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O Fairy, Where Art Thou?

O Fairy, Where Art Thou?
I was not studying the other night and came across this photo as I was sorting through some files and the idea that a fairy should be there came into my mind. Then as I thought more I thought of O Brother, Where Art Thou? I haven’t actually seen the movie but have heard the soundtrack a couple of times. This was taken back in March when we had a couple days of rain, not though it fell where our dams are. The dams that feed the Brisbane area have just fallen to 30% capacity, this means that we move into level 3 water restrictions. Level 3 restrictions means that we have to now use a bucket or watering can for watering or washing of cars. Brisbane is in a serious drought and the rain is rarely falling in the catchment areas for the dams 🙁 Want to read more? Water Forever – SEQ Water Saving Initiative. Back to the layout though, maybe I should have called O Rain, Where Art Thou? instead 🙂
The last couple of days I have:
  • Gone to the Lifeline Bookfest today, picked up two books and three magazines for $2
  • Listened to an interesting talk by Francis Fukuyama of The End of History fame on why he is moving away from the US government and the neo-cons, he drew attention done to some work done in comparing the Christian Reformation with the events in the Islamic world today, all really interesting stuff. The talk was given at the Philadelphia Free Library and you can go here to listen to it – Background Briefing
  • Studied some and then bludged some, need to do more of the study – First exam is on Tuesday
  • I have baked two times in the last three days – more on that to come later
  • Scrapbooked the above layout
  • Worked on Saturday as usual and head off to work at 5am in the morning like usual

This weekend is a long weekend for the Queen’s Birthday so Mum went away walking for the weekend, so we were not expecting a call this evening saying that she would be coming home early. She has had quite a serious accident, she did the proverbial broken leg in a rabbit hole, though she hasn’t broken her leg just stuffed up her knee something horrid and it wasn’t a rabbit hole either, just a hole. On our way back from picking her up from the house of the lady who drove her back to Brisbane we picked up a pair of crutches! No one in our house has ever needed crutches before! She has two weeks left of school left before the winter holidays and she has already called her boss to tell her what has happened. She also won’t be going walking anytime in the next couple of months so luckily we had decided not to the Mackay Highlands Great Walk in the holidays or that she had decided a couple of months ago to postpone her next walking trip to California to do part of the Sierra High Route from this July to next July because there is no way that would be going ahead now.
I just got this quote in my ThinkExist daily email and I quite like it 🙂

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending” – Maria Robinson

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Cinnamon Muffins

I was checking my RSS feeds yesterday when I stumbled across a recipe on Bakingsheet for Cinnamon Muffins, next thing I knew I was in the kitchen making them. 🙂 They are oh so yummy.

Cinnamon Muffins

Cinnamon Muffins
Recipe from Baking Sheet (bracketed comments are things I changed from the original recipe)
2 cups all purpose flour (1 cup plain flour & 1 cup wholemeal plain flour)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon (I went for a bit more than this, more like 2 tsp)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
3 tbsp vegetable oil (I used light olive because that is what we had)
1 tsp vanilla extract (I always just go for a splash)
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400F (200C). Line 11 muffin cups with paper liners (or grease really well).
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.
In a large bowl, whisk together sugars and the egg until smooth. Beat in vegetable oil and vanilla. Working in 2 or 3 additions, alternate adding the flour and the buttermilk to the sugar mixture, stiring until just combined.
In a small bowl, stir together remaining brown sugar and cinnamon.
Fill each muffin cup about 1/2 full. Sprinkle with a scant 1/2 tsp of the brown sugar mixture into each cup. Evenly divide remaining batter on top and sprinkle with remaining sugar mixture. (I only did the first sprinkle of the sugar/cinnamon mixture)
Bake at 400F (200C) for 15-18 minutes, until a tester comes out clean.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before eating.

Makes 11 muffins.
Oh – there is one more thing to note about this recipe. I only made 11 muffins and not 12. There are two reasons for this. First of all, if you add 1/2-1 cup of nuts, chocolate chips, chopped banana pieces, etc, you will need that extra cup to use the extra batter. Second, the muffins will be puffier, with prettier tops if you make only 11.

As these were cooking, the cinnamon wafted through the house, it smelt gorgeous. 🙂 Best eaten after a short spin in the microwave to warm them up. Even better if after warming them up, you cut it in half and spread with a little bit of butter. MMMMM

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dance better at parties mixtape

I don’t know about you but I love making mixtapes (ok cds), picking a theme, choosing the songs, deciding on the order and then designing the case.

This was one I made last week for the birthday of a friend. I had a few different ideas for the mix but then it morphed into this idea of 22 songs that will help you dance better at parties, if you can dance to the 22 different songs listed you will be the life of the party, although you probably are already but that is not the point.

dance better at parties


The front cover is made from advertising material and some Making Memories wordfetti stickers. As can be seen from the back cover the entire thing is in a vellum slip case but I can’t show you the front because that would give away the secret of who is receiving it :). The back cover is made from flattened out cocktail umbrellas (I bought a box of 100 a while ago because they are so cool :D). The note on the bottom says that this CD is designed to be played one song at a time. Pick your mood and learn how to dance. 🙂
Song list is as follows

  1. Repeat it (Eric Prydz vs Retarded Phunk – Callin’)
  2. Have Some Praise (B(If)teck – We Think You’re Dishy)
  3. Sing it (Ute Lemper – Don’t Tell Mama)
  4. Shake it (unknown artist – typcial belly dancing song)
  5. Grab the Hairbrush (The Beu Sisters – You Make Me Feel Like A Star)
  6. Swing it (Acker Bilk – White Cliffs of Dover)
  7. Skank it (Reel Big Fish – Sell Out)
  8. Croon it (Rúnar Freyr Gíslason og Selma Björnsdóttir – Sumarnótt)
  9. Whip it (Devo – Whip It)
  10. Articulate it (Luciano Pavarotti – Le Donna E. Mobile)
  11. Bend it (Panjabi MC – Mudian to Bach Ke)
  12. Remember it (The Mountain Goats – Dance Music)
  13. Stamp it (James Last – Hava Nagila)
  14. Drag Queen (ABBA – Dancing Queen)
  15. Beat it, Break it (The Herd – I Was Only 19)
  16. Funk it (Michael Franti and Spearhead – Rock the Nation)
  17. Trance it (Air – Sexy Boy)
  18. Line it (Ike and Tina Turner – Nutbush City Limits)
  19. Get Down (Black Eyed Peas – Dirty Dancing)
  20. Chill it (Bernard Fanning – Wish You Well)
  21. Hunt it (Karen Kamon – Manhunt)
  22. Love it (Beyonce – Crazy in Love)

That is it.
I am feeling so much better today :D, less coughs, less snot and less phlegm. Yeah!

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TV, Timor Leste and Books

Well I am as sick as a dog with the cold that passed through our house, first Mum, then Pabbi and now me, hopefully Matthew won’t get it.

As much as I really hate been sick I am glad I am sick this week not last week or next week. This is because this week is swotvac or study week, which is the week of rest we are given between the end of teaching and the start of the two week exam block. The four exams I have this semester are on June 13, June 14, June 17 and June 19. Though the bummer is that I want to do something productive like study or make stuff but I just don’t have it in me. Dude, it has taken me two days to right this entry 🙂
I went out Saturday night even though I know I should have stayed home and rested for a friend’s 21st party/shindig at Friday’s which was quite nice as it was the first time I had been out all semester.
Had a big night with the TV last night, first up there was the final part of Peking to Paris, that has been a great show to watch, I would have loved to have been on that epic adventure. I have placed the book on hold at the library so I am waiting for that email to come through so I can discover more about their trip.

The final half of Answered by Fire was on last night as well. It was a joint ABC/Canadian Broadcasting Company production and it gave the emotions a good stir (Nadine, when it airs on CBC it is well worth watching, I searched the site but could not find a Canadian air date). The two part mini-series revolves around the 1999 referendum in Timor Leste (East Timor) and the lives of a French-Canadian policewoman, an Australian policeman and a local family. It was a microcosmic look at the event and the before and after effects of the referendum. All of which is particuarly relevant given the current events that are unfolding in Timor Leste at the present.

“The East Timorese saved our arses in World War Two against the Japanese, and then in 1975 we just stood by and let the Indonesians walk in and take this place. We owe these people, big-time.” Mark Waldman (David Wenham)

Timor Leste is probably one of the defining current events of my life so far, I was just shy of 14 when the 1999 referendum occurred and was just starting to see the events of the world in a broader context and since then I have tried to follow the events as best as I can. I will always remember the cheering that happened when at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney when the four athletes from Timor Leste who participated as Individual Olympic Athletes entered the stadium, the cheering they received was on par with the cheering that the Australian team received.
The final episode of Blue Heelers was also on last night which I taped and will watch some time this week.
Blue Heelers was the first “adult” tv show that I got seriously hooked on, this was in the period of say 1998 to 2001 or so. I was hooked: I was on email lists, I would read fanfiction, I would go to episode marathons with some of the Brisbane girls who I had met on the net, we would also go to the meet and greets when the actors came up for Queensland Day. Then as the show progressed and more and more of the characters I loved left so did I. After airing for 13 years with 510 episodes I like many other “retired fans” would have tuned in last night to get our last fix.

Go Australia! We played a friendly against the Netherlands last night in preparation for the start of the World Cup next week and we tied 1-1 🙂

I went to work this morning and then have pretty much spent the rest of the day in bed asleep or reading. I finished Prep today, it was an interesting read. Speaking of books I have finally worked out the kinks and I now have a Book List on my site of the books I have read. I currently have 18 or so novel length books out of the library to work my way through over the next two months so the list will be updated fairly regularly.

Someone want to pass me a new hankie?

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as young as we act

only as young as you actI handed in my last essay yesterday. Now I just have classes today and tomorrow, swotvac (study week) next week and then four exams in the two week exam block that follows.So between catching up on some TV (McLeod’s Daughters, ER and The Glass House) and working on a little surprise I did a page which ended up been so much simpler than I had planned. As you can probably tell it is only 1 photo, 1 piece of “paper”, a font and a little dose of Helen.

These are two of my sweet nieces, like every day I spent in Iceland I can play this day out on the TV in my head but this day something very special happened. Birta, Silja and I were waiting in the car whilst my brother went to get something, which meant we were just going crazy singing along to Icelandic Pop. Then my brother came back and said a few sentences, which left the girls in shock. They had just made the connection between me been their father’s sister and that meaning I was their aunt. It was classic.

We then met up with my sister-in-law and then spent the rest of the day at the Reykjavik Children’s Zoo and Park. This meant that big kids and little kids alike got to have fun watching animals and playing in one big and very cool adventure playground. 🙂

If someone came up to me tomorrow and said “here is a ticket to Iceland”, I would take it and run!

I have four nieces, five nephews, two sisters, four brothers and a scores and scores of aunts, uncles, cousins and the like in Iceland. Who are all in my mind each and every day.

If I was magical I would pick Iceland up and move it to just off the coast from Brisbane and then I would put a magical dome over it so it would retain all its Icelandic weather and stuff. Then Iceland would just be a short trip from Brisbane. How much would that rock?

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Holy Cripes Batman!

Holy Cripes Batman!

I got 35.5/40 for the essay on Japan and the modern day effects of their past military agressions that I really did not like doing. Can you say Happy! 😀

I was bouncing round the room like crazy.
Then I put the camera on the tripod and proceeded to take 124 photos of myself.

But can you spot my fake tooth? or my ultra cool Mountain Goats t-shirt 🙂

I  have the final exam for this subject today and unless I bomb out on the exam I will be getting a distinction.