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about that

Well I think I have ironed out all the bugs of this new theme, what do you think?
I am still trying to decide what I want to put in the header so at the moment it is just a pretty simple graphic using a brush from Jason Gaylor’s Worn Hi-Res Brushes III.

I cracked down and bought a new camera bag yesterday, I got a Crumpler Seven Million Dollar Home in Blue. Buying a camera bag is one of the hardest things to do. I have been after a bag for a long time which would take some uni books, some other stuff and some camera gear, after playing with numerous different combos at the camera store and at the Crumpler store, I have had to decide that the product I want is just not on the market yet.

Mum is progressing along nicely, the other day she moved up from a 7/8 plaster cast to a fancy knee brace, which looks like the one on this page.

We have watched some more movies

  • I Heart Huckabees (This was cool)
  • Before Sunset (This was an amazing film, very different to what I am used to as it basically only has two characters and the movie consists of them walking round Paris talking)
  • Bride & Prejudice (This was super rad, I could watch it over and over, loved the musical parts and all the colour)
  • Ladder 49 (Parts of this make me teary :()
  • The Princess Diaries (A simple little movie to curl up on the couch watching on a Friday night)

Tonight however, I will not be watching a movie but will be sitting on the edge of the couch full of anticipation as Australia goes head to head against Italy to play for a quarter-final spot in the World Cup! Go the ‘roos!

Some of you may know Karyn but for those who don’t, she was the first non-Australian person from 2peas that I gotten to know, she is in the USA Navy and is married to an Icelander (which is how we connected), well after some time spent training in SC she is now smack bang in the biggest sandpit she has ever known in other words she is now in Iraq (or in her words Irock the Casbah). She has posted some photos that are well worth checking out and she is always up for well wishes.
That is about it.

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Hello Holiday

So the Socceroos didn’t get up, we only lost by two against Brazil and Japan-Croatia tied with no goals, which means that we still look good for the next round.

I did my last exam for the semester yesterday, now I just have to wait for the results to come rolling in, even though grades are not announced until July 5, I already know that I have gotten two distinctions (6) and I think I might get another two yet and one credit (5) if I manage to pull this off, it will be my best semester at uni ever. One of those distinctions would have been a high distinction if I had not done miserably (11/20) on the mid-semester. Bring on next semester (which is my last semester of my undergraduate Bachelors degree)!

I watched three DVDs yesterday. The first was with Mum – Hope Springs, quite a nice romantic comedy and the character played by Minnie Driver was just a total piece of work. The second was with Mum and Matthew – Do You Remember?: Fifteen Years of the Bouncing Souls, which was a really great doco about The ‘Souls which made me think I really should have gone with Matthew and his friends to see them when the played the other month. The last one I watched was Speak, this was an incredible movie, I didn’t think it would be anywhere near as dark as it was but it was just incredibly moving.
Bring on five weeks of holidays and try to forget that this time last year we were busy preparing for the Palsson Grand Iceland Tour of 2005, I guess though in four years times we will all do our best to make our way back as a family for the quinquennial clan gathering.

I have plans of grandeur to fill my holidays with, which include the following.

  • Make this top – Simplicity 4589, view A
  • Make pasta
  • Finish the final testing of a new blog template
  • Attack the ever increasing pile of recipes to try and make a good number of them
  • Learn how to knit – Continental style (Mum was taught English style like most Australian’s but thinks it would be better for me to learn Continental style as it is so more efficient, she talks of when she was in Iceland and like most of the other women spent a lot of time knitting by hand or with their machines and how the Icelandic women were just powerhouses with their knitting, maybe I can talk her into paying for me to go to Iceland these holidays to learn how to knit?)
  • Get a fair stack of scrapbooking done
  • Make a couple of bags
  • Get my bike serviced so I can start riding again
  • Go on a couple of mini photographic expeditions
  • Go see Trivia at the Metro Arts
  • Go see Death Cab for Cutie at the Arena
  • The Brisbane Flickr meet up on Sunday
  • Get a couple of photos printed and mounted for a long overdue birthday present
  • Have fun
  • Work a heap
  • Organise some sort of filing system for the clippings I collect
  • Hit up the shops/life with Andrea
  • Party hard(ish) with Sam
  • Play copious amounts of Gamecube with Matthew
  • Organise something with The Girls from school
  • Read all the books in this monstrous stack I have – five different trips to the library and the four I need to finish beside my bed (if you click on the photo you can see it full size so you can have a “browse” of my library shelf)

books to be read

The real question is how much of this list will I actually get through and how much I won’t finish.

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Studying, Not Studying and Studying

“In the final analysis, human security is a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, a job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode in violence, a dissident who was not silenced. Human security is not a concern with weapons-it is a concern with human life and dignity.”
UN Human Development Report 1994, p229.

Powerful words which I found in an equally powerful reading by Steve Smith (Smith, S. (2004). Singing Our World into Existence: International Relations Theory and September 11: Presidential Address to the International Studies Association, February 27, 2003, Portland. International Studies Quarterly, 48 (3) pp. 499-515(17)), if you happen to come across it or have access to any of the various academic databases it is well worth a read even if you are not an International Relations person and is quite an easy read too.

The last couple of days I have spent doing exams, studying, not studying and studying (probably more of the middle one than I should have done but I have kept up with my study all semester so it is all in there somewhere I just need to pull it out at the right time). I have one exam tomorrow worth 50% and then I have my last one on Monday morning.

Mum saw the lower limb specialist the other night and was told that she has a Tibial Plateau Fracture and is booked in for a CAT scan on Monday morning to decide if she will need surgery or not, it seems that this type of brake can be quite iffy in terms of management. At the moment she looks like having 6 weeks in plaster and than another 6 weeks at home getting back on her legs.

I had started to write a bit on my love of the grocery store but I don’t really know if it had any point so it can wait for another time.

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plaster from toes to mid thigh

Well Mum is not going anywhere fast. She has a leg in plaster and Matthew and I are rapidly adding to the list of reasons why the household needs a laptop. The following is the email that she dictated to Pabbi (hence it does not talk about Matthew and I) that she sent to friends and family. Saves me typing it out.

On Sunday I broke my leg. Paul is typing this for me while I lie in Helen’s bed with my right leg on a pillow. Paul has been fist class at looking after me and helping me etc over this episode

I have plaster from my toes to mid thigh.

I am pain free.

Now for the details:
The following is my own fault, I know I have a tendency to be a bit gung ho and normally I keep that well under control, but on Sunday I didn’t

On Sunday I was leading a small group on a walk from Lemon tree flat to Sentinel point and Mt Huntly (South of Cunningham’s gap) We went up a cliff break on a rope but I decided to come down without the rope. I was almost down when I slipped a bit and where my foot landed gave away, and my foot went in a hole almost to my knee, and I kept going. Before I got myself disentangled from that, I immediately I knew I had done something bad to my knee. I sat still for a while and put some more clothes on, the general consensus was that I had done a ligament bandaged my knee and walked out with the help of two walking poles and someone carried my pack. it was a slow walk. As long as I did not try a twisting movement of my knee and I walked slowly it was quite ok. We had to walk about an hour and a half before we got to the end of the 4 wheel drive road. One of the men had gone ahead and he got back there with his 4wheel drive the same time as we did. Went back to camp and had a sleep while I waited for Kay, my traveling companion to come back from her walk.

Kay packed us up and drove my car to Brisbane. Because I thought I had done a ligament I did not go to the hospital that night but hired crutches on the way home.

On Monday Paul took me to the 24 hour medical centre at Kedron and I had xrays of my knee. The GP there thinks I have fractured the top of my Tibia (shinbone) I was put in plaster (Paul did a great job of assisting the nurse as this sort of plaster is a 2 person job)

I was given a referral to a lower limb specialist but he was not open for business today, I shall call him tomorrow morning.

More news when I know more.

Meanwhile I am drowning in marking and reports. Fortunately a recently retired teacher from my school is taking my classes, by pot luck she also teaches Maths A, B and C

What she doesn’t say is that the GP said that best case scenario she is back at school in a couple of weeks, worst case scenario she may never go back to teaching. It seems that this sort of break can have all sorts of complications. We are all adapting our life to our new found situation. Once she has finished her marking, she plans to break out the embroidery etc that needs to be finished off as unfortunately unless we get a new sewing machine table there is no way she will be quilting.

I had my first exam today which I am pretty sure I did alright in, I knew which questions would be on the exam so I was able to prepare my essays beforehand. I have another exam tomorrow which is for my Ethics and International Relations subject, even more fun.

We have evolved from having a Nintendo 64 which Matthew and I were given for Christmas many moons ago to having a Nintendo GameCube that Matthew bought off eBay for cheap as people sell in preparation for getting a Nintendo Wii. I can’t wait to get Burnout for it as that is one game that I rocked at when I used to play at it my ex-boyfriend’s house. Matthew is planning on attempting to get Mum hooked into playing the games with him; however I do not see that as a likely event.

I picked up this pretty cool book in the 75% bin at Borders today – All My Life For Sale, it is the catalogue of a man selling almost all of his worldly possessions on the internet and the history and future of the items, pretty darn cool 🙂

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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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This is Kosovo/Iceland Calling

The title comes from a song by Aussie singer John Willamson called “This is Australia Calling”
Tuesday morning I had a nice phone call from one of my older brothers who is probably the world’s best air traffic controller (well at least he is in my book :)). He is currently in Kosovo where he has been on and off for it must be a couple of years now working at the Pristina airport initially as part of the NATO mission in Kosovo (KFOR) and now with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). It was great to have a nice long chat with him about life in Kosovo, his family, our life in Australia and all the usual chit chat we do. Out of 8 of us Toti and I are the only ones who share a similar first/middle name. His first name is Þórður and my middle name is Þura which is a short version of Þuríður. Þor (Thor) was the son of Odin.

This morning, my big brother Karl rang to thank me for his very late Christmas/early Birthday present. It was great to talk to him about all the random things we normally talk about, life in Iceland, my uni stuff, all that fun stuff. Sometime round the 1996/1997 he was given the CD – Hype! Surviving The Northwest Rock Explosion – The Motion Picture Soundtrack. Let me tell you that CD had extremely heavy rotation on the Palsson Washing Up Radio.
Some time early this year I was walking past a local music/dvd chain and starting right at me was the Hype! DVD and with no second thought I knew I had to buy it and send it to Karl. It sat on my entry table for a couple of months until I got off my backside and sent it to him earlier this month. It arrived in Iceland the other day. 😀

Both the DVD and Soundtrack are fantastic and you should check them out. Ever since we first listened to the CD, it was the two songs by The Fastbacks that have really stuck with me through the years and when I got my new phone, one of the first ringtones I made for it was a sample from The Fastbacks song – Just Say.