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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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good night and good luck

Dear Socceroos,

I am going to bed. I am sure you will understand, I have an exam at 8:30am in the morning and I am placing it above you.

I can’t justify geting up at 1:30am to watch the game.

As you have said yourselves, Brazil has everything to loose and we have everything to gain.

I know you will do your best and show the world what Australia can do.

The last time we played them in 2001, we beat them and you can do it again tonight.

I will be cheering you in my dreams and Pabbi will watch the game on TV.

Good Luck and Good Night

Helen

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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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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