Yrae Chronicles

How has it been over a month? Gdit and I thought I was getting better at this shit. I am better on Insta, so there's that, I guess.

So anyway, somehow it's March already, dunno how that happened so fast, but February went pretty sodding well. Finally got to Chihuly Nights at the Botanic Gardens. It's an exhibition that's been on since October and runs til April, of these massive glass sculptures all around the gardens. I've been several times during the day, because it's just a great place to go for a walk or run after work, but yes, finally got there for the night showing :D The stuff inside the tropical glasshouse was all new to me, since that costs money during the day, and god it's stunning. I mean the whole thing's stunning but... yay new things!

Last weekend we drove to Melbourne to see Green Day! It was SO awesome. Baby's first mosh pit, at the tender young age of 39, aww. Boys were fantastic. It was a bit of an anniversary concert, of their first album, Dookie, 30 years ago; and American Idiot, 20 years ago. They ran through both those albums, track by track, with stuff from the new album last year scattered around, so it wound up being like a 3-hour concert. I last saw them right there back when Marvel Statium was the Telstra Dome back in 2005 (better rundown here on the Adelaide concert, which was earlier that year) and I promise they rocked just as hard as back then. Billie-Joe Armstrong doesn't look like he's aged at all; Mike Dirnt (bass) does look like he's aged about 20 years; Tré Cool (drums) looks like he's aged about 40. BUT LIKE. Drumming is frigging hard work. Mike was often running up and down right in fornt of us and god, that man makes some fun faces <3 I got a couple of them!

The brought up one girl from the mosh pit to give her a mic and sing with Billie-Joe and, after like three seconds of deer-in-headlights panic, it as like she consciously chucked all her inhibitions out the window and just ran with it. She was running up and down the stage, air-guitaring with both the guitarists, also sang really well after the initial fear of holy shit people had been thrown away. Then at the end of her bit, Billie told us all her name was Honey, so of course the crowd started chanting, 'Hon-ey, Hon-ey, Hon-ey!' and it was just a delightful moment :D

Thank you, boys. I did, indeed, have the time of my life 🖤❤️

The final show of the tour was supposed to be this Saturday on the Gold Coast, but um. idk if you've heard but it's a little... breezy... on the Goldie right now. So sadly that one was cancelled :< I feel so sorry for everyone up there, woulda been awesome, obvs.

On Sunday~ we went to Cranbourne Botanic Gardens, which I've been excited to go to for a while now. So many native botanic gardens are planted to look like they do ~in nature~ but like... I already live in the Hills, the bush is literally right there. I don't want to come to a curated garden to see bush, I come to see curated garden. So that's what Cranbourne is, properly architecturally-designed native gardens, and it is stunning. From photos online I've already taken a lot of inspo for the Raykinian royal palace, but seeing it in person is so cool. The red desert one is what you see first walking in, then everything else surround that. I could've spent hours more there, but we got home around midnight as it was, so I'll just have to go again when I go back to Melbourne next. Maybe it won't bloody rain, too :P Seriously, can't remember the last time we had rain in Adelaide* but it was last year, the two-ish days I'm in Melbourne and I get rained on when I'm out in a garden with no shelter. Course, then we started driving home and it was clear blue skies by Horsham. Bloody Melbourne.

I~ have bunged my ankle. This happened last Monday, the week before Green Day, by stepping in someone's footprint wrong in the wet sand on the beach. It's not bad but has just enough of a twinge that it's clearly warning me not to do more than like stand on it. Clearly walking is out. Running 10km? HAH. So I have disappointingly not done any fitness since last Monday. I'm so pissed off. I was doing so well! Running was starting to actually flow and feel natural. Doing the fitness literally every day, even on both days of the weekend, had become just a normal thing I do. I was excited to see the little wheel of confidence (how confident my Garmin app is that I can achieve my goal) go up and up and break from the green Confident range into the purple Very Confident, Maybe You Should Make Your Goal More Ambitious range. I got my VO2 Max, which is a key number for fitness, go from 32 up to 34, just this year! One more point and I'll be up from Poor into Fair! I could even become Good! Not Excellent cos that's the realm of elite athletes and shit knows I can't be bothered with that.

But all because of a bung ankle, that's just stopped. I can pause the actual training app, the one that tells me different running things to do each day, but that doesn't stop my actual body and fitness from going backwards. SO miffed. It's feeling much better just today, no swelling when I got home from work, which is a change, so I'm hoping by Sunday I'll be able to start working back up to doing fitness again. I'm not letting this slide, not this time. I've been doing so well and feeling so good about it, I won't drop it.

I've submitted four stories to various competitions, which I believe all start judging this month? So it'll be exciting to see if they go anywhere. First time submitting to competitions, I don't expect to, but it's still exciting!

Limes were $4.50 for a bag so cosmo's for cocktail hour tonight when Amanda gets home 🍸

OH and Sculptures by the Sea, that was in Feb, too. See, I'm good at Insta!

OH OH and I won a thing! Just on a whim I entered a radio contest to go see Tommy Little's Naughty Fortieth, which is basically part of the Fringe in the Garden of Unearthly Delights, and I won! It was a lot of fun =3 Opened with a stripper Fringe performer who uses FIRE and she was awesome. Then Tommy Little and Carrie Bickmore, who are said radio show, plus three comedian Fringe performers in Luke McGreggor, Ivan Aristaguierta (who is Venueulan and awesome) and Ross Noble came up to play Tommy's card game. Ross waid he got the single most Fringe experience ever, cos they didn't see the opening fire boobies act, but he was backstage. So what he got was this extremely hot, semi-naked woman (she had star nipple stickers and a gstring) wandering around with a giant cannister of parafin under her arm. 'No idea what the show was but it looks like fun!' XD That is indeed the most Fringey thing I've ever heard and I'm so pleased he had that experience X3 And he's been doing Fringe for frigging decades by this point. Ross Noble and Arj Barker are like the unofficial mascots. I LOVE THE FRINGE. And then walking back up Rundle Street to get back to the car, street closed with lights up everywhere, tables and chairs from the restaurants all out on the road, and this at like 11:30 on a Tuesday night. It's just such a fun, vibrant time to live here. Got another, this time paid, show happening next weekend, so excited for that one, too X3

All right now that's everything. Probably.


* If I don't even need to turn my windscreen wipers on, it's not rain. Also for the record, even that's only happened twice this year.

Happy new everyone! 🥳

I keep meaning to do more of a retrospective every year but it just never seems to happen. Sitting down to actually go through everything is a lot, y'know? Maybe if I actually keep up with making entries this year it'll happen for 2025, hah. Not for 2024 cos I~ can't be arsed. Instead, have some 2025 plans.

Holidays were lovely 💚 I made a big effort in getting the garden back up to snuff, which has been suffering from lack of water, so I did a proper rehydration of all the dirt, cut back all the dead bits and bought a bunch of new leafy things to fill in the gaps where stuff died. Also bought new little dichondra for the lawn, which did really well last season until I sucked at watering it, and even then it still lives around the edges. So this year I'm going to make a real effort with the garden, get the dichondra looking gorgeous and lush, hopefully cover the area by next summer. It was really fast growing last time so I'm hopeful.

Also, chillies! I want to get into Mexican cooking, but every time I look at a recipe book they always have like three different chillies in them. In Australia, we have big ones, little ones and green ones. If you have an awesome supermarket like my local, you can maybe get jalapeños. Our exoctic foods are very much geared towards Asian, so if you want galangal or Vietnamese mint or Thai basil, you're good. Different chillies? Not a chance. SO. I asked the Discord of Tasting History for some recommendations of chillies to plant in a Mexican-targeted garden. They gave five different ones, so I bought seeds to grow those last year annnnnd haven't yet planted them. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow >> But yeah, wanna get into Mexican X9

Last garden thing, I want a desert lime. I've tried growing finger lime but keep killing them because I don't water them. I have a regular old Tahitian lime but the sodding thing's biggest season has been to produce six limes. I dream of producing enough limes that I can make a mojito out of the thing, but after 11 years in the ground it's done next to nothing. So. I'm trying to source a desert lime. Surely I can't kill something that lives in the desert.

I know I say it every year, but fitness every day. Ideally lose 25kg but that'd just be the icing on the cake. I want to at least be able to fit into the clothes I bought last time I lost weight, cos I've got some really nice stuff and I can't get it on anymore, which sucks. So yes. Fitness every day. After work is easy, just drive to the beach instead of to work, but doing something on weekends is hard. Motivating to leave the house and take like two hours out of my day for it is effort. That'll be the challenge.

I want to save enough money to finally do up the kitchen next year. I think this is doable? Signs are that interest rates will drop next RBA meeting, which would help. It's not like I spend a lot anyway so I'm not sure what I can do about that, but that's the plan. Kitchen next year.

Also, on the house, I want to sort out the studio. Since Amanda moved in, she has a lot of hobbies that take up a lot of space: beading, sewing (three sewing machines and so much fabric), knitting/crocheting (HEAPS of yarn), a lot of painting and art supplies. All of this is awesome except that everything's literally just dumped in the studio right now. Piles and boxes and boxes and it's just a nightmare opening the door now. Used to be my favourite room in the house, now it's all but unusable with my tiny little corner for my computer. So this year that's getting sorted out. If it means installing a wardrobe type effect for storage, then so be it. I just can't handle it the way it is.

Writing I already went into so won't touch on that here.

I want to try posting on Insta daily, and here weekly. Not a bad start, but if I drop a day here and there, try not to let that get to me and just keep up with it.

That'll do :D