Better times collide with now
Monday, 11 June, 2007
So it's nearly the end of the long weekend and I have been convalescing well—plenty of R & R. Friday night, after a trying day at work in which I did more Briefing stuff and only edited one “From the Dean” and went to counselling where I realised that just about every aspect of my life is frustrating at the moment (and it was somewhat gratifying to find that there was some justification for my complaints) and then drove home through the torrential rain singing along to Tori Amos's The Beekeeper—anyway, Friday night, George and I went to Hoyts Eastgarden to see Georgia Rule which was an okay movie and which could have used a little more character development but I could find no flaw with the acting. Afterwards we went back to her place where she cooked me dinner and we talked and talked, and then she drove me home through the torrential rain.
Saturday Ben and I slept in, then went out for breakfast in Newtown at Urban Bites where I had the Big Brekkie and chai tea (and I think Urban Bites makes lovely chai tea—all milky and sweet!). It was Ynping's birthday so we braved the rain without umbrellas and ran from shelter to shelter all the way to T2 where I got her a box of chai and we ran into some college people. That's the way it is in Newtown; you always run into college people, and we ran into more all the way back to the car. We were invited for an afternoon of hanging out and watching Zoolander but I just really wanted to go home, and I spent the afternoon updating my Current blog for the past three months, while Ben vacuumed and cleaned the bathroom. I also stitched the flower onto this hat which I made two years ago (the yarn is Katia Himayala, the pattern is based on Alison's beginners cap and the flower is from Knitty):
I actually made a number of these hats—one or two of which were sold through FEVA events like Black Tie and the art exhibition—but they had a design flaw: the flower would tend to fold up and no amount of smoothing would make it bloom as beautifully as it did in the above photo. So I decided to sew it on and I still had some of that Katia yarn to do it with. This was the end result:
So unfortunately the flower doesn't stand out as much from the hat but at least it's always blooming.
We were running late but we still managed to get to the restaurant (Sushi Bar Hiro in Beverly Hills) before everyone else. Unfortunately most of our circle of friends were unavailable to celebrate Ynping's birthday with her, but we still had a lovely feast of Japanese, and we got to see Pauline and Zhen before they had to dash away for their weekend trip. We were toying with the notion of going to see Shrek the Third at Beverly Hills Twin where the tickets are $6.50, but then realised we would be sharing the cinema with lots of screaming children, so opted instead to go back to Ynping's place where we spent the rest of the evening playing mahjong (I won three games in a row) and half-watching Iron Chef.
Here's Ynping sporting her birthday present:
Sunday I slept in until 11 so hopefully I've recovered my sleep debt. I still had a cold, but it wasn't as bad. I spent the day cleaning the shower recess, doing laundry and watching television and thinking idly of my Salt article. I went to band practice at five and then we had church. Ben was leading and he got us to fill in a poll where we had to rank the world's professions from the most respected to the least respected. Bottom of the list was real estate agents; top was ministers. Cameron preached on Deuteronomy 16-18 and I found it hard to pay attention, but he did have some excellent things to say on Church and State. Things got very overwhelming for me towards the end of the evening and I ended up bursting into tears when Bron asked me what was wrong (the Dr Who scarf really suited her, by the way), and then Ben took me home and we watched Law & Order until midnight.
Today I've been trying to get to my Salt article but I must confess I am not trying very hard. I've caught up on blog reading, mined Ben's computer for good music (Blacklisted by Neko Case, Armchair Apocrypha by Andrew Bird [who has some Jeff Buckley qualities] and Neon Bible by Arcade Fire [which I disliked upon first listening, but Funeral grew on me so perhaps this one will too]), I listened to some A Prairie Home Companion podcasts, and I listened to Greg Clarke, Chris Forbes and Peter Bold speak on “A Credible Jesus ” at a CASE Easter forum to see where I could find the bit which had an extended silence (one listener complained about it)—and I listened while piecing together this wrap jacket which I'd knitted in black Bendigo Woollen Mill wool ages ago but had never gotten around to finishing because the sewing part is always the most boring part—but nevertheless it was a sewing day since Ben asked me to sew that loose button back onto his jacket, plus I had this other top from Espirit that had another button dangling, plus one of our bathroom floor mats was unravelling, so I've been sewing and sewing, and listening to audio off the internet is the best thing you can do when you're sewing—it makes it less boring and you're not required to fix your eyes on anything other than the thing you're working on—so I listened to Garrison Keillor's caramel voice and all 76 minutes and 24 seconds of “A Credible Jesus” and the only silence I could find was the silence of audience members who are too far away from the microphones asking questions during question time. So I re-uploaded the MP3 in the hope that would solve the problem.
Back to trying to write. Or trying to blog.
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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