Be Still My Bleeding Heart

In a desperate search for a fashion blog that will not only appease my taste for fashion but also allow for some drool-worthy piccies of completely-out-of-my-price-range-but-want-them-anyway designer numbers, I came across this little gem. Heart shaped cupcakes that bleed jam. Oh, I love it!

Urban Wildlife

I could re-cap the weekend for you here in great detail, but it would be extremely boring. Let's just say I thought I did well to be up, showered and dressed rather than slothing about in my jammies all weekend. I watched movies on Friday, Firefly all day Saturday and did some sewing Sunday morning before I went for afternoon tea with Honeydeath and Mme Droopy Drawers, at which we did more sewing.

Oh, the sunrise! Do you remember the cheesy artwork that would grace the outside of Holden panel vans from the 70's, with an orange sunrise leading into an azure sky? That's what I saw this morning. Took me back to my childhood, made me think of how glorious mother nature can be, had me rolling over for a few minutes more sleep.

I had a companion for the first few minutes of my walk to the station this morning. It was a mouse of some description and, I highly suspect, not the native kind. When I walked, he ran. When I stopped and stared, he stopped and stared.

There was a part of me that wishes I had my camera handy, to take a photo of my new little friend, for he was rather cute, if somewhat pesty. Another part was thinking about the fun my cat would have with it - fun in this instance meaning the small tortures he would put the mouse through before eventually killing it and leaving it somewhere for me to find days later after the smell of a rotting rodent pervades the apartment.

Oh, the Monday-ness...

How the mighty have fallen

After blogging nearly every day last week, I managed to get through nearly a week without updating. It just goes to show that old habits die hard.

Since I have no particular topic for this post, I thought I would throw in some random observations and lessons for the week and you all can make of them what you will.

* The Butterfly Effect recording a new album = one happy JD.

* I'm going to Perth!

* Pennsic is a no go. Buggerbumpooshitfart.

* The lack of rodents in the subway at midnight of a weekend is disturbing rather than comforting.

* Pajama days rock.

* Friends who put a tab on the bar are teh awesome.

* Short men with even a mediocre amount of authority are really annoying. You know who you are you little, little man. Luckily for you, I wasn't wearing boots.

* Boys are stinky, but I want one anyway.

* It's an odd day when you sit eating chocolate sauce while watching your cat chase his tail and are amused rather than depressed that your life has only taken you that far.

* You should always check your kid's homework before they show it at school.

In a fit of procrastination again (me, procrastinate? Like you're all surprised. "Never do today what can be put off until tomorrow", and all that.), I came across some bandying about on the interwebz about Chick Lit (CL). Firstly, in the interests of full disclosure, I'm a fan of CL. However, while I obviously enjoy it, I do not read it exclusively. If I did, I think I shall run mad.

A lot of the arguements against CL I've read rely on the idea that all the books in this genre contain a 20-something heroine with entry level employment or a job that's essentially just a paycheque, single and an unhealthy obsession with designer products to the exclusion of everything else. The heroine Does Something Stupid, sometimes repeatedly and involving a Mr Wrong, gets herself Into Trouble, eventually gets a patch of Good Luck while meeting the Guy of Her Dreams Who Is Not Only Obscenely Wealthy But Also Fantastic In Bed And Puts All Of Her Other Lovers To Shame, and the book ends with a gloriously Happy Ending.

Where's the career motivation? Why must she have a love interest? Why must she buy new and shiny? Why does she make the same mistakes? Why the 'happily ever after'? Where's the PLOT? Where's the character development? Why is she no annoying? How can this been seen to empower women?

Firstly, not all CL books are like that, although I will conceded that there are some that are, especially the early ones. Fans of romance books will tell you that they aren't all bodice rippers and Danielle Steele; Sci-Fi/Fantasy fans will tell you it's not all Storm Toopers, Hobbits and fairy wings. They will also tell you those books that are the most popular are not necessarily the best in the genre.

And really, not everyone can learn from their mistakes, almost everyone enjoys a happy ending and love makes the world go round!

However there is a simple answer to all of the above questions: there doesn't have to be any of that.

Just because it's published work does not make it some authority for society - that it is this sacred cow that must show us moral guidelines and supply us with a better way of looking at the world, that it must enrich our psyche and force us to have Deep Thoughts about the nature and consequence of the actions within the work.

This, I think, is the reason why so many people decry, bemoan and naysay genre fiction, in all of its forms. On some level, CL speaks to some women, just like SciFi/Fantasy, Romance, Mystery and Horror speaks to others. Reading a novel is not necessarily about having a spiritual experience. It's about escapism, pure and simple. Whether you escape into the world of beautiful people with an expence account, the trials and tribulations of space travel, being a single mum trying to find love, a retired beat cop that must solve a murder or a blood hungry vampire/werewolf/sociopath trying to fit into the human world, it's the place you take yourself to make your life a little more bearable, to not think about your own troubles for a while and take yourself away from your own everyday drudgery.

Call CL trash or pulp all you want. At least people are reading.

And why will I run mad, I hear you ask? As you all know, I am a deeply superficial person. However, sometimes the ease with which I can get through a CL book means that the next book I read needs to be a little more meaty, make my brain work a little bit hearder, which surprises me no end. On the flip side, if the book I'm reading is too heavy (like Atlas Shrugged, for example) I need about two or three CL books to get my brain back on track!

One-word Meme

I was reading the archives of For Battle in the hopes of finding an amusing science article (along the lines of this)to present at journal club this week and came across this meme.

In the interests of procrastination, I give you my answers. :)

Where is your mobile phone? Workbag
Describe your boyfriend/girlfriend? Que?
Your hair? Wavy
Your mother? Bestest
Your father? (s) Watching
Your favourite item? Laptop
Your dream last night? Forgotten
Your favourite drink? Cosmopolitans!
Your dream car? Aston Martin DBS
The room you are in? Office
Your ex? History
Your fear? Spiders
What do you want to be in 10 years? Happy
Who did you hang out with last night? Hades
What you’re not? Clairvoyant
The last thing you did? Typed
What are you wearing? Clothes
Your favourite book? Engaging
Last thing you ate? Caramello
Your life? Lucky
Your mood? Pensive
Your friends? Fantastic
What are you thinking about right now? Answers
Your car? Que?
What are you doing at the moment? Meme
Your summer? Hectic
Your relationship status? MIA
What is on your TV? Programming
When is the last time you laughed? Today
Last time you cried? Forgotten
School? Sucked

Hrumph!

Well, don't that beat all! On a free Flickr account, you only get 200 photos. I could upgrade, but I don't want to pay since I'm trying to get to Pennsic.

So, I've set up a Photobucket account for my SCA and Family/Friends photos, and the Flickr account will be solely for my overseas trips; NZ 2006, The Big Trip and NZ 2007. I've just uploaded the Paris photos, and I'll upload the UK photos once I've transfered some photos to Photobucket.

My new photo page is here, or you can use the link on the right.

ETA: Looks like there will only be enough room for The Big Trip on Flickr. I obviously took too many pics! Bum.

I Hate Wait

Here's the thing: I'm sitting bored out of my brain while I wait for a bloody sample to be delivered. Once it gets here, I have to spin one of the tubes down, take the plasma. That adds another 15min to the time I'm here.

Am I peeved? You betcha. Unfortuantely, there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Our participants get bled when they can make the appointment, not when it's convenient to me. Add that to the fact that this participant is probably hella sick from chemo and, well, I have no right to complain, I guess.

Still, who wants to be at work for ten hours? Tomorrow will probably be the same since I have to make happy white blood cells from this sample and train a guy to do my old blood processing.

Making up for all those hours I did sweet FA, I suppose!

Oh my giddy aunt!

This will the the third blog update in as many days. What's going on?

Well, right now, I have 10min to fill before I have to take my samples out of the oven, so I thought I'd just drop a note to let you all know I've updated some of my photos on my Flickr page. Some of the photos aren't so new, and mostly of me, but I was beginning to get tired of wondering which photos I had where, so I'm slowly going to be putting them all up on Flickr. (Yes, that will potentially include the 200-odd ones from my Big Trip^tm.)

Does anyone know how to arrange the photos there so that the ones that were taken the most recently show on the main page first (as opposed to the ones most recently uploaded)?