March recap

 

Well, so far I’m still on track. In fact I am already ¼ of the way there. I have to admit, I am still enjoying the reading. Actually, I think I am in probably more in danger of becoming resentful of anything that interrupts my reading than of the reading itself. With that in mind I have tried to be careful about some of my reading choices. I got completely sucked into the Dresden chronicles, and I devoured the Hunger Games trilogy, but other than that I’ve been fairly good.

I did manage to see around 15 films @ MQFF. I would have liked to see more but it was never going to happen. Miss R & I both picked some interesting one, but we went to a few separately. Hopefully next year we'll have time to see more.

Uni is keeping things interesting. Major academic projects are not my idea of a good time, but unfortunately I'm doing ‘Electronic Publishing’ so there’s no avoiding it this semester. My initial proposal fell through, so now I’m scrambling to find something else so I can get my plan in on time. It does not look good.

The photobooks class went really well, and head of the training team was very happy with it. She is still talking about having me join the team, but needs to convince her managers to find the funding in the budgets. It’s nice to feel wanted, but I’m not holding my breath.

I am looking forward to catching up with the girls in a few weeks. Between work, uni, and the reading, I haven’t been very social. I’ll have to work on that … in my copious free time.

Books read in March:

64: Sybil Exposed, the extraordinary story behind the famous multiple-personality case by Debbie Nathan

65: Claymore vol 7 by Norihiro Yagi

66: Claymore vol 8 by Norihiro Yagi

67: Claymore vol 9 by Norihiro Yagi

68: Claymore vol 10 by Norihiro Yagi

69: iD_entity vol 5 by Son Hee-joon

70: Storm Front by Jim Butcher

71: Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

72: Grave Peril by Jim Butcher

73: Summer Knight by Jim Butcher

74: Death Masks by Jim Butcher

75: Blood Rites by Jim Butcher

76: Dead Beat by Jim Butcher

77: Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher

78: White Night by Jim Butcher

79: Small Favor by Jim Butcher

80: Turn Coat by Jim Butcher

81: Changes by Jim Butcher

82: Ghost Story by Jim Butcher

83: The other Tudors; Henry VIII's mistresses and bastards by Philippa Jones

84: Kurogane vol 1 by Kei Toume

85: Kurogane vol 2 by Kei Toume

86: The kingdoms of dust by Amanda Downum

87: Kurogane vol 3 by Kei Toume

88: Kurogane vol 4 by Kei Toume

89: Kurogane vol 5 by Kei Toume

90: Terminate with extreme prejudice: an expose of the assassination game, its killers and their paymasters by Richard Belfield

91: Hunger games by Suzanne Collins

92: Catching fire by Suzanne Collins

indoor picnic

I love my friends. No really, I have awesome friends. I could try and list all the ways that they are awesome, but that would just make everyone else sick with jealousy or depressed that my friends aren’t their friends. It’s all true.

This afternoon’s picnic is an example of what happens when you put us all together:

• Miss A’s lentil and chickpea surprise (one of the few things I could eat, stupid body),
• Mr T (no, not that mister T) dates, cheeses, olives, crackers, tasty looking cob loaf (stuffed with lots of things I could eat, and one that I couldn’t),
• Miss J’s chicken pasta bake,
• Miss K’s zucchini slice (definitely something I can’t eat),
• Ms H’s fresh and hot non-denominational buns (with serious amounts of butter).
• Mr N provided the chocolate and walnut cookies, and I made my spicy Cajun capsicum, cheese, and corn loaf.

Lots and lots of food. Of course it’s not the food that makes my friends awesome. It’s more the loyalty, understanding, and the fact that no level of geekiness is too great (though four of us singing the “popcorn song” and could name the two games it was the theme music for was a very geeky moment). It's nice knowing that your friends will back you. They don't need you to explain. They are just there, no matter what.

It is shame that we don’t manage to spend more time together, but we have a few things to look forward to:

• Thor,
• Captain America,
• The Zoo (our gang of roving librarians [and a few non-librarians, we don't discriminate] will be enjoying ourselves, but are still prepared to leap in to action, correcting parents that are filling their children’s brains with rot),
• And a final Harry Potter marathon before Deathly Hallows pt2 is released. (I particularly like the idea of hiring the whole cinema for a bunch of us, but don’t know that we’ll actually go that far).

But first we have to survive work/uni, which means more assignments/hours/PhD proposal. Wonder if I can get zombies into my disaster management plan ...

life get in the way

I’ve been neglecting my blog the last few days (bad Hawm) so I’m making a proper effort tonight/this morning. There is all sorts of stuff going on, of varying levels of importance. So this is, in no particular order, what’s been going on:

• Caught up with my library girls last Wednesday. Always fun, even if the crowd wasn’t quite what we expected. Will go again next month and see if more people front. We made the most of it, and had our own little catch up.

• Work, which is the one constant in most of our lives. The introduction of VOIP by council has been one long fuck up, though my boss was on fire Monday morning. The council IT guys were all hiding under their desks. Some branches still don't have any phones, which means the extra traffic is being forwards through to the branches with working phones. 30 phone calls in an hour. It's like being back in a call centre. Oh to win Powerball and shake of the financial chains. I could really do without the job hunting. It really is depressing.

• Uni. I should spend this Friday on homework and stuffs, especially as I skipped the lecture to catch a movie at the film festival.

• MQFF. All the film you can watch in a 10 day period, provided you have the time and the cash. Miss R and I have been to three sessions so far, and have two more to go. I really enjoy the diversity of films they show, both fiction and non-fiction.

• Old book play-date. Miss A joined Miss R and myself on Saturday for some book loving. It was a close thing, with Miss R coming away not with the pirate book (which had been the original goal) but instead a signed first edition of Texts & Pretexts by Aldous Huxley. I was talked out of the very old leather bound dictionary by Miss R (mostly because it was $250). I may yet go back for it, though apparently I need to invest in a special display case for my growing collection of old books (mostly dictionaries and some poetry).

• I had an interesting chat with a patron about the new series of Dr Who. He was telling me about a guy he follows on twitter, and how some “feminist nazi” was ranting about the series being sexist (it was supposed to be for Red Nose day or something). * So I watched the clip on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51JtuEa_OPc and followed the link the patron gave me to http://twitter.com/#!/TheUrbaneMan to see what all the fuss was about. You can imagine my surprise when I scrolled down and found that Ms L was involved. Truly my world is too small sometimes.

• I had a call from Wendy (little old lady who likes to call and ask about obscure 1960s Australian models). It was a short phone call, under 20mins, but I still couldn’t get her to come into the library. She said she was going off to the state library as they had better resources. I’d be amazed if she’s actually gone into the city. Some of the other librarians and I have a theory that she doesn’t even belong to our library, she just calls each branch asking the same question until she get an answer she likes. She’s harmless, unless you are flat out and she refuses to take no for an answer.

• My little sister wants the whole family home for her 16^th birthday. She seems to have completely missed the fact that my Dad and stepmother don’t want anything to do with my brother and I. Not going to happen. Not a chance in hell. Ah, to be 15 and still think the world revolves around you. Hopefully reality will set in before July.

That’s pretty much it. Not really a terribly exciting update, but it is an update. And now bedtime. At least I can sleep in tomorrow. Love the afternoon shift.

*Now I have known some very nice feminists (and some rather freaky ones, but that’s another story). I have never understood what prevents a man as identifying as a feminist, though I suspect it comes from the (inaccurate) perception that all feminist hate men. If you ever want to chat about feminist theory I’m up for it. The three and a half years I spent studying gender/queer theory at uni have to be good for something  :)

Shrink wrap part 3

Well, I survived. In fact I feel fairly good. Was a little touch and go for a moment, but mostly I’m good. My Doc’s do look after me, though I’m apparently getting a little too cuddly. Of course the first thing I did when I got home was to look up a recipe for rosewater ice cream. Not that we have an ice cream maker, but I’ll probably give it a go anyway.

Other than that I’m making sure I spend time on my uni stuff, and looking forward to next week. Play date with the library girls on Wednesday, and off to MQFF with Miss R on Sun/Mon/Sat/Sun. Busy busy busy. But still, lots of fun.

One more thing: http://smurfhappens.com/

New toys

Apologies for the lack of blogging. We went over out internet usage (first time ever but I still got read the riot act), so I was grounded. But the month has since kicked over so I'm allowed to play again.

I finally went and got a new phone. This is the first new phone I've had in over 10 years. With all the technophiles I've had in my life over the years I have had many second (third and fourth) hand phones. Which is a good thing because there have certainly been time where a new phone was completely out of the question.

Now, with the exception of the occasionally op-shopping play date, I'm not much of a shopper. I do my research, make a decision (eventually), then get in and out in record speed (unless you leave me in a book store, at which point you'd be lucky if I realise you're even gone). So you'll understand when I say how happy I am with my new phone. I've had it for 24 hours now and the only problem is I'm having a hard time putting it down. I'm like a kid with a new toy. With this in mind I have done the grown up thing, put it on the kitchen table, and gone to do something else.

Lets not read anything into the fact that I'm blogging about it right now. Anyway, this is my new phone. I won't talk about it again ... maybe :)