Salt and corrosion

A meme (feel free to ask if you'd like to play too):

Reply here and I'll give you 3 subjects I don't think you know or care much about. Then you talk about those subjects in your journal. It's interesting to see who knows what about what.

emma2403 gave me:


1) Fashion
Fair call that I don't know or care much about fashion. My fashion sense could be described as "what's in the shops when I need new clothes". As long as I look presentable... which is a step up from my teen years when I just wanted to look invisible.

I read somewhere that one's sense of style comes down to two choices: structured or drapey, and matte or shiny. I'm structured and matte. I think there's another choice that those two don't cover: colour. I tend to wear blacks and greys and jewel tones. Pastels and earth tones are not for me.

2) Painting (the art)
I like looking at paintings, the noun, so I care about it in that sense. It's true I don't know much about painting, the verb.

Once as a child, I was daubing away with my little children's watercolours, as a way to keep me quiet during a visit from my frail great-grandmother. "Would you like a cup of tea, Mum?" my grandmother asked her.

"Oh, no, just water will do," she said, and picked up my glass of murky blue brush water and downed the contents before anyone could stop her.

It didn't seem to do her any harm.

3) Japanese food
I had eggplant katsu with a pear and ginger slaw for dinner the other night. In all my job changes these last few years, I am pleased that I have always been within walking distance of the Japanese deli for days I decide to buy lunch. I used to take my lunch to work in a proper two-tier bento box until I discovered the hard way that it wasn't microwave safe. So I'm going to say that while I'm not an expert, I do care about Japanese food.

I should have written this entry last Tuesday to use this title on Melbourne Cup day. Ah well.

Today I thought it would be fun to do some random reviews throughout the day. I found a website that generated three random times for me, and this is what I was up to at the appointed hour:

10:45 – Reading Fresh magazine after unpacking the groceries – ★ ★ ★
( And it doesn't get any more exciting than that )

That was fun, wasn't it? Perhaps I could do that all week.

Knitting update: I unknitted the row I had to unknit and threaded a lifeline through it in case I had to do it again, and as that's all I did last week it doesn't seem worth photographing it. I had it resting on my knees during the unknitting and threading and I must say it's very warm. If the cardigan doesn't work out it can be an oddly shaped blanket.

Finally, by popular demand (two), I have set up a Goodreads account as todayiamadaisy (of course). Do friend me (or whatever their term for it is) if you'd like. (For new friends here, I should say I am also todayiamadaisy on Pinterest, if you'd care to follow my quest to find the world's worst shoes. Just when I think I've captured them all, another one shows up.)

Our Prime Minister, honestly. Last year, in response to precisely no demands, he re-started the practice of creating knights and dames. Yesterday was Australia Day* and to mark the occasion, he knighted Prince Philip. I assume he did this because he couldn't dame the Queen.

Back in the real world, painting is proceeding at... maybe not at full steam, but definitely at some steam. They start at 7:30 in the morning and finish at 3:30, without stopping for lunch, which I find extraordinary. I need lunch.

They bring a radio with them and the head painter likes to sing along. This morning while I was having breakfast he was stirring paint under the patio singing along with Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on fire", but the only line he knew was, 'Ooh-ooh-ooh, I'm on fire'. So Bruce would sing about the freight train running through the middle of his head, and the painter would chip in about how he was on fire. Then at the end, he whispered, 'I'm. On. FIRE!' to the paint, sounding as though he should be doing jazz hands. I don't know if Mr Springsteen finishes the song like that when he performs it in concert, but he should consider it. It was just what was needed.

A few people on my f-list have been doing that 10 day challenge meme, which I have enjoyed reading. Here's the start of mine, fashionably late:

The 10 Day Challenge

Day 1 - Ten random facts about yourself
Day 2 - Nine things you do everyday
Day 3 - Eight things that annoy you
Day 4 - Seven fears/phobias
Day 5 - Six songs that you’re addicted to
Day 6 - Five things you can’t live without
Day 7 - Four memories you won’t forget
Day 8 - Three words you can’t go a day without
Day 9 - Two things you wish you could do
Day 10 - One person you can trust

1. When I was little, I would find a long stick, put one end on the ground and the other in my belly-button, and walk around the garden. This was tremendous fun (I was a sad and lonely child, yes), until I hit a bump and the stick pushed back. It's a great game, and I urge you all to play it. I take no responsibility if it disembowels you.

( And nine more, just as thrilling )


* Was I made Australian of the Year? No, I was not.

There is a bus stop across the road from my house. That is perfect. One, because it is across the road and therefore quite handy, and two, because it across the road and therefore there are no strangers loitering outside my house all day. Except it's not really all that handy, because the City by the Sea's bus services have traditionally been fairly meagre. They're meant to be once an hour, but there are none from seven-thirty to nine in the morning, when a person might want to get to work, because the buses are used as dedicated school buses during that time. Same again during school home time. So I didn't use the bus very often, but when I did, it took about 5 minutes to get into the city centre, and a couple of minutes to walk to my office. Eight minutes, tops.

Anyway, the bus line announced last year that 2014 would bring exciting new services. More buses, more often! Buses that will go during peak hour even! So last week, I noticed new orange and grey bus stop signs going up. Not on my stop, though. It's still one of the old red ones. Does that mean it's been decommissioned?

I saw a route map today, and yes: my stop is gone. So I typed my address and my work's address in their Find My Bus site, and it seems I have two options. I can walk 600m up a hill in the other direction and catch a bus going to the shopping centre on the outskirts of town, which will then take me back into town, where it will drop me a couple of blocks west of work: total time, including walking, 26 minutes. Or, I can walk the 600m up the hill and catch a different bus heading to the shopping centre, but get off en route on Wanstead Street (Wanstead Street! The City by the Sea's badlands. On Wanstead Street, sometimes... hedges are set on fire! What? Even our criminals are fairly mild.) and walk the rest of the way: total time, 21 minutes. I'm not seeing a huge improvement in my bus service there. Honestly. If I'm going to walk 600m, I might as well just walk 600m towards the city centre and be quarter of the way there.

When I was doing yesterday's meme instalment, I mentioned that I once lived in a place that is now called Mutitjulu, and marked it on the map, but I forgot that non-Australian readers won't recognise the name and won't think 'crikey Moses, how interesting!' So here's the sitch: when I was a wee little thing, the place that is now called Mutitjulu was a tourist area filled with motels and camp grounds. (My mother was the on-site nurse for one of the resorts.) In the 1980s, the tourist places were moved a more respectful distance away, and the traditional owners of the land, being Pitjantjatjara people, built the township of Mutitjulu. Respectful distance away from what?, you may ask. Well, Mutitjulu is point A on this map:

( It's walking distance away )

So there's that. And now onwards:

100 question meme, part III

51. Do you sleep on a certain side of the bed?
The left, just because it's closer to the door. When I stay in hotels, I am happy to change sides if that's where the clock is.

( And 24 more in the same vein )

There is a 100 question meme going round, which I have enjoyed, particularly mockduck's, because she cleverly thought of breaking it into manageable chunks for easier answering and reading. I decided to do that too. So there's something for everyone to look forward to.

100 question meme, part I

1. How old will you be in five years?
I have a couple of irritating colleagues who keep asking my age and other birthday-related queries, and I have been fobbing them off by saying that I am 212 and have no star sign. So I suppose in five years, I will be 217. Unless I become one of those people who say they're the same age for years and years. I'll be 212 forever.

Or 44. One of them.

( And 24 more in the same vein )

A news item today:
A New Zealand man who assaulted his wife with an ostrich egg after her pet pig damaged his power saw has been jailed for six months.

There's a short story in that, I'm sure. (He threw the egg at her, bruising her chest, if you're wondering.)

As part of our staff development policy at work, we have to do a variety of short courses this year. You know the sort of thing. Time Management and Bullying in the Workplace and so on. We've learnt all about how to do those things. We had to do those as a group, and now we have to choose a course from an approved list and do it alone. I chose Achieving Success with Difficult People. Such fun. One exercise asked me to think about my own difficult tendencies. I don't have any, obviously. I am delightful.

No, that's not true. I am afraid to say, f-list, that I may be a Difficult Person. I have definite Clam-like tendencies. As our book says: These people are perfectionists, always worried about getting things wrong. They react to questions you have posed, controversial statements you have made, and indeed any situation they deem threatening, by clamming up. Oh dear, that's me. Clamming up and thinking what an idiot everyone else is. Apparently, I am to be dealt with like so:

Questions like "How do you feel about this?" or "What are your ideas?" are good starters. Add to those questions a friendly, silent stare to encourage answers. To stop yourself from jumping in with more conversation, be to the point and say something like "I expected you to say something, John, and you're not. What does that mean?" And if that doesn't work, say: "You look distressed. Don't worry about starting at the beginning. What's on your mind right now?"

Just reading that gives me chills. I don't want people staring at me or asking me what's on my mind or calling me John. I want questions submitted in writing so I have time to think about them.

Later on, though, it says that treated firmly but kindly and with compassion, Clams often prove to have useful ideas and can make a valuable contribution. So there's that.

I would feel a lot better about this course if the People I find most Difficult had to do it too.

Happy birthday to me. I made myself a cake yesterday:



I sat it on the table in front of me this morning while I had my breakfast. That's a bit sad, isn't it?

(If you fancy a paper cake too, you can make your own here.)

I saw a mystery novel called Sudden Death Sudoku today, which came with bonus sudoku puzzles for the reader to do. Is that a good idea? It seems to say: sure, people die doing them in the story, but you won't, we promise.

I also saw a mystery novel in which the sleuth was a small-town newspaper reporter who solves crimes in her spare time. Nothing wrong with that, and more likely than the crime-solving cake shop owner books I've seen... except this working reporter/sleuth was 92. As in, years old. And the blurb on the back suggested that she was so outraged at being removed from her newspaper, she started her own. Am I being ageist, or is that, er, unlikely?

Parrot fight! It's bright early these mornings, and the birds are up and chirping long before my alarm goes off. And so it is with the rosellas having their parrot argument across the road. I lay awake for a couple of minutes, but I know I won't get back to sleep, not with the sun bursting in and the rosellas chattering out.

So I'm up, and at the piano. Warm up, then scales and exercises for B minor week, and pick at a couple of pieces. I'm still making smoothies for breakfast, today using up the last of the coconut water. I don't think I'll be getting more. Percy appears. I make toast while he has some salmon; I eat my toast while he sits on my knee and washes his face, breathing fishy breath on me.

Work: pay last week's invoices, prepare pays for tomorrow for casual staff, put together a welcome-and-here's-some-forms-to-fill-in package for the new office girl who will collect it tomorrow and start next week, prepare the mail because the old office girl finished last week and I have to do it myself. A visit from my mother's partner, wanting to know where he could buy a footstool because the furniture shop down the road from my office only had one and he didn't like it.

Home again. The green waste collection is on Wednesday, so I mow the lawn. Water the garden, pick some spinach. Make Delia's eggs florentine for dinner, remember that I like eggs and I like spinach, but I would prefer only half the huge amount of white sauce in it. Find a pencil and note this on the recipe. Do the ironing, play on the internet, read a few chapters of We Have Always Lived in the Castle before bed.

So that was my day. How was yours?

Apparently Saturday was National Bookshop Day. If I'd known that, I would have... actually, I probably wouldn't have done anything, as I had other things to do on Saturday. But the sign was still on the window of the bookshop near my office when I passed today, so I went in and bought this. So that's my local bookshop supported.

And from a variety of sources, that long meme that's going around.

1. What kind of soap is in your bathtub right now?
None at all. I don't like baths. Why would I want to sit in dirty water? My bath is boarded up with a pot-belly fig on top.

( Plenty more, probably only of interest to Daisy completists )

I found my first ever grey hair this weekend, which was unexpectedly depressing. Closer inspection revealed a couple more. I pulled them out. Take that, ageing process! What was weird was that two of them were white at the bottom, but dark at the top, as though my hair had changed its mind. I wouldn't have thought that was possible, but there you go. The internet tells me the average age for women to start getting grey hairs is 34, which means I am above average by two years, so that made me feel a little better.

On Saturday evening, there was a knock on the door but there was nobody there. An hour later, the doorbell rang, but, again, there was nobody there. I shut the leather bellpull in the door to remove temptation (my doorbell is an actual bell next to the door). An hour later, there was a knock, and another one an hour after that. I know who it was. There is a boy, about ten, a couple of houses down, who has a friend who lives around the corner. They went through a doorbell ringing phase earlier in the year as they walked between their two houses. Not just my house, though I suppose it is particularly tempting because it has relatively easy access to the front door, compared to neighbouring houses that have a little porch to go through. They stopped when the man across the road lay in wait behind his door and caught them red-handed at the doorbell. I hope Saturday was a one-off recurrence. I don't really begrudge them being silly, but it is just a tiny bit annoying. And I hope they're not doing it to Joan Next Door, who is an old lady living on her own. I must ask her next time I hear her in the garden.

I have been working on my year-end newsletter thing that I send out with my Christmas cards and on reflection I have come to the conclusion that 2010 has not been particularly happy for me. I seem to have been down and grumpy all year. I normally try to be chipper* here, to cheer myself up, but I don't know how successful I've been lately. Anyway, I am very much looking forward to drawing a line under 2010 and starting a fresh new year.



* The spell check wants to change that to 'kipper'. I think it's safe to say I've never tried to be kipper.