Strong Verbs Are Just Better

It is currently zero degrees celcius outside.

It hasn't been over 10 degrees for about a week.

I haven't been turning heaters on until around 5pm. Yet I am somehow overheating in my room here. Insulation ftw?

Today has been a Good Day. To whit:

1. I slept until ten, and did not get out of bed even then. Instead I lay around reading more of Feminism and Masculinities, because my brain was too fuzzy to face fiction. Fiction requires me to work to read it, these days.

2. S's boy fixed the wireless.

3. I cleaned my bathroom.

4. I then read more of Women Becoming Mathematicians, a book based on interviews with 35 of the two-hundred-ish women who recieved mathematics PHDs in the US in the 40s and 50s. It's fascinating, shut up.

5. Lucy leant me Sheridan le Fanu's short story/novella collection Through a Glass Darkly, with orders to read Carmilla ("it has vampires and lesbians!" says she, "what more could you want?"). I decided it would be easier to read than any of the fantasy novels I have lined up, and devoured it in a couple of hours. It made for rather strange reading, given that through the week I had read Pterry's Carpe Jugglum, so I had Agnes in my head loathing Carmilla and Perdita despising Laura, and random quotes which I can't actually pin to a character flitting about. "Spelling their names backwards, who do they think they're fooling?"

6. Bullied myself into going for a bike ride - discovered I can circumnavigate my entire suburb on the same bike track. I only get my bike out every couple of weeks, but all the walking must be good for me, because I can ride further every time. I need to fix the gears so that I can use the full fifteen speeds, the middle cog is getting too easy for me.
Still, right now, my knee muscles feel like custard.

I bought a snug knitted beanie in the supermarked for four dollars. This solves one of my immediate problems, the fact that my strange grey beanie/beret thing which I bought for twenty dollars is a loose knit and therefore does not keep my ears warm.

Also, it is ten degrees out and I did not wear gloves and my hands did not hurt. This suggests I am adjusting, since in early march when it was 10-16 degrees in the morning, I'd get to work and my hands would be so stiff it hurt to type. Actually, on reflection, the temperature in the mornings has been getting colder, my gloves have not been getting any thicker in the last two months (yes, I started wearing gloves outside in MARCH), and my hands have been progressively less and less stiff. Praps all the walking is improving my circulation?

I am making Arthurian fudge cookies. Ok, they're only Arthurian because of the company who owns the website. But I CARE NOT. Also, they're warming up my house a bit.

Happy Easter everyone!

This has been the best Easter I've spent for many years - at least three, probably... four or five. kayloulee, phrasemuffin, sommeille and cameo appearances from xxlucyferxx and tahira_saki made it so. Verily. Our cooking was more entertaining than exact, but it was a truly excellent way to spend three and a bit days, I tell you.

I'm not back, the computer is dead of a new death now. Motherboard replaced, but now the computer doesn't recognise the power source. Frustrating: may not be fixed until monday. HOWEVER, these things happen, and Dell have been positively angelic the whole way through the process. Dad paid for their extra insurance package on top of the warranty, so that helps (gets me bits replaced even if the problem had been my fault, means I'm entitled to evening service work, and so on). But on top of that, their service centre have been unfailingly polite, helpful, and willing to work with me and believe my report of the problem even though I've been ringing from work and haven't got the computer with me. All these corporate blogging books the bosses have given me keep telling me that some years ago Dell's corporate image took a nosedive thanks to a couple of vocal disgruntled bloggers. Let it hereby be stated that this particular blogger is very pleased with Dell's service.

NOW, a few points:

* I have my suitcase back. Yay for gloves and winter clothes and far more pairs of footless tights than I remember owning...

* I'm wearing makeup. For the third day in a row. For some reason I'm enjoying the whole colour-matching, mascara applying, lipstick sticking thing right now. It's... I dunno, quiet and soothing and the end result is pretty. Expect this phase to last less than a week, though.

* I booked my ticket up to Sydney. K, I'll be seeing you between 9 and 10pm on Friday the 6th. You're next door to where you were last year, yes? Shall I bang on your window?

* My phone is MOSTLY working, but it seems that if I don't turn it off every three days we have problems. Still: you can contact me by mobillyphone at the moment. I think.

* Lucy: WANT TO SEE YOU. You still want to see Rachel Getting Married? Except you're excused in the name of studying if necessary ;).

* I'm now reading books on change management. They're rather interesting, actually.

* On my own time, I'm reading Henry James' Portrait of a Lady. I'm not sure if this is the same Henry James who wrote The Turn of the Screw: I keep expecting Portrait to turn all gothic, and so far, it hasn't. But I'm in love with Isabel Archer. I may have found a fictional woman to rival Emily of New Moon in my affections ;). I am of the opinion that Isabel should give up wondering if suitors are or are not an affront to her independance of spirit, and take up with me, whereupon we should be scatterbrained, highly imaginative, over-self-analytical, slightly self-centred oddities together.

* I went to French Conversation Group on tuesday. The people seemed very nice, the pub/club/thing doubly so: comfy couches! jazz music! A candelabra! Also, there were people I knew there, because you can't escape the Uniting Church and/or your housemate's friends. Gave up after an hour because my brain hurt and I had nauseus period pain, but will definitely do again.

* Friday I'm going to be pretentious and go to a spoken word poetry evening, instead of going out to dinner / pubs with my workmates. Its at The Front Cafe and Gallery in Lyneham, so I have to figure out how to get there... but it should be entertaining. Anyone happen to want to join me? (ED: that is of course providing that I'm not getting my computer fixed. But even if I am I think I should be able to make it over there, even if I miss the 7.30 start. OR I COULD STAY HOME AND INTERNET. Decisions?)

ETA: LJ rejected my post with the complaint that I have an entry dated 2009-03-25 19:42 and I'm trying to post before that. I'm, er, not. Have back dated the old entry, hopefully that'll help.

ETA2: WAIT. It's still february. Why'd LJ decide it was march last night, I wonder?

To say that I am happy. Happy as in I spent an hour drinking tea from a tiny cup and reading a book about female friendships in early 20th century Australia/Australian expat literary circles. Happy as in my desk is set up and all I need now is a LOOOOONG LAN cable. Also my MP3 is charged and connected to my speakers and, to round off this set of excellence, I am wearing my favourite comfort jacket.

Probably still lonely, since I'm posting nine hundred times today. (Also I have a case of Disappearing Housemate, which is worrying since she was driving from Melbourne this afternoon and, as I have lost my phone, I do not know if she has sent me messages to say she's not coming home / running late / eaten by wildebeest.) But I'm feeling... optimistically lonely? I have a functioning social life, as much of a one as I had in Sydney and more than I had at home. The problem, such as it is, is that I spent last year with my life wrapped around K's, and the year-and-a-bit before that intensely twined with the Wife, and the year before THAT I was a sort of orbiting planet around the TessNReena binary star. I didn't go anywhere or do anything much or talk to many people I didn't live right next to, but they were always around. The last time I've been not constantly surrounded by people was first year, and then I spent every spare minute online talking to gryphonvere.

When I got to Canberra I was so glad to be on my own for once. The novelty is kinda wearing off, but I'll adjust. I really need to spend some not in the sort of intense friendships I seem to have formed in the last few years, remember how to be alone in my head again.

As for friends... I'm sulky about the necessity of making a whole new set, since I liked the set K and I gathered last year so very well. But I have xxlucyferxx and tahira_saki, and I would much rather have two good friends (and these two were good friends the moment I laid eyes on them) whom I see every couple of weeks than the kinds of friends I had for many years at uni: ones you ate with every day and then never emailed after uni broke up, ones you saw every week at church and bible study but never felt compelled to meet up with outside of those circles.

sommeille, when you come online: email me your postal address pretty please? If anyone sees her in person before she gets the intarwub back, pls filch her contact details for me ( I don't even have her phone number).

If you couldn't predict one of these things, yours is a sad prescience:

1. I finished Evelyn's book, it is awesome, and NOT A ROMANCE AT ALL.
2. I got impressively lost going from the Nat. Lib. to Kingston, DESPITE HAVING LIVED IN KINGSTON FOR TWO WEEKS.
3. There is a VERY TALL, very skinny man in my grad cohort. Cue giggling mess and Amy getting him lost in his kind attempt to drive her home. Why, no, I did not walk up from Woden, despite the fact that the other person being dropped off did so. *shifty eyes*
4. I managed to stick the edge of my grad program sheet into my EYE and now sort of can't see out of it.

Spend hours screwing.

And by that I mean, wrestling with tiny bits of metal and wielding an Alan Key.

Between the screws, the not-quite-rectangular bed into which the final slat did not fit, and the Demonic Lego Drawer System, today is officially declared the Day Of Shoving Things Into Inappropriate Holes Without Any Sort Of Lubricant.

Am moved in, sort of. Like the house. Have internets. Removalist company made me cry, do not know when my stuff will be getting here, probably not until the week after next. Just hope I don't exceed the dept's budget because I do not want to pick up the bill as a result of fuckups caused by nameless call centre wenches.

So, tonight, I went in to town with one of my soon-to-be workmates and sat by the lake and watched the Australia Day shenanigans and then a pretty damn spectacular firework show (fireworks! Off the roof of the National Library!). Quite a few spectacles were cancelled because of high winds, but the Army's display parachute troupe made it out and were pretty impressive, and also there was a local band playing who were so-so, but one of the members got his fourteen year old daughter up to sing some of her own songs, and damn, she was good.

Between events they were playing some sort of pre-recorded radio thing, with Classic Aussie Music and Famous Aussie People Telling You Why They Like Being Aussie. Lots of blather about a fair go, helping each other out, freedom of speech (which, you know, we don't actually have guaranteed, or anything) and multiculturalism (which seems to be back in vogue as a buzzword, after suffering a downturn since the Cronulla Riots). Only two things on there moved me particularly: one was that I quite like living in a country where, despite recent efforts to improve the status of the Citizenship Pledge (or whatever it's called?), it remains so obscure that the event host turned off the patriotic broadcast thereof in order to get the crowd to cheer a passing jet-skier.

The second was the soundbite from the Umbilical Brothers (comedians), who proudly declared their love for Australia and it's 'healthy disrespect for tradition', being a country that 'doesn't take itself too seriously', and 'cares enough not to care too much: to care about others and not just yourself'. Which, er, was not necessarily logically coherent, but I liked it anyway.

Without further ado, here are some things I like about Australia:

* Our relatively high distrust of patriotism and jingoism. Granted, the year I was in Sydney in Australia day I was verbally abused on a train for not wearing green and gold, and there's a high proportion of patriotic bogans you'll find in Nelson Bay. Canberra, on the other hand, was remarkably calm and quietly proud.

* Our extremely high disrespect for politicians, even the ones we like. I believe it was Labor partisans who christened Kevin 07 K-Rudd, and if it wasn't, then they took it up with enthusiasm, since I picked up both that title and 'Ruddbot' from Young Labor members before the election had even happened. Unwarranted faith in and emotional attachment to politicians can only lead to bad places. *looks stern*

* We have a damn good public health system. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is a wonder which I have cause to stop and appreciate every time I talk to an American.

* In a similar vein: HECS is a gift from the deities of Higher Education. And in Australia, because we used to have completely free university education (back in the Whitlam era, which really is quite a while ago now, isn't it?), we bitch and moan about HECS increases all the time. But really, honestly. I have a 20-something thousand dollar debt, equal to one eighth of the cost of my education. The government picks up the rest of the bill. I have to pay this debt back now, but it is paid back to the government, out of my tax, without any effort on my behalf. If I had not got a job which paid more than 30 000 a year (is that the limit?), I wouldn't have to pay anything until I did. If I lose my job, quit my job, go back to uni, take up international money laundering, or do anything else which reduces my taxable income below that threshold, I stop paying. And I start again at such time as my taxable income goes back over the limit. Easy as pie. I know people who finish uni in the states with sixty and seventy thousand (US) dollar debts, and have to scrape to pay them back right away. I don't fully understand the situation in Britain, but it doesn't involve anything as awesome as we have. Let us all now give thanks for HECS.

* We are not in a recession. YET. But that puts us miles ahead of much of the world at the moment. I was asking my Dad, who used to work for a bank and thus has some idea about invisible money, why this is, and I did not understand the answer very well, but it seems that loans and mortgages in Australia, while they've become easier to access and to borrow larger amounts of money with, remained somewhat more tightly regulated than in the States. This turns out to have been a sensible idea. And Dad also said something about foreclosures being dealt with differently- if the bank sells your house for less than they loaned you, you still owe the difference. Which sounds nasty, but does not reduce the total amount of invisible money in the country, which turns out to be a good thing.

* We finally have a government who got off their high horse and apologised to Indigenous Australians, although they haven't exactly done anything remarkable in that direction since then. But still. Something to be mildly proud of.

* Our National Library makes an excellent staging-point for firework displays, which is just what you need in a civic monument, y/y?

The fire trucks are yellow, and the police cars are red. Pedestrian crossings are a matter of rumour. And it's a bad idea to walk from Old Parliament House to Kingston south at 2pm on a baking hot day. It is a worse idea when you have hiccoughs, because, really, that just ruins everything.

Why yes, we are playing a game of 'how many days can Amy play Dumb Hatless Tourist without getting sunstroke'. Although possibly I had sunstroke already, which would explain why I spent most of yesterday asleep and the rest of it feeling shitty.

Thirdly, did you know that the Great Ocean Road was built as a War Memorial? Apparently it was, and it was constructed using returned servicement as labourers. These things I learned from the National Archives today. I also flipped through a facsimile dossier of flying saucer reports, which was fun.