Guest Post: The Roomie Edition

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

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

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!

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

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

"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

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 :)