Unanticipated Anticipation

Next week for the very first time I am going to attend a book club.
This as far as I'm concerned is A Good Thing.
I have been very lazy with my reading for quite a while now and this is going to introduce me to new books and authors in a way that will probably snowball and completely decimate my free time.
That's all for the greater good as well. I waste the hell out of my free time.

As I know and quite like the people who are going to be there the only wankery and pseudo-intellectualism I'll have to look out for is my own*, so I'm not worried about that.
I'm worried about My Turn.

The rules, as far as I remember them, are:

• We take it in turns to pick the book we're all going to read for that month's meeting
• It has to be something that none of us has read before
• Um... yeah, that's all I remember, that might be it.

The first book chosen was A Thousand Brilliant Suns by Khaled Hosseini.
I've just finished it and it was brilliant.
The pacing of the story and the presentation of the themes were both done in a very effective way and the manner in which the author describes things is deceptively simple and very stirring**.
I'm going to talk about the use of timing so hard on Thursday...
Ahem, excuse me.

Anyway, my concerns are as follows:

• Like I said, I've been fairly lazy with my reading lately so I'm going to have to go looking for new books. Usually I just go down to the library or the bookstore and wait for something to catch my eye.
• I hate, hate, hate recommending books that I haven't read before. What if they're terrible? What if I've just wasted your precious time and made you read something you can't unread? Like many things in life I'm perfectly willing to accept and forgive this sort of thing happening if somebody else does it and treat all knowledge and experiences as valuable in their own way, but if I do it...
• Nobody in the group is a genre-snob but I'm probably a bit more zombie/sci fi/crime fiction oriented than they are. If I pick something in my usual range I'm going to have to make sure it's well written and accessible to everyone rather than just hilarious and/or interesting to me.

But even now that I'm thinking about it on a Freak Outs register of 1 to 10 this is barely registering a 3.
Despite my reservations I am more excited than apprehensive.
Much more excited.
Oh my God I'm going to read so many books!
Deploying Glee in 10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1!

Glee!!! ^_^



*I majored in literature in university, I only know one way to talk about books and that is pretentiously.
**See what I mean?

Oh Lord He's Doing A Little Dance!

There have been a lot of changes in my world of late.
Not with me - I am probably a bit too comfortable on cruise control - but with the people around me.

Two of my friends (R of the NIN concert and E of the embarrassing teenage adventures who is making her blog mention debut) have just purchased blocks of land with their partners and are planning to build houses in the near future.
Another friend has quit her brain-numbing job, enrolled in a TAFE course, gotten engaged... and crashed her car. She's OK but her car looks a little buck-toothed at the moment, there was some strange crumpling...

The job-quitting, course-taking, engagement-entering, car-crashing friend is my mate Awesome and in some ways I'm having more trouble with her changes than with those of any of the others.
Not because of the job-quitting or course-enrolling because that is a cause for celebration and jubilation across the land.
Not because of the engagement-entering because her fella is a genuinely nice guy and they balance each other out nicely.
But because of the... side effects of the engagement-entering.

Awesome, E (of the aforementioned house/land buying) and I have been friends for about 10 years now and none of us have ever been... excessively girly.
The other two have a lot more knowledge of hair sculpting or face painting than I have but haven't gone to extremes.
E has a higher appreciation of shoes and bags and whatnot than Awesome or I but has never gone buck wild with those either.
Whilst I'm probably the least accomplished in the girly arts due to equal parts laziness and allergy - huzzah sensitive skin huzzah! - Awesome has always been the most pragmatic and down to earth.
But since she became engaged...

There has been giggling.
There has been buying of magazines when there has never been buying of magazines before*.
And I have been given a small notebook and a coloured pen.
For just in case I have ideas for the wedding.
We are to compare notes at intervals.

So far all I've got is: There should be one.

I am ten kinds of happy for her but I've never made this kind of plan so I'm going to have to take a bit of a bit of a mental hop, skip and a jump at it and hope for the best.

This is being made more difficult by the concept of the hens' night.
Which E has already started planning.
There is apparently going to be a stripper.
He is apparently going to be dressed as Darth Vader.
Ever since I heard this I have been unable to get the visual out of my head.
And it is going to be the end of me.




*Well except for ones featuring space-faring adventures, music of a fairly epic nature or cricket players whose children she has offered to bear.

Taking Back The Grey Matter

Alright, that's it.
I've done it.
I've turned off the spellchecker and the autocorrect on my computer.
It is banished.
And maybe now I can remember how to spell all by myself.
And my brain will stop melting.

I used to be good at crosswords.
Really good.
Of course I was living with my grandmother at the time* and used to be called in whenever she was stumped.
Woe betide me if I dared to give her the answer for a non-requested clue that she 'was getting to in a minute' but oh the basking in the shared word nerd satisfaction when I identified a word that unlocked a whole section of the puzzle.

I hadn't tried one for a while and then a few months ago I had a crack at the quick crossword in The Age, got two of them fairly quickly and then just ground to a halt.
I couldn't remember any of the... word thingies...
I got stuck on one possible interpretation of multi-definition words and couldn't even think of appropriately sized synonyms for them.
I got cranky and gave up**.
I decided to write a friend a balanced and objective email about how stupid the crossword was and how back in my day they picked words that didn't suck so much.

I got halfway through composing the email and I realised the following:

• I couldn't remember how to spell one of the words I wanted to use and had been retyping it in a few different ways, waiting for the little wiggly line of failure to disappear so I knew that I had it right.
• That whilst my already quick typing had become quicker that was because I was getting lazy with my keystrokes and depending on the program to autocorrect my ham-fisted attempt at English.
• My email was peppered with z's I hadn't put in there and lacking u's I had because despite my best efforts the damn program keeps resetting to US English.
  

So I've turned it off.
And saints be praised, yes I do remember how to spell and dear Lord has my typing really gotten that bad and check it out I've remembered another word for incessant*** all by myself without hitting Shift+F7 because I couldn't be bothered thinking about it.

I have bought myself a book of crosswords.
Let it begin.



*Another side effect was watching The Bill which was actually quite good until it turned into a soap opera.
**Yay for being an adult! Eff you perseverance!
***It's ceaseless!

The Descent Into Madness (Now Available In Cinnamon Flavour)

Oh Lord save me, I have succumbed to food porn.
I don't mean some fetish corner of the adult entertainment industry where people pelt each other with blueberry muffins whilst flashing come-hither glances, I mean I just can't stop looking up recipes and making long and complex lists of ingredients.
And it's going to kill me.

I'm either going to end up the size of a house or chasing after people holding surplus dishes, screaming 'Eat it! Eat it!'*

So many recipes.
I don't eat enough meals a week to actually make all of them.
And they just keep accumulating.
And what if I find something I like?
If I make it again that pushes back making something new even further.
And some of these recipes are similar but not quite the same so they warrant their own run and...
Oh the logistics!

This has unfortunately expanded to include baking which has made me a little unpopular in the workplace.
Whilst I like cakes and biscuits, if I make them I'm not able to finish them all before they start going Extra Crunchy^TM so I take them into work for people to have with their coffee and whatnot.
And everyone at work is on a diet.
Everyone.

One person went on a diet and then another person went on a diet and then all of a sudden everyone was bringing salad and celery sticks and sachets of brown rice into work and looking slightly disappointed with cups of herbal tea.
Meanwhile I'm sitting here with a plate of biscuits and a cup of coffee.
And my lunch-time portions of food porn.
Things have gotten a little frosty.

I don't know how it's going to happen - coronary, exotic spice overdose, being choked to death by a coworker with some organic low-fat wheat noodles the texture of Hessian because she just can't take it any more - but if it's inevitable I might as well enjoy the time remaining.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go remember how to use Excel so I can make a needlessly complicated spreadsheet.
It might even include a pie-chart.
Oh man, pie...



*And that should be a few years off at least. I'm pretty sure you have to actually reproduce before that gene is activated.

And On The Seventh Day He Rested... And Barbequed Some Lamb...

My landlord is a wonder of 'I figure this will work' ingenuity.

Since I've moved in to my current abode he has landscaped the entire garden, replaced the flyscreens on all of the windows, built a greenhouse and erected* a chicken coop to keep foxes out and chikkinz in.

This marvel of industry often result in me not having anywhere to put my rubbish or recycling for the week as his resourcefulness stretches to seeing wheelie bins as the perfect way to move and store mulch but it's hard to be fussed when he's building a little patio type dais around the base of a tree or making a cactus garden part of which is mounted on top of artfully arranged bits of old furniture.


The greenhouse did come as a bit of a surprise.
It wasn't there when I left for work that morning, when I returned in the evening he had built a framework around his favourite flowerbed and nailed opaque plastic sheeting over it in an attempt to keep his plants alive through the winter.
That day he had also thoughtfully installed a sensor light near the staircase for those winter evenings where you get home after dark and want to get up to your home and put on the heater without stubbing your toes or accidentally Home Alone-ing down the stairs in a humorous fashion.

Of course when you walk through the gate into a darkened yard and a blinding light suddenly hits you in the face illuminating a frosty quarantine tent full of ominous shadows and shapes it can cause you to stumble into a cactus, twist your ankle on an ornamental stone arrangement and drop your bag in a newly mulched and fertilised garden bed... but that's a small price to pay for having free vegetables routinely abandoned at your door because they can't possibly eat all of them all themselves.




*Hurr hurr

Can I Get Them With Metal Points?

A handful of weeks ago I went on a medical appointment extravaganza like a hypochondriac at Christmas.

The physio appointment went well; the doctor gave me my flu jab, took my blood pressure (110/80 I think which I'm told is good) and sent me off to have my blood harvested and tested to see where my cholesterol is at these days*; but the dentist...

Internets, it looks like I'm getting braces.

This is a strange thing to say as a 26 year old grown up person.
Obviously I'm not hugely dentally deformed or this would have happened years ago, according to the dentist it is just that some of my lower teeth rest against my upper teeth in a way that will result in unnecessary wear.

I can imagine getting hooked up with the framework and I can imagine the gentle heartbreak of no popcorn for however long it takes, I can even imagine the hysterical laughter at the point when the orthodontist uses the funny thingies to hook your lips out of the way to photograph your teeth in their current incarnation thanks to having gone along when my sister was having her braces put on... and being the person who was laughing at her...
She's been waiting for this for years apparently, she and her now perfect teeth have been enjoying this idea so much she's been unable to put them away since she heard.

I haven't had the orthodontist appointment yet so I have no idea what exactly it is they're planning to alter or where all my teeth are supposed to end up.

All I know is the whole time I have them I will be pretending to be Jaws out of James Bond and will probably be enjoying it a hell of a lot more than I should do.
A lot more than I would have ten years ago certainly.

Chomp Chomp Chomp!


*I've never had a cholesterol problem but my family has a history of heart disease so I'm starting the monitoring process early because I'm not going to take that kind of insubordination from within my own body, no sir.

In Anticipation Of Silence

The annoying family nextdoor is moving out.

Turns out all the exciting and exuberant late night ball games they've been playing against the 25 year old wooden fence have completely wrecked it and the landlord is less than impressed.

I knew that already of course.

Not the bit about the landlord, the bit about the fence.

We looked after a friend's dog a little while ago and whilst our goofy-assed labrador has no interest in going anywhere without us*, temporary extra pooch is sly and curious and would have investigated the ever growing gaps in the fence. So I spent about three hours before it was dropped off levering two-thirds of the rusty antique nails out of the boards and replacing them with shiny new nails that actually secured them to the framework.
I was quite proud of myself really and probably kept the damn thing from completely disintegrating.

Anyway when the landlord went around for the rental inspection and found a busted fence was the very least of what had happened to the property in the six months since the last inspection they gave the family notice to evict.

But the notice was for 120 days.

That was at least two months ago so we've still got at least another couple of months unless they find somewhere else sooner.
But I don't think they will.
Because the mother works a lot and also uses phrases like 'oh I'll talk to them' or 'I'll see if they'll stop' when we've asked if maybe the kids could not go tearing through our front yard kicking plants and I'm guessing this isn't the first time this has happened.
The kids don't seem to care they're ruining their mother's rental record, they're too busy feeling rebellious and hard done by.

So in a couple of months things should be a lot quieter on our street.
But for the last couple of months I'm not going to be leaving anything important outside and I'll be keeping an eye out because the kids seem to be under the impression that somebody ratted them out to the six-month inspection police** and that they will have their revenge.
Sadly enough they're not bright enough to know that if they trash something the night before they leave the police would still be able to get their secret identities from the real estate agent.
Now if only the people who live around the corner would stop letting off fireworks on total fire ban days we'd be set.


*Or doing anything that doesn't involve collapsing against us, coating us with hair and wagging her tail so hard she verges on dislocating her spine...
**Uh durrrrrrrrr...