/karen/

December, 2007

• Where was I?
• The straw that broke the camel’s back
• Miyazaki goodness
• Reflections on linkblogging
• Lightening
• Blinks
• Why we need more Christians who write
• For faithful writers
• Get us home
• Supanova 2007
• Ravelry
• Three hen’s nights, three weddings and three talks down
• Blinks

Where was I?

Monday, 31 December, 2007

Saturday 22/12/07

First day of my holidays and I spend it sleeping in and blogging about the past fortnight. I'm also frantically knitting the Henry scarf from Knitty because it's going to be a Christmas present from my dad, but then realise that I have 100 rows to go. As each row takes me roughly 25 min to complete, even if I knitted non-stop for two whole days (which is impossible anyway; I'd get RSI), I still wouldn't be able to finish it. So I desist, feeling rather depressed, and wonder what to do.

In the evening we head down to Ynping's to decorate the place (which has already been decorated for Christmas) for the occasion of Pauline's 30th. Pauline doesn't know we're celebrating her 30th; she just thinks we're meeting for dinner to celebrate Christmas. And we are. Sort of.

Mel has arranged a card and present, so we all sign the card and put up the streamers, then go out to the restaurant (which is called The Italian Job café, complete with model of a Mini Cooper above the counter) trying to pretend that we haven't seen each other just before (“Hello! How are you?” *big hug*). The waitresses are young and inexperienced, and don't realise that two pizzas really isn't enough to split between six, so we order another. Then it's back to Ynping's place—all of us rushing to get there before Pauline so we can surprise her as she walks in the door.

She squeals and hugs everyone, then we give her her present and she hugs everyone again. We spend the rest of the evening looking through Ynping's wedding photos and watching The Muppet Show while I wind my Bendigo Woollen Mills yarn into a ball and start learning how to knit entrelac (and, yes, it's easier than it looks).

Sunday 23/12/07

It's Sunday and I feel absolutely exhausted. I want to write a newsletter because I haven't done so since May 2006, and our non-blog-reading friends and family keep asking us basic newsletter-worthy information. Step 1: compile an accurate up-to-date list. Easy, right? You'd think. I end up spending five hours wrestling with Thunderbird's address book. For some reason, it would put double entries in the personal address book, which usually happened when I added people to my various lists (WBW, Family, Newsletter, etc.) I went through and painstakingly removed the double entries (because, even though the lists worked fine with them, if I ever need to update someone's contact details, I don't want to have to do it in two places) but then the double entries would keep reappearing. I scanned the Mozilla Knowledge Database for clues and Googled the problem, screamed at the computer, then left to go to band practice.

Toby was on singing but Judith ended up joining him to do harmonies because it was fun. We only did one carol (“Silent Night”) because the others were too carolled out. Baz preached well on the Trinity, spelling out the doctrine very simply. I helped Liz wash up in the kitchen, and then we all went out for coffee at Cinque in Newtown (we gave Naomi and Yvonne a lift so that we could play them the Twisted Sister Christmas album and the Aimee Mann Christmas album in the car). I needed another present for my dad so I went into Fish Records and bought him a double Yo Yo Ma CD. I noticed they had Open Season by Feist at a very reasonable price and so bought two copies—one for Ben and one for ... I was thinking my mum but then listened to it and decided my mum wouldn't like it.

Powder Burns (my favourite Twilight Singers CD) was playing over the sound system as I went to pay. I pointed this out to the girl behind the counter but she just smiled weakly like she didn't know what I was talking about. I went to join the others in Cinque, met one of Guan's old workmates who is friends with Cameron, ordered a mango smoothie and listened to them talk while I knitted. Eventually at 11 pm we called it a night and went home, where I continued my battle with Thunderbird. I soon worked out that the problem was it was trying to read multiple address book files; once I'd deleted the extraneous ones, the thing worked fine.

Monday 24/12/07

Christmas Eve. Another sleep in day. My intention was to start putting together my newsletter but instead I got hugely sidetracked, wasting time on Facebook, shopping for ingredients for my pasta salad (which is dead easy: cook one 500g pack of penne and toss it with one bunch of chopped up basil, one jar of sliced up sundried tomatoes, one or two punnets of halved cherry or grape tomatoes [depending on how many you get in your punnet] and one jar of sundried tomato pesto), wrapping the last of the Christmas presents and doing various admin-y things.

In the late afternoon we drove south to Ben's parents' place where I assembled the pasta salad. We always have Christmas Eve with the extended Beilharz family, and this year it was at Hans and Cathy's. Dinner was BBQ chicken and lots of different salads, and then we had present-opening. Aunty Brig had organised Secret Santa again. I was Megan's Secret Santa. I made her this hat and these fingerless gloves, and gave her some spending money for her US trip. My Secret Santa gave me a pack of three plain Moleskine cahiers and some movie tickets.

There was the annual Christmas wrapping paper fight and then everyone headed off. We stuck around to watch the end of the Melbourne carols on Hans and Cathy's new high definition flatscreen TV (so impressed with the image quality!) before heading off ourselves at 11. Then very foolishly I stayed up too late writing cards and doing various other Christmassy things so I didn't get to sleep until 2.

Tuesday 25/12/07

Christmas Day! Ben and I rise at 7:30 which seems a bit obscene for Christmas morning. We're out the door by 8:15 to get to Tim and Ros's by 9. Hans, Cathy and Lizz arrive soon after, and Tim and Ros feed us breakfast. Then we have present-opening, which is a big deal among the Beilharzs—not just because we enjoy getting presents (gifts being the love language for all the Beilharz women) but because we also love giving out our presents. So we take it in turns to give out our presents, and we watch them being opened one by one.

This is what everyone got from us:

• Hans and Cathy: wooden fridge magnets in the shape of a crab and a whale from Ocean Park;
• Hans: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life, Casino Royale on DVD, and a Johnny Cash and June Carter CD;
• Cathy: By God's Word and this green twisty scarf;
• Tim: If I were God, I'd End all the Pain, If I were God, I'd Make Myself Clearer, Nothing in My Hand I Bring, Spider-man on DVD and a Batman Lego keychain;
• Ros: box set of Diana Wynne Jones's Chrestomancy series (includes The Lives of Christopher Chant, Charmed Life, The Magicians of Caprona and Witch Week, this hat and some butterfly earrings we bought for her in Hong Kong;
• Lizz: Stephen Fry's Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music, a beanie pig and a phone ornament that looks like a prawn sushi which we found in Hong Kong.

And I gave Ben Gentlemen and Up in It by The Afghan Whigs and Veronica Mars Season 3 on DVD. He gave me Begin to Hope (Regina Spektor), Fumbling Towards Ectasy (Sarah McLachlan), After the Quake (Haruki Murakami), How to be Good (Nick Hornby) and a voucher for Kinokuniya (*claps hands with glee*!)

Around 12:15 we left to go to my mum's for lunch. My brother and aunt were in Hong Kong so it was just the four of us. As usual, we had turkey with stuffing, roast potatoes, vegetables and mashed pumpkin with gravy. After lunch, we opened presents. This is what we got my mum and Peter:

• My mum: Amadeus on DVD, Joan Baez CD, and I made her earrings out of two leftover beads from the necklace I re-strung for her (which I re-strung again on that day);
• Peter: Les Miserables 10th Anniversary Concert CD (which, thankfully, he did not own).

At around 4:30, we headed home and I spent about an hour or so trying to make earrings for my step-mother. Then we caught the train into the city and went to the Palace Chinese Restaurant to have dinner with my dad, my stepmother Helena, her stepfather and her aunt. It a nine-course meal which included Shark's Fin soup (my dad knows I love it), lobster, fish, beef and peking duck. Gifts-wise, we gave

• My dad: Bach: The Cello Suites (Yo-Yo Ma);
• Helena: this twisty scarf and the earrings I just made.

I was pleased to see that they liked their presents (even though I was sad not to be able to give my dad the Henry scarf). They told us to take home the leftovers. We got home around 9:30 and I spent the rest of the evening putting everything away.

Wednesday 26/12/07

Boxing Day. We slept in, then went to Bec's place for lunch with her and her mum, Guan and Mary. I brought the leftovers from the night before and some juice. We had a very lovely lunch (with me getting my hands all icky by breaking apart the lobster and looking like a bit of a fool). Then Ben and I had to go because he was going to Xboxing day with school friends and I was going to see a movie with school friends.

He dropped me at Wolli Creek station. The train was 10 minutes late so I SMS-ed Liwen and Ramya to let them know. Then there was an announcement saying that the train would only stop at Kingsgrove. I panicked, thinking that we were stuffed then because of the time it would take to get to Revesby, and then from there to Campbelltown. I rang Ramya, asking her to pick us up from Kingsgrove, but she assured me that we had plenty of time and that the next train after would be fine. She was right; I alighted at Kingsgrove and met Liwen, and then we caught the next train to Revesby where Ramya picked us up and drove us out to Campebelltown with plenty of time to spare (only I thought I was getting a cold so sat in the backseat with my eyes closed, still trying to make conversation).

I had told Anita to meet us at the cinema but because we got there so early, we thought we'd go pick her up anyway. She was already there, so we drove to Macarthur Square, parked and met her in the cinema. I had pre-booked tickets. It took ages to get popcorn and a drink (the staff at Greater Union Campbelltown were a bit vague—perhaps recovering from their own Christmas experiences) and by the time we finally entered the cinema, the lights were down and the ads were starting. Someone was sitting in our seat (annoyed about the fact that someone else was sitting in his seat) and I asked them politely to move. He didn't want to but his partner was accommodating so he shifted for us. We watched Atonement, which I cannot say I loved but which I greatly admired (particularly the score which incorporates typewriter noises by Dario Marianelli who also did Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice). I thought the little girl who played Briony was just brilliant, the supporting cast just as good (I love James MacAvoy and Keira Knightley; I know a lot of people hate Keira but she totally won me with her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet), the direction superb, the cinematography stunning (though my friends complained the war scenes were “too pretty”), and I was intrigued by the non-conventional narrative structure that left you with that feeling of things unresolved—an “open loop”, to borrow from GTD, like Æon Flux.

We left the theatre feeling very pensive, then went down the avenue to have pizza for dinner where we talked about movies and books and tried to come up with a “must see” list. I'm not sure if I could name a film that everyone “must see” before they die; there are a lot of films I love but I love them for particular reasons which others probably won't share. One of my friends remarked that it's not that my DVD collection contains trashy films, it's that they're nice films—escapist films—social films—fun films. They're not the stuff of high cinema or Academy Awards, but they're not totally fluff either. After Ramya dropped me home, I tried to see if there was some sort of software available to let me catalogue them. I found Listal which is a social networking site that lets you catalogue, tag, rate and even mark “on loan” all your stuff, and I put all our DVDs into it. (Unfortunately, because it's working off Amazon's US and UK databases, there are no Region 4 releases listed. I couldn't be bothered entering them all in so they're incorrectly listed as Region 1 or 2.)

Hmm, should I give you the link? Would that be too tempting for potential burglers? Well, it's only stuff, so have a browse if you wish. We do have a lot of them but we're cheapskate and didn't pay full price for any of them (though I still regret not splurging on the collector's edition of The Labyrinth which came with beautiful Brian Froud cards). Some of them were gifts from lovely people. You'll notice they fall roughly into the following categories:

• Superhero/comic book films, e.g. Spider-man, X-men, Batman Begins, Sin City;
• Austen and Austen-related movies: Pride & Prejudice (both), Emma (both), Mansfield Park, Persuasion, Sense &Aamp; Sensibility, Clueless, Bridget Jones's Diary;
• Shakespeare and Shakespeare-related, e.g. Romeo & Juliet, Shakespeare in Love, She's the Man, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (haven't watched that last one yet; someone gave it to me);
• Other period dramas, e.g. The Age of Innocence, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Gosford Park, A Room with a View;
• Fantasy films, e.g. The Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, The Lord of the Rings, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Peter Pan, Ever After, The Princess Bride;
• Children's movies, e.g. Mulan, Hercules, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Wallace & Gromit, Holes, Corpse Bride, Chicken Run;
• Anime, e.g. Studio Ghibli films, the Ghost in the Shell movies, some discs of Cowboy Bebop which Ben found for me secondhand, the first disc of Love Hina (also secondhand), the last disc of Samurai Champloo (because it was only $7 and SBS haven't screened the second half yet);
• Sci-fi, e.g. Gattaca, The Fifth Element, The Matrix trilogy, Minority Report, Men in Black I and II, Firefly, Serenity;
• Movie classics, e.g. Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Roman Holiday, Charade, Spellbound, Rear Window, Singin' in the Rain;
• Foreign films, e.g. Amélie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The House of Flying Daggers, Hero, Delicatessen, Shall We Dance?;
• Music or music-related, e.g. This is Spinal Tap, High Fidelity (a film which so many tell me they hate), Almost Famous, Into the Woods, Ben Folds Five, Norah Jones, Pearl Jam, John Lennon, You am I, Travis, Live8, Live Aid, WaveAid;
• “Chick” movies, e.g. Bend it Like Beckham, Legally Blonde 1 and 2, Mean Girls, The Devil Wears Prada, When Harry Met Sally, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Centre Stage, The Princess Diaries, Josie and the Pussycats.

Anyway, you get the general idea.

Thursday 27/12/07

I got up at around 8:30 or 9 and me Bec in the city at The Tea Centre at 10. Bec blogged about it here (weird looking at your life through someone else's eyes!) Neither of us had had breakfast, so she ordered banana bread and I ordered Turkish toast and genmaicha. We talked for a bit, then knuckled down to some serious writing. Strangely enough, as we'd just been talking about hot drinks, I ended up writing about coffee and she ended up writing about tea. Sufjan Stevens was playing on the sound system, then Ani DiFranco. After an hour and a half, we'd had had enough, so wandered down Pitt St to Allan's Music. I was trying to be good with my Christmas money and buy the sheet music that I had illegally photocopied in my teens. Fortunately they were having a 20% off sale and I was able to get Into the Woods (Vocal selections), Sweeney Todd (Vocal selections), The Piano and, wonders of wonders, Dario Marianelli's Pride & Prejudice (which makes me painfully aware that I have no discipline—that I am impatient because I wish to be able to play it now instead of putting in the hard yards of practice—that I am spoilt because, whereas previous generations spent most of their lives music-less, I can turn on a perfect recording with just one touch of a button. It reminded me of this article and how piano sales dropped with the coming of radio, vinyl, CDs and cassettes. I should practice. I should work harder).

We moseyed down to King's Comics. (Every time I'm in there, I hear Ben singing “There was an actual girl in the comic shop” by Tripod. Well, this time there was two girls.) I saw American Born Chinese for $50 in hardcover (but you can get it for a third of the price off Amazon ... isn't that crazy ...) I was intrigued by this issue of Kabuki by David Mack and decided to give it a try.

Then we wandered up to Kinokuniya where, contrary to Bec's report, I did not buy up half the shop! I did, however, spend my entire voucher on

• The Complete Polysyllabic Spree (Nick Hornby);
• Taran the Wanderer (Lloyd Alexander);
• The Dreaming Part 3 (Queenie Chan);
• Secret Identity (Kurt Busiek);
• Volumes 9, 10, 11 and 13 of A Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snickett)

Then Bec and I went to lunch at Sakura, and discovered that she was friends with one of the girls I had been best friends with as a child. (Small world!)

We had been planning to go see I'm Not There with the Dendy tickets that Guan and Mary had given us, but Bec wasn't feeling too well, so she headed home and I went to meet Ben in Newtown. It has to be one of the strangest movies I've ever seen, but I quite liked it. I thought it made for a fascinating biopic, though at times it felt a little long, and having no discernible story arc, it was hard to know when it was wrapping up.

Ben and I walked home (he helped carry my books) and had coconut chili basil chicken for dinner. We watched Elizabethtown which felt more like a second draft of a film, and was unworthy of Cameron Crowe (also I kept wishing that Orlando Bloom was a better actor and Kirsten Dunst was less perky). But Fish was right: the last half hour was very sweet. Too bad the rest of the film couldn't have been like that.

Friday 28/12/07

I've been getting into this terrible habit of going to bed at 2 and getting up at 10 or 11. Today was no exception. But the exception for today was no people: it was a house-bound day. I did two weeks' worth of laundry, washed the sheets in the bedroom and the spare room, cleaned the shower recess, and vacuumed the front hall, the bedroom, the spare room and the bathroom with the vacuum cleaner Bec had given us in exchange for a ticket to see Andrew Bird. I also unwrapped the IKEA fairy lights I had been given and wound them around the stair bannister, and draped them on the wall next to our door. They looked very pretty!

I was on a total cleaning streak, then ran out of steam late in the afternoon and mucked around on the computer. Ben went out to visit Luke, but I stayed in and watched Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice. I went to bed extremely late.

Saturday 29/12/07

It was so late, in fact, that I didn't rise on time to meet Elsie; she rang our phone and I sprang out of bed, thinking, “What time is it?” She laughed at my vagueness, then took me out to breakfast. The Big Brekky in Petersham was closed (as it always is every time I want to go there), so we headed to Urban Bites in Newtown and she treated me to bacon and eggs and mushrooms, plus a mango smoothie. It was for my birthday which was six months ago but we never got around to doing breakfast together.

Then we walked down to the Newtown markets opposite the railway station where there were a lot of trashy secondhand clothes on the racks selling really cheap. In my vagueness I thought I'd better get some plastic cups, plates and forks for tonight, so we stopped at the IGA.

She dropped me home and I tried to get my brain into gear to come up with writing games, and to cobble together the thing I had written on Thursday at The Tea Centre with Bec into something decent. I had thought about reading my blog post on music but it didn't seem like the sort of thing that's good for reading aloud. I whinged on IM to Bec about the whole thing, then decided to work on the coffee piece for a little while, have a sleep and get ready for when people turned up (while Ben vacuumed the rest of the house). But in the end I spent the afternoon drafting and re-drafting and didn't sleep it all, then tore around the house like a mad thing half an hour before people were going to show to get the house sort of ready (well, it had been vacuumed and cleaned; I just need to squeeze 17 chairs into our little lounge room).

People actually arrived for the Word by Word Big Read on time! It goes to show that the words “Note the starting time” do get noticed. I had had some sort of vague plan to chop up carrots and capsicum and put them out with dip, but it didn't happen; we just had chips and dip and the box of Ferrero Rochers (my favourite chocolate if I had to pick a chocolate but I'm not into chocolate) that my dad and Helena had given us, along with a tin of very nice Belgian chocolate biscuits. Bec turned up and helped me order the food, then everyone else turned up and I became aware what a poor hostess I am (“I organised it ... do I have to run it too???” I whinged to Bec which was silly; I do enjoy these things, I was just feeling rather out of it). I'm not very good with groups of people and I'm not very good at making everyone feel at home and welcomed—particularly people who do not know each other very well. But it was lovely to have them all there—Dave and Kel, George, Haoran and Sarah, Haydn, Larissa and Matt, Little Rachel and Seamus, Bec, Alex, Jo-Anne (who was a first-timer and probably wasn't expecting a room full of young people), Ben M, Ben and myself. We just fit everyone in, and it reminded me of the party scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's (though without the telephone in the suitcase and the crazy lady with the hat that caught fire).

Bec made rice. The food came about 45 minutes after I ordered it, and Matt and I went to get it. Ben collected the money. I said grace and we ate. Then Ben got everyone to introduce ourselves by telling everyone a story about Canberra (since we had all been there). Bec read Psalm 139 (because at the last minute I thought in my vagueness, “We should read the Bible. We always start every Word by Word meeting with the Bible!”) And then I welcomed everyone, thanked them for coming, got them to write down their names on a list that was going 'round so we knew in what order we'd read, and kicked off the readings with my coffee story.

It was rell-received—everyone applauded politely at the end. Gradually for the next hour or so we went around the room, and those who had come to read read their pieces. George had a poem about Christmas, Larissa brought T.S. Eliot to read (good on her!) because she hadn't written anything in time, Matt had some blog posts, Little Rachel wrote about the first time she and Seamus met (which was hilarious), Alex had a thought-provoking snippet of an essay he was writing, Haoran had two poems, Seamus had one poem, Dave had part of an article he was writing about toys and technology (at my suggestion), Bec read her short story about pineapple tarts and Jo-Anne read an excerpt of her book. It was an interesting mix of material and I enjoyed it very much.

Then we played what I had tentatively called “writing games”. We kicked it off with a writing exercise where I gave them three options:

1. Write about something that happened to you at Christmas at some point in your life;
2. Write about something you're thankful for;
3. Write a letter of complaint to Santa Claus.

We read a few out but I didn't want to spend too long on them. Then we played a bastardized version of Articulate: we had to describe something in writing and the others had to guess (that was pretty easy). And then it was Balderdash: I gave them words and they had to come up with definitions of the word (misology, virga and omphaloskepsis). I had also planned to do rounds of Snookums (that's what Guan calls the game where you put lots of names of famous people/characters into a hat. You divide into two teams. One person from one team would draw a name out of the hat and try to describe the famous person/character to their team without using the person's name—like Taboo. The team would try to guess who it was. They got points for the number of famous people/characters they could guess in one minute. Then the next team would have their go. After doing that for a while, the names that had been guessed correctly were collected up and put back in the hat, while the others were discarded. In the second round, using the same names, players were only allowed to use one word to get their team to guess. The third round was like Charades: players had to act them out. And the fourth was facial expressions.) But it was getting late and there wasn't time, so we had dessert instead (fruit and ice cream). A lot of people had to go then but some stuck around for a little while. Then, after everyone had gone, Ben and I cleaned up and went to bed.

Sunday 30/12/07

I slept in again. Ben had gone out in the morning to go to the beach with Fish. He came back around 11. I had some leftover Thai for lunch (once again I had ordered far too much), then caught the train into the city to meet Anita and Ramya at the QVB statue. Liwen was running a bit late but soon joined us. We walked down to the George St cinemas and got tickets to The Golden Compass (and drinks from Easy Way as refreshments). The movie was slightly better than I expected it to be. It looked gorgeous but suffered from scripting problems. I couldn't understand why they wasted screen time on some of the scenes they did, and I wanted to shake Lyra for some of the speeches the screenwriters put into her mouth. But I did get caught up in the story of the thing (though it was terribly confusing) and in a way it's a shame they're not going to be making the other two in the series.

Afterwards we went to Jet Bar/Café where the others ordered lunch because they hadn't eaten, and I ordered a chai latte. They were all animatedly talking about the film, but commented on the fact I was rather subdued (I think I was all peopled out and just wanted to be quiet). Liwen, Anita and I started making plans for Melbourne deciding to take the coast road south (can't believe that's only two weeks away). Then I looked at my watch and saw it was 4:30 so made my apologies and dashed off to the train station.

However, Cityrail was annoying and I couldn't get a train for 20 minutes. I went up to the main floor of Town Hall station and rang Ben, asking him to bring stuff to church for me. The train came at 5 which is when we normally start band practice but I figured everyone always shows up late anyway. I got off at Petersham and walked to church. Fish, Toby, Tal and Ben were setting up. I helped them cart chairs into the hall from the other room. Ben chose songs and then we got into practising, even though Julia (who was singing) hadn't shown up yet. When she eventually turned up, we went through all the songs again, and then church started in earnest. It was a small group—not sure where everyone was (holidays?) I was on prayers and roused myself out of my vagueness to do them.

Afterwards, I helped wash up and then we headed home. I spent the rest of the night on the computer, catching up with blogging and trying to find some free anti-spyware software (found some here).

Monday 31/12/07

Last day of the year. I'm having a mental health day. I think I probably need it before 2008 begins in earnest!

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