Official Apology to my Beloved

A couple of weeks ago my little bro and his family came to visit. For their first evening here I cooked up a roast meal - the meat from our local butcher is just delicious and this roast was particularly tender and tasty.

There was some left over and I put it away in the freezer for a later date, having protected it from being eaten as seconds on the night itself.

A couple of days later, I pulled it out to be used as cold meat for lunches for the big crowd we had that week.

My Beloved was at work and wasn't able to attend lunches during weekdays.

Last week he commented on the fact that we still had that spectacular roast meat to finish off.

How much was left for him?

PS I'm sorry, my love.

Accidentally Polytheistic

You wouldn't think that grammar could have an impact upon one's theology.

Until one is proof reading an assignment and finds "...Gods' purposes..."

Dumb apostrophe.

Of course, how often would I make an error like that?

(okay, so I make many, many typos)

Depressing

I've pulled out my Greek books today and tidied up my storage space, which of course means reviewing the marks I got on the assessment last semester before I consign it to the archives.

And, boy was I so smart... and now can't recognise the half of the obscure grammatical points I identified in the final paper.

There's no resting on my laurels for this semester, though. Somehow I'd better pick it up prior to the beginning of the new semester when I'm doing New Testament Greek 3.

And what can I remember about hortatory subjunctives?

*brain slowly grinding into gear*

And it would mean that I don't need to buy stamps this year, except that it doesn't...

I've been working on cleaning up my study/office.

Not just cleaning up, but CLEANING UP.

Sorting through lots of pieces of paper that are no longer required and I don't need to look at again...

...and some that I possibly want to look at again from my current perspective, but realising that that is just the thought that lead me to keep the pieces of paper that I don't need to look at again, I've resolutely thrown these out too.

And in this process I've found lots of things that hadn't got into their homes. An envelope with $12 cash in it. And two separate stashes of postage stamps: Nine 50 cent fauna of the Rainforest stamps and twenty-six 45 cent Christmas stamps.

... And 20 sen from the Bank Negara Malaysia, which possibly doesn't add much to my stash, but nevertheless I found it.

So I wouldn't need to buy stamps this year, except that the cost of postage has gone up.

But still, I resent finding nearly thirty dollars worth of cash and stamps how much?

It's the only time I've ever known housework to pay. (Apart from the occasional coin in the bottom of the washing machine)

Maybe I can post Emily Sue's books back to her now.

A Tad Excessive?

So when you get your new credit card, do you take the old one and

1. Cut it up, making certain to

a. cut the signature into at least three pieces, and

b. cutting the numbers in half across before cutting them into pieces; then

2. Carefully divide the resulting bits into two piles that are each missing key pieces, then

3. Throw out half the pieces in one week's rubbish; and

4. Throw out the other half two weeks later when there is no chance some weirdo can ever put them back together.

The chance that's not a tad excessive?

That would be wrong, right?

I was waiting for Givinya to have lunch together, given that I was in town for the day.

There were some 1/2 price calendars.

One had Jack Russell terrier puppies on it.

I had been wondering why people buy Jack Russell dogs. I now know. It's a pity the calendar doesn't come with a sound track to turn you off.

And it wouldn't have been healthy to buy the calendar for violent destruction purposes when the ones next door have been barking for 2 1/2 hours straight, right?

A problem. A solution. A problem. A solution.

My name is Hippomanic Jen, and I'm a book-aholic.

I love to read books.

I love to buy books.

I love to reread books.

I hate to give them away, because I might want to read it later.


I once answered a phone poll, and among other things they wanted an estimate of how many books I own. The options were along the following lines:

a 0 books
b 1 book
c 2 or 3 books
d 4 or more books.

I was astounded. So astounded that I can remember that the first and last options were 0 and 4 or more respectively. Who would have fewer than 4 books in their possession? I still don't know what the question was trying to acheive.

When we were having Dad design the house one of the essentials on the list was a wall to place our bookcases against that wasn't in a bedroom. I've known people who have had to give away thier libraries when they are expecting their second child, because they need the spare room for the new baby. This was not going to happen to us.

But over time, one acquires more books (particularly if one is studying and/or needs resources for preaching).

Then one ends up with the following problem:

Books on a cupboard in my office.

One of two huge bookcases full of books against the book wall my Dad made certain was in the house plans (it would've helped if I'd rotated the image, but you get the drift).



Books on a small shelf in the spare bedroom (it needed to be rotated too).

Books on a shelf in the cupboard in our bedroom.

Hmmm. Even though I have brought myself to do some selective culling of the book population, there are a few issues.

1. I'm asthmatic and seem to be having a problem with house dust.

2. I'm a terrible housekeeper and never have time to dust all the bookshelves.

3. I really need to rationalise book locations. After all, there is a perfectly good book wall to have a consolidated library.

The solution:

We priced cabinets with doors to keep out / minimise the dust and that would take up the entire length of the book wall (which had some space for more bookcases - but inevitably not enough length to fit the little bookcase that lives in the spare bedroom).

We measured the lineal metres of shelf required. Checked out what was available, and ordered three units (2 x 1200mm wide units and 1 x 600mm wide unit). If the skirting and cornice was removed from the sides, and they were made to fit together, they should fit perfectly. We looked at the example in the furniture shop and decided that the shelves were reasonably spaced, and that if we got the 2100mm high rather than the 1800mm high units we would get an extra shelf and that would get us closer to our desired lineal metres of shelf.

They came today.

They looked pretty.

They were heavy for the blokes to manhandle.

My Beloved had to take the skirting board off the walls along the book wall so that they'd fit. We were really hoping that the walls of the alcove were plumb. We joined the three units together and then slid them back into the space.

My Beloved pushed on the joins with his feet and I ran back and forth and pushed the ends back little by little until it fit snugly into the space.

Beautiful, hey?

Unfortunately, despite their beauty and the functionality of the new bookcases there is a problem.

We decided not to specify the distance between the shelves, because we decided that what they had was about right, why would we stuff them around any more? They were already putting doors on, and taking skirting and cornice off, and making them to fit neatly together.

It didn't even cross my mind that a taller 2100mm high bookcase would have THE SAME NUMBER OF SHELVES as the 1800mm one. (Doesn't everyone want to absolutely maximize how many books they can store? Or I might want to have all my 4 books on separate shelves, you know.)

And who would guess that those shelves would be evenly spaced, so there's not a hope of putting an extra shelf in between two existing shelves, because they are all 370mm apart and my shortest books are all 190mm tall.

One of the things I was looking forward to was not having books stacked on their sides.

Another was not having two rows of books on the shelf so that you can't see the back ones.

Grrrrr.

But my very clever Beloved has come up with a solution.

The smaller books could be stored in two rows with one behind. But this means you can't see what you've got.

However, by putting a half width shelf along the back that is slightly lower than the top of the front row (and entirely behind them) we can raise a back row so that the majority of each spine will be visible.

He is very clever, my Beloved.

And the chance that I'll let him go?

After today I think I've confirmed everyone's suspicions that I'm a bit air-headed...

It has been one of those days.

7.30am - Prayer breakfast

8.45am - Get home and take a picture as a background for our church's new website banner (for September - yep, right in time for the new month). Download it. Put the necessary writing on it. Get onto the admin site and upload the image. Realise that it has a typo. Not an important one, or anything. Just the name of the town the church is located in.

10.20am - Frustrated at not getting the website update finished, but take the LBD to the vet to get his dressing changed and for the vet to make sure that everything is looking good. It is, he's walking on it, but doesn't like the sticky bandage coming off. Pushes against me so hard that his good back leg falls off the table and he tries to take all his weight on the bad one.

10.55am - Put dog in the laundry because I have to go out soon. Madly work on the computer to fix the typo, re-upload September's website banner and fix it. Try to insert a new news article, that doesn't end up showing on the public site, but I have to go out again...

11.30am - Meeting with one of our music ladies about a potential solo for Sunday. Words of song are perfect for the service. Can't get onto Sunday's organist. Have a bit of a discussion about deep theological stuff. Get fuel, pick up the hospital pastoral care phone on the way home.

12.45pm - Get home, put some soup in the microwave to defrost. Check dog. He has managed to eat or in other ways get rid of half his bandage. Ring vet. I can bring him straight down. Great.

1pm - try to lift resisting dog out of the back of the car. Drag him into the vet. Vet fixes new bandage. Buy pigs ears to try to keep the LBD entertained while I'm gone.

1.15pm - Put soup on to reheat. Find the LBDs bucket-collar in the back of the top shelf of the cupboard so that he can't eat his bandage. Gather materials for 2pm meeting, remembering the letter I have to post, and the CD to leave for someone at the office.

1.30pm - eat lunch quickly. Burn tongue.

1.45pm - Grab dog. Put on bucket collar, grab pig ear in other hand, then pick up the dog to carry him downstairs to the laundry. Try to push him into the laundry, despite his unwillingness and the fact that the bucket collar gets stuck on the door, which can't open fully because he's rearranged all his bedding. Run upstairs and grab handbag and stuff I need.

1.50pm - Realise that my car/house keys are not in my handbag. They are not on my desk. They are not in the kitchen. They are not in the bedroom. Put everything down and check each of these places three times. Stop and think about what I did when I first got home. Check the shelves in the cupboard where the bucket-collar was. Grab keys. Grab stuff.

2.03pm - Apologise for being late to the meeting. Have meeting to organise Sunday's service. Find out that our organist is away and is not due back til the end of the week. Scrap potential solo.

3.30pm - pack up stuff after meeting. Decide to have a quick run-through of a new song for Sunday (to be accompanied by guitar). Realise that I've lost the CD I had to leave in the office for someone to pick up. Go through all the stuff I have with me. It isn't there. Check the car, my path between the car and the church hall, the office and the meeting room three times each.

3.40pm - Decide that I really need to get home to my Little Black Dog.

3.47pm - Find CD and letter I was going to post on my desk. Ring the lady who was going to pick up the CD. Get her husband. She's just left for the church. Leave message. Ring church. Leave message.

Just now - get new email with the minutes of last week's meeting to plan the Spring Fair. Realise that I should have been there and wasn't because it had entirely slipped my mind.

What amount of respect am I going to have from my church after today's little effort?

... Approximately None!

Finding my own level

I've always been a bit of a klutz.

I would have been excellent at sport if only I could throw a ball, catch a ball, run or hit a moving object with any sort of implement.

Having a modicum of balance and flexibility may also have assisted.

Oh, and some cardio-vascular fitness.

As you can see, I was not ever the first person picked on teams at school. And I fear I wasn't a nice person at all because I was always glad that at least I wasn't the last one picked. There was always a very real possibility that I would be, but the team who started picking at least chose me over the very last one left that the other team had to have. *sigh* I am not a nice person sometimes. Particularly when I was in high school.

Yesterday I felt I found my level.

I was throwing balls to a group of 3-5 year olds.

Nice light plastic balls that don't hurt.

Balls that were big enough to catch and hold.

Thrown gently in an arc.

Over a distance of about 1.5 - 2.0 metres.

When my reach is about three times theirs.

And they just expected that I would be able to catch them. There was no judgement. No waiting on me to fail. It was the best time I've ever had that involved round objects in motion.

But the chance that I managed to catch two balls at once when they came at me unexpectedly?

... You guessed it!!!

Not doing the housework could actually prove fatal...

Further to some of the comments regarding cleaning being over-rated from yesterday's post...

On Monday afternoon I went and got some groceries. This was pretty essential, and we now have things to eat.

(That wasn't what I was talking about with the fatal thing. I could certainly go for some days without perishing from lack of food. My Beloved does not have as much stored up for later, but even he'd last a little while.)

When I brought the groceries in, I dumped them on the kitchen floor so that I could sort them and put them away.

(Putting them away was a really good idea. It doesn't always get done, and then I find dead fruit a week later. Putting things away may not stop fatalities, but it does mean that I don't have to throw away food)

I discovered that there was some form of liquid on the floor under some of the packets, then was amazed that I hadn't smelt it before. So I dug out the bottle of ironing spray that had a loose top, regretting not getting the environmentally insensitive pressurised bottle.

(And being very glad that I hadn't remembered my cloth shopping bags, so I'd said 'yes' to plastic and the back of the car wasn't awash and pongy. I'm wonderfully consistent in my efforts to save the world.)

I cleaned up the spilt liquid with paper towel and went on my merry way. I did think I probably should wash the floor properly, but who has time to do that?

Let's jump to an entirely different topic for a bit.

(Humour me, okay)

My Beloved works in the glass windows, security screens, awnings and blinds business. This means that he picks up lots of scratchy stuff in his work boots. We have polished timber floors. So, being an absolute sweetie, he always takes off his boots before he comes upstairs.

This means that he walks around inside with his socks on much of the time.

(You can see how these stories are going to intersect, can't you?)

I was serving dinner last night when my Beloved came into the kitchen to get glasses for our drinks.

The patch which I had mopped up, but not washed properly, is right at the corner where someone entering the kitchen has to pivot and change direction to get to the cupboard where the glasses are.

The chance that he actually killed himself?

... Approximately None, but it was a pretty spectacular (and successful) attempt at regaining his balance. I reckon the only reason he didn't stack it was due to his wing span - you know how tight rope walkers have that balancing pole thing? I would have stacked it for sure.

By the way, it turns out that the ironing spray has a warning. "Aviod any accidental spraying on hard, smooth floors as they could become slippery" Whad'ya know! Total inundation seems to have the same effect.

And the liklihood I've washed the floor yet?

... "Sweetie, I'm just serving dinner, would you like to come and make drinks?"

Loud and inappropriate laughter.

I was at a christmas gathering when one of my ecumenical colleagues turned to her boss and asked, "Have you checked out the new coffee shop in town yet?"

He (known for his liking for certain stimulants most often found at such a venue) replied that he had not.

She then responded, "Oh, I thought you would have been in like a shot", whereupon I dissolved into giggles and she looked at me, perplexed.

It lost a lot in the explanation, but still gives me the giggles. Sadly, I like a good pun, "Thank you, Bernard."*

The chances that I'm likely to be invited to anything at the local Anglican church for a while?

... approximately nun.


*Reference to the BBC TV series "Yes, Minister". Bernard was known for his pedantic attention to unmixing metaphors, explaining obscure Classical allusions, and finding the most literal meaning of any given phrase. Whereupon either Sir Humphrey or the Minister would repressively intone, "Thank you, Bernard", and change the subject. He is arguably best known for his 'helpful' suggestion of an advertising slogan for the British Civil Service - "Red Tape is Fun!". I've always wanted a shirt with that slogan and his caricature on it. Sadly, I've never seen one, and given that the show was produced in the '80s I doubt I will ever find one.

Cooling Tip for events during a long summer

Although we've had a reprieve from the hellish heat of a couple of weeks ago, it's still warm. Particularly at inside events where there's no air-conditioning or fans and that have limited windows to let the breeze through.

But I've discovered a useful tip to aid in such situations and I'm about to share it with you to apologise for not being a good, regular blogger.

Aren't I kind?

Are you ready?

Sure?

Look around the audience or congregation and sit next to a post-menopausal woman. As the room heats, she will begin fanning herself. And although she may not actually be fanning you, there's enough air moving in the general vicinity to make life a little more bearable.

And, of course, if you have lots of post-menopausal friends, you may be in the enviable situation of finding a seat between two post-menopausal women who will both start fanning themselves.

And the chance that life gets any better than that?

... Approximately None!

Praying that your holidays are excrement...

At my church we have a weekly prayer breakfast. We cover world, national and state events; personal losses and joys; church doings and issues; and anything that relates to our town.

And so in amongst prayers for our Pacific neighbours and those from our congregations who are grieving I chose to pray for our minister and her husband, who are soon to head off for some well deserved long service leave. I prayed that they be refreshed and given the opportunity to flourish, like well-tended plants. It wasn't until I'd finished that I suddenly realised that I might have got a little too much into my analogy.

Don't you hate it when an analogy gets away from you?

You see, technically I believe I prayed that this holiday be for them like plants that are given a good dose of manure which gives them the nutrients to thrive.

Yes, I prayed that their holiday be ... er... excrement.

And what's the chance I meant it the way it came out?

... Approximately None!

O Lord, set a watch over my mouth...

Well, there is probably more than one problem. My brain is mostly here, but sometimes I am still doing dumb stuff. On Tuesday I signed my name on a very important, official business document and signed the wrong name.

Oh no, not my maiden name - I made up an entirely different surname by exchanging the final letter with a totally different letter. A letter that has never existed in my name in the lower case.

What's more I didn't find it until the next day, which was saved by the fact that my dodgy brain forgot to take it around to Dad's office to fax it off. I discovered the error before anyone else saw it. (Then blogged about it. For everyone to see. Hmmm. Maybe I have more problems than I thought)

The main problem I'm confronting is that my jaw hasn't yet let go. I can actually get my index finger between my teeth, but I can't open my mouth any more than that.


So while there are many things that I'd be game to eat, unless they are thinner than my index finger it's just not going to work for me.

I can have a sandwich - as long as I take it apart and eat all the components separately. I ate a sausage at the sausage sizzle last night - but had to cut it in half lengthways. I could eat a pie or hamburger - as long as I cut them up with a knife and fork. My meals are taking ages to eat because I've got to bash down each forkful to be thin enough to go through the 'letterbox'.

And what's worst is that I've had this much opening for about a week now and it's not changing much.

So yesterday I went shopping and decided that I deserved a little treat:-

But I forgot one very important thing:-

Close. Very, very close.

But possible. Just.

The chance that I didn't get just a fraction more room by sheer effort of will and a little discomfort?

... Approximately None!

Linguini Jen

Well, I've been keeping something in my closet.

It's probably about time I 'fessed up.

It's just that it might change the way you think about me, and I'm not certain I can cope with that...

In April I was commissioned as a Pastor in my church, although I prefer "Linguini" as a title, because it is more fun to say. (Get it - Pasta/Pastor - oh, nevermind)



See, I told you that you'd think about me differently.

But I haven't actually changed at all, as evidenced by a moment at our Church Council meeting this afternoon.

I had visited with a family when their husband/father passed away last week. The funeral is tomorrow. When it came up during the meeting every connection to everyone else and every place any of the kids had ever worked was part of the discussion. This is part of belonging to a small country town, and making certain that everyone knew if it was the same "John Citizen" they knew, or Fred Citizen's Dad that was about to be buried.

I mean, it's terrible if you've mentally buried the wrong person's father. Particularly when some of the old names are around here in plague proportions. Next time you see a client and give them your condolences only to find out it was John Citizen, second cousin once removed, who died, not their Dad who also happens to be John Citizen, because he was named after the first one.

Of course, it's even worse if you see someone up the street who you mentally buried six months ago. You can't really greet them with, "Hey, great to see you, I thought you were dead!"

So in our meeting the ages of the kids came up. One of the other ladies said that one of the sons was the same age as one of her kids, thereby making him 41.

At which I said, "Well, he certainly doesn't look it, I would have said he wasn't much older than me."

Whereupon I remembered that I am actually 35. He's not that much older than me.

There was much hilarity at my expense, particularly given that my inclusion on the Church Council has probably dropped the average age of the group to about 55.

And my church is sending me to the national assembly in Sydney?

How much did they think that through?

... Approximately None!

Burr under my saddle

I got dressed after my shower this morning before I went down to the church for prayer breakfast. I'm usually running late as I'm not really a morning person, but I was doing okay today, maybe even a little ahead of time.

As I bent over to pick up my 3/4 pants I noticed something scratchy in my undies. A burr. Admittedly small, but spikey.

It's interesting that at that moment my mind did one of those replay a specific moment things that they sometimes use on television dramas. The specific moment was of me picking up that particular pair of undies off the ground because I dropped them when I was hanging the washing last week.

I made a mental note that I should check clothing a little more carefully if I drop something as I'm hanging out the washing.

After prayer breakfast I was hanging out more washing and I dropped a pair of undies. They belong to my husband. Chances that I checked them carefully?

... he, he, he.

Both a reward and an incentive...

I've decided not to have a massage as a reward for losing my first 4 kilos.

You might have wondered where I was yesterday. The short answer is having fun and spending money (which comes first - the chicken or the egg?).

I needed to go to Toowoomba for a meeting, so I invited my Mum along for some Christmas shopping and a girls' day out, and I slipped away for a bit in the middle of it for a couple of hours.

Somewhere in the saga of Murphy's Law that was our day out (that was more frustrating than funny, so I'm not going into it here) we made a trip to the Ewan Gardam Fabrics shop in the main street. It was actually our post-meeting rendevous, as we'd been looking but didn't have time to work out what to buy before I had to go.

For those who don't sew, or have ever had to buy really, really good quality fabric - Gardams in the middle of Brisbane was historically the place to buy fabric for formal or wedding dresses. It was a tragedy when they closed some years ago.

The good news was that one of the sons (or possibly grandsons, I'm not certain) decided to start a shop for essentially the same thing. Quality fabrics - you can buy wedding veil lace, silk linings, satins and linens, suiting and wool for winter coats. They also have some more 'good casual' fabrics, too. All very yummy.

What is even better is that they started a store in the main street of Toowoomba in addition to the one in the centre of Brisbane. It might not have the same range, but has really helpful and friendly staff and there is certainly plenty enough temptation.

Mum and I were window shopping. One of my little cousins once referred to shopping as "Mum's gone feeling material". It's not far off the mark. Unfortunately we happened to walk in on their two week 20% off sale.

Oops.

We found some fabric that was a really good price in colours that we liked, and were looking for fabric that matched in with it, and doing a little circumnavigation of all the contents of the shop at the same time.

Now for one of the famous Jen digressions (that apparently my four regular readers love) - Back in 2003 when my brother was getting married I was looking for a ready-made dress to wear and discovered a soft, clear shade of mist/spring green that is incredibly flattering on me. I probably wouldn't have even tried it on (because I didn't think the colour would do anything for me) except that I was getting desperate with the selection available in the nearest large centre to where I was living at the time.

Needless to say I bought the dress - sleeveless shift dress (no waist), chiffon over satin, cut on the bias with a cowl neck. Fairly classic lines, although the chiffon cut up diagonally at the hem to show the satin might date it a bit. Anyway, as I said the colour does wonders for me.

In more recent years my clothes shopping expeditions have mainly been along the lines of, "I don't really want to buy clothing because I'm going to lose some weight and then it won't fit - so I'll find something cheap that will cover my body until I'm slender and then I'll buy some nice clothes."

As a result I have many clothes that I don't really love - the nice colours weren't cheap. Having lost 5.7 kilos in the last 6 weeks or so, I'm starting to think about nice clothes. Or at least clothes that don't slip over my hips accidentally.

Also, one of my cousins is getting married in April (and although I'm not taking it for granted that I'll be invited to the reception, there is no way I'm missing the service!), and I wanted to start scouting around for something to wear - not to buy yet (because I should have lost a bit more by April - that's a couple more months away), but to look out and see what's around.




You can tell what's coming, can't you?





One bolt of fabric jumped out from the shelf and screamed, "Please buy me - you can't walk past me, I'm perfect for you!" Something in me responded"I have to buy that one, it would be perfect for me!". Who says they don't believe in love at first sight?



I kept coming back to it, despite the horrendous price tag. It was just me. It's a boucle that from a distance appears to be a soft spring green that really works wonders for me, but up close is woven out of many of the soft, clear colours that also flatter me. The texture gives it wonderful character, but it is a small, dainty, feminine texture that I like.

My mind immediately went to a Jacki Kennedy / Chanel style suit, 3/4 sleeves on the jacket and a straight skirt to just under the knee. A little retro, certainly classic. And it would go with the other fabric I was looking at. Actually, I thought it should go with many things in my wardrobe.

So here is my new wardrobe for next year as a reward for losing some weight and incentive to get to the next milestone when it can be made up:-


Starting top left (and working clockwise) we have:
* a satin sleeveless top with chanel binding,
* a Chanel style suit - straight skirt and 3/4 sleeve jacket
* a full 3/4 length floral skirt and matching short-sleeved blouse
* a tailored long-sleeved jacket and trousers

Everything is interchangeable, and I can dress my suit up or down for many different occasions.

When I got home, I tried my favourite fabric out with some of my favourite existing clothing choices (starting top left):
* a sleeveless mocha/chocolate lace blouse
* my favourite new fabric that isn't anything yet, but will become a Chanel suit
* the dress I bought for my brother's wedding
* a pink floral short-sleeved dress
* my mushroomy-grey suede-finish casual skirt and jacket
* my chocolate chiffon dress trousers (that I should be able to wear again soon because I've lost some centimetres, yippee).

So now I have heaps of incentive to lose those extra kilos, because I want to make up these pretty fabrics and start wearing them.

Oh, which brings me to another digression. An important one.

I hereby fully apologise for any reference that I may or may not have made about my mother being in any way scary or critical... on this or any other blog to which I contribute. She is in fact a lovely, warm, gentle woman who is incredibly generous with her time and talents. Particularly with a sewing machine. And ability to draft patterns. And sew really well. And not be scared to cut into horrendously expensive fabric.

How much chance is there that someone reading my blog can wave a magic wand, make me lose those extra kilos and dress me in my new suit?

...Approximately None

- but if I work at losing those kilos, my magic mother can work on the other little matter? Please?

Nuthin' (Exuberantly Verbose Version)

Normally when I have nothing to say it would be best not to say anything (of course, that is an impossibility for me - despite training at uni and in the workplace!).

As it turns out in the world of blog, no posts mean that it gets very boring, very quickly and everyone thinks the author has dropped off the planet (or has been raptured - you didn't get the memo?)

Well, the truth is more likely that I get more visits to my site if I've actually written something new - Yes, my whole blog is motivated by my traffic counter (despite the fact that additional traffic means approximately nothing when I don't use it for advertising or any form of sales - just the ego boost that someone cares enough to read something I've written).

So as a result, sometimes I will write a very long, rambling post about nothing, hoping to stumble across something mildy amusing - then give it a a bit of a pruning and send it off into lonely cyberspace.

Yesterday I spent some time reviewing my posts (both here and at Skinny Cow), and checking on the length of my comments on other people's posts. This was probably because I had absolutely nothing to say. There are probably other things I could have been doing to get blog fodder, but I didn't do them.

I noticed that other people manage to get their story told with much less verbiage. Maybe verbiage is my style. Yes, my life is made up of many digressions around my intended point... although some commenters were very kind (and as a result ended up with this - hope you've enjoyed).

So I'm still feeling constrained to keep it simple, but decided to let fly anyway to see if I like the effect any better - so I've used the absolutely greatest number of words to get my point across.

Of course, how much of a point do I have today?

... Approximately None.

One for Femina

Femina's comment in response to my last post has inspired me to relate an incident from my college days.

You can 'thank' her later.

During my time on-campus at uni our college celebrated an anniversary milestone. Each year, we had someone design a college T-shirt, and they made a big thing of it that year (being a special year). A competition was run to find the best design.

I can't say much about it without giving up the anonymity of the college, but one group who were entering the design competition had the idea of going with a classic Ionic pillar with the year and anniversary on the front, then the back had the college mascot (which comes from mythology) and they wanted to have an inscription "Towards a Better Age" in Classical Greek.

That's fine, but there was only one individual in the whole place who had done any Classical Greek. That was me. I did one semester and just passed (due to my gramatical struggle after the powers that be in the Queensland Education system decided that English Grammar was a waste of time for high school students).

I offered to take it in to the lecturers and get them to do it, but of course this was at uni and the competition ended in about 30 mins. So I got out my textbooks and did the best I could do in the time available. I figured that no-one but me would know anyway. I couldn't work out how to render the comparative 'better'. I had trouble finding a word for 'age'.

What the shirts actually said? "Towards a Good Time" Probably more much more representative, but shhh, don't tell anyone.

How glad are you that I decided not to take this secret to my grave?

... Approximately None.

You've heard of self-fulfilling prophecy?

OK, so I've got a confession to make...

Last night I noticed that I didn't have too many more downloads to go until my blog reached 1000 site downloads (since I've been recording my traffic and stats). This was very exciting and I really, really wanted to see the 1000 click over.

So in between writing a letter to the local Council (which I may very well blog about once I've cooled down) I kept coming back and refreshing to make certain that I didn't miss the milestone.

I noticed that each time I refreshed another person (or on one occasion two) had viewed the site. This makes sense. Many people check out blogs at night when everything is finished for the evening.

Then I realised that no matter how soon I refreshed again, another person had viewed my blog. Maybe it was me! (Although I'm certain I've fed my own URL into the stat counter so that it doesn't count me)

So I hit refresh again and got to the 1000.

The chance that my site traffic counter is accurate?

... Approximately None.