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My Virtual Breaths
Oct. 17th, 2010 02:27 pm1. It went so well last time, I'm going to try again.
2. This time, I'll see if I can count properly. Fingers crossed.
3. Do you want to live near me? By 'near' I mean 'an hour away'. Let's respect each other's personal space, okay? With that in mind, and if you had an unknown but presumably quite large sum of money, you could buy Chocolyn Park in Camperdown. It has a scullery! And a smoking room! And a school room! And a courtyard! And servants' quarters! Everything the modern family needs. Plus a 'superb treed garden' and a slightly out of character tin shed. Put a bid in today.
4. It also has Roman blinds in the kitchen. I can't tell if they are real Roman blinds over the Holland blinds, or just Roman blind-style pelmets. Either way, I don't like them. Do you hear that, Romans? I am not a fan of your blinds.
5. Chocolyn Park also has views of Lake Colongulac. There are a lot of -acs in that part of the world: Beeac, Colac, Coragulac, Moriac. I always mean to look up a place name dictionary to find out what it means. There are a lot of -bools too: Warrnambool, obviously, and Barrabool and Berrambool, and these morph into -pools, and eventually, as someone suggested when I mentioned this, Sebastopol, which is near Ballarat. I think that's got more to do with the Crimean War than Aboriginal toponyms, though.
6. I don't know why I read the Sunday Life magazine that comes with today's paper, except in the hope that the fashion spread will be hilariously wrong. Every week it is full of articles about how hard it is to be a woman today, what with all the affairs we are having and the fashion rules we have to follow. This week, the cover story is about the new trend for growing old gracefully and how great it is that old ladies now look like Helen Mirren. And while I love Helen Mirren as much as the next person, I think it is a bit much to ask other old ladies to look like her now, when they didn't look like her back when they were young ladies.
7. The article also mentions other 'leading ladies' who are growing old gracefully, who include Julia Roberts and Sarah Jessica Parker. Again, I love Helen Mirren, but I am horrified that Roberts and Parker are put in the same age bracket as she is, when they are about twenty years younger.
8. As I mentioned the other day, Australia is getting its first saint soon. Today, apparently, although the lead-up has been so long that I've lost track of time. At any rate, the Blessed Mary MacKillop will soon be Saint Mary of the Cross. I have found the coverage quite odd. (There is a giant souvenir poster of her in today's paper, for one thing.) Media coverage of it has been mostly cheerleading, and based on her virtues. If that is all you read, you would think she was being made a saint because she did a lot of good work and because she reported a priest for abusing children (for which she was excommunicated before being reinstated). And that is all true, and I'm sure she was a very good woman who sets a fine example for us all.
9. But she's not alone in that. What sets saints apart from the common or garden good people is that they work miracles. In the Blessed Mary's case, she has cured two people from terminal cancer and (the backup miracle) one boy from multiple sclerosis, as a result of their prayers. I don't doubt that those things happened, nor that they are miraculous. But I'm not convinced that they wouldn't have happened without the prayers. It just seems odd to me to say blindly, 'Ooh, wasn't she a feisty one?' rather than asking why wait for something so tenuous before celebrating what was a remarkable life even before her supposed afterlife intercessions. Critical thinking: is that too much to ask from journalists?
10. This week is going to be an important one at work, deciding the future of my job. I've tied myself in knots this weekend trying to decide what would be the best option, what would be tolerable and what would make me ask for a redundancy package. Fingers crossed.
2. This time, I'll see if I can count properly. Fingers crossed.
3. Do you want to live near me? By 'near' I mean 'an hour away'. Let's respect each other's personal space, okay? With that in mind, and if you had an unknown but presumably quite large sum of money, you could buy Chocolyn Park in Camperdown. It has a scullery! And a smoking room! And a school room! And a courtyard! And servants' quarters! Everything the modern family needs. Plus a 'superb treed garden' and a slightly out of character tin shed. Put a bid in today.
4. It also has Roman blinds in the kitchen. I can't tell if they are real Roman blinds over the Holland blinds, or just Roman blind-style pelmets. Either way, I don't like them. Do you hear that, Romans? I am not a fan of your blinds.
5. Chocolyn Park also has views of Lake Colongulac. There are a lot of -acs in that part of the world: Beeac, Colac, Coragulac, Moriac. I always mean to look up a place name dictionary to find out what it means. There are a lot of -bools too: Warrnambool, obviously, and Barrabool and Berrambool, and these morph into -pools, and eventually, as someone suggested when I mentioned this, Sebastopol, which is near Ballarat. I think that's got more to do with the Crimean War than Aboriginal toponyms, though.
6. I don't know why I read the Sunday Life magazine that comes with today's paper, except in the hope that the fashion spread will be hilariously wrong. Every week it is full of articles about how hard it is to be a woman today, what with all the affairs we are having and the fashion rules we have to follow. This week, the cover story is about the new trend for growing old gracefully and how great it is that old ladies now look like Helen Mirren. And while I love Helen Mirren as much as the next person, I think it is a bit much to ask other old ladies to look like her now, when they didn't look like her back when they were young ladies.
7. The article also mentions other 'leading ladies' who are growing old gracefully, who include Julia Roberts and Sarah Jessica Parker. Again, I love Helen Mirren, but I am horrified that Roberts and Parker are put in the same age bracket as she is, when they are about twenty years younger.
8. As I mentioned the other day, Australia is getting its first saint soon. Today, apparently, although the lead-up has been so long that I've lost track of time. At any rate, the Blessed Mary MacKillop will soon be Saint Mary of the Cross. I have found the coverage quite odd. (There is a giant souvenir poster of her in today's paper, for one thing.) Media coverage of it has been mostly cheerleading, and based on her virtues. If that is all you read, you would think she was being made a saint because she did a lot of good work and because she reported a priest for abusing children (for which she was excommunicated before being reinstated). And that is all true, and I'm sure she was a very good woman who sets a fine example for us all.
9. But she's not alone in that. What sets saints apart from the common or garden good people is that they work miracles. In the Blessed Mary's case, she has cured two people from terminal cancer and (the backup miracle) one boy from multiple sclerosis, as a result of their prayers. I don't doubt that those things happened, nor that they are miraculous. But I'm not convinced that they wouldn't have happened without the prayers. It just seems odd to me to say blindly, 'Ooh, wasn't she a feisty one?' rather than asking why wait for something so tenuous before celebrating what was a remarkable life even before her supposed afterlife intercessions. Critical thinking: is that too much to ask from journalists?
10. This week is going to be an important one at work, deciding the future of my job. I've tied myself in knots this weekend trying to decide what would be the best option, what would be tolerable and what would make me ask for a redundancy package. Fingers crossed.
