Where's my biro?

After the Australia Day mid-week holiday, I have no housework to do. So I have had a leisurely day randomly googling and calligraphying. During my googling I found a beautiful pen set that I am now trying to decide if I have done anything that merits buying this as a present to myself for whatever amazing thing I did.

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Naively I had a look at office works to see if they had a cheap plastic version. Well they did as fate would have it, only the postage works out to be $30 for a stupid $5 pen! Argh! I think I would rather the beautiful Italian pen than the cheap pilot pen that isn't anywhere as swish. I mean, who would pay $30 postage for a pen? Probably someone who really needed a pen I guess...

Ghost busting in Gove

I have spent a great weekend away from Gove and have returned home to the horrifying news that my unit is haunted.
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That's right, its haunted by a ghost dog. Apparently it has been hanging about while I was away. This ghost dog is quite the nuisance and I was told the ghost dog was spotted by a very helpful pseudocouncil person. Apparently the ghost dog is a cream colour and spent the whole time I was away standing on the veranda barking at people.
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Boy am I glad Jack was safely in the kennels, otherwise who knows what may have happened while I was away. Despite Jack being nowhere nearby, the helpful pseudocouncil person refused to admit the ghost dog was probably a figment of the downstairs neighbours imagination (along with the strange bumping sound only they can hear).
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Ever the sceptic, I went ghost hunting to get to the bottom of this. Imagine my surprise when I found the ghost dog haunting my rug! I managed to get a quick photo before it disappeared...
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...and rematerialised on the other side of the room. Here is the ghost dog again, haunting the dining table. As you can tell, the ghost dog does not look impressed with the whole situation...
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Now its time to get in the professionals.... Yeah, who you gonna call?

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I am rushing to get this posted before the afternoon storm hits with its inevitable blackout. I just missed the lightning in this one, and was struggling to keep the lens fog free in the humidity long enough to get a quick picture. My photos never to the weather here justice. The birds outside are going crazy, with a few cockies roosting on the verandas of the units under cover (with the occasional birdy look that says 'Cocky wants a biscuit' followed by some claw tapping and peeping through the window). I did get some sewing done and will post a picture of my plain ol skirt later, the rumbling of the thunder and the lightning is making me think its time to turn off the computer...

Forbidden reading... er... listening

When I finished uni last year, I joined a local writers group. I am not sure what I expected but I didn't expect to stumble across the odd opinion that you can only read a book. Heaven forbid you should buy an audio book and listen to it while doing things that don't mix too well with reading (such as walking the dog or driving- although I did see a guy riding a bike and reading a newspaper the other day). The scorn was palpable, which was quite ironic given the lady later admitted to not doing as much reading as she would like due to a busy schedule. Hmmm

I have found new joy in getting through all the books I want to read but never seem to find the time for (just finished Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton, couldn't believe the ending and have just finished downloading the follow on book- Judas Unchained in time for Jack's afternoon walk). I am still waiting for the last book (Owner's Share) in the Golden Age series by Nathan Lowell (which is free by the way) and have about a million books on the waiting list to either listen to (The Red Queen), read (Steig Larsson's Millenium Trillogy) or buy (Wolf Hall).

If anyone has any great books they have recently read (or listened to) to recommend I would love to hear them. Unless its 1984, a book I was patronisingly told to read and found it incredibly trite, and afterwards wished I could claw back the time that was lost on it- not unlike Dirt Music which bored the crap out of me and I only finished due to a friend constantly gushing about how great it is.

Commencement de la fin

There really should be a word that describes the feeling of running full tilt into a brick wall that you experience on return to work after having a break long enough to remember what being sane is like. I tried the thesaurus, but it was sadly deficient in suitable lexemes or indeed even morphemes. Apart from 'crack of doom' there wasn't anything there that even came close to describing the feeling I was after. I found something in french, but then got distracted ranslating stuff in google translate. For example 'au diable, vous et vos stylos'... I wish I could rant fluently in french

That's not crochet, it's a bunch of knots

I can't believe the Christmas holidays are over already! I had such a great time sleeping in and watching movies.

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During the holiday, I found a great little pattern for a crochet shrug (it gets really cold in my unit and we spent a fair bit of the holidays looking like we were at the snow with all the jumpers and wooly socks. I was thinking of making a budgie cosie but the feral budgies probably wouldn't appreciate the effort put into wrestling them into matching jumpers), only the pattern resulted in a hideous mess.

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I spent a fair bit of today re-writing the pattern so it would look like the picture. The result is the sample to the right. I am really pleased with how it has turned out and I think I am ready to make the full sized one. Once I get all the bugs worked out, I'll post my modified version of the pattern (with links back to the original in case you want to give it a go).

It's the Classic Case of the four J's; Joey Jeremiah and his Jean Jacket

In true new years resolution style, I have already missed a day. Ah well, rules were made to be broken... I have instead been caught up watching Degrassi Junior High on you tube and looking at crochet patterns. Its an odd combination that is making me worry when I started thinking "those leg warmers look great! All I need is some hot pink wool..." I am sure it is a direct result of too much Degrassi (and the phrase "what a broom head" is sneaking into my vocabulary).