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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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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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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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$11.60

Ever wandered what AU$11.60 looks like in a collection of 50c, 20c, 10c and 5c pieces? Well the photo below shows you.

$11.60

There is in 2x50c, 19x20c, 47x10c and 42x5c for a grand total of 110 coins.

You say, please tell Helen what does $11.60 buy you these days?

I respond by pulling out a 3 zone 10 trip concession bus ticket. The key to traveling across town and back four to five times weekly to go to uni.

For a number of reasons (impulse purchases and to keep my wallet thin), I only like to keep a couple $1, $2 and 50c coins in my wallet and maybe a $5 note. Everything else goes into a jar in my room and when the jar starts to get full I take it down to the bank and they have fun counting it all.

The other day though I needed to get a new bus ticket and you can only really pay cash for the tickets, I decided to see how much money I had in my jar, I had about$12 in coins, Bonza!!! The right amount to get a bus ticket. I bundled it all up in a piece of cloth and made my way to the shop to get a ticket. To put it simply the guy at the shop was not as enthused as I was about my pile of coins 🙂