annarti | Entries tagged with summer

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: living room

My phone carked it :< After years of loyal service it's just given up the ghost. It was the perfect phone: green, reasonably cheap and, best of all, waterproof. I've taken it in the pool on multiple occasions, been running with it in the rain, swum in the ocean with it shoved in my bathers. Apart from that one time last summer that I forgot to dry out its headphone jack after swimming in the sea and the salt very quickly corroded said jack, it's been brilliant. This afternoon, though, dead. Functioned fine while in the sea (well, 'fine', with everything wet the touch response always takes a bit of effort to dry your finger off enough for it to register, but still, fine), fine when I got out of the water and dried it off to stop my fitness tracking, but when I got home, it wouldn't turn on again. I took the back off, where it's usually bone dry, and it was sodden. I followed this tutorial to take it apart and subsequently shattered the screen and possibly broke its earpiece, but I had fun taking it apart, anyway.

So now I'm in the market for a new phone. I highly doubt I'll find that holy trinity of cheap, green and waterproof, but I can dream. Or just find another Motorola G3 on ebay. I've done that before, when the headphone jack died, with the intention of using its headphone jack to replace mine, but I've just been using the extra phone in the car for music. It came from Brazil, tho, so my Aussie sim card won't work in it, sadly.

ALSO. I have a bung ankle. This was from Wednesday two weeks ago, now. Running on the beach, doing my sprints as I've been doing for a good chunk of February, and I stepped in a footprint, rolling my ankle. It felt so innocuous at the time, just a bit of an, 'ooh,' bit of a sting, and I kept going with just a twinge, figuring it'd work itself out. Once I got back to the car, it had swollen up to give me a not insignificant cankle. After a week of no improvement, I went to the doctor and was told that yep, that's normal, this sort of injury usually takes 4-6 weeks to heal.

D:

This sucks balls. I've been doing so well with the fitness! Going to the beach after work for most of February to do sprints on the beach or go swimming if it's been warm enough. If I made it down every day for the month, I was going to reward myself with Copenhagen ice cream on the 29th and it was going to be awesome. I've been gearing myself up for self-imposed Walk Week! For the second week of March! When there were going to be no committments from Sunday through to Saturday, no footy or cricket, no family dinner and even a public holiday Monday, so I was going to go on a bushwalk (or similar) every day after work with the last of daylight savings... That's not happening now, cos the stupid thing'll only be at 3.5 weeks by then and not up to bushwalking. It STILL doesn't feel any better than day one.

But eh. New tech is exciting, my phone was getting somewhat slow and only just lasting the day on battery anyway, so that's fine. Ankle will heal, and I can't feel it at all when in the water so I can at least still do fitness while it's summer. I'm just piling together eeeeverything to give me motivation right now. For every 5 kilos I'm buying myself a fitness reward. 85kg will be new socks (I know, thrilling, but that should've happened this week if not for the goddamn ankle, and my sockies right now are so threadbare in the balls of my feet that one of the four has a hole there), 80kg will be new shoes and 75kg, my goal, will be sexy activewear from, like, Lorna Jane or Seafolly or something. Because screw you I'll have earned it by then. Anyway I'm compiling pictures of all these things as motivation. Also, a list of things to ddo to mix it up, such as Walk Week, which will now have to move to the end of the year (booooo), interesting places to do the fitness (like the beach! Or the botanic gardens, along the Torrens, look up other places...), do like a gym/yoga/pilates/whatever trial month to see what, if anything, I'm missing there. All that stuff. So I'll get back there. Just frigging annoying right now.

Time to look at new phones. Yay.

Current Mood: calm

Three weeks ago it was still winter. I was at the cricket and it was cold and wet and everyone was in winter gear, complete with Crows scarves and beanies cos Cricket Australia doesn't make scarves and beanies. Last week it was spring! We got, like, a solid six days of spring this year. That's a lot of spring because spring is a lie. It's winter up until mid-December, then you get a week of spring, tops, and then BAM you're on day four of 40+ and everything's on fire.

Hey look everything's on fire. Must be summer. IT WAS WINTER THREE WEEKS AGO.

The Advertiser is Helpful. (I mean, they're not wrong. Also lol 'cool in the night' that very night it was still 37 at midnight.)

Mostly, though, fire. I'll just preface all this by saying I'm safe, my family's safe and I promise if I'm ever in a danger zone I'll evacuate (as will be described below) but yes. For now, my bit of the Hills is fine and dandy.

So, fire. NSW has had it shit for ages now, and that's undoubtedly what's been making international news, but we sadly got our bit yesterday. Catastrophic fire conditions (which is the worst) which doesn't necessarily mean something will catch fire, it just means that if something does catch fire it's going to be a shitshow. We've been through plenty of catastrophic days where no catastrophe actually eventuated. Yesterday, manymany things caught fire. Big ones on Yorke Peninsula, in grasslands just off Main North Road, stuff on Kangaroo Island which seems to have been worse today than yesterday, started by dry lightning.

The big one, though, has been the Cudlee Creek fire, which I'd been monitoring all morning, then we went to end of work/pre Christmas lunch at a pub whose aircon was not coping with its fourth day over 40. Those poor waitresses and kitchen staff, omg.

For the record, I live in amongst all those little greyed out <!&rt; marks in the bottom left of those maps. The red indicates the warning area, where you should really be evacuating, and the hasshed-ut bits indicate the fireground. Individual icons indicate reported incidents--exclamation points being small, localised things (like a house alarm, tree down, car accident, that sort of thing), fire is when general nature is on fire and (not visible here, but they'll come in a sec) little houses with fire are buildings on fire.

So that was how it was developing yesterday. Started the top left of that red blob, north-westerly blew it south-east and devouered Lobethal and Woodside, then a cool change hit and brought with it cool winds (it only got to 23 today), fuck-all rain, dry lighting that started the fires on KI and a change in wind direction, so now the goddamn thing looks like ( this )

Or even more specifically, this. The fireground is the size of Adelaide. Those little pockets there, if you zoom in on Woodside, for example, are where the fieries have managed to keep it back from the actual townships. Yellow means it's downgraded from 'Emergency' status to 'Watch and Act' status, which I'm unclear on because the latest report from the CFS says it's still uncontrolled so idk. Maybe it's just because the conditions aren't nearly so bad as yesterday. Also this from my favourite insta, which is terrifying.

I wish I'd taken a screenie of this before the cloud came over. You could see the plume of smoke on the satelite image from the fire, but I mean... you have to zoom in to see it. Pan west and the shit that's going on in NSW right now is horrifying. If you look at that in daylight (ie not the infra red overnight) then all the dirty-looking cloud cover you can see over half the country is smoke. Cricket match I was watching tonight from Canberra was abandoned because smoke blew over the ground and it looked like this. Victoria is not on fire and yet Melbourne looks like this.

I think WA is okay. They seem to be not on fire. Well done WA!

Oh also, Cudlee Creek was started by a tree falling on power lines. Not fire bugs, thank god.

But yes. In closing, I'm safe. The cool change is now blowing the fire in the complete opposite direction from me (on that map above, I'm around about where the lone greyed out <!&rt; is in the bottom right-ish). It'd have to get through the whole Crafers/Stirling/Bridgewater area, which is much more heavily populated than where it is now and hence much easier for the fieries to navigate by road. It'd also have to jump the freeway, the big red wiggle going through said Crafers/Stirling/Bridgewater area. So yeah, I'm safe and I promise I'll tell you if ever I'm not ♥

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: living room
Current Music: avatar: the last airbender

My poor melty Europeans :< 40+ sucks enough when you live in a country prepared for such occurrances. I think I've given all my hot-weather advice over the years. Best thing is having a cold shower with just a liiiiittle bit of hot in it, enough that you can stand under it but that it'll still cool you down. Get the water especially where your blood vessels are close to the skin--armpits, scalp and butt-crack. I swear to god, cold water down your butt-crack when you're roasting hot feels sooooo good. Stand there until you're bored shitless and go back to bed. Bonus points if you don't towel off before you get there.

Also frozen grapes are great. And leech off anywhere that has aircon--shopping centres, libraries, cinemas if this thing's still going by Tightarse Tuesday. Keep the curtains closed and everything electrical turned off except the fridge. Ideally don't cook anything, either. Salad is friend. Then as soon as it gets cooler outside than in, fling eeeeeverything open and douse yourself in insect repellant.

GOOD LUCK, LOVELIES.

Meanwhile, we're having the most piss-weak winter I've ever experienced. Regularly getting days of 20+, delightful sunshine, spring blossoms are already coming out, very little rain, haven't even been tempted to use the heater all winter, eastern states remain in a hideously crippling drought... It's July. Usually I'm sick of winter by about May, but this winter has barely even felt cold. I'm kinda scared for this summer now. If northern France and the Netherlands can hit 43, shit knows what's going to happen here. We hit 48 last summer. LET'S CRACK FIFTY CELCIUS. WHY THE FUCK NOT.

In not-weather news, bloogum is progressing nicely! I've done the Yrae Chronicles, Cork's Crew and old fiction pages, so I'm a little over half done. Seem to be getting one page done a week, so I might have it finished in a month or so, that'd be nice.

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: living room
Current Music: game grumps stream tetris

I briefly mentioned this earlier but I want to wax lyrical about my local supermarket. They have a quiet night, which is for two and a half hours on Monday night from 6:30, for people who get overstimulated by too much... stimulation. Yeah. So there's no music, the beeping of the cash registers is significantly quieter and they dim the lights.

There's live music on a piano at the back of the supermarket. There's a salumi bar, a cheese bar, a full-on patisserie, a seafood bar and a restaurant. You can take a seat and a plate at all of these spots. In a supermarket.

But of course, the reason for a supermarket is the stuff you actually buy in it. BAM Asian produce. They have durian and rambutan! Fresh galangal and kaffir lime--not just the leaves, but the fruit. Feijoa, kohlrabi, lychees and okra, and those are the things I've heard of. It's at this point when I'm telling people about Pasadena Foodland that they usually go "oh yeah, you can get them at the Central Markets," but the Central Markets are something special. This isn't an Asian supermarket or the Central Markets, this is a frigging supermarket.

What the shit is an abiu? Or a hairy melon? Sapodilla? So after four years of shopping there and going in with my shopping list based off a recipe I've got in my books at home, but walking past all this weird shit and wondering how to use it and what it tastes like, this year I decided to approach things a little differently. Go to the supermarket, pick a weird thing, look up a recipe using it on my phone and make the shopping list while I'm there.

So my experiments so far this year! I've made this hairy melon recipe, which was... the actual stuffing was odd? Somehow it was lacking, and the vermicelli was an odd addition. The hairy melon itself was kinda like a giant zucchini, right down to the hairyness of it. You know that sort of prickly feel zucs have? Yeah, like that. It was much firmer than a zuc, tho, so it held together really well and was still reasonably chunky after being in the oven for 45 minutes.

I made okra! From a recipe in one of my recipe books, which was part of what started me on this weird shit kick. So this was Turkish-inspired and had lamb mince sausages I made as well (mixture didn't hold together but it was super tasty, honestly I'd just use all the stuff that wasn't mince as a marinade on chops), an amaaaazing salsa, a salad with pomegranates because WOO summer, and the okra! 'How do you cook [weird thing]?' 'Looootta garlic.' Idk if it fell into that typical style but there were four garlic cloves involved in just the okra, also fried onion and that kind of general yumminess. I enjoyed it! Weird texture, slimy in the middle with some little seeds that go pop in your mouth, honestly not sure on the taste because of all the garlic. The whole meal was pretty awesome. Every now and then I just like doing a meal with a whole lot of stuff to it, just for me. I like cooking.

Made this, which used both kumquats and tamarind paste, and it was amazing and I recommend it highly if you can get your hands on kumquats and tamarind paste. I didn't put any sugar in it cos it's not a goddamn dessert and it's already got kumquats in it, it's sweet enough. Went so well with pork, omg perfect.

The latest one has been venison, which I actually got as part of the meat shop, because every meat shop I get one special meat, like duck or prawns or something else pricey. Cos it's only me here, and for just the odd one-off it's not a hell of a lot more expensive than the standard stuff. So yeah. Every venison recipe is full-on gourmet. I was just saddened that the celeriac in the supermarket was super piddly that day. Like in the past few weeks they've been HUGE beautiful monsters, easily the size of a melon, but these were barely the size of a decent onion. Anyway. The recipe was beauuuuutiful, amazing sauce with all the cherries. The meat itself is so much like kangaroo, very yummy, so I'll probably do this recipe again with roo. Love adding to my roo recipes list. I've got one bit of venison left so that'll be dinner tomorrow, then next~

Banana flowers! Specifically this recipe, only I'm low on meat--all I have left is half a pork belly, a tray of lamb chops and two bits of salmon--so I'll probably do this one with the salmon. Salmon always goes well with Thai flavours so I feel that'll be a good slide-in.

Also, Thai basil! I just planted some over the weekend. I don't have a cup and a half of it, but I also don't have a kilo of chicken (which will be played by salmon, as mentioned) so idk, half-recipe. Why doesn't Pasadena Foodland have Thai basil? They have finger limes, Buddha's hands and breadfruit but no Thai basil? I know this cos I've looked twice for other recipes, hence trying to grow the stuff. Last time I planted it, it got completely overwhelmed by the Vietnamese mint, so hopefully it'll be happier this time around. There it is, third photo is my herb garden. The big grassy one is lemongrass, to the left of that, the bushy one is the Vietnamese mint, and the little one in front and between the two of them is the Thai basil. Clearly that is not a cup and a half's worth. D'yknow what I'm going to hold off on that recipe until it grows big enough to get a cup and a half of Thai basil off of it.

Okay so. Hot weather~ weird foods~ that one. Yam beans and baby Asian salad leaves. I can do that one with the pork belly. DONE.

Also it's hot again but it's also February so that'll happen. Since Saturday it's been 35, 37, 37, 37 today, 36 tomorrow, 40, 39, then a cool change down to 32, 30 and 28.

It's also festival season, so the Fringe is on (woo!) and the formerly-Clipsal-now-just-Adelaide-500 V8s are on (boo). Well, road closures are on, racing doesn't start til tomorrow. Monday I left home 15 minutes early in anticipation of traffic and arrived at work 20 minutes late, because I underestimate the Monday every goddamn year. So okay, fine, Tuesday I left home 25 minutes early... and got to work 25 minutes early. What the shit even. So that made up for Monday??? At least??? Today I almost got it, only got in 5 minutes late, so I've had a net ratio of on-time this week. Yay.

FINALLY. No wait. I should put this bit in a private post cos it really relies on real names.

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: living room
Current Music: aus vs sri lanka, 2nd test live from canberra

It's still hot. Frig, this summer. No extended walk this weekend because of it. I was hoping to go down to the south coast, ride the Goolwa to Port Elliot (maybe all the way to Victor Harbor) route, hoping it'd be cooler down there than up here, but it was still forecast for 35. As it turns out, that happened at about 11am then it suddenly dropped off and was probably only around 30 when I would've been riding. Go figure. Instead I've just sat watching cricket all day, yay! Go for standard sprints-run after that's done.

I finally put my Sydney photobook into production on Friday, so they'll be done probably Monday, maybe Tuesday, woo! I would upload these things, but even the super-fugly low res low quality ones come out over 20mb, and trust me, they are very fugly.

Oh yeah! One thing I've been trying out this year. My local supermarket is pretty awesome. The fruit and veg section has heaps of stuff you'd otherwise only find at Asian grocery stores or maybe at the Central Markets, and every time I go shopping I look at these weird things I've never heard of, or stuff I have heard of but have no idea what to do with, and wonder what they taste like. This year I've decided that, every week or two, I'll pick one of the weird veggies, google it for recipes, and make something based on that.

The last one was kohlrabi, which is one I've heard of but have no idea about, so I made this salad, but only half quantity, and had that with fish. It made a LOT of salad. I've been having it in sandwiches at work for lunch for like two weeks now. The dressing was amazing, though. Kohlrabi itself? Kinda like a big radish, I guess, though not nearly as peppery. I've read it can also be baked in the oven so I'll probably do that once the weather cools down and see how that goes.

Tonight is hairy melon! No idea what this thing is! But this recipe sorta seems to suggest it's something like a zucchini. I'll report back.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: living room

COOL CHANGE YESSSSSSSSSSS oh my god it was only 28 degrees today and I had legit goosebumps when I went to lunch. Drops of water fell from the sky but only of the variety that sit on the ground for about 20 seconds before evaporating and making it humid. But I mean. At least it was so humid that the garden was still damp after I watered it last night, so that was a nice bonus. Didn't have to water the garden today, woo.

So yesterday it was foreccast for 47, right? We exceeded it. Forty-eight degrees Celcius. That's a touch over 118 for my American lovelies. D'YOU KNOW WHAT? NOT KEEN. I'm not sure I can put this into words someone not Australian will understand? But anyway. When it's hot and you stand in the sun, you can feel it burning your skin. I guarantee this is a uniquely Australian thing, because we have no ozone. Trust me, you can feel it. It's not just hot, it's actually burning as you're standing there. So that's normal omfgHOT. That's like... 35-42 hot. Everyone in Australia has experienced that kind of hot. It sucks, but you get a day or five of those every summer.

48 is a solid six degrees on top of omfgHOT. It feels like that in the shade. It feels like the sun is burning your skin while standing in the shade.

It hit 40 by about 10am and just kept piling on a degree or two every hour until we maxed out at 3pm. The aircon at work was really struggling, so even inside it was probably nudging up towards 30. In the absence of blinds, we taped a piece of pull-up banner stock to the window when the sun came around that side of the building and that made a noticeable difference.

Then I had to get in the car and drive home, and that suuuuucked. Even parked in the shade, the steering wheel was burninating so I was holding it with my fingernails. Pumping the aircon, obvs. Got home, had dinner and went straight to the beach.

Glorious.

The sea was glassy-flat and there was absolutely zero chill factor. None of the hugging yourself as the water inches up your knees, thighs, bits, belly--none of that. It was practically tropical. There were pockets of water so warm it was like someone had peed there, only they hadn't because these pockets were fully the size of a human and also nobody was within 50m of me.

So I did my fitness, swam half a k or thereabouts, and floated there until I got bored, basically. Then I got ice cream because fuckit. I felt like it was cooling down at, like, 8pm. Checked my phone and it was 40. It had indeed dropped eight degrees, woo.

And that's the story of how I survived 48°C. I feel like I need a tshirt to commemorate the occasion, to go along with my I Survived The Statewide Blackout commemorative cap of... whenever that was. 2016? Meh.

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: living room
Current Music: australian open

There's a Dara O'Briain sketch where he talks about being in Australia and seeing the weather report for Adelaide, where the "overnight minimum is twenty-seven degrees Celcius." So he jokes that if that were to happen in Ireland, he'd shake the kids awake and go, "come on, kids, we're going to the beach!" Can't find the sketch, but the point stands. Also:

im dun.

killme

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: living room
Current Music: strikers vs renegades, t20 domestic, live on foxtel

What is this shit? Are we seriously going for 32°C overnight with a random dip to 27°C at 7am? This is going to be one of those weird days where the daily max is at 3am or something.

Jesum Christmas. I can't even open the house up.

Current Mood: chill
Current Location: living room
Current Music: horizon ~ gary luton

My New Year's Eve was significantly smaller than it has been in previous years--just me, Mum and Dad with copious cocktails and the Sydney fireworks on telly. Still, was a nice, quiet evening.

Earlier that day I also bought a tray of pratia from the local native plants nursery, then planted them all down the front end of the garden. The place is in the middle of the Belair National Park and I had no idea it was there until Mum took me back in September-ish. Normally I get them from Bunnings for about $6 per plant. From this nursery, though, they're normally $4 per plant, and because I got the whole tray they did it for me at wholesale, $2.90 per plant. If only I'd known about this longer! This is pretty much the last I'll need to get of it, I hope. I've got them spotted all over the back area now, so it's up to them to grow into themselves. The far end, where I planted them in autumn, have pretty much covered the ground with just a couple of bald patches yet to go. I'll leave the whole lot for a year or so, then any remaining patches I can fill in with a few new plants. It's looking good, though, and there's enough there that I can walk on it. It's so, so soft and cool, much nicer to walk on than lawn. Love it. The only remaining garden plan now is calla lilies, which will go in where the daffodils are, but I'll need to wait until you can get bulbs of those. Daffodils come up in August, die back in October, lilies come up to replace them in October/November. It'll be glorious.

Meanwhile, my holiday is sliding away too quickly. Four days left? Seriously? I'd hoped to write a chapter or two at least, but I've only just been able to start on such things today. I did get all the memories added for

figjam and

yrae, so that's that off my back. God it was dull, though it did get me wanting to write again. I used to write a LOT of minifics, doing those 15min fics and such once a day for years. I also went a long, long time between chapters. Like, a quick chapter was a month, and that's when I was at uni and living with Mum and Dad. This year I'm hoping to hit chapter 20. I feel like last year I really hit the groove of how to consistently write chapters--write about them in the Spoiler Book before writing the chapter itself. It's amazing how many issues I could easily out in that time, instead of coming up against a block midway through page two and just waiting until it sorted itself out, usually four months down the track when I'd finally realise I needed to backtrack and start the whole section again. Now, though, I think I've got it. Let's see how this practice will apply to Steel.

Ummmmm... It's hot. I've been watering the garden every day over 30, which has meant every day since I knocked off work. Tomorrow is 41, so that's fun. (no it isn't). I will park myself in front of the cricket and hopefully bang out the rest of this chapter.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: living room
Current Music: new year test, the ashes, live from scg

Happy new year for realsies, now! I've had a delightful holiday. Having Alex over from Sydney I've practically been a tourist in my home city, which is a lot of fun. We've been to many an eatery for amazing food, omg. The Adelaide food scene is so brilliant right now. I love that this is becoming our major tourist attraction cos I can make use of it, too X3

Jamie's Italian, however, I'm going to make the recommendation that we scratch from the traditional almost-Boxing-Day lunch. The food was great, but dear god the hassle of getting there. As the holder of the credit card I was in charge of booking, because early booking got us a 20% discount or something if we did so in November. So I made our booking online towards the end of November, but didn't have any option there to pay. I got an email warning me that this booking meant nothing until I had actually paid. So I rang four or five times over the weekend, never spoke to a human, left a couple of messages that nobody ever returned, until finally, on 29 November, I got an email with a link to pay. Sweet! Paid money, happy days, we're going to Jamie's Italian.

The week before Christmas, I got another email telling me we needed to preorder our actual meal and if we didn't then our booking would be cancelled. No deadline to this preordering, but we panicked and put in our orders, hoping that the weather on the day wouldn't make the choices stupid. Sweet! Preorders made, happy days, we're going to Jamie's Italian.

Two days before, I got ANOTHER EMAIL. Please confirm your booking. If you don't then we'll keep all your money and you don't get your table. OH MY GOD. Click the confirmation, this now being the fourth time I have confirmed that yes, we're coming to Jamie's Italian. THANKS. JESUM CHRISTMAS.

We turn up, one member down because she had the flu but without getting any refund for that, and we're told that they've sold out of one of our meals. I'll just allow an ellipsis for that to sink in.

...

HOW. We booked a MONTH ago. We paid a MONTH ago. We PREORDERED TWO WEEKS AGO. That is just unacceptable. Luckily for us it was the number down whose meal was somehow 'sold out' but dear gods above that's atrocious. I have less complicated bookings with international travel. This is a goddamn restaurant booking, and in the end it achieved nothing. So no. Not happy, Jan.

Food was good, though. Paté was awesome, though they had the gall to charge us another $7 for a few extra bits of bread, fish was delicate with its nice crispy skin, though the piddly little shrimp the size of the last joint on your pinkie finger would have been better as two or three nice big SA prawns, and the panacotta was perfect. But the service was slow, for being less than half full and pre-paid and pre-ordered I cannot get over this. They knew we were coming and what we were ordering. I just. That's it. No more Jamie's Italian for me, they don't deserve my business.

New Year's Eve was at Stam's mum's place. Stam is Alex's friend from school who has moved to Melbourne, then there was also Linda and Hanh and of course me and Alex. Great little group we are :D I was once again in charge of cocktails and other booze, while the other guys got the food together. We've learned from last year! No reheated frozen food for us, all freshly made and great, with dip and cheeses from the previous day at the Central Markets, yummy chicken wings, sausages, and beautiful home made mousse, Eaton mess and mango jelly/pudding/thing. I did manage to forget the cocktail shaker, though. And the martini glasses. We made do with an empty bottle and wine glasses, and then it was brandy Alexanders and golden dreams all 'round! And bellinis, and gin and tonics, and straight bubbly, and some weird Irish thing that needed diluting with soda water because my god it was sweet.

It was a great night. Just an awesome bunch of people having fun and getting happily drunk, nobody threw up or pushed anyone else to do so... I love these girls <3

Alex and I then spent a couple of days spending my many hundreds of dollars of Westfield, David Jones and Myer vouchers on clothes and some makeup. We shopped, and then we dropped. I'll take photos at some point but right now it's 41 degrees and I can't be arsed. Just in case I don't get round to it: This top, this skirt and also the cream tee she's wearing with it, which has gold dots on it and will go well with my red jeans, this jumpsuit (I KNOW. ME IN A JUMPSUIT? It's really cute, though!) and this dress. There's a pair of denim shorts, too, that I can't find on Myer anymore but I'm sure you can picture denim shorts. Less exciting (or more exciting? :O ) I got three new bras: that one which is much prettier and brighter than in the photo and that one both with their matchy-matchy undies, and that one without the matchy-matchy because the only pair of matching undies left were a size 6. Also got foundation, liquid eyeliner and fiery red lippy, so that's fun :D AND ALL OF IT FREE MONEY! I had two $200 Myer vouchers from work Christmas bonus of the past two years, another two $200 Westfield vouchers from cashing in my credit card points, and a $50 David Jones voucher from the Qantas points I got going to Japan last year. Still got about 150 Myer dollars left that I'll keep to get some new jeans for winter.

Also on sizing, I am officially a size 12 now! It was one HELL of a morale boost going clothes shopping, you guys. I'm used to hoping to fit into a 14 but realistically getting the 16 off the rack, too. Now, I fit a 12 quite comfortably from every brand I tried on. Some of the stuff I got was a little firm, but I'm doing the same fitness as I did in the first half of last year so I should be able to drop another ten by winter, at which point jeans shopping. But omg all that work I've been putting in has been paying off so much. Health year has worked :D

On Wednesday we went to the zoo! Because Alex and Stam still hadn't seen the pandas, so they've seen them now. It's been a good decade since I've properly been to the zoo, so to see just how much has changed is incredible. Really only the SE Asian rainforest walkthrough and the sealions are the only bits I recognise. Everything else is entirely different. There's beautiful jungle all over the zoo now, both for the animal enclosures and for us to just walk around, and it's so lush and gorgeous. Sadly a fair few of the old stalwart animals have died in the last year, most notably the tiger and one of the two orang utans, and the two flamingos are, like, 80 years old now, and since we got them the laws on bringing in birds have made it highly unlikely that they'll be replaced when they die, too. That said, the meerkats are always adorable, the sealions were fun, otters were such slippery cuties. Only got to see the red panda's beautiful tail and not the rest of him, but the pandas themselves were reasonably active, so that was good.

Finally, last day on Thursday, we went out to lunch again and followed that up with Jumanji, which was surprisingly great. From the previews, I always thought it could go one of two ways--either be really really awesome, or really really cringe-worthy. Happily it was the former. You will believe Jack Black was a teenage girl trapped in Jack Black's body. And The Rock was an awkward geeky boy. The action was fun, the comedy was bang on, I laughed a lot and it was great :D Nice bookend to the trip--we went to see Thor (again) on the first day Alex was here, and Jumanji on the last. Good clean fun action movies :D

I also bought a laptop, but holy shit this post is long already and I'm going to leave tech talk for a later date.

Current Mood: chilled
Current Location: home
Current Music: anomaly ~ lights & motion

STOP EVERYTHING.

IT'S TWENTY-ONE DEGREES.

*FLINGS THE HOUSE OPEN*

This is the first time the temperature has dropped below 26 in three days. It's beautiful. I'm so glad I live on top of a hill now and get a breeze to go with my cool change. Soon as I opened the window it was just sweet relief all over.

I wrote four pages today! After sitting on the last chapter for six months I'll have this one done in a weekend. What even is writing.

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: living room
Current Music: the project

41, 41, 39, 35... yes this is just what I want when I start bleeding =|

Table and wine rack are finished! ( Read more... )

And I finished a chapter! My god I've been sitting on that thing for literally half a year. Yay.

And Cassie and I have booked Japan accommodation! I am so goddamn excited. We've mostly got reasonably cheap stuff, through Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto (which is where we'll be for half the time), then one nice night in Hiroshima and one REALLY nice night at the base of Mt Fuji with an outdoor onsen and frigging amazing food everywhere. I CAN'T WAIT. It's less than a month away omfg. Now it's all booked it feels really real. EEE!

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: home
Current Music: game grumps play sonic 06

It's 31 degrees. It's also 10:30pm. It was 40.2 degrees, making Adelaide officially the hottest capital city in the world for Christmas Day. Suck on that, Cairo! Screw you, Nairobi! In your face, other desert-like nations!

Christmas was delightful! I hosted, being as there were only five people attending with an outside chance of a sixth. I figured it was the prime opportunity, since I really can't fit more than that around my dining table. I made these for nibbles, only realising as I was cutting up the cucumber that I didn't have any toothpicks but whatever, we made do. Prawns with a Thai marinade for entrée, then Mum helped out with the mains. Because my oven really only has room for the turkey, and also it was forty goddamn degrees, I did salads instead of veggies. One with mango, avocado, cucumber, coriander and a chilli, which I make all the time through summer for myself because it's awesomely fresh and yum, and one from a recipe book with spinach, nectarines, capsicum, toasted almond flakes and crispy proscuitto. I wouldn't crisp the proscuitto next time. It was amazing when it was raw, and lacklustre once cooked, so leave it as is. The stuffing also had mango, then bacon, onion, sage and macadamias. Mum glazed the ham and brought that over along with a cold rice pudding which was just delightful.

It was all lovely! Fresh and summery and the aircon worked beautifully. While Dad was carving the turkey, the doorbell rang and the outside chance of the sixth turned up in the form of Laura! As a nurse, we hadn't expected her until at least 3, 3:30, but she timed it perfectly to be there for lunch yaaaaaay!

ALSO
Alex is here! Not here but in Adelaide for Christmas/New Year. I'm seeing her on Tuesday for movies! Moana, Star Wars and Assassin's Creed.
Shopping on Friday was insane. I had to park three streets from the supermarket. Usually the supermarket carpark is big enough but no, not two days before Christmas!
It's still 29 degrees.

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Location: home
Current Music: mi amor ~ armik

PARALLAX SCROLLING IS HARD. WHY AM I PUTTING MYSELF THROUGH THIS?

I've got the rough-as-guts working on desktop, but it breaks on mobile and I can't get the workaround working. It's supposed to basically just stop the funky scrolling effects, but it actually seems to stop everything, resulting in a) a completely static screen that looks like the front of the desktop only it won't scroll; b) a page with the four GIANT and unresized images just scrolling through with no text and then a whole lot of white space; or c) a black screen of nothing.

It really doesn't look like 40+ outside. It's cloudy, for one. I'll bet if it wasn't, we'd actually hit the forecast 44, but it's 3pm and I can't see it going up another three degrees. I did go outside to water my herbs, though. That was quite enough. The basil and the mint are loving it as expected, the coriander's carked it but not before going up to seed so I can at least plant them tomorrow when it's not hot°C, ditto the parsley, the lemongrass and chives keep getting in the way but they're happy, the oregano seems to be having a second coming after its long stalks died and is now short and bushy again, and the rosemary just needs a bigger pot. I think I've killed my studio fern. The bromiliad's happy, and has in fact got three shoots that look like they'll turn into flowers, but the fern is decidedly unhappy if not dead. I'll take it outside tomorrow and leave it there for a while, see if it perks up.

I'd thought of just getting a second iPod for the car, because I keep forgetting to take it with me when I leave the house and also it only fits half my music collection on it. Except that there's only one green gen 3 Nano on ebay and it costs $80 and is in pretty bad nick. So. Screw that idea. I was expecting them to be a dime a dozen.

I'm just procrastinating on the parallax scrolling. Ugh.

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: home
Current Music: all star ~ smash mouth

Still hot.

I've really had a can't-be-arsed week. I've done nothing on my portfolio and been making smoothies for dinner, mostly because it's Fucking Hot and frankly hot food and the associated hot stove/oven/whatever are not at all tempting. I'm out of mangos now, though, so I'm going to have to cook something tonight. Also no running for the same reason. When it's still 30+ at midnight you don't do anything more active than, y'know, breathing.

Mango smoothies make the best dinners, homg. I had some left over coconut milk from a stir fry last week, too, so bunged that in for extra amazing. I'm just going to stock up on mangos for the next week. Actually stone fruit in general. Favourite thing about summer.

Tonight I'm going back to being productive. Gonna do my About page and finish that tomorrow, then Sunday (COOL CHANGE YEAH) I'll do some gardening. Repot the rosemary, glue the extra air plants to the log, prune all the dead bits from the herbs. YEAH.

Holy balls it's hot.

This has been Christmas presents week at work :D All our suppliers have been dropping by with bottles of wine and boxes of Favourites and packets of nuts. We took ours around to our top clients today, and I even got something back from the people I visited as a thank you for all the tight deadlines we've met through the year.

The rest of today was preeetty slow. The entire day and a half we're in next week are going to be thrilling.

Current Mood: pretty
Current Location: home
Current Music: the show must go on ~ moulin rouge! soundtrack

38, 39*, 40**, 41, 42... Just as we were thinking, well, we've had a few spikes but no holy-shit-heatwaves yet... HELLO SUMMER. Meanwhile Sydney's getting pummelled by fricking tornadoes and hailstones the size of golf balls. What the actual shit. Amazingly we're not on fire, but eh, early days yet.

I'm not going for runs right now. We get a cool change on Sunday though! Only 30, yessss. See if that sticks.

In other news, I got a hair cut yaaaaay. And a second ear piercing! Which I've been wanting to do for a while but never thought about it while I was actually at the hairdresser. Even less ouchy than I remember it being the first time around, and I don't remember it being particularly ouchy then, either. So that's cool.

It's quarter to eleven at night and it's still over 31 goddamn degrees.

* That was today's forecast, actually ended up being a touch over 41 so this bodes well.
** That's what yesterday said tomorrow's forecast was, but it's now up to 42. It was just nice how it was slowly counting up, degree by horrible degree. Now the bomsite's just decided 'nope screw it. all of the hot. aLL OF IT.'

Current Mood: productive
Current Location: home

HAHAH. I mean. If you're in Safari on a Mac. Nobody else should notice any difference. I fixed it up during lunch breaks over the past few days at work, that being the only Mac I have relatively steady access to.

I'm now a solid portion of the way through this--I've since done that big gum tree you see on the ref and the trunk of the one next to it, so I'd say maybe 3 hours left there. Taken a break from it tonight to get started on the logos and lettering page, so I've got all the logos presented and ready to go and the header images. Going to get as many lettering bits together now as I can and gather up some quotes for drawing during lunch at work. SHOULD be able to get that page done tomorrow, and then I'll FINALLY be almost caught back up after the delay the damn gallery caused me. Stupid thing. Wish I'd found touchTouch first instead of wasting time on PhotoSwipe. Oh well, live and learn.

It was raining ten minutes ago. Probably only long enough to make it damp and humid, but after last night's gales and 30-ish that kept waking me up, a bit of dampness just puts your mind at ease for a bit.

Current Mood: worried
Current Location: home
Current Music: lullaby ~ noir soundtrack

Sooooo South Australia's on fire again. No comparisons yet to last summer's, probably because the CFS are too busy right now trying to make it not a fire anymore. They can hardly tell us anything about it because it's so big and scary. 41km fire front and 'pretty nasty'. Cos. They're fieries. Properties probably destroyed and people probably dead but they dunno.

Also it's travelled about 50km in 4 hours, so it's travelling at about 13kph, which is faster than I could reliably jog. I've been doing fitness recently, of 30-second sprints, during which I can go about 150m giving me an absolute top speed of 18kph, and that is seriously giving it everything. I'm dead afterwards. And that's in clear air. Which this isn't. The air is black.

Just been upgraded by the CFS chief to 'particularly nasty'. Shit.

(I have the entire city of Adelaide between me and the fires, btw, so I'm safe, as is everyone I know. I do fear for the vineyards, though. Obvious selfish reasons aside, wine is a major industry for my state. Lose too much of that and we're stuffed.)

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: home
Current Music: lady marmalade ~ moulin rouge! soundtrack

( Screw you, Safari )

Screw you right in the ear hole. Why are the divs not wrapping? They wrap on every other browser, including every other browser on the Mac. The blog wraps perfectly and Safari never gave an issue. If I need this thing to work anywhere, it's Safari. Why now? D: Also, troubleshooting this one is bloody awkward, being as I don't own a Mac and obviously can't do my coding at work. Maybe I'll see if Colin'll lend me his, 'cept he seems to be using it as his primary now. HRM.

Balls.

ALSO. Booked a test drive. I'll book the other one when they call me back. Interestingly, both cars listed by dudes. I had thought Mazda 2s, especially the bright coloured ones, were predominantly owned by women, but I have been proven wrong. That or the ladies are letting their dudes do the selling, idk. I'd prefer the Maxx, so if I can get that in under $11k, ideally, like, $10.5k, I'm in. That's the one I was laughing at two weekends ago for being way overpriced, and by the weekend just gone its list price has already dropped by $500, so we'll see how it goes.

Then I get to try and sell the Shagna. That'll be a task.

Also it's hot. This is a serious contrast to last summer, which was the most pathetic I've seen in a while. This one's full El Niño and it's already started. Suspect I'll be using the aircon tonight.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: home
Current Music: feeling way too damn good ~ nickelback

SUCKED IN, AMERICA. I'm going to buy shit online, oh yeah >D

I really don't update much these days. Hrm. Must rectify that.

Last weekend was the official start of summer, as marked by 28 degrees (on Monday, but still) and, more poignantly, fish and chips from Normanville with Anna P on the beach. Course, it's currently drizzling and about 12 degrees as it's been for the past three days, but that's spring for you. It never actually DOES spring. Mostly, it's winter, then you get about three days of spring some time around mid-November, then BOOM it's 35 and summer.

But yeah, the beach was lovely~ <3 Supposed to be fining up this week, so we'll see how next weekend goes.

Tonight I have a little black dress masquerade party, so that'll be awesome :D I bought a mask last week (it has peacock feathers on it and it's green, would you expect any less?) and a little black dress yesterday. Personal opinion, it's too short to be a dress, so I'm wearing a skirt, too. There will be cam whoring.

Annnnd stuff. Yeah I don't have much goss lately.

OH. I've been reading this, which was in my massive box of books from the Shanrie <3 It's beautiful~ and I love it a lot.

And that's all I've got. I'm going to draw now :D

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Annarti

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