Ira Glass & a Giant Wall of Text

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

Picture found here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday Night Trivia

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.

Birthday times

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.

Birthday weekend celebrations

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?

Updates

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!!

The Zombie Apocalypse

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

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

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!

Random snippets of life

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!!

Lyrics courtesy of Boy Roomie

"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!

Just a little note...

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!!

Still plodding along

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 :)

A Saturday Night Out

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!!!!

Sniffling my way through Tuesday

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!

Insert Blog Title Here

My brain has left the building! I am frantically trying to finish this ginormous assignment on 'advice for specific animal care' (vaccinating a chicken, anyone??) and I have discovered if I work on one animal a night, I will be able to hand it in on time.

Unfortunately I procrastinate so it's taken me about four hours of half hearted writing what could have realistically taken me about an hour if I'd just sat down and written it all out. But I have read a million blogs and I'm all caught up. I have drunk an entire bottle of energy drink which I absolutely only ever do in emergencies (which this is) and so I am absolutely pumped full of caffeine. I am dancing in my chair to my Glee soundtrack and before that I had a little dance party in my bedroom to Usher's "Yeah". I don't think it's possible for me to listen to that song and *not* dance. And besides I have to burn off all that excess caffeine before I go to bed.

Work went really well this week (although I am doing a few hours tomorrow so who knows?!). My poor workmate Jess was sick, like really sick, so she's been away so we didn't get to have a crazy giggle fest like normal. BUT I was proud of my performance this week, I did good stuff. And with Jess being away, I had to do everything myself which was scary but I managed to get it all done. And I got to deal with my very first live chicken. We were examining its eye and I had to support her neck while she was in the oxygen mask under anaesthetic. Chickens' necks are so tiny and scrawny, I was petrified that I would accidentally wring its neck! The chicken is still alive so it's all good. I then had to help with its recovery from the anaesthetic, which was interesting. Like, I know that cats like to be tickled under the chin and dogs like to be scratched behind the ears but chickens..? I just stroked her back and hoped that that was a comforting way to wake up. I then had to hold her for an injection and she kept lifting her tail like she was going to shoot poop all over me, but she was a good girl and didn't do that! Good chicken! Maybe I am secretly a chicken whisperer??

And I have a super exciting Saturday planned. Bookstore visiting and movie watching with a new(ish) friend. Can't wait!

A little bit of this, a little bit of that!

Turns out when I missed school last Monday... the people that turned up for a half day were told to go home because the teacher was in a meeting and the other teacher was like "...yeah, I don't have anything to teach you". So, I didn't miss out on anything!

Which totally means that me playing hooky yet again on a Monday isn't so bad because it's like I only missed one day instead of two. Right??? Right?!?!?!?!

I was actually pretty productive today. I could almost pat myself on the back. We started a new class last week about radiography. All I know about it is 'x-rays' (and that's not even the right name for them!) and we got told we've got an assignment due in two weeks. Which is now next week. I finally had a look at it today and it's pretty easy. Just got to read a 104 PAGE GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT to get my answers. Oh dear! But it's nearly finished. Phew! Thank goodness I am a good skim reader :)

But I was much more productive yesterday when I made soup!! With dumplings!!! Yesterday I didn't even know what dumplings were but I made them nonetheless. I was so proud of myself, I am now a person who makes soup (that one time). It was an Irish Chicken Stew with Dumplings and the recipe can be found here further down the page. It was quite easy to tweak it and add stuff and take stuff out.
Also, a little callback to a blog post I did last week. Remember how I was obsessed with the Maroon 5 song 'Moves Like Jagger'? And I was hoping that if someone else got the song stuck in their head, it would get out of mine? Well, it worked... sort of. The person whose head the song got stuck in was my girl roomie!! She was walking around the house singing it ALL WEEKEND!! Haha, serves me right for making her watch the music video in the first place!

Ok, let's start again.

Right, well I had possibly the worst day yesterday at work! You know when you're already having a terrible day and then bad stuff happens?? That was me! I was having like the WORST midlife crisis and just feeling terrible about everything and thinking that I was the worst vet nurse in the world... and then my boss basically told me that I was the worst vet nurse in the world* (*not his actual words). To make matters worse, I started CRYING which is super embarrassing when you are nearly 26 and at work. And then I was embarrassed and angry that I was crying, which made me cry even more. And once the floodgates had opened, I couldn't stop crying. I had to run to the bathroom about three times that day and as soon as I even think about tears, I get all red and blotchy, so it was pretty obvious that I was miserable. Which makes for a great work atmosphere.

The situation definitely left me with a bad feeling in my stomach and I could still cry just thinking about it. It makes me not want to go back next week. But at least I don't have to work with Dwight K. Schrute. Although I wish I worked with Jim!



Although it did get better because once my boss left, the girls brought me cake :) And the vet that was on asked me to help out with a gross job because she knows I love gross things (yes, I'm weird, sorry!). She was like "If we're lucky, there will be pus". No pus :( but I did get blood dribbling down my arm. And then the dog shook its head (where the bleeding was coming from) and I felt all these droplets go on my face!! Eww!! When I went out of the room, I looked in the mirror and I had blood droplets all over my face which made me laugh.

AND, you know what?! It is the WEEKEND!!!!!!!! The sun is shining, it's a little chilly but that's good coz I get to wrap up which I love. My hair is in a messy plait which makes me feel bohemian and awesome. And right this very second, with no petic license at all, I got a text message from my friend from work hoping I was feeling better after yesterday. Isn't that nice?! And I am off to the movies this afternoon with my roomies and I will get a giant bucket of popcorn and because I went for a run this morning I won't beat myself up about it.

I read a post this morning which can be found here and it really rang true. I am going to try and choose to be happy.

Monday & Not A Hair Post In Sight

... it feels odd. But it doesn't matter because I didn't go to school anyway. (For those of you who still want to know, I wore my hair in a messy bun. The first day back from my 'hair project' and I revert straight back to my old ways- did I learn nothing?!).

I decided to sort out my life instead. I put on my army green t-shirt and my dragon necklace and I meant business.

I was on a mission. Operation:Sort Laura's Life Out.

Not that much happened though.


I did all the things that normal people do on Sundays. I did my washing. I tidied up my desk. I colour co-ordinated my calendar.

Yellow= day off
Blue= assignment due
Green= exam
Pink= holidays :)
... and these are the ones I know about so far!


My desk got messy again from re-doing my assignments. And I hardly did any 'real' work.

BUT I played with Nilly so much today, she was in a really silly mood, it made me happy. And I drank copious amounts of tea and pretended I was Sherlock Holmes so that I would be smart and get some school work done. It didn't work very well as I kept getting distracted and wanted to watch the TV version of Sherlock Holmes instead of actually doing any work. But I resisted temptation.

In conclusion, I am glad I missed my half-day of school. I feel more normal again. Less likely to maim people. Education: 0, Sanity: 1

The Time Traveller's Daughter

Um... so I just figured out my mum is a time traveller.

Pretty cool, right?! Do you like her cunning disguise? Here are my three pieces of evidence (because you only need three):

Number One
My mum gets confused easily and will forget stuff. This is either because a) her brain has been messed with due to constant to-ing and fro-ing through time OR b) she can't remember her actual supposed 'time line' so she just pretendes that she can't remember. Sneaky!

Number Two
After watching 'Captain America', I asked her if she liked the movie. She replied "I really enjoyed it because it reminded me of what life was like back then". To which I responded "It reminded you of what it was like living in 1940s America??" She just laughed. She wasn't even born then... therefore- Time Traveller.

Number Three
Upon seeing the ad for the movie 'Hot Tub Time Machine', she announced that she would like to see that movie because "I think it would be interesting to see what it was like in the 80s". What?!?!? Mum, what were *you* doing during the 80s? Were you gallivanting around in the Roman Empire? Having tea with Queen Victoria?

Is my love of history due to the fact that I was born in the 80s, therefore born whilst my mother was having epic time travelling adventures??

Day 26: Getting My French Braid On!

I feel like this hairstyle would have been cute on an 8 year old version of me. Shame I am more than triple that age!!! Never mind. I was so excited that I actually *did* this. This was my second ever attempt at french braiding and it looks pretty darn good!

In my awesomeness, I missed a teeny bit of hair (not that you can notice in the pictures) so I curled it and pretended it was all part of the plan. This challenge, if nothing else, has taught me to embrace my mistakes!


Also, please take note of my CENTRE parting. I spent a lot of time making sure that my parting was in the centre, got it there, but somehow whilst doing the braiding, my parting moved a couple of inches to the left!! Sorry for the flash-arama photo!

In the real world, I am feeling SO much better!! Not sure if it's because the sun is shining and I can feel winter losing its grip or because I went to the doctor and got some magic pills and great tools to deal with stress and anxiety or because I'm spending more time with God or maybe it's because my hairstyle's youthful optimism is rubbing off on me. Lots of options... I think it's a combination of them all.

And as promised Abigail... here are my Night's Watch boots! I lovingly stole them from my mother when I went to Canada. I didn't think she would need wool lined boots whilst in Australia. Although I am getting tons of use out of them now I'm back in Australia!!


And here is their more attractive cousin on TV :) Also, please note Professor Snape in the background... I feel like it all makes sense, maybe he spends the summer holidays at The Wall? He would totes fit in, wearing black and all!