was epic. My team just sat there and giggled because really guys, it was over ONE point… in the FIRST ROUND! And it’s ‘Trivia’, it’s not ‘Answer this question correctly or I’ll kill your whole family’.

Monday Night Trivia

2011-12-05T17:52:00.003+10:00

This is a semi-regular thing that the Roomies and I have been participating in at our local RSL club. It’s mainly for middle-aged people but we like it because we are all middle-aged women at heart… even Boy Roomie.

There are several rounds and between the three of us, we have collected enough random information to do pretty darn well. Each round consists of ten questions and if you get all ten questions correct, one team member from each winning team has to go up to the front and participate in a series of sudden death questions. If you make it through the sudden death ‘true or false’ questions, you then get to spin a wheel, like on ‘The Price is Right’ and the team who gets closest to 100 wins $25. Wow, that sounds complicated but it works.

We even have our own arch nemesis team, a team made up of two girls who are about our own age and seem like nice people from what I’ve seen when I try and spy on them. In fact, we should probably team up with them and make a united stronger team against the rest of the oldies. However they are our arch nemesises because on their first night they lucked out and won $50- and for that, I can never forgive them.

Our team name is either “Let’s Get Trivial” (we love a good pun and just shows why I love living with Girl Roomie when she makes up cool names like that!) or “That’s What She Said” (because we are 12 year old boys who still find that funny). We’ve gotten ten out of ten right on several occasions but find it hard to get that elusive $25.

We did get $25 though, one magical night. We’d been doing really badly all night, getting 6/10 for most rounds. We wanted to go home, we couldn’t even be bothered to stay for the last two rounds. But then the last two rounds were something like “Lucky Dip” and “Movies & TV” so we decided to stay. We got 100% for both rounds but failed to make it through the sudden death until the last round. For some reason, I’m the team member that gets nominated to go up and play (thanks guys!). The question was something weird like “An oyster has a row of eyes on the outside of its shell” and I was up against all these old men who were from the teams that always win every week. I decided to go with “true” but all the other teams said that it was “false”. I was like “aw…” because I assumed I’d gotten our team knocked out and then the announcer said “congratulations” to ME! And handed me a voucher for $25. And then I did a little victory dance that made everyone laugh at me. I couldn’t help it, it was a spontaneous outpouring of joy!

Oh, also we love it because the food and drinks are cheap and you get a free pancake with your meal.

Just a little something for the weekend.

2011-12-03T21:19:00.002+10:00

Tomorrow I really must have a day away from the computer. I’ve had a number of days off that I think have been wasted because I’ve just sat in front of the computer. I fully intend to do other “time wastey” things like read a book or watch a movie tomorrow, but there’s something completely soul sucking about sitting in front of the computer. I found this great quote today.

“You can't leave footprints in the sands of time if you're sitting on your butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?”

And I leave you today with some little pictures. I had to throw out my old ipod headphones because they suddenly stopped working. These headphones have been through a lot. All thanks to Timmies.

One earbud had been chewed by this Timmy.

And then the other earbud was chewed by this Timmy.

Do not name your pets ‘Timmy’ if you want your headphones to survive. Just a little public service announcement for you.

Also:

So true!!

Work fun

2011-12-02T18:08:00.004+10:00

I feel like I haven't talked about work in the longest time and today's the perfect opportunity to do so. My boss called me yesterday and left a voicemail message that went something like this: “Hi Laura, I’ve just looked at our schedule for tomorrow and it looks a bit crazy. Was hoping you could come in a bit earlier, say ten am… or nine. Hope that’s ok. See you tomorrow at ten! Or nine”. Needless to say, I turned up at nine because I am a sucker and I actually do love my job.

When you de-sex a dog or cat, you have to place a tattoo on the inside of their ear. It’s my FAVOURITE thing to do. I love doing it so much, I always tell my work colleagues that I’m leaving them and going to open up my own tattoo parlour. You just apply the dye to the ear and scrunch (that’s a VERY medical term) the tattoo press to the ear, kind of like doing earrings I guess. I applied the dye to the ear and was so intent on getting the dog’s hair out of the way that I didn’t notice my own hair getting in the way. So my fringe has black streaks in it. I've brushed my hair several times and you can’t really see it anymore, phew!

It was so busy and we all went a little stir-crazy, including one of the patients. In addition to howling for almost the entire day, this little madam used her Elizabethan collar to rattle the bars of her cage, like in the old movies where the prisoners rattle the bars of their cell using a coffee mug. If it hadn’t been so annoying, it would have been funny. She just sat there, deliberately running her collar along the bars to rattle them.

I was glad when it was home time, I can tell you that!! Anyone got any fun work stories to add in the comments?

Blu Ray Tuesday #14

2011-11-30T17:48:00.004+10:00

The movie: The Eagle

The menu: We all had different things to eat so I’ll tell you what I ate. A huge hunk of birthday cake and a coke slushie. Why yes, I am on a diet starting tomorrow, how did you know?

I’ve been waiting to see this for AGES!! It’s a movie based on a much loved book that I thoroughly enjoyed. The movie did badly in the States and so was held back for a year or two before even coming to DVD in Australia. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get anyone else to watch this but Girl Roomie took one look at the front cover, saw her celeb boyfriend Channing Tatum on the front and said a big “yes” and in this household majority rules so Boy Roomie had to watch it whether he wanted to or not.

The story is a rather simple one of a young man trying to regain his family’s honour by having a glittering military career. He’s off to a fine start before being wounded and given an honourable discharge. He’s at a bit of a loss at what to do with his life but to cut a long story short, he decides to go on a secret mission with his reluctant slave, played by the kid who played Billy Elliot who has matured very, very nicely.

At the heart of the story is the friendship between the two young men. Billy Elliot is very resentful at the invasion of the Romans to his native land, not to mention his capture at their hands and being forced to become a slave. However, they realise that they share many of the same values and through saving each other’s lives, they learn to trust one another. I did have to giggle at several points during the movie because my mind took their friendship to a WHOLE other level. Although I usually complain when there is a romance "shoehorned" into an action movie, so I guess I should be grateful for one movie where there is no romance to get in the way- and I should probably not make up a romance that is not there.

I think that if I hadn’t read the book I would have been quite lost. Boy and Girl Roomie were both fiddling with their phones by the end of the movie so I don’t think the movie held their interest. Whilst it’s not a terrible movie, it’s certainly a quiet, gentle movie. I use the word ‘gentle’ despite there being several quite bloody battle scenes even though the movie's only PG-13. There are long periods in the movie where I guess you could say that nothing happens but the real enjoyment of the film is watching the two characters interact and see their friendship grow (~~and blossom into love~~- I can’t help it!!!!!!!!)

Recommended? Yes, if you like character driven movies. And attractive men. And gorgeous scenery (filmed in my beloved Scotland). The costumes and sets aren’t too shabby either.

Wednesday with Danielle

2011-11-29T18:16:00.002+10:00

Danielle is my vintage blogging friend from back in the Livejournal days. We met once before and had an excellent time and so we knew we had to repeat the venture.

LAST Wednesday (I know, I know, I’m a terrible blogger!), we met up for movies and lunch. Because I am a greedy person obsessed with popcorn, I managed to convince Danielle to come and see an early session so that I could eat popcorn and still have room for lunch. Because Danielle is nice, she agreed.

We were lining up to get our tickets and made some non-committal comments about the Twilight popcorn bucket and related merchandise. The lady in front of us who was honestly about 70 turns round and starts a rambling monologue about how much she loves Twilight and how much her friends who are in their 70s also love Twilight and went to the midnight screening and how this is her second time to see Twilight in a week. Super awkward a) because I’m not really a Twilight fan so I didn’t have much to add to the conversation and b) random lady had interrupted our private conversation to wax lyrical about Twilight.

Random Twilight pensioner went off to see Twilight and we went off to see The Three Musketeers! SO much fun!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously, there is not enough swashbuckling in movies these days. There were airships and awkward romances and double crossing and people outrunning bullets. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. As I watched Mr Darcy swordfight his way through a bunch of guards, I thought to myself “*That’s* what was missing from Pride & Prejudice!”. Plus it stars my inappropriate crush Christoph Waltz making an appearance as the polite psychopath Cardinal Richelieu (and then there was sword fighting which just increased my love for him!) Hollywood needs to make more ‘olde worlde’ action adventures that don’t take themselves too seriously. So if any big shot Hollywood producers read this blog, you know what to do.

Afterwards we went and had lunch, in the food court because we are fancy. AND Danielle presented me with a belated birthday present!! How cute is that?! It’s funny how well she knows me: a book and some chocolates- my perfect kind of present!! We met at 10am, saw the movie and then chatted until about 3pm when Danielle had to go and be a grown up and do her assignments! My throat actually hurt from talking way more than I'm used to! Can’t wait til next time :)

The Aftermath

2011-11-27T08:48:00.003+10:00

The party was fab! People arrived, they had a good time and then they left.

The frozen daiquiri machine was a rip-roaring success- even though it possibly broke halfway through the night. I mean, everything was still frozen, the machine just got real noisy.

Usually people are a bit “too cool for school” when it comes to themes but everyone got into the spirit of Hawaii and dressed up. I was pleasantly surprised. And when I say everyone, I mean EVERYONE!

Even the dogs! This is Tessa who is my new doggy. And when I say “mine”, I mean Boy Roomie’s family’s dog. She is living with us for a bit, along with their other dog Katie (who’s too cool to pose for pictures). Tessa was gracious enough to dress up. I don’t think she entirely hated it- she didn’t like wearing the hula skirt but she liked being the centre of attention so it all balanced out!

The patio was decorated beautifully (fantastic work, Roomies!) and the weather was perfect- warm and not too humid. Please note the rad ‘Survivor’ torches by the pool.

We had games planned but we ended up not playing. The next morning, we did break the piñata and there may possibly be photos floating around the internet of me in my PJs wielding a little rolling pin whilst attempting to hit a paper mache hula girl.

But it’s not a party without cake and look at this one!!! Girl Roomie’s mum pulled out all the stops and baked this one for me, isn’t it AMAZING?!?!?! Girl Roomie would want me to tell you that her mum got a bit over excited with her decorative chocolate swirls on top of the cake. Girl Roomie tried to cover it up with frangipanis but I have to say I love the dog poo look. I’m a vet nurse, I have a healthy love of dog poop. And yum, look at all that icing!!!

Ok, maybe parties aren’t so bad after all.

Birthday times

2011-11-24T21:42:00.003+10:00

Seriously, for someone who hates birthdays and parties, I do go on about them a lot.

I am having a super special awesome and exciting birthday/graduation party on Friday night. Me, socially awkward Laura not only going to a party but HOSTING a party. I know. I think hell just froze over. Luckily I have two super cool roomies who like parties and people and will make having a party in our house not a weird experience.

The food = awesome.

The decorations = awesome.

The theme = awesome.

The theme is Hawaii. We kind of ran out of oomph when it came to food but made up for it when it came to drinks. And decorations. Man, you should see our decorations. We went a little overboard but in a good way. Instead of 'less is more', we believe 'more is more'. I will post pictures if my camera is being good.

I was nearly going to have to miss my own party due to work but another nurse stepped in. I brought her chocolates to say thank you. She was outraged that I might be late to my own birthday party and she offered to stay late and do the closing shift for me. She actually unironically used the phrase "You *will* go to the party" as if she was my own personal fairy godmother.

Also this post may not make sense but I just worked a ten hour shift and closed by myself for the first time. My brain is dead.

Blu Ray Tuesday #13

2011-11-23T17:31:00.002+10:00

The movie: Bad Teacher

I started watching this movie and I didn’t like it. The main character was a thoroughly unlikeable person and I wasn’t in the mood to watch it. To be fair to ‘Bad Teacher’, I’d had a really long day (going to the zoo, SUCH a first world problem, I know, I know!) and I’m sure any other day I would have laughed my bum off but I just wasn’t feeling it. Jason Segel made it worth watching (that HIMYM cast are a wonderful bunch of scene stealers!) but about halfway through I slipped off to my room.

I turned off the lights and put in my new DVD that I brought yesterday on a whim, “The Muppet Christmas Carol” (aka my favourite Christmas movie… tied with “Elf”). The overture started, mixing snippets of songs from the movie with Christmas classic songs and my bad mood was gone.

I was reminded why this movie is so good. The Victorian London set is fabulous, as are the costumes. The world created by the movie of Dickensian Londoners living alongside Muppets is strangely believable. The script is surprisingly witty. I love the use of Dickens’ original narration, as performed by Gonzo in the movie. For some reason, it works well alongside Rizzo the Rat’s ramblings, mainly about food.

Michael Caine is so, so good as Scrooge, particularly in the beginning as they’re setting the scene and showing you just how despicable Scrooge is. Even when he has no lines, he’s brilliant. A lot of the movie balances on him being able to portray how the Spirits have changed him with simply a look and he knocks it out of the park. Plus there’s the added bonus of seeing an Oscar winner singing along with Muppets.

Recommended? Yes. Definitely gets you ready for Christmas!

F is for… Furies

2011-11-21T15:54:00.002+10:00

This is a story about the time I drank too many energy drinks and went crazy. And is the reason why I will never take drugs because if this is what happens when I get too much caffeine, imagine how much worse it could get??

It was my final year in college and one of my final assignments too. I can’t even remember what the class was called, something to do with ancient Greek drama. My assignment was writing about the Oresteia by Aeschylus. The story goes that Orestes kills his mother because she killed his father and is swanning around with her new lover and in general being a total b*tch- oh and was planning to kill her son. Even though we're all cheering when Orestes kills his mum, he's still in trouble. Mainly from the Furies.

The Furies are some super scary mythological beings. They are these three old women with snakes for hair and burning coals for eyes who fly around chasing down someone who has done something naughty. Like an evil version of Santa, they know if you’ve been bad or good- so be good for goodness sake! They would basically hound someone to death, the very sight of them was so terrifying that it drove most people crazy. And if they catch you, they’ll kill you in the most hideous of ways. Orestes realises that these ladies will be on his tail so he goes on the run but it’s a little difficult to hide from supernatural beings. Luckily the gods love Orestes and he’s saved, cutting a very long story short.

I had the most fantastic professor for that class whose name I can’t remember. Seriously, can I remember ANYTHING from college?!?! He brought to life all those old and dusty plays, making the comedies funny and the tragedies horrific. The one thing I do remember is that he said something along the lines of “You must never call The Furies by their name. You must always call them ‘The Eumenides’, meaning the Kindly Ones. If you call them that, you can talk about them as much as you want because they'd never think you were talking about them with a name like that. But the second you say their name, it brings their attention onto you and they’ll be standing behind you, suddenly reminded of that thing you did that one time… waiting for you to run”

I still remember him saying that and the way it sent a chill down my spine. Those Greeks sure knew how to spin a good yarn! Anyway, *this* story is getting far too long. I had to pull an all-nighter and I had my bottles of energy drink. It says on the label only to drink one a day. I had four. As I was writing the essay, I realised I had written ‘Furies’ instead of ‘Eumenides’. I remembered my teacher’s words. And I was convinced, ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED, that those old bags were going to come and find me. However, I was more worried about not finishing my assignment in time so I kept writing but I was so, so afraid. Every sound in the night’s silence were the Furies after me. I finished the assignment but was still too afraid to go to sleep. Every time I shut my eyes, I would picture the Furies convening in my room standing around my bed, watching me, waiting for me to wake up.

So in conclusion, next time you find yourself in ancient Greece always call the Furies, the Eumenides. And hopefully I’ll come up with something less nerdy and more interesting for ‘G’.

Last Friday Night

2011-11-20T13:43:00.003+10:00

Now that you’re all singing that Katy Perry song, I can tell you what I got up to on Friday. My church held a “Fairtrade Market” where only “fairtrade” products were sold. There were local stalls and international stalls. The international stalls obviously couldn’t have the makers working the stalls, so I volunteered to help run one of the stalls. My stall was ‘Afri Beads’. These were beautiful beaded necklaces and bracelets made from rolled up bits of paper. They were made by The Kind Mothers Project, a group of women in Uganda who make these beads and sell them in order to send children to school and care for them.

I can’t imagine how much work must go into making them. They look fabulous. I spent my entire time working on the stall, trying to pick which necklace I wanted. I still couldn’t work out which one I wanted, so I just picked one at random!

I brought presents too. One for myself, this gorgeous necklace from India. I hardly ever see anything in this bronze colour and it’s so unusual, it caught my eye and I had to have it! It kind of matches my hair colour (just not in this photo!).

And then I brought this t-shirt for my friend Jess for her birthday. I hope she loves it as much as I do! The t-shirt is called Pegapuss, which just makes me giggle. It’s made from a print by a local artist who does some fantastical animals designs, I spent ages on her website! Please go and have a look. I wish I could buy some of her work. I really want this one.

Yay for employment!

2011-11-18T22:41:00.002+10:00

I feel like I’ve become one of those bloggers that starts every post off with an apology. Sorry that I haven’t been around much and even sorrier that I haven’t been commenting on your posts. My birthday weekend threw me. And now I am no longer using this blog as procrastination for school work, I am less motivated to write. However, hopefully we’ll be back in business soon.

Anyway, onto better things- I got a job!! This will be my second job and I think I’m going to keep an eye out for a third… although I think my hours at the vet clinic will pick up (fingers crossed).

My interview was done at my new boss’ house whilst Jersey Shore played in the background. I had to tune it out but kept getting distracted by the TV! My new boss seems really lovely and we chatted for ages. I want to be friends with her in real life!!

I am working for a pet sitting company. They do daily visits and walking and even house-sitting. I will be able to pick and choose which jobs fit in around my vet clinic work which is the best part of the deal. I also had to obtain an Australian Business Number because I will be working on a sub-contractor basis so I feel like I am a business woman and I need to go and buy a pant-suit or something similar.

I haven’t been sent any jobs yet but I will be SO nervous for my first meet-and-greet with the pet and their owners!

Thanks to all of you for your prayers and best wishes! I wanted/needed this job so badly and am completely grateful and happy to have it.

Package Pals Party

2011-11-16T21:26:00.002+10:00

A little while back, Gentri sent the call out to bloggers who wanted to send a parcel to another blogger and receive one in return. I’m always up for receiving a present in the mail so I signed up. I was paired up with Jenna. Oh sweet Jenna! We instantly became great friends, we have so much in common and she introduced me to my latest obsession, Vampire Diaries. We’re both crazy animal ladies and also have far too many celebrity crushes and share a penchant for YA fantasy. Not only are we now blogging friends but we’re email pals too… when I return her emails anyway :)

I went a little overboard with stuff for Jenna and she went the same way too. I think we were paired together perfectly!! There was a LOT of candy involved.

This is what I sent to her:

CHOCOLATE!! Bird photo holders, “The Princess Bride” (aka the best book in the world), jewellery (I liked those bracelets so much I brought them for myself too!), a magnet about cats being awesome and a snood or cowl, as I have been informed they call them in the States. Although my knee is in the picture, I did not send this in the parcel.

And this is Nilly trying to get in on the action:

It took absolutely AGES for Jenna’s parcel to reach me but it was definitely worth the wait. I think Nilly was just as excited as me to get the parcel.

Look how much chocolate I got!!!

I got a TALKING John Krasinski birthday card, a super cute cat to-do list, a Florida mug and magnet, two books that are MUST reads, bookmark, jewellery. And chocolate. And a photo of Miss Trixie sending greetings all the way from Florida.

Then Nilly got bored. But look at our babies being friends!!!

I know Gentri’s keen to do another one some time next year so definitely get involved! It’s been such fun doing this. Yes I learned about another country, but I got chocolate and made a friend out of the deal too. Sounds pretty good to me.

Blu Ray Tuesday #12

2011-11-16T08:07:00.002+10:00

The movie: Country Strong

The menu: Chicken Tandoori pizza… guess I’m getting fancy in my old age :)

Let’s preface this review with the fact that I am not a country fan. But I do like those country pop songs that turn up on the radio every now and then. I am not a Gwyneth Paltrow fan. But she is in two of my favourite movies (Sliding Doors and Shakespeare in Love, for those of you playing at home). I am not a fan of the “washed up singer” movie. But I really, really, really liked this movie.

When I went online to find the picture for this review, I couldn’t believe that it was so hated by critics! I thought they loved this kind of movie. But I never listen to those fools anyway. I listened to my friend Jenna who said I would like this movie.

The movie is about Gwyneth Paltrow’s character who is a super famous country star attempting a comeback tour after a very public breakdown and stint in rehab. Like I said, I’m not a fan of the “washed up singer trying for redemption” storyline so thank goodness there was another storyline in the form of her support acts and their relationship with each other and with Gwynnie’s character.

I thought the acting was great, not to mention the plot. Me and the roomies had a fun time trying to come up with the ending, making up several alternate plot lines. Seriously, Hollywood should give us a call some time. The singing was also excellent, as were the songs. As a non-country fan, I really enjoyed the songs and will probably youtube them while I’m doing work today. But also because I am a girl and not blind, my very favourite part was Garrett Hedland and his character.

Yum! Any man that can sing and play guitar and look good in a cowboy hat is alright by me. I think I swooned several times during the movie because his character is so lovely. I need someone who can swoop in and save the day, with guitar in hand. When talking about him, Gwynnie says “He thinks he’s so tough, but I’ve never had a man be so gentle with me”. Excuse me y’all, I’m moving to the country!

Recommended: Yes indeedy!

More Birthday celebrations!

2011-11-14T22:53:00.002+10:00

They just don’t stop, do they?

On the Sunday afternoon, Kristy came to the house for dinner and gave me what can only be described as a very, very good present. I kind of feel bad for her though because how is she going to top that next year?

For those of you not sitting at the table with the rest of the cool kids, that is a life-sized cardboard cut out of the Doctor from ‘Doctor Who’. SO awesome!! Except for the fact that I keep walking into my room and getting mini-adrenalin rushes because for a split second I think that there’s someone lurking in the corner. Although I am not the only one in the family who gets a little freaked out by the Doctor.

It was so silly because she’d actually been in my room for the WHOLE day but just not seen him. And now she doesn’t really go into my room anymore!

I had this little guy hanging out by my window for two days last week. I was a bit worried about him as possums are supposed to be nocturnal and he was running around, having a great time in the daylight. But after two days, he didn’t come back so I guess he went back to his normal home ~~or died~~.

I also got my ‘craft’ on last weekend. I brought wire to make some candle holders for my party in a few weeks time. Me and the roomies had fun making them. Although me and Girl Roomie both got frustrated that Boy Roomie was a natural at making them and it took us blood, sweat and tears to even make one!

We made about half a dozen and they looked SO good when it got dark. You couldn’t see the wire and it looked like the little tea lights were floating in the air. And here is the actual picture via Pinterest (of course!).

Birthday weekend celebrations

2011-11-13T17:55:00.003+10:00

Yes, it’s the birthday weekend and as a result, I went home and stayed with the grandparents. Staying with my grandparents is what I imagine being a celebrity is like- you’re the centre of attention, you've always got to be 'on' and you get asked lots of personal questions, like ‘are you dating anyone?’ and ‘what do you plan to do next with your life?’.

In response to the question “Is there a special chap in your life?” and me saying “no”, my nanna came out with “Aw, so you’ll be an old maid then”. Please note that I turned 26 on my birthday, not 66! Although it ranked slightly better than the time they outright asked me if I was gay simply because I had never brought any boy home to meet them!! I never expected my grandparents to ask me that question!!

Luckily, I managed to escape and helped my friend Kristy chaperone her cousin’s 11th birthday party. So much fun. And I got ice cream and a party bag for my troubles. Awesome!!

And then I went and visited my aunt, who told me that I’d put on weight. Not awesome. She tried to tell me that it looked good on me, but the damage was done.

Despite all that, I do actually love my family. But it was nice to escape back home and hang out with my new family of friends. This family is much less stressful and exhausting! If only I could do Christmas with them!!!

I heard about this article on the radio. Based on statistics, those born in November have a higher chance of being a serial killer and suffering from schizophrenia. I know there's at least one other of my bloggy friends who's a November baby. Although I think April sounds much worse. Do these statistics ring true for you and your career?

Blu Ray Tuesday #11

2011-11-09T21:15:00.003+10:00

The movie: Water for Elephants

Now, I have been told by Boy Roomie (specially requested, actually!) that I have to come clean and confess that I watched ‘Bridesmaids’ in the time slot dedicated to Blu Ray Tuesday. And then Boy Roomie sang Wilson Phillips to me, complete with over the top dance moves. That’s all well and good but I feel like everyone and their mother has seen ‘Bridesmaids’ but not everyone has seen ‘Water for Elephants’ which I watched beforehand. And I have to say, going against popular opinion- I liked ‘Elephants’ more than ‘Bridesmaids’ and it impacted me more than 'Bridesmaids'.

I had read the book a while back and absolutely loved it. I love that 1930s era, the extreme decadence whilst the financial world slowly crashes down around them (sound familiar?!) and I think the book captured that really well. The book had some imagery that played absolutely beautifully onscreen: a woman atop a rearing elephant with her diamante headdress sparkling in the lights, the excitement and sweat that went into the setting up of the Big Top. Costumes were gorgeous, the sets were pitch perfect and seeing all those animals was wonderful.

Ok, so *visually*, it was amazing and I certainly wasn’t bored despite the movie taking just over two hours. I actually liked most of the changes that they’d made to the book (Interestingly enough, the author wrote this book as part of NaNo!). Now, I’m not particularly a big fan of Robert Pattinson or Reese Witherspoon and the whole movie is basically their love story which I didn’t really believe.

So by now you’re thinking “um… Laura… if you didn’t like the main actors and thought they weren’t very good at telling their story, why did you like the movie so much?”. Well, dear readers, it is because the fabulous Christoph Waltz was so fabulous in it. He plays the ringmaster and did SUCH a great job. Knocked it outta the park. I'm afraid he's probably now horribly typecast but he's just so darn good at playing the polite psychopath. I have to confess that I have an inappropriate crush on him. There, I've said it.

And all the supporting actors were also amazing. Camel who was my least favourite character in the book became one of my favourites in the movie. I think what I’m trying to say (in a very long-winded way!) is that despite not liking the things that I should have liked (such as the main actors and the romance), every other little thing in the movie- I went crazy for which made up for it. I hope that makes sense!

Recommended?: Yes. And/or read the book. It’s an easy read and a great page turner.

Has anyone else read the book and seen the movie? What did you think? Am I alone in liking this movie? From what I’ve seen on the internet, I think I am!

Also I apologise for getting this to you late, it’s just that I don’t have any more procrastinating to do because I have handed in ALL my assignments and done ALL my exams! You now have a fully qualified veterinary nurse on your blog roll :) Holla!

Updates

2011-11-06T08:06:00.002+10:00

So, life has been crazy busy again. But on Wednesday, it will pretty much all be over ~~unless I fail something and have to do a re-sit.~~ I’ve been doing a lot of ‘pick up’ shifts at work, covering for someone who’s away. It’s been fun going into work so often and feeling more involved. And I applied for a super cool job that I REALLY want so hopefully I'll have an update about that soon too.

I decided to do Nano this year but because of busy-ness, I haven’t actually written a single word so far. What is NaNo, you ask? It is this crazy thing that some people do to celebrate November being National Novel Writing Month, they write a 50,000 word novel. Or 1667 words a day, if I remember correctly. I’ll be attempting to finish my story from last year, I made it to the 50,000 word mark but I had absolutely no idea where my story was going as my willful side characters completely hijacked the plot. I still want to re-read my original 50,000 words and see if I can figure out where this darn thing is going so already I’m on the back foot.

And now I have to catch up on everyone’s blogs. I feel so bad, I’ve done such a poor job of being a bloggy friend. Please forgive me!!

Getting to see the man of my dreams!

2011-11-03T10:42:00.003+10:00

My delightful mother brought me an early birthday present, tickets to see the live QI stage show. She was going to take me but now she’s in New Zealand and so I asked my buddy Jess who is an even bigger QI fan to accompany me.

Right about now you’re probably asking yourself “What is QI?”. I tried to explain it yesterday to Boy Roomie and it’s just so hard to sum up in a few sentences, so here goes. It’s a television panel game show where comedians are asked mainly obscure questions. Nobody’s supposed to know the answer but you do get points for stumbling upon the right answer or for adding some quite interesting knowledge to the mix. And because comedians are the guests, it’s pretty darn funny.

Stephen Fry is the host of the show, as well as being one of my most favourite people that I don’t actually know. I absolutely adore him and love hearing him speak on just about any subject. The man has a gift for words. Besides, any person who still bears a grudge against the Spartans for beating the Athenians and winning the Peloponnesian Wars in the 5th century BC is alright by me! Ancient history nerd alert!!

It was wonderful to see him in the flesh and hear him talk. The show started out with Stephen Fry talking about his last visit to Australia and also about how the show got started . He told some absolutely terrible ‘dad’ jokes that made me laugh really hard. I love that the smartest man alive tells terrible jokes. But really the real reason I will always love him can be found here.

And then the game started. The panellists for the show were Wil Anderson, Colin Lane and Genevieve Morris. Oh and regular panellist Alan Davies made the trip too and was fantastic. He was his usual distracted self and got a big cheer from the audience. It was such a fun night and I was completely exhausted afterwards from smiling so much and getting my brain filled with incredibly useless knowledge!

And so I leave you with a short clip from the television show… the answer to the question “Why would you undress for a polar bear?”

Blu Ray Tuesday #10

2011-11-02T13:37:00.003+10:00

The movie: Take Me Home Tonight

The menu: McDonalds. Well, just for me actually. Everyone else had a late lunch and didn’t want dinner!

Wow. This movie. Let’s just say that I know how to pick an instant classic! I actually couldn’t even remember the title of the movie so I had to imdb Topher Grace in order to see what the title was… *that’s* how much this movie made an impact on me.

And I’m just going to steal imdb’s quote about this movie too “Four years after graduation, an awkward high school genius uses his sister's boyfriend's Labor Day party as the perfect opportunity to make his move on his high school crush”. It was set in the 80s but it didn’t really need to be. I was looking forward to seeing Anna Faris but she was in it for about two seconds. I actually preferred her storyline and wished I could have seen more of it. Thank goodness for Topher Grace who had enough charm and likeability to make this movie slightly watchable. Oh and there was also a dance off and if there’s a dance off in a movie that is played for laughs, it’s pretty much my favourite thing ever. That helped too.

Recommended? This is actually a big moment for me and “Blu Ray Tuesday reviews”. This is the first time I am NOT recommending a movie. Even though this movie clocks in at a short and sweet 97 minutes, I still wouldn’t recommend it- and normally I’d recommend something bad because it’s short and it’s not going to steal your life away from you if you watch it. I do have one addendum though. If you’re a Topher Grace fan, then I think you might like it. But you’d have to REALLY like him.

E is for… Edinburgh

2011-10-28T21:31:00.002+10:00

I’m feeling a little melancholy tonight. Not sure why. Although Edinburgh was only my home for six months, I miss it. I think I miss the hope that I had there, hope that absolutely anything could happen. Scotland is most definitely my ‘spiritual home’. Love it to pieces. But I’m a bit afraid to ever go back in case it’s not the same as I remember.

I got to walk with Vikings in a torchlight procession

Visit magical ruins

Discover the best library in the world (complete with secret passage ways!)

While away the hours in beautiful graveyards

Spend hours upon hours wandering through streets that look like this

Watch far too much Gossip Girl and having a headband club and practise giving my best ‘Serena’ impression.

I must try and remember not to romanticise it too much.

Blu Ray Tuesday #9

2011-10-26T15:40:00.002+10:00

The movie:

The menu: Hawaiian pizza with MEDIUM base!! A step away from the usual thin base, such rebels.

Boy Roomie and I kept trying to interject lines and songs from Disney’s Beauty & The Beast into this movie, which is a modern spin on the classic. We hit a home run with the ending but our several attempts to add “Tale As Old As Time'” into the movie didn’t work as well. We kept trying though.

Um, confession time, I found this movie quite enjoyable. I’m pretty sure that the target market for this movie is 14 year old girls but I think I will always be a 14 year old girl at heart. This movie gets bonus marks for co-starring Neil Patrick Harris who is always brilliant in everything he does. He was definitely one of the things that made this movie and he stole every scene he was in. And also Mary-Kate Olsen was in this playing an ‘ugly’ witch. She just wears pale lipstick and messy hair and S&M outfits.

That doesn’t equal ugly. Oh she also plays a high school student despite being 25 and looking it. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, I’m just saying she looks 25.

A few problems: Our resident witch turns our hottie into a beast for seriously NO reason! He’s kind of a douche but as an audience, we aren’t given much to work with. We’re given a few short scenes of him being mean and we’re meant to believe that he deserves this curse. And those short scenes are interspersed with moments with him interacting with our “beauty” who he actually already likes so he’s quite sweet with her.

So when our hottie turns beastly, he’s actually not that bad. He kind of looks like a tattooed rocker and in a city like New York, there’s probably more than a few girls who would find that look pretty darn hot. I think the storyline would have been better if he lived in a small country town.

When Mr Beast is trying to find someone to love him, when he stumbles across his “beauty”, he literally stalks the crap out of her. Like for real. Super creepy. He just hides in the shadows wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up and watches her in her bedroom. KA-REEPY!!!

Recommended? All that aside, the movie is magical and ever so slightly dark, despite everyone knowing how the story will end, making it a great movie for this spooky time of year.

The Zombie Apocalypse

2011-10-24T18:37:00.002+10:00

On Sunday I faced my fears. It has been well documented on here that I hate velociraptors a lot, however an equal fear is that of zombies. I somehow got talked into attending ‘Zombie Walk’, ok, I was bribed with a movie. Every year in my city, people walk through the main streets dressed as zombies to raise money for brain cancer. This year there were an estimated ten thousand people aka TEN THOUSAND ZOMBIES!

The majority of people just wandered around covered in fake blood whilst chatting with their neighbour. We weren’t impressed with those people. There were a few zombies though that were dedicated to their craft and they freaked me out!

Some highlights were:

A funeral hearse being driven by zombies with the words “Just buried!” written on the side. And all the other zombies cheered as they drove past!

Zombie children, especially zombie babies being pushed in strollers.

Zombie dogs!

Zombie Ron Weasley

These two were my favourite!

No wait, this kid was my favourite.

As he walked past us, he cocked his shotgun, looked at us and raised his finger to his lips and went ‘shh’. Zombie survivor! I couldn’t stop laughing!!

Sunday morning and I never want to leave

2011-10-23T10:33:00.003+10:00

I woke up somewhat early and the sun was shining and I wanted to get out and explore. I have just gotten back into running and my knee is playing up so I decided to have a walk instead. It was actually really interesting to walk my usual running route. So many beautiful things I was able to stop and take a look at it and I attempted to take photos using my teeny ipod. I listened to my ‘This American Life’ podcast on my walk and it was all about adventures and exploration, so it seemed very apt.

I got to see my two favourite bird breeds while I was out.

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Wish I could take credit for that picture and the next one but my wee ipod could never take something like that. The galah is probably my favourite bird ever. They feed on seed on the ground which leads to the reason why I love them so. Because they are on the ground, they walk. But they don’t just walk, they waddle. SO funny. And the macho ones have this real gangsta walk. If ever I spot a group of them feeding I have to stay and watch. If I had a pet galah, I would legit never be sad ever again.

I also came across two lorikeets as well. These birds are really cheeky and very easy to tame because they are greedy guts and will do anything for food. My granddad used to feed wild ones by hand in his backyard when I was a kid. I love watching them too because they will get into all sorts of bother in order to get their food!

A red tree being awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this tree flower before. I don’t know its name but it’s so pretty and bright.

I love getting to see this jacaranda when I go out for my run. It’s so beautiful, it always cheers me up and I love the smell as I go past. Plus, it’s really near my house so I know that my exercise is nearly over!!

This is my little friend that I see every time I go for my run. He’s always sitting outside the front of his house, basking in the early morning sun. He’s usually at the top of the driveway and when I stop to say hi, he comes running down for a pat. I love him so much and I get worried if I don’t see him straight away!

This is a cool marker that they have by the river. Actually as I came past this on my way back, this super cute old couple stopped to say hello. I’d seen them earlier on in my walk and the old man raised his hat to me. I hope I get to be part of a super cute old couple one day!

The words say “Because rainbows are better than grey nothingness”. This has been permanently painted onto the pavement of the little park area I walk through. I thought that it was done in chalk but nope, it’s still there. The first time I walked past it, that phrase stuck in my head all day. I love it! It’s got that kind of whimsical mysticness that I associate with fortune cookies.

Back to regular scheduling

2011-10-21T20:19:00.002+10:00

Well my life should be somewhat back to normal now. I’ll try and get you up to speed. For the most part, assignments and exams are over. I only have a teeny tiny few left. Am trying to remember that I *do* have things I still need to do. It’s so easy to just slack off.

Everyone’s been posting their gorgeous Autumn photos (I’m particularly giving you the side eye, Gentri!) so I thought I’d post a Spring photo. I didn’t take this one but it’s such a beautiful photo. I pass ones just like this when I go for a run. And these jacarandas smell so beautiful too. Sort of like jasmine.

For someone’s talk for class, we got to make these grass heads. Look at his little hair!! That was taken a few days ago and he’s changed so much. Kids, they grow up so fast, don’t they?!

We finished our puzzle! This is a super old photo. I feel like Boy Roomie would want you to know that. That it hasn’t taken us this long to finish it. Haha, just saw his finger in the picture pointing to our completed puzzle!

In other news, I was bored in class so I coloured in the tips of my hair with a highlighter.

And now I really want to dye my tips. It won’t happen but it was fun for a day. I found this next picture on Pinterest. This would be my dream!!

And then I spent way too long trying to find the perfect short haircut for me, thanks to Pinterest. As a result, I'm kind of stalking Dianna Agron (aka Quinn from Glee)... I'm now obsessed with her hair!

Blu Ray Tuesday #8

2011-10-19T18:58:00.003+10:00

The movie:

The menu: Pizza. Apart from Boy Roomie who wasn’t feeling well. So he ate an entire bowl of popcorn instead. That smelled amazing. I'm still jealous

I read that this is a horror/comedy but I wouldn’t really describe it as such. It’s definitely a comedy, not so much horror. It’s certainly gruesome but all the blood, death and gore are played for laughs… and it’s very, very funny! We all laughed the entire way through.

A group of teens are headed out to the woods for a camping trip during college break. They run into two hillbillies at a gas station who look and act like every creepy scary redneck from every teen horror movie ever. The action swaps from following the teens to following the rednecks, who it turns out are just two best friends who are heading to the woods themselves to start doing up their newly purchased ‘vacation home’, a small shack.

When one of the girls falls and hurts herself, the two ‘heroes’ swoop in and save her. Unbeknownst to them, the college kids think that the rednecks have kidnapped their friend and plot to get her back. And then calamity and hilarity ensue.

Recommended? Ok, why not? It’s silly, gory fun. Perfect for the Halloween season for all you American folks.

D is for… Deadlines

2011-10-15T22:52:00.002+10:00

As most of you know because I talk about it 99.999878% of the time (when I’m not talking about celebrity crushes that is), I’m currently doing my veterinary nursing degree. I am right at the time when you need to make a final push and for some reason most of the assignments are due in now. I have about five weeks to go. I can hardly believe it!

I remember when I first started, I was fresh and bright eyed. I was all like “This is not going to be like when I was at university. No siree. I am going to do my homework ahead of time. I am going to do my readings. I am going to do EXTRA readings.” That lasted about a month before I went back to my usual student-y ways of mad panicked study sessions and all nighters to get my assignments in on time. Oh well.

On Wednesday, it will almost be all over. I’ve just got a few more exams (scary, practical ones!) and the odd assignment or two and that’s it. This will really be my last week of full on panic mode. Wednesday is when I hand in my last big assignment. Not that the ones remaining aren’t full on, it’s just that I will actually have the time to do them.

I am not good at meeting deadlines. Well, I get it done but it’s probably due to the stress and anxiety. I can’t wait to be a normal person who doesn't spend her weekends locked in her room and isn’t a manic stress ball.

Today we were watching TV (it’s called a ‘study break’, mum!) and we heard this thump and I had this horrible feeling. I walked into my room and my computer had slid off the bed and landed on its side. BTW, we're talking about my brand new laptop that my mum brought for me. Luckily, it was fine. Probably because my poor wee USB stick had taken the brunt of the impact. It was shattered but was still bravely plugged in. It’s not supposed to be at right angles.

Let me remind you, this is my USB with all the giant assignments on it that I have to hand in. I almost started crying but roomies stepped in. Little USB was still flashing at me, so still working, so we put everything onto my desktop and then I got a loan of a USB from Girl Roomie.

Isn’t he the cutest?!

Blu Ray Tuesday #7

2011-10-12T17:08:00.002+10:00

The movie:

The menu: McDonald’s. The weather was hot and I think we were all too lazy to discuss which pizza we wanted, so we went with the individuality of Macca’s.

I had never seen this movie. For those who know me- even if only through the blogosphere- I think you’ll agree, that’s a shocking statement. This movie comes up a lot in conversation and people are always surprised that I haven’t seen it. Well, that situation has been rectified.

I did like the movie. Being an ‘English’ person in high school, I definitely wish I’d seen it in high school so it could have had even more of an impact. I still kind of want to scrawl ‘CARPE DIEM’ on every available surface but my adult sensibility won’t quite allow it. I half knew the ending but still teared up anyway. And then Boy Roomie started telling me about the ‘Family Guy’ parody of this movie and that definitely drove the tears away!

Girl Roomie and I started making up ulterior storylines. I liked our one about Robin Williams posing as a loving English teacher who is secretly a serial killer. He lets the boys in his class ‘find out’ about this secret club that meets in the woods. He knows they’ll be enamoured by a midnight club meeting in a discrete location. When the boys go off for the first meeting of the club, there’s a fantastic shot of them walking off into the fog. You could just imagine Robin Williams waiting in the darkness, slowly picking them off one by one in the woods. Brings a whole new meaning to the ‘Dead Poets Society’.

I’m off to walk in the wilderness and read some Walt Whitman. See y’all!!

Introducing the very first guest blogger!!!

2011-10-10T07:45:00.002+10:00

Well, as you know (because I talk about it every single chance I get!), school has gotten crazy in the final stretch. I still want to post things to my blog but I usually spend way too long writing stuff up, so I decided to get someone else to do it for me! Jenna was lovely enough to agree to write a guest post for me. Gentri hooked us up and we’ve quickly become BFFs with so much in common! I love the internet for introducing me to such great people- including Jenna. She’s such a sweetheart, just as animal crazy as me and I love her posts, especially Tranquillity Wednesdays!

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Hey everyone! I’m so glad that the lovely Miss Laura asked me to guest post on her blog while she tries to tackle her crazy class/work schedule!

So an intro is probably in order seeing as you have no idea whose post you are reading right now!

My name is Jenna and I live in the far off universe of Jacksonville, Florida. I blog over at SewSavoirFaire Creations about a hodge podge of things that mostly focus on animals, crafts, every day inspirations, and just a day in the life of a somewhat crazy cat lady!

So stop on by and say hi, I love to meet new people, at least online :p

I was trying to brainstorm what to share with all of Laura’s fabulous readers and because Laura and I share a love for famous boys, I thought I would jump on the cute celebrity boy train, and share with you MY celeb crushes! At least the ones on “the list” this week.

Now in no particular order of severity of crush-level here are the boys!

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The bad boy vampire in The Vampire Diaries, all the Lost fans out there will recognize him from the beginning of the show. I however, prefer him as Damon, in the vampy show that is definitely one of my favorite shows!

Next up on deck -

Cam Gigandet, Twilight Fans may know him as James from the first movie, or possibly Burlesque where he played Christina Aguilera's uber cute love interest. No matter where you recognize him from...yum!

Step up to the plate Charlie Day! If you are an Always Sunny in Philadelphia fan you know this man OR from Horrible Bosses.

He is so so funny which in turn makes him crush-worthy. Plus...he is just too cute!

Numero Four -

Adam Levine, lead singer for Maroon 5, he has something about him that just screams confident and the man makes good music! Hello...Moves Like Jagger! (I'm dancing right now because now the song is in my head...great!)

Last but certainly not least -

Oh Jim...I mean John. He has it all. He's adorable, he's hilarious, he's smart...hey and he's tall. Woo hoo!

Oh well a celeb crush list isn't complete without the girl celeb crush! Since Laura and I agreed to share Zooey Deschanel, I thought I would go with my runner up celeb girlfriend.

Ta Da! Mandy Moore!

She is so effortlessly gorgeous, she's got a killer smile, and she's a really smart girl!

And let's not forget...she starred along side John Krasinski in License to Wed.

That's it! That's my Crush List...as of today anyway...there are a lot of movies coming out soon with very cute boys that will probably be taking someone's place before too long!

Who's on your Crush List? Is there anyone that just never loses their spot on your list?

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you stop by and say hello!

Jenna

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Thanks Jenna… for introducing me to more celebrity guys to crush on!

Random snippets of life

2011-10-07T22:52:00.003+10:00

I haven't posted in a while. Been busy with stupid school stuff and it's only going to get worse. So I offer you some snapshots of my life instead.

Nilly has become an emo teenager. She blatantly ignores people when called. Sometimes I will call her and crouch down and she will walk towards me and then somewhere in the middle, she just diverts off onto an entirely different path. Her new favourite trick is to just be an emo and lie down in the middle of the floor, wherever.

This was us, studying last week. Please note in the background to the left, the blanket that I lay on the floor so that she can have something comfy to lie on in my room.

Then, because who am I kidding, I never study for long, I went and watched a movie. Instead of hopping up on the sofa next to me, she put her head under a chair, like this.

I went to Kmart TWICE this week and brought up big. I found boots for $5 and will wear them probably forever because I’m so proud of owning a pair of boots for $5!

I’ve been inspired by all your Missoni posts/obsession and so when I found this, I knew you’d be proud :) It’ll be great for summer because it’s all light and floaty. Um, it does look better on me than on the hanger. I love the crochet/lace detailing on the sleeves. AND you get to see my favourite photo of my dog which is sitting on the desk- she’s totes smiling!

Although it wasn’t all cool purchases though, I did buy a pair of shoes for work and don’t they just scream “I’M A SENSIBLE, SERIOUS NURSE”. They’re not even as comfy as they look, which bums me out.

And now I bring you to the obsession of the house at the moment. On a whim, we brought a 750 piece puzzle (because we are AWESOME!!). It is taking over every waking moment. Boy Roomie is properly obsessed aka he almost missed the train to work because he was busy on the puzzle. Yesterday we spent almost the entire evening doing the puzzle. And we don’t talk whilst we work, we sing. Usually we just repeat a line from a song over and over and over and over. And to stop it from getting boring, we’ll change up the tune, put on an unusual accent- basically make it completely different from the original line. Seriously. only us could live with us!

It’s pretty much completed now. Tomorrow is Saturday so no pesky work to get in the way of our serious puzzling. I promise to post the completed puzzle. I know you’ll be dying to see it!!

Blu Ray Tuesday #6

2011-10-05T18:12:00.002+10:00

I realise only just now that I broke my Jurassic Park review streak. I may watch it next week but really, JP3 isn’t that great. Not sure if I want to watch it again!

The movie:

The menu: PIZZAS!!!

I really liked this movie. It started off slowly and I confess I was a little bored with all the Viking gods hanging out in their city in the sky but once Thor hits earth, I was back on board. The movie made me proper laugh out loud several times (mainly due to good old fashioned comedy ie people falling over).

Whilst I didn’t quite believe Natalie Portman as a scientist, I was willing to suspend my disbelief because Natalie and Thor had great chemistry together and made me ‘cheesy grin’ whenever they shared the screen together. So darn cute!! Also the bad guy wasn’t just ‘one dimension’ bad guy, I liked that storyline too. Actually all the side characters were really great- well written and well acted, providing a lot of the fun.

Thor’s dyed eyebrows were a bit distracting though. Girl Roomie and I kept needing to comment on them.

Mainly I watched it so that I’d be all up to speed for ‘The Avengers’ when it comes out next year. Can’t wait! There was a great scene at the end of the credits, teasing ‘The Avengers’. Ok, two posts in a row talking about ‘The Avengers’… I’m not a rabid fangirl, I promise!! (Maybe a tiny bit of a fangirl but I’m not too bad!)

Recommended? Yes, a fun summer movie with laughs and action. It’s just under two hours long and it *does* feel that long but if you’re looking for a movie to watch, you can’t really go wrong with this one.

C is for… Celebrity Crushes (bonus points for alliteration!!)

2011-10-04T18:03:00.002+10:00

I thought I'd better continue this alphabet series before I start to forget what letter I'm up to. Oh, celebrity crushes. You get me through the dark days. Where would I be if I hadn't had you? Maybe I'm too old to have crushes on random men who have no idea that I exist but whatever.

Whatever.

My first crush in the world: David Hasselhoff

Oh yeah. This was who I decided to crush on- aged 5. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was Baywatch. Maybe I was attracted to the primary colours? I also watched a lot of Knight Rider and maybe I thought he came with his own talking car.

My animated crush: Dimitri from ‘Anastasia’

As a Disney girl, it definitely kills me that my animated crush isn’t from the Mouse House. He’s super cute, a conman, witty… oh and voiced by another of my celeb crushes, John Cusack.

My high school crush: John Mayer

This was John from before Jessica Simpson, before Jennifer Aniston. Simple, sweet, funny John. Oh man, I had it bad for him!! I really do feel as if he was my high school crush and we took different paths in life. Every time I see him, I kind of go "oh..." and it makes me sad. I just want to sit him down and tell him to concentrate on the music, man!

My celeb girl crush: Zooey Deschanel

Zooey is adorable. She makes me want to dye my hair dark and get a fringe. I love the characters she chooses to play. And she has a beautiful singing voice too.

My five minute crush: Seth Macfarlane

I love his shows and I totally crush on him, but I always forget about him when I’m not watching the shows. I don’t care what anyone says, fart jokes, pop culture references and cut away jokes are funny! And I love his voice too, speaking and singing. Showtunes forever!!!!!

My current crush: Chris Evans... but actually, really, probably, Captain America

An absolutely sweetheart of a character, sweet, honest and brave. Oh wait, and he’s hot. And he has 1940s hair aka hair parted to the side aka my new weakness. I am dying to see The Avengers!!!!!

My runner-up all time crush: Henry Cavill

You guys, he plays World of Warcraft and reads fantasy novels... basically my perfect man. I’m kinda bummed that he’s the new Superman, now the rest of the world is gonna fall head over heels in love with him. I remember the simpler times where he was a suspect on an English crime show.

My all time crush: John Krasinski.

Every time he makes eyes at the camera on The Office, I like to think he'’s making eyes at me :) I'm still a little devo'd he got married, and not to me! But I love Emily Blunt too, so I guess they can have each other.

Who’s on your celeb crush list? Don’t lie and say you don’t have one!!

Guest Post: The Roomie Edition

2011-10-01T12:06:00.003+10:00

Today I’m linking up with Mrs. T, Naturally. This is a fun idea about getting someone else to write a blog post about what it’s like to live with you. As soon as I found out about this, I thought I’d love to have my roomies do this. I sent them an email (yes we live together but I emailed them… we’re children of the 21^st century) and was pleasantly surprised to get responses from both. They’re both busy people and I love that they took the time to write something (about me!) for my little blog. Their responses cracked me up and definitely shows that living together for almost 8 months teaches you a lot about someone!

I mean, I know I said I’d let them do a blog post but it’s MY blog, I can’t let them have it all. I’ll interject in purple :)

Boy roomie:

So this is my ‘Laura’ project. I was given a deadline, and funnily enough I have left it to the night before to finish. Procrastination is a common trait in our house and no one does it better than Laura! (Unfortunately very true!)

Laura calls me ‘Dad’, mainly because I hover around her door like a parent, asking her if her assignments are done, and questioning her about what she has been doing all day if she hasn’t finished them.

Laura took only half an hour to move her stuff into the house which is a demonstration of the unmaterialistic (is that a word?) nature of the girl. She has what she needs, is content with not having all the ‘wants’. She does have a few books though (By a few, he means a GIANT pile stuffed into my bedside table). She is one of the ‘read the book before the movie’ types.

She acts like another parent for Nilly (the dog), which I love and she isn’t afraid of all the unglamorous things you have to do with them like clipping nails, washing and brushing, and filling up water bowls. Nilly loves her – when Laura leaves for church, she sometimes will sit by the door waiting for her to come home.

So I finish with an acrostic type poem:

L is for her Laptop. She is on it a lot, pretending to do her homework (but I know she isn’t). (Sometimes when I hear Boy Roomie walking towards my room to hover in my doorway, I will quickly bring up Word to pretend that I have been working on an assignment and not surfing the internet. Damn, looks like he knew what I was doing the whole time! Can’t put one past Dad!)

A is for her artistic flair. Who knew a trip to Kmart could turn into a bedroom renovation extravaganza

U is for her uncontrolled laughter, usually at the TV or the dog. (Nilly gets this look on her face which I like to call her ‘P*ssed off face’, which cracks me up. I love how dogs really do have facial expressions. It’s usually directed at Boy Roomie who will annoy her when she’s trying to sleep. It’s such a patient look, like she’s thinking “I hate this but I just have to put up with being poked for five minutes and then he’ll get bored and I can go back to sleep”)

R is for her recipes, hardly a repeat meal in the seven months we’ve lived together.

A is for her assignments. She has so many of them! (I think I have TOO many of them)

And this is Girl Roomie’s post about life with me

Some thoughts on...

...dinner: Always trying different food and internet recipes out on us; we’re both happy to be guinea pigs (I wouldn’t have tried tofu roast for anyone else). Sometimes we’re left in charge of getting dinner ready when Laura’s working and we always seem to stuff up. I always forget vital freezer ingredients and just do wedges (the disappointment on her face almost broke my heart); whereas Boy Roomie doesn’t really stuff up, he just hangs around drinking wine until Laura is in the driveway, and then he’ll decide to pop the oven on. I’m pretty sure she is used to the feeling of her own stomach eating itself by now. (Haha!! Girl Roomie and I are early dinner people, 6:30/7, is when our bellies are ready for dinner. Boy Roomie is happy to wait until like 8 or 9 before dinner. This is a point of contention in the house when Boy Roomie is in charge of dinner. Girl Roomie and I are nearly dying of starvation when dinner comes around!)

...TV: Watching TV with Laura in the room is priceless. When she’s not lying to you about if a main character’s head is going to get chopped off (for which I’ll never forgive/forget) (I said I was sorry- but you got the full emotional effect of the death. That’s what’s important!), she’s throwing cushions at the tv in disgust or laughing like a squeaky door alongside Boy Roomie (aka The Seagull). (Poor Girl Roomie has to put up with me and Boy Roomie laughing at our TV shows… and we LOVE to laugh! Despite our terrible laughs!)

Other high points are when zombies or velociraptors are involved; if you can’t see Laura just look for her blanket, she’ll be under it. But the BEST part about watching tv with her is making up the show/movie plots as they go along. Our ideas are always much better and we would definitely make the best season two of Winners & Losers ever. (TV is definitely the central focus of our house- as you may be able to tell from Blu Ray Tuesday. Girl Roomie and I always watch very cool shows together… and Boy Roomie and I watch comedies together and giggle like loons)

...cleanliness: Neat enough, doesn’t leave stuff lying alllllll around the place like I do! Also discourages me from vacuuming as it would interfere with her quiet study time (I hate vacuuming so I like this a lot). (I only pretend to be tidy. My bedroom is the first thing people see when they open the door so I try and keep it relatively tidy- not as easy task for a messy fool like myself. Luckily it’s small so it can’t get too messy!)

...social stuff: Has a large number of celebrity boyfriends, the floozy! Don’t you dare let your eyes linger over John Krasinski, he is well and truly taken. (I really am a hypothetical ho as I like to call it. And I am quite possessive of my harem of celebrity men)

Some other good bits:

· · Her shampoo smells awesome. (Apple fresh, if you’re interested)

· · Always seems to be in the right place when free food is on offer (e.g., NightOwl, church ladies – although I didn’t get any of these scones) (That’s because I ate them all)

· · Brought my attention to the Heat light in the bathroom in the middle of winter, thank youuuuu!

· · Opens the door when she can hear me struggling to find my keys.

· · Knows everything, amazing memory; best person to have at Trivia.

· · “That’s what she said.”

So, overall: Laura is kind, considerate, warm, smart and funny to live with

And this is why I love her :)

How cute are my roomies?!?!?! I love hearing what they have to say and maybe I can bribe them with food to do another guest post.

Photo: Girl Roomie sold separately.

Yesterday was rough

2011-09-30T07:33:00.004+10:00

I knew that Thursday was going to be a rough day when one of the vet nurses called me up and asked me to come in early. And then she called back and asked if I could come in earlier. Usually I do a five hour shift on Thursday but yesterday I did an almost ten hour one. Ouch! I only got to sit down when I answered the phone and I only had one cup of tea. I really only had one mouthful of it before I got called away and when I came back it was stone cold. I still tried to drink it though.

We had two big emergency cases, as well as our usual workload. We had a dog that was seizuring and because of this, she was very disorientated and frightened... and therefore kept trying to bite us when we were helping her, which doesn't make life easy. It was sad, when the owners came in to see her, she didn't seem to recognise them and just lay there. But by the end of the day, she was starting to get her bearings and I'm hoping tomorrow, she'll be even better and will recognise her owners.

Then we had another tick dog. This one was a big dog with a shaggy coat so it was hard to find the tick but we found it. She was in a really bad way, could barely move and had to be propped up to keep her airways clear as she had no gag reflex. She was a real sweetie though and when I would pat her, she would briefly wag her tail, even though she was almost completely paralyzed by this tick. Unfortunately she didn't make it and passed away right at the end of the day. I had just finished patting her head and speaking to her, I left the room for a brief moment and when I came back, I looked at her and I knew. I called the vets and they came and I went out of the room and I had to go and serve people. It was surreal, trying to be all friendly and chirpy to the customers, knowing that the dog we'd been caring for all day had just died.

The owner came in to say goodbye to her dog and it was so sad. I was trying so hard not to cry. In general, I pretty much start crying as soon as someone else cries so I pretended I was busy in another room.

It's days like this that make me happy though. I was busy and I felt (somewhat) competent and I felt like I was making a difference. And to top it all off, my boss today told me to write down my hours for yesterday as he would like to pay me for that day! Ten beautiful hours of pay!!!!! Considering he didn't have to pay me that makes me happy too :)

Blu Ray Tuesday #5

2011-09-28T08:42:00.005+10:00

As promised...

The movie:

The menu:

After a long separation, we finally went back to pizzas. It felt good. It felt right.

Girl roomie had not actually seen this movie. I know, right?!?! Here's the deal: this movie is nowhere near as good as the first one. As a standalone movie, it's ok but comparing it to Jurassic Park, it's kinda lame. I don't know what happened, they would have been given a bigger budget for this movie, the CGI would have advanced so much in the four years between the first and second movie... but the magic is gone. We spent way more time going "That looks fake" in this movie than the last one.

There was kind of way too much exposition at the start of this movie. If you need to have a whole heap of back story for your movie, it's not great. Writing 101: 'show... don't tell'.

I still have no idea why Jeff Goldblum is in this movie! It's based off of Michael Crichton's book so obviously Michael Crichton knows why Jeff's there... shame he didn't explain that to the rest of the class.

I'm being mean about this movie but there are a lot of exciting stand alone moments in this movie: Velociraptors picking off people one by one in the long grass (including a fantastic bird's eye view shot), T-Rex poking his head through a tent (this ruined camping for me), T-Rex IN SUBURBIA (I lived next door to my friend and after I watched this movie at her house, her mum had to walk me home because I was so scared!). However, lots of exciting moments do not make a movie especially when they are strung together on a flimsy plot.

This movie did have a bit where all three of us genuinely went "Ahhh!!!!!!!!!". It was quite exciting watching this part of the movie because I couldn't remember what happened- and youtube have kindly put it up for all of us to relive! All I know is Velociraptors are scary. This is the best part of the movie, I spent most of the part were Jeff's in the car, screaming "Kick it in the face!!!!!!!!!!" I realised afterwards why Jeff Goldblum doesn't kick the velociraptor in the face. Because it is an expensive animatronic puppet and kicking it in the face will probably break it. Anyway, check out around the 1:30 mark to see the moment that got all of us (but really watch all of it to give you the shivers!)!

Help needed!

2011-09-27T08:11:00.004+10:00

You lot seem like an interesting, diverse, creative bunch of people. I need some help.

I have to give a 40 minute talk for my class in a few weeks. I have to teach them something in this 40minute talk. Now, I was originally going to do hair braiding but when I started telling people, they were a little reluctant to let other people touch their hair in order to do the braids. So that idea got put away.

The only things I can think of is something like 'no bake treats' or making friendship bracelets. I'd really like to do something that involves people doing something so they are not staring at me during this 40 minute talk! Who has some bright ideas as to what I might do?

It's such a long period of time, I might die!!!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies

2011-09-26T18:30:00.001+10:00

Taylor had a great post that I read today that jogged my memory about a post that I wanted to do myself. Why did I read her post? It only made me want to do more baking!!

I had amazing beginner's luck this week. I was procrastinating from doing my assignments and so decided to try my hand at baking. I'm normally not very good at cooking chocolate related things but this one came out great. I would repost the recipe on my blog but if you go over to the original poster's site here, you get bonus pictures of the tasty treat- and what they're *actually* supposed to look like!

I've been dying to make this for a while now. I made it a little differently to the recipe. I used a slightly smaller tin which means my brownies were a bit bigger and needed cooking for longer. I didn't use vanilla essence either. But guys- FOR REAL- these are the best brownies I've ever tasted- and I've tasted more than a few in my lifetime. This will be my new go-to recipe for brownies, not that I ever make them, simply because I thought I couldn't bake chocolate stuff. Now I can!! I also don't think I used as much cookie dough as the original recipe calls for. And worst of all, I cheated and brought storemade cookie dough. I thought, I've spent enough money on this- it's cheaper to buy the cookie dough than make it from scratch- and honestly, you can't tell.

We gobbled these down at work. We gobbled these down at home. They are super great. I cut them up into small pieces as really, they're so rich you can't eat a big slice. You can however eat several small pieces though. I have done the experiments. You can trust me.

Lyrics courtesy of Boy Roomie

2011-09-25T13:00:00.001+10:00

"If you don't know the lyrics- you just make 'em up. I do that all the time!"

Truer words were never spoken.

This was uttered by my boy roomie whilst watching The X Factor a few weeks ago when a contestant fumbled their lyrics. Boy roomie really does know how to mangle some lyrics. Here are some new lyrics for you to enjoy.

On the way home from watching the movie 'Friends with Benefits', we listened to the song that was heavily featured in the movie, Semisonic's 'Closing Time'. Boy roomie was on his phone reading the lyrics because he wanted to sing along. I assumed he wanted to know ALL of the lyrics but instead he just wanted to know the words in the chorus. Suddenly he exclaimed "Ohh! *Those* are the words". He thought the line "I know who I want to take me home" was... "I know who ha want to take me home". That doesn't even make sense.

Musicals aren't safe either. In 'Grease', 'You're The One That I Want' apparently has Danny singing to Sandy in that classic opening line... "I've got jewels, they're multiplying". Jewels, chills, any difference?

And my personal favourite misheard lyric is during Taio Cruz's song 'Dynamite' in the chorus. PS The clue is in the title :) Instead of 'We're going to light it up, like it's dynamite'... boy roomie thought it was 'We're going to light it up like it's 9.09'. As if that particular time of night is an especially cool time to party. Come on guys, tonight's going to be great, we'll be out way past 9.09!

Boy roomie, please keep mishearing lyrics and singing them aloud for me to hear- and blog about.

Anyone else have some great misheard lyrics? My friend's little sister thought The Corrs' song 'Breathless' contained the lyric 'Leave me breakfast'... instead of 'Leave me breathless'.

I'm just about to try and catch up on all the posts I've missed. Wish me luck!

Blu Ray Tuesday #4

2011-09-22T08:25:00.003+10:00

I can’t leave you guys without your Blu Ray Tuesday reviews! What was I thinking?! Besides, writing this was a nice break from writing assignments!

Since writing about my fear of Jurassic Park a few posts ago, it got me thinking about the movie and whether it would be that scary after not watching it for probably ten years. We decided to do a Jurassic Park marathon so girl roomie and I went down to our video store... and we couldn't find it! So girl roomie went and asked at the counter and she was directed to the section that I had been looking in for the last five minutes, unable to find it (and slightly panicky).

Of course, girl roomie found it straight away! I also wanted to get the other movies in the trilogy so I went up to the counter and asked where they were. The girl at the counter was like "uh... are you with that girl?" referring to girl roomie and it made me giggle, us getting sassed by an underage video store employee. They weren't there but I will definitely be reviewing 'The Lost World' next week- unless some other person has stolen it from me.

The movie:

The menu: We'd had fast food three nights in a row, so we decided to cook something for 'fast food night'. We had Vietnamese Spring Rolls, which are probably called something else for different people but look at the recipe and give it a whirl, so easy and yummy!

You guys, this movie is nearly twenty years old. Just let that sink in. How old do you feel now?!?!?! And as we were watching it, I really felt that people don't make movies like this nowadays. Maybe we're so used to CGI now, maybe I'm too old to feel the magic of Hollywood anymore but this movie? This movie is AWESOME! It's got light-hearted moments, it's got good old fashioned scares, it's even got Samuel L. Jackson in it! What more do you need from a movie?!

Some notes:

There was way more exposition at the beginning of the movie than I remembered.
Some of the CGI hasn't held up over time. We spent a lot of the movie going "That looks fake... that looks real... that looks fake".
Richard Attenbourgh's (the guy that owns the park and looks like Colonel Sanders) accent changes throughout the movie. Sometimes he's Scottish, sometimes he's English.
The kids are kind of annoying but not too bad. We kept telling them to man up. Side note: look at the boy from JP now!!! Just to make you feel old again :)

That theme tune is amazing. That is why John Williams is the man.
None of us can work out why Jeff Goldblum was invited to the park in the first place. He's a mathematician. The only reason he is there is so that he can be the voice of reason and foreshadowing.
The velociraptors are still hands down terrifying. I chewed most of my thumb nail off during that kitchen scene. And put my blanket over my head at several points.

Spielberg is the king of movie making. Remember the scene where Ellie and that hunter guy have to make it to the power station to turn the perimeter fences back on? It's a 20 metre walk and they can see the power station in front of them. But then the hunter guy tells them that they are being watched- and hunted. By velociraptors. You don't even see anything and yet it is a very fraught 20m walk- and then run.
Sam Neil is strangely attractive.

The very DVD menu is terrifying. It's just basically the scene where the velociraptors are walking around in the Welcome Centre and they're calling to each other. Girl roomie turned up the volume and I was talking to my mum on the phone and I heard the velociraptors and just stopped talking. And then when you press play, one of the velociraptors runs towards the camera to try and eat you. I shut my eyes.

We were talking about how they are apparently making another Jurassic Park movie and boy roomie was like "They'll probably make it in 3D". Oh wow. I would die of fright right there in the cinemas.

Just looking for photos for this post was pretty scary. And then I found these ones, a re-enactment and a poster for the next Twilight movie :)

Just a little note...

2011-09-20T12:46:00.003+10:00

I am crazy busy and all of a sudden I have lovely people who are following and commenting on my posts. This is probably not a good time to take a short break but I really need it.

I need to concentrate on my school work.

Also to be noted: In my head, my break will be a week. In reality, it will probably only be two days until I sort my life out and therefore I didn't really need to notify you all! Oh well :)

On a side note, I got a new laptop with web camera... vlogs to come!!

Post 100!

2011-09-18T12:25:00.005+10:00

Wow! I cannot believe that I have written 100 separate posts. I honestly thought I would get sick of blogging before I ever got close to reaching a milestone like this. And I have met so many wonderful people, including the lovely Emily from Amazing Grapes. I literally started following her from the second I saw her blog name, I'm a sucker for a good pun! Emily has given me my very first blogging award! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

The rules are clear:

- Thank the award-giver and link back to them in your post.

- Tell your readers 7 things about yourself.

- Give this award to 3 bloggers.

- Contact those bloggers and tell them the exciting news!

Onto my seven things...

#1 I really want to stay in an ice hotel. SO badly! Which is odd considering I hate the cold but I just think it would definitely be a once in a lifetime experience.

#2 My mum is the cutest. She just brought me an early birthday present which is the BEST!! Love my mum. You know how women turn out like their mothers? I'm looking forward to it :)

#3 I have a really weird phobia. I guess it's not a phobia because I'm not afraid of it, I just hate it and seeing it makes me gag. Watching people brush their teeth. UGH! Just writing it out causes me to picture it in my head and makes me want to hurl. I have decided that it is the foam that really does it for me.

#4 Jurassic Park is the scariest movie of ALL time! For reals. Velociraptors in a kitchen?!?! And now as a result, I find industrial kitchens equally as terrifying. Bonus random fact: The first time I went on the JP ride at Universal Studios, I genuinely started crying in fear. My dad thought it was hilarious. I was 14.

#5 I was 13 on Friday the 13th!

#6 I used to hate my name until I discovered Petrarch. He was the dude that invented the sonnet and wrote most of his ones to his muse, a woman named Laura. I have super amazingly romantic poetry dedicated to me!

#7 I think the cape is a very sexy accessory for a man. However in real life, if someone came up to me wearing a cape, I would definitely be like "um... you're wearing a cape, you weirdo!". Which is why I need to start dating someone who is from the 18th century or a superhero or likes to visit Medieval fairs. Only one of those options is viable... Batman, you have my number. Call me.

My chosen three are

Danielle from danielle carey who was one of my very first online friends ever!

Abigail from Abigail and the Great World who is a new friend but also happens to be another version of me, just living in America.

Kristy from Musing of an Unenthusiastic Blogger who is a real life BFF. True to her blogger name, she is a very unenthusiastic blogger, so maybe this award will kick her bum back into blogging!!

Summer advice?

2011-09-17T10:40:00.002+10:00

Today is my first day wearing summer clothes. I spend the winter months dreaming of cute sandals and flirty skirts but when summer actually rolls around, I realise that I hate it! I love winter clothes because you can layer and I love layering.

I never know what to wear in summer. I tend to wear more conservative clothes than the average 25 year old. And while I try and look vaguely hip, in summer I usually just end up looking like a 50 year old Amish woman. (No offense meant to any 50 year old Amish women who stumbled across my blog). Can anyone offer any tips on how to look good and keep cool in summer without resorting to nakedness?

Also I had to wear a long skirt today because of this bruise on my leg.
PS It looks way darker in real life, just so you know and can offer your sympathies.

Yet another reason to hate summer. I’m constantly walking into things and getting bruises. Which never looks good in a skirt. Also I needed to wear a longer skirt today so that I don’t blind people with my pasty white legs!

Blu Ray Tuesday #3 (and the greatest day ever!!)

2011-09-14T19:18:00.004+10:00

Again we were lazy bones and couldn't be bothered to go out to get a movie, so we stayed inside and watched one from girl roomie's hard drive.

The movie: Griff the Invisible
The menu: McDonald's

This movie... well... I don't quite know if I liked it or not. Girl roomie and I wanted to see it because it sounded cute and had Ryan Kwanten in it. Some people know Ryan Kwanten as that guy from True Blood but us Aussies know him from back in the day when he was Vinnie in Home & Away. Anyway, I digress. It's a small Australian film and it was quirky and I think it was supposed to be uplifting but somewhere in the middle, it just got sad.

The story is about this shy office worker who is bullied by his co-workers by day but by night, he becomes a superhero- Griff the Invisible. Somewhere in the middle of the movie it becomes clear that he is just a sad man who suffers from delusions and it becomes worse when he meets Melody, who encourages him in this belief that he is a superhero. Then I had to realise that it was just a movie and it was all going to be ok and then the movie became sweet and uplifting again.

Recommended: Why not? At something like 89 minutes, it's not a huge chunk out of your life. By the end, once I'd embraced the mindset of the film, I thought it was cute but again, not sure if I liked it.
Haha, I'm always so wishy washy with my recommendations!

Ok, the greatest day ever... at lunch time a girl comes back from the shops down the road and announces that Night Owl's (a knock off of 7/11) freezers have broken down and they're just giving away stuff. People started traipsing back withboxes filled with cheesecakes and Ben & Jerry's, frozen pizzas and so I had to get in on it! I managed to score a couple of things like Sara Lee cheesecakes and frozen frenxh fries but by the time I got there, most of the good stuff had gone. The original girls who had discovered this had brought back icecream for all of us though so we spent the rest of the lunch break stuffing our faces with ice cream :)

Then there was nowhere really to put it. We have a small communal fridge/freezer that we put it in, then there's a staff freezer which we used to. Then we have a deep freezer for dead bodies... and people put food in there too. We are such grubs!!

I thought that was so nice of the owner to just give his stuff away. I've been in there a couple of times and he's always the sweetest, so I'll definitely go back there and frequent his business as my way of saying thank you!

Still plodding along

2011-09-13T16:43:00.002+10:00

I took my Pathology exam and passed, phew!

AND the giant assignment that I was freaking out over to be handed in on Friday?? We were talking about it to our teacher who said "I thought it was due in after the holidays?". It was originally meant to be due after the holidays but some people in the class asked for it to be moved forward because we have a whole heap of stuff due after the holidays. I thought it was stupid because we haven't even done the class that this assignment is for! But everyone wanted to get it out of the way so the date got changed. Anyway, the teacher just shrugged his shoulders and said "Do I look like I care? We haven't even started doing the class, just hand in the assignment after the holidays". Yay!!!!!

I'm going to be so busy in the holidays doing school work but tonight I am going to just relax, read my book and enjoy Blu Ray Tuesday.

In other news, I did a rope braid in my hair. I redid it for a photo after school and it came out WAY better this time than how I had originally done it!

I'm off to read my book and probably nap too. Love doing nothing :)

Ten Day You Challenge: Nine Loves

2011-09-12T17:04:00.016+10:00

#1 Snuggling with animals
The way they just snuggle into you and simply love you and trust you. *sigh* It's so cute. Especially kitties when they purr and you are just both so content.

#2 Reading while in bed on a cold morning
Bonus points if you have no reason to get up and can stay in bed for as long as you wish!

#3 Eating melted chocolate
Normal chocolate is a love too but there's something deliciously decadent about eating warm chocolate when it's all gooey and melty.

#4 Watching reality TV whilst stuffing my face with some kind of snacks
It's always best when it's some kind of 'appearance show', like 'America's Next Top Model' or 'Biggest Loser'

#5 Laughing at something silly, usually with my mum
#6 Reading blogs
Love reading about you all and what you crazy kids get up to! I love hearing about other people's day-to-day lives and getting the insight on their innermost thoughts. You never fail to make me laugh or inspire me. You remind me that I am not alone!

#7 Drinking tea
This is especially true when it is accompanied by some kind of delicious baked goods

#8 Writing a story when it's all working out and everything's flowing
Yep, I just compared myself to Shakespeare :) Also, this is what I wear when I write... an open necked puffy shirt and I, of course, use my trusty quill at all times.

#9 The smell of rain on a hot summer's day
I also love that 'Doctor Who' taught me that the word for this is 'petrichor'. Isn't that a cool word? And now you know the word for that lovely smell that is the smell of summer.

Honourable mention is this video that my teacher showed us in class today. If you have ever spent more than five seconds with a cat, you'll enjoy this one too!

A Saturday Night Out

2011-09-11T19:38:00.009+10:00

I am a confirmed homebody. I hate going out. Ok, hate is a strong word but it's always so much effort and I always get really excited about going out on the town and it never lives up to my expectations so I'm always like "bleurgh" when I end up agreeing to go out.

This Saturday night was an exception. We were going out to a dessert restaurant (getting to cross another thing off my '101 in 1001' list) and to a comedy show afterwards. Confession time... I did not bring my camera, nor was the lighting conducive to amazing FB profile pictures... so NO awesome pictures. Well, there were awesome pics aka some extra special sexy ones of me. Case in point:
My girl roomie was in the picture with me, making an equally attractive face but you know, there's only so much hotness that this blog can take. Plus I feel weird putting people onto the internet so I took her out.

Also I want to get a hold of video footage of me. I unfortunately introduced my boy roomie to the practice of pretending to take a photo of someone... but actually taking a video and seeing how long the people will hold their pose for. I think it's his new favourite thing to do. And he got a great one of me, literally seconds after I'd just finished talking about this phenomenon. There is a website where people have uploaded their videos of this happening and I can no longer find it. Does anyone know the one I mean???

It was fun getting to see what everyone else picked out. I got a Macademia nut and caramel shortbread slice. It was just ok. I should have gone with my gut instinct of 'chocolate brownie'. I mean, don't get me wrong- it was beautiful and yummy, it was just unfortunately surrounded and drowned in a moat of caramel sauce which I don't really like and so it kind of ruined the actual shortbread slice. I am not a food blogger, therefore I do not have pictures of my food.

I am also not a fashion blogger, hence no photo of my awesome outfit. Seriously I was so impressed with it. It was a dress from Target and I jazzied it up with accessories and it looked great! At the end of the night, I took my best 'fashion blogger' photo. This is the result.

I accidentally cut off my own head. You can see my school bag and running shoes by my feet. You can barely see my boots. This photo is pretty much a how 'not to' do self photos. It makes me laugh so I thought I'd share it!!

After food, we went to see Tripod. This is a musical comedy trio and a band that me and my friends have been following since high school! Almost ten years!!! This is all part of my local festival and I even got a cool stamp!
This is the symbol of the festival... yeah, I don't know what it means either. BUT they'd put up a tent in the middle of the city and inside, it was beautifully set up with fairy lights it was like an old fashioned circus big top. It was really beautiful. There were all these rows of seats and by the time we arrived, there were only seats in the last row left. Not cool. But my friend Kristy is awesome and went and talked to the bouncer and scored us this sweet booth right up the front of the stage!!! It was empty and we just went and sat in it and pretended like we owned it and somehow we got away with it :)

The group were just as funny as I remembered and they sang some classic oldies as well as some new ones. This is one of my faves that they sang last night, I think it's one of their best. Please listen and enjoy!

So, I might go out and do cool stuff but I'll always be a little homebody at heart. Maybe one day New York will let me come back and some more of its coolness will rub off onto me and I will ONE DAY be cool!!!!

Battle your way through my wordy post!

2011-09-09T20:00:00.005+10:00

It's a chilly Saturday morning, the sun is shining but the wind is whipping around. I realise it's all my fault because I only have summer clothes in my wardrobe but can I please catch a break?! I'm tired of being cold!!!!!

I'm not feeling too sick anymore but I would like to not be doing any school work. I wish I could just sit and do nothing, lie on the sofa watching a movie. Although I only recently realised that next week is my holidays! So this time next week, I will be on holidays!!!!!!! Yay!! That's some good news right there. But... I have promised myself that I will spend a large amount of time doing school work so I don't die next term because we have so much stuff due in October!

Tonight I'm going to a comedy show with a bunch of friends and before that we're heading to a dessert restaurant. This was actually one of my things on my '101 in 1001' list and it's funny that without any planning on my behalf, I am going to get to cross this one off my list :)

Also tonight we will be snapping pictures of me to use as my FB profile picture. I think I've had the same one for about half the year! I mean, it is of me and Helo from 'Battlestar Galactica' so it's pretty darn cool but I think it's time to move on. Time to shake things up but I usually don't go out or do anything that involves having your picture taken so tonight we will be rectifying this with lots of pictures being taken. And hopefully one will look ok and I can use that as a profile pic!

And in other news, I also won my first ever blog giveaway! Yay!! I won an e-book by the lovely Dina Sleiman over at Inkwell Inspirations. I absolutely love Dina's posts and I look forward to reading her book. Just something else to do instead of doing my assignments!

Also, as a form of procrastination I have been researching e-readers that I can get as a birthday present. My birthday is over two months away and normally I don't care about presents but I thought this year I will be proactive and have a list because according to my mother, I am a hard person to buy presents for. Also this year I will be having a birthday party! Apparently 26 is a big year for me! Anyway, my research leads me to a Kindle. Any thoughts? Does anyone have an e-reader?

Oh wow...

2011-09-08T21:52:00.002+10:00

Thanks to Sarah, I just worked out how to amuse myself endlessly. I should be doing my assignment that's due in on Monday and that I haven't started yet. But then Sarah posted about her giveaway and gave a great tutorial on how to create moving pictures just like in Harry Potter. Well, which do you think is more fun to do???

This is one of my foster boys, Timmy, playing his favourite game- hiding behind the sofa and jumping out at an unsuspecting passer-by. He loved to play this game ALL. THE. TIME. And now he will be playing it on high rotation :)

Being of the PC variety, I wasn't able to follow her Mac tutorial all the way but thanks to a very quick google search, I managed to piece together how to do this, thanks to the headstart she gave me. I also had to save my .gif on a photosharing site first before I could upload it. For some reason it wouldn't upload normally like how it does on Sarah's tutorial.

And you guys, I know NOTHING about photoshop. I can't even stick people's heads onto other people's bodies. And I managed how to do this. I am properly patting myself on the back. So if I can do it, you can too! Give it a go, post it on your blog, drop Sarah a comment and you might win an awesome prize!! And just go and check out her own beautiful moving picture.

Blu Ray Tuesday #2

2011-09-07T13:49:00.004+10:00

Last night, we were all pretty wiped out. I think everyone was in bed by 9. Yes, we really are THAT cool! We didn't even go to the video store to pick out a DVD, we just found something on girl roomie's hard drive.

The movie:
The menu: Red Rooster meals (for my US friends, this is an Aussie version of KFC)

This movie was lots of fun- very silly and rude but it made me laugh out loud several times. It was a homage (or perhaps a parody?) to those 80s fantasy films, complete with an extremely fake-looking puppet character. I have to say that most of the humour came from characters in medieval costumes using modern swear words or anachronisms, but yeah, I'm a sucker for a cheap laugh.

The actual storyline was pretty good. I thought my celebrity girlfriend, Zooey Deschanel was extremely underused but that's what you get for playing a kidnapped damsel in distress.

Recommended? Um... yes... If you are in the mood for a silly movie and you won't be offended by stuff, then go for it.

10 Day You Challenge

2011-09-07T10:39:00.007+10:00

This looks like fun. I've seen it on a couple of blogs that I read and I want in! I won't be doing it every day but just when I want to shake things up on the blog.

First day is ten secrets, so here we go!

#1 I'm 25 and I still have a stuffed toy in my bed. He is called Woof and is awesome. I actually only got him when I was 10, so he's not a beloved baby toy which I feel would somehow make it ok that I still have him. I don't snuggle with him every night or anything, just like having him around. One of my favourite things about him is that he is also my dog's toy too. Ok, this is getting weirder and grosser by the second, sorry. When my dog used to live with me, she used to love Woof as well and would just carry him around in her mouth all over the place and would snuggle with him. So Woof reminds me of my dog, who now lives with my grandparents.

#2 I'm a total cry baby. I hate crying but I cry an awful lot. Probably about once a week. If possible I cry in privacy but sometimes I get caught out crying in public.

#3 I still daydream about celebrity crushes. I know I was supposed to give up all that when I left high school but I can't help it! Sometimes it's nice to think about how [whoever I'm crushing on today] and I will meet and how we will get married and have celebrity babies with nice ordinary names.
#4 I know for a fact that I will grow up to be a crazy old lady with a house full of animals. I'm ok about it. I just hope my house doesn't stink *too* bad.

#5 I only sing along to music when I'm in my car. There's something about blasting music really loudly and singing along that is so liberating. I think it's because I play my music so loudly that I can't hear how my actual voice pales in comparison!

#6 I wish I had the guts to wear gypsy, boho fashion. I would love to swan around all the time in long skirts, vintage tops, messy hair and top it all off with bangles. My sensible brain rejects this fashion because it is messy and unprofessional. Although I do have the 'messy hair' part down :)

#7 My dream job would to be on the judging panel of a reality show. Doesn't matter which one. I would be the 'nice' judge. I think it would be fun!

#8 My actual perfect man is John Krasinski. Although that's not really a secret, I tell everyone that :) My girl roomie and I have had a John Krasinksi week actually, it's been lovely!
#9 I think I was born in the wrong era. I'm quite passive (read that as LAZY) so I would have been a perfect woman in olden days!!

#10 Whilst I'm a certified homebody, I really love travelling and living overseas for extended periods of time.

Sniffling my way through Tuesday

2011-09-06T17:46:00.002+10:00

Remember how I put all my winter clothes away for the season? As a result, I was a little chilly last night when I watched an outdoor theatre performance and the cold that I have been fighting off for the last week managed to get its claws in! So I now have a cold. Ick! I'm feeling very sorry for myself and today's only the first day. Never mind. I have made the executive decision to take tomorrow off. I will stay in my PJs (unfortunately not my comfy winter ones!) and work on assignments and drink lots of tea.

Last night's theatre trip was awesome! It was two dance companies together- one does a lot of circus work and the other does 'raw' dance... I don't really know what that means, I just read the blurb about the show, but the end result was amazing. It was in an outdoors theatre and they had people doing a lot of wire work. There were people tapdancing vertically up a wall and this gorgeous piece where a couple floated and danced as if they were under water. And there was a lot of tap dancing where they followed the rhythm of each other's taps, not any music- which is possibly my favourite kind of dance. Like Stomp or Tap Dogs. I could watch that stuff ALL day. Seriously.

I get so jealous seeing people dance. It's just so beautiful and it's something that's so attainable too. Like if I'd only gone to dance lessons, I could be up there too. Although I know there's a lot of hard work and you do have to have a little something called 'talent', but *sigh*. I spent six years doing Irish dancing, won some district competitions but gave it all up. I wish I'd taken modern dance classes or ballet instead- something a bit more general- something that I could actually use. Oh well, I'll just make my future daughter take a myriad of dance classes. PS Check out my fancy vocab back there with 'myriad'! Sometimes I suprise myself.

But best of all, we discovered this awesome pizza place. I wish I was a food blogger because then I would have remembered to take photos of the pizza. Man, I want to go back there right now and eat. We had a streaky bacon and camembert on a red currant sauce pizza and another one that was chicken and mango chutney and something else. Oh wow. Kind of puts all those fast food pizza chains to shame!

The opposite of Monday blues

2011-09-05T16:26:00.003+10:00

Hello! The sun is shining although I apologise in advance to all those in my part of the world. Because of Murphy's Law, the weather will now be cold and rainy. I took all my winter clothes back to my mum's house on the weekend (including my electric blanket) and got all my summer clothes... and because of that, I can pretty much guarantee a chilly outlook with the weather :)

My weekend was good. I went home to the Gold Coast and cooked soup for my mum who just got home after 2 weeks in NZ. I've missed my daily chats on the phone with her! Watched the new episode of Doctor Who. Stayed up far too late reading a scary book and then couldn't go to sleep!! Had Father's Day with my grandparents. Ate too much food.

My talk went well today to my class. Everyone actually really enjoyed it and laughed in all the right spots, so yay! It was only in front of about 20 people and we've been in the same class for 8 months so it wasn't as terrifying as I thought it would be. The only downside is that the projector wouldn't work for me and we literally wasted about an hour of the class trying to fix it. In the end, I just gave my talk and people had to look at a tiny computer screen to see my pictures. But it was good because it meant I got to sit down so I didn't have to worry about my knees knocking together which they sometimes do when I have to do public speaking. I now know what will be 'E' in my alphabet series, haha!

Tonight I'm going out to celebrate my town's festival. No parades, though Ashley!! Hehe :) We are going to see this dance/acrobatic show in an outside theatre. Hope it doesn't rain!! And then on Saturday I'm off to a comedy show. Um... remember that post about BALANCE?!?!

Work & school stuff

2011-09-03T15:50:00.003+10:00

Friday was exciting at work. I normally wear a purple scrub top to differentiate myself from the rest of the staff who wear light blue. It's supposed to show that I'm the work experience girl but unfortunately it usually backfires and people assume that I'm the vet! Which horrifies me- don't trust me with your animals!!!!

Anyway, my boss told me that he was now happy for me to 'upgrade' and wear the light blue scrub top!! Yay!!!!!! Who knew that changing outfits would be so meaningful and such a source of joy?! AND I'm getting my own name tag with 'VETERINARY NURSE' engraved on it. If I have a name badge, then I know it's the real deal.

I also assisted with my first real autopsy. It was gruesome and awesome all at the same time. Certainly makes me realise just how fragile we all are and what a miracle the body is.

I'm currently putting together a slide show for my Edinburgh talk. I wasn't nervous about it until this morning when I was semi-practising it in front of my mum and she kept interrupting. Now my stomach is churning... why is public speaking so hard??? Although I will have a much quieter audience on Monday, much less interference!!

B is for Balance

2011-09-01T10:31:00.002+10:00

And so continues my alphabet series.

Balance is super important and I know that now after spending a week stressed and up to my eyeballs in school stuff. Assignment has been handed in and things look a little clearer now. But it's taken that stressful situation to show me that maybe I need a bit more balance in my life. Not so much play and a little more work. Not that I sit around on my arse all day doing nothing but I think I need to make a bit more of an effort.

This blog post is going to be more like a letter to myself. I want to be able to look back on it when I'm stressed and see what I need to do to sort out that situation. I don't react very well to stress. I have about a week where I'm sitting in the eye of the storm and then the storm hits all over again- until mid November. Then I'm free!

I like to start the mornings getting up a little earlier and spending the time reading my Bible and with God. I find that, for me, it's a good way to start my day. Some days I get up even earlier and go for a run. My body loves it. I personally hate it, but my body loves it. And afterwards I feel better because I already kicked today's butt and it's only 7.30 in the morning!

But really, the only true reason I run is because it means that I can justify eating the junk food that I so dearly love :) And that my friends, is balance.

Sometimes stress is good. On occassion I need to push myself, to only go to bed once I've finished a page of assignments. But de-stressing is good too. Movies, reading, spending time with friends. And sleeping. Sometimes I need to miss my run and sleep in. And that is OK.

I apologise for the two references to bottoms in this blog. It felt right.