Toll

Night 1 - 4
Day 1 - the remaining 7

All of them have been given proper burial - toilet bowl & pastic bag in bin.

* sob sob *

Crafty wkend

Crafty wkend
Originally uploaded by ragde2507.

These are the said giant 'paper clips' that I bought from BaySwiss yesterday. I proceeded to make them into a mobile (no phone, just mobile) becos I can't actually see myself clipping any paper to them things. Pretty cool mobile though, rite?

Anywhos, disturbing news. Spent a lazt saturday today to do various odd things, like making this mobile. There's the usualy laundry & others of course. I also tried moving the new, small fries (baby fishies) in the tropical tank into a plastic tube that I submerged. Alas, the holes that I poked were too large & they swam back out pretty quickly. So all the efforts that I went thru sucking them out with the shits & food scraps, separating them from the shits & food scraps & putting them back in were all for nothing. Have done up another plastic bottle with much smaller holes. Have yet to sight the fries again. Will try again tomorrow. After watching City of God while finishing the laundry (who knew it's so violent?!? Maybe I should've read the box before I bought it. I liked it still though) I stopped & looked at the fish. It was to my shock horror that there was a massize white-spot infestation happening at the big tank. Have applied medication now & I have no idea if any of the will make it. Oh crap. Have no idea what went wrong. They were still doing when I last fed them on Thurs. Already had a fight with dad about whether to tip them out now or keep them in the treatment (am keeping them all in). What a sullen end to the night :(

Passion | Flower

Passion | Flower
Originally uploaded by ragde2507.

Yet another wkend is rolled by and a wk of procrastination it's time for some full-time fun & relaxation. Uni-ed on monday for some briefing on teaching, wrote some more of chapter & basically bummed around. Decided to stay home on tues instead to pend more time writing. Ending up doing only a couple of solid hours & some other hrs on & off. End result was pretty gd though. Work & work on wednesday & thursday & of course ended the days watching TV (last of the Miyasaki japanime on SBS, & 30 Days on Ten on thurs of course). Yesterday was some sort of a mixed day. Went in relatively early & stopped by library to pick up interlibrary loan. Ended up going to library for 2 more times by lunch time because of other references that keeps popping up (luckily after moving office it's a much shorter walk these days). Anyhow, was going to spend the day marking until Kaka suggested that we should lunch at the Royal. Up we went, & at the last minute I decided to pack up & leave for the day & head into city afterwards. So, no 'real' work done & proceeded to do shopping in/around Town Hall. Didn't get anything I had planned (bday present for Hendo, gd pants for me). Got big, funky, what they call 'paper clips' from BaySwiss though (see next blog). Dinner @ Wendy's & mahjongg. Must've been something about the dinner 'cos we were all pretty out of it during the mahjongg. Anyhow, getting to the pic. After a yr & a 1/4 the passion fruit plant that I got last yr as a bday present is finally flowering. Very pretty flowers. I don't actually eat passion fruit myself, but hey, at least i have pretty flowers to look at. The buds are all over the vines & there are already 2 fruits, which I guess should mature some time during the wk. Maybe try it. Or pass it/them onto parents as guinea pigs :P

Rather hazy

A rather hazy weekend. It started out quite early. Friday was Rae's rescheduled house-warming so I drove into uni early-ish (ok, it was 10am) and while I thought I would have a somewhat productive day before the night of drinking, dinner, and more drinking, it didn't end up happening that way. Kaka & TK were in also but they were heading down to the 'Gong for the day. Bumped into Danski on way to library, & was told that since kaka & TK were gone we'd be the 1s left on our own un-supervised. Great, 2 bored ppl who didn't particularly want to do the work they were doing but had to. So we spent a stupid day at the office, before deciding that we should bolt 4-ish, picked up Willis on the way & headed to Rae's @ Slurry. After a bit of dress up by the girls while the boys watched on, we dropped stuff off at kaka's before cabbing back to Slurry & met up for pre-dinner drinks. Fun, fun. Dinner was funner. It was Hannibal's on Elizabeth. Yes, Lebanese complete with belly dancers. Naturally I wasn't the 1 who went up to dance & embarass myself (that honour went to TK after the bellydancer very unsucessfully tried to bait Stevo). Anyhow, dinner went long & sore (laughed so hard my cheeks were hurting) & continued at the corner pub (more laughing so cheeks hurt more). Stevo had to leave early cos grandma is in hospital, so some of us carried on at the Coogee Palace. Loud dancy is really not my thing, so Rae & I decided to bolt 2-ish. Slept it off at Slurry for the night until woken by the glare 9-ish. Dazed around with a headache thanks to the vino from night before (should really limit my vino intake & get back onto the hard stuff. Never ad a hangover in my life while on the hard stuff). Decided to bolt the 1pm brunch (seriously, who has brunch at 1??) around 11-ish & went on to buy dog biscuits then Ikea before heading home. Too hung over to continue writing so shredded the fallen wattle & pruned bougainvillea instead (yeah, like loud shredding noises would help that cause). So no writing happened until this afternoon after yet another lazy sunday morning. Finally realised that I need to take more photos at Parramatta & Moore Park to add to the chapter (great, it's only going to be so raining this wk). Now I have to bring the camera to uni AGAIN tomorrow. Speaking of photos, must get wacky photos from TK so we can print & paste on our new dividers as our head shots...

More damn splinters!

What is it about me with splinters?? I simply can't seem to get away from those damn things lately! Here's the story:

I was trying my hand at propagating plants again this past sunday as I saw one of the bird's nest fern has kinda died down & grown into 4. I 'skillfully' cut the thing in half & successfully split it into 2 plants for 2 pots. Then I saw the lush growth of spores at the underside of leaves of the bigger bird's next, so I thought I'd do spore-propagating too. I mean, I've read it in books, so how hard can that be. Proved to be a painful lesson, & underline painful pls. As I proceeded to move the big pot of bird's next out from the corner so I could wipe some spores off, naturally a pot of cactus with giant spikes the size of toothpicks fell onto my hand. Despite their giant size, some of the mini titbits of the spikes broke off & got stuck in my hands. I managed to pry 3 of them out myself which required some cutting of my own skin (ouch No.2). But still 2 got wedged under my skin & tried & I tried, even until the wee small hours of 1am & still couldn't get them out. So, seeing that I needed to drive into uni for a briefing the following (monday) morning I thought i'd stop by the doctor's the have them taken out. While only a short wait until I got to go into the dr's office, she decided that I needed anesthetic on my thumb before butchering me open & get them splinters out! Not having anything against needles or injecting chemicals into my body I agreed. So out came the needle, which btw is not the smallest needles you can find (again, size of toothpicks), filled with anesthetic & she jabbed the thing into, not once but twice on either side of my right thumb! Now, for those who know the nerve system well (& I do 'cos I'm usually a nervous wreck :P) finger tips are bloody sensitive parts of our bodies. Having toothpick-size needles jabbed into them are no walk in the park. Still contemplating if the excruciating pain was worth having those splinters removed, which had by then made my thumb rather sore & swollen. Anyhow, as the anesthetics took effect, the 2 remaining splinters were cut out & removed. Just as the 2nd 1 was being removed, I guess either the anesthetic was starting to take full effects, or from lack of sleep, or on the unlikely situation (as the dr had suggested) that I don't do well with the sight of blood (hello, I cut my thumb myself just to get splinters out!!), I fainted for a couple of minutes. Lucky I was resting my hand on the bed anyway so I just moved smoothly on it & slept it off while they cleaned & bandaged my thumb into a ball of white. A quick stop at the dr's thus turned into an hr & a 1/2 drama. I was going to be given a tatitis shot or whatever it was that she ws going to jab into me but the dr suggested that the next day might be a better option. So I went back on tues morning & had the shot. I was warned that it would hurt a bit. While the jabbing in didn't really hurt, my right arm has been sore & feels kinda bruisy since. Great start to the wk & while the situations didn't deteriorate, it didn't improve either. At least parents are back & I don't have to be cooking & cleaning & etc etc etc. Might be a good time to write that chapter that I said I would do a couple of wks ago. Speaking of which,,,

Ooh, cricket's on!