Sunday

Well, Mum should now be firmly on the ground in South Africa, she flew out on Friday for about month away in Southern Africa (i.e. not just South Africa). She is going to have a wonderful time but it will be strange not been able to pick up the phone and call her when I feel like it. Things are starting to settle down at work which is nice. Last week I switched from looking after the medical side of the applications for all the Navy and Air Force full time general entry candidates to now looking after the Army full time general entry candidates. It means that I am looking after a larger number of candidates and am now faced with enlistments every Monday as opposed to three times a month like I used to have.

I went to see Two Fists, One Heart yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed, especially the strong WA music presence in the soundtrack. With a broad brush it had some similarities to Two Hands, in terms of fighting, cars, bouncers and the not the girl ordinarily expected girl as the romantic interest. I would definitely recommend checking it out. Parts made me laugh and parts made me sigh.

This morning I gave the kitchen an autumn clean, top to bottom, I scrubbed, wiped and shined. This photo was taken two weeks or so ago but it gives you a fair idea of what the kitchen looks like.
The Kitchen

I also did the seemingly weekly clean of my room; vacuuming, dusting and tidying. I don’t believe I have shared a picture of what my current room looks like. It is small but I do quite like having everything at an arm’s reach.

My tidy little room

Talking of my room, that reminds me, I must share the incident that happened earlier this week. I was getting ready for bed, I had closed the deck door, turned off the lights, started the dishwasher and gone to clean my teeth. As I was brushing my teeth, I heard a tumble. I thought something had dislodged in the dishwasher and thought nothing much of it. I finished cleaning my teeth, looked at the dishwasher and it was fine. Then as I stepped into my room, I saw that some of the things from my bookcase had fallen onto the floor, as I looked up I came face to face with a Possum sitting on top of my bookcase. I was slightly shocked to say the least. Possums on the roof, possums on the power lines or possums in the back yard are fine. A possum on my bookcase is another matter. As you can see from the above picture, my room is narrow and there is only one way in and one way out. As I entered the room further the possum jumped and I ducked, it landed on my bed and scattered up to the desk. I started yelling at it to get out of the my room. Johnno hearing my yelling came to investigate and we managed to get the possum out of my room and into the kitchen, then with some fancy footwork the deck door was opened and the possum was let free. As the light was turned on in the kitchen and I walked back into my room, I discovered something the possum had urinated all over my room; the carpet, my bed, the wall, my desk, my laptop etc. Cleaning up possum urine is not pleasant. It is a tick slightly gelatinous liquid and cleaning it off the laptop is not at all fun. Normally I close my laptop when I switch it off at night. That night though for some strange reason I had left it open… if only I had closed it. Now that that story is off my chest…

Something that would surprise most people would be that I actually scapbooked today! I know! It has been a good handful of months since I last did something but the other week, I packed up a fair amount of stuff from my old room and brought it over here. In the picture below you can see the little chest of Ikea drawers that I have covered. They hold my computer cables in one little drawer and then in the others scrapbookig goodies.
the desk

It is now just gone 10pm and means it is time to retire to bed with a book and prepare for tomorrow been Monday.

movies, baking and a brass monkey

It is a Friday night, and I have just come home from the movies. I have quite literally walked in the door, picked up my laptop and gone back out onto the deck and I am not going to move till I have written at least one recent adventure.

What day, week, fortnight, whatever it has been. Work is of course still work and hopefully in the coming the weeks the stress, the issues and the hours will start to settle down. Next week will mark the turning of a new leaf at work with staff changes and I am cautiously looking forward to it.

Yesterday at work it was the birthday of one of my “Work Mums” and to celebrate I made the Orange and Almond cake made famous by Claudia Roden (photos/recipe of course to follow). We had planned to have it for morning tea but one thing of course leads to another and before we knew it was just before three and the cake had not been cut. A mimed Happy Birthday was sung and then there was cake. I was really quite happy with how it turned out. It does take a little time in the prepping of the oranges but oh it was good.

Today was of course a Friday and it was even Black Friday, it was also a day where we had 29 candidates in for assessment which makes it a very big day. To fill our stomachs, a morning tea buffet was arranged which was a very fitting end to both the week and a booster shot for the day. I made these little Persian rosewater and cardamom rice biscuits which went down a treat (of course as above photos/recipe to follow).

I went to see Easy Virtue tonight and oh it was a tragic delight. Oh the costume design was just glorious and the music and the wit, I did adore the wit. On Wednesday night I went to see He’s Just Not That Into You which was a pleasant reprise from the week. It was a good laugh, which also had some sad/true/real bits in it as well. Two movies in a week is quite bold but through Optus Tickets I have a $8 movie pass for Birch CC till the end of the month and I plan on seeing a few more movies between now and then, especially as a ticket normally costs me $15 something!

Last weekend I had quite a pleasant Sunday, Windsor Brass was playing what was advertised as Jazz, Swing and Show Tunes at Gregory Park in Milton. I arrived a little early and picked up a turkey/cranberry roll, an apple scroll and a ginger beer. I found a patch of grass in the shade and enjoyed what turned out to be an afternoon of show tunes with no jazz or swing. I had been very looking forward to the jazz/swing but the show tunes sufficed.

An older couple enjoying the music
Listening to the music

The Band
Windsor Brass

And a little video! Windsor Brass, play some James Bond

Finally I adored these rainbow pencil bollards at one of the entrances to the park, how cool are they?
Rainbow pencils

Tomorrow I have a Risk Management course alllll day with SES which should be at least interesting.

ATP 2009

ATP Crowds

ATP, ATP, ATP, it almost sounds like the name of a bank or an insurance mob rather than one rather rocking festival. Last Thursday saw the first Australian All Tomorrow’s Parties roll down to the Riverstage for one jaw dropping afternoon. I missed the first set by James Blood Ulmer but from what I heard of the last couple of songs it would have been great to see it.

The Necks
The first act that I saw the saw the complete set for was The Necks. I very much appreciated their music but it was a bit weird listening to at an improv set of one song at 3:30 in the afternoon! It was quite funny as since The Necks only played one song, the security was a bit unsure as to when we should leave the pit.

The Necks
The Necks

Robert Forster
Mr Forster was next and oh sigh, that was an incredible set. The highlight song for me was for sure Surfing Magazines, a song from The Go-Betweens era, that was just magical. At the end of the set, Robert pulled a few beers off stage and tried to give them to people in the front row, security went nooooooo, you can’t give the punters glass bottles and poured the beer into cups for the punters. Thought that was a really nice move by him.
Rob Forster
Robert Forster

Spiritualized
I had never heard of Spiritualized before and I actually really enjoyed the set. Will keep an ear our for them in the future for sure.
spiritualized

The Saints
This set was so cool but also really disappointing. I mean man, it’s The Saints. This is Brisbane in 2009 and I’m meters away from The Saints taking photos. If I hadn’t been so hyped up about the set I would have loved it but and a really big but is the fact that they didn’t deliver what they said they were going to do. All the press leading up to the event had said the following

“The most important Australian album ever made”. – Nick Cave on The Saints (I’m) Stranded.

Released in April 1977, The Saints (I’m) Stranded regularly appears in any poll nominating Australia’s greatest ever albums. To celebrate this fact – along with their inclusion in the inaugural Australian All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival series – The Saints (including original members Chris Bailey, Ed Kuepper and Ivor Hay as well as long time Saint Archie Larizza on bass) have graciously agreed to recreate the album (all 32 minutes of white noise, punk snarl and songwriting smarts) in its entirety – via two very special Don’t Look Back performances.

The poster for the event has in big, big big type (I’m) Stranded, The Saints. I can’t begin to describe my disenchantment when in Brisbane, their home town, the town where this band that gets billed for changing the music scene does not play their number one hit which got them all the attention. They didn’t even play all the other songs off the album but an assorted mix of their songs through the years. Days later, I still feel my stomach fall when I think about the gig.

Their were highlights and they would have to include the fact that Chris Bailey walked onto stage with a smoke in hand and smoked/drank through the set. Rock on.

Chris

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
As the curators of ATP 09 Australia, Nick Cave and co took to the River Stage last for a set that contained a wide range of songs, many from the recent Dig, Lazarus Dig! album. Photographing Nick Cave was interesting, we were limited to one song (no surprise there) but we were also required to stay low, very low and to limit our movement. This meant that we basically spent the song sitting on the inbuilt seats on the crowd barrier and trying to shuffle round to get other photos. Still it was pretty darn cool seeing Nick Cave.

Nick Cave

My highlight for the night was by far Robert Forster and The Saints (though I am still pretty ticked off at The Saints for not playing (I’m) Stranded, even though a) it was advertised in big type on all the promo material and b) dude, the song is like a Brisbane anthem, how could you not play it to a Brisbane crowd?

See the rest of the photos here – ATP 09 gallery

Australia

Mum and I went to see Australia yesterday and much to our surprise it was a whole lot better than we had expected it to be. We went to a 1020 session on a Sunday morning and the cinema was full. The movie has been out for almost two months now, that was pretty impressive.

What I loved the most was the clothes, oh such style. I would quite happily have a few of the blouses and a couple of the frocks and oh the skirts. I think you get the picture.

Also the landscape was just as mind blowing, all those sweeping landscapes and not a hazy sky amongst them..
Whilst the movie far exceeded my story expectations there were a few things that were weird including the child Nullah not growing over the three years or so the film was based on, also the fact that the Japanese landing they show in the film never happened, in that sense I have never been a fan of the movie title, Australia is a pretty big name to live up to. I think call it it Faraway Downs or The Drover or something else would have been just as epic.

It was well worth going to see and I could quite easily watch it again. It has a decent story line that has more than enough action it for those who want it and sweeping vistas and the fox dance for those who want something a little more dainty.

Go see it.

post by post

Man, today is the 28th of November and I am so glad that there are only two days left in November, this daily blog posting has been quite an adventure. I have no intention of keeping it up but hopefully it has taught me to blog more regularly. I think one of the reasons I have not been so regular (gee that sounds like an ad for All-Bran) is that since moving out of home, I haven’t found a really comfortable typing location. The chair isn’t right, the desk isn’t right, getting the laptop the right distance from the keyboard. ahh so many different combinations, none of them optimal. That is life though. and excuses are excuses, though other than my family and some friends I am not really sure who even reads this anymore so do me a favour and say hello!

Last night I went to The Globe for a very special show. Dan Kelly and The Ukeladies are in town supporting Augie March (playing tonight/now at The Tivoli) and oh what a darling show it was. It was a show of great stories from love in the supermarket to attempting to scam the insurance company and how SUV cause climate change. As well as other suitable songs including a cover of the Sinead O’Connor/Prince song Nothing Compares To You. I now have oohh four gigs that I haven’t blogged about, three of those were gigs that knocked a bit of my socks off. I hope to get to them soon. I will share this one photo though from the show last night. A girl near me had a little bottle of bubbles and was having a great time blowing them round the room.

Dan Kelly (and bubbles)

Kate Miller-Heidke

The post today is a quick shot from the Kate Miller-Heidke show I went to tonight at the Tivoli. The supports were Madeline Page and The Boat People (man, I forget how much The Boat People rock, they were fantastic). KMH is one very very good performer, her stage show has changed a lot since I first saw her and one day soonish I can see her on the stage at the Entertainment Center. She has just such a fantastic stage presence.

Kate Miller-Heidke (by HelenPalsson)