yes I'm working. I just wanted to write something quickly as a change from all the writing:
another thing there should be a word for: to place something found aside in a supposedly easier to see place, with the actual effect of making it impossible to find when the owner comes looking for it. what shall we call it? to Toorak it.
as in "I dropped my keys next to the car, and it took me TWO HOURS to find them because some idiot had tooraked them onto the gatepost."

closely related to Malverning: to put something in a safe place that you can't possibly forget. and you know what happens then.

something else there should be a word for: to link to someone in a quote, as in: "I realized the perfect model for my proposed Public Service Announcement
Me.
Do you know why I'm not smiling in that picture up there? It's not because I'm looking for the sophisticated-executive look. It's because I'm embarrassed to smile. It's because my teeth are literally rotting due to my pack-a-day habit."

we could call it "to bendigo."

as in: "check out this bendigo to Ev's latest rant"

I consume, digest, and excrete information for a living

now that is getting closer to what I feel about blogging. sort of mindless info-munching and excreting. what a lovely image, huh?
(caveat: of course, I have not fully read either this or the 73-blogs article, nor have I done the Berkeley course. you should really just ignore me.)

:: how jedi are you? ::

a Berkely course on blogs, also found at Daypop, that seems to me to almost entirely miss the point. at least the point of what I like about blogs. news is all very well, I know from experience, but what about the people-ness of it?

stolen from Daypop as usual: really gross pictures. if you go here, it serves you right!

"What happens when we have 73 blogs about Wooster, red blogs, prose blogs, gun blogs, ska blogs, braless blogs, blog blogs, bong blogs, 29,471 Boston blogs, when we have three blogs for anyone who thinks for a living or lives for thinking: a blog for work, a blog for play and blog for family? What happens when Laura Bush, Zonker Harris, Bill Gates, Britney Spears, Homer Simpson, John Edwards and Tiger Woods all blog?"


I'm glad you asked that. this article actually confirms my feeling that as long as we all read about as much as we're read, blogging will be just fine. although I take issue with the headline "making a living from blogging". that's not the idea. live first, then blog.

Via Jill.

When the mirror hit the floor, she sat up in bed and shouted “not yet.”
then she said to her husband: “what the hell was that?”
Why should he know?
She opened the door as if she’d never been through it.
Seeing the circular mass on the corridor floor, she looked up for the hole in the ceiling where the thing had crashed through.
Gathering the pieces together the next morning, she asked “why do these things always happen at three in the morning?”
“Why can’t they happen while I’m at work, or out shopping; it wouldn’t be so bad just coming home to it. Why do I have to participate?
The big pieces she kept, stacked with their curved edges poking up out of a green bucket in the shed.

my archives keep disappearingfrom the front page. they'll be back soon. at least I know they still exist

caffeinated soap

a keeshond puppy: 'nuf said.

last-ditch attempt to get BlogCon moved to Melbourne: Saturday night. boy's birthday. setting: Katsalidis-designed restaurant in the city; polished concrete walls with rich timber panels, very soft music, black-clad waiters who can pour wine from about five feet away and not spill a drop, etc. high interior decor point: the slab of granite in the ladies' room instead of a sink. the water ran off it like a waterfall.
drinks: g&t, champagne, a couple of glasses of excellent cab sauv.
menu: an amuse-bouche of warm frothy mushroom broth. crunchy breadsticks. mushroom tortellini on shredded celery with oysters (me) prawn and scallop mouthfuls (him), followed by tender medium rare venison on a bed of caramelised winter vegetables (me) and a sort of yummy red snapper steak thing (him), followed again by poached pear with chocolate cakey-mousse, topped with melted Valrhone (spelt?) chocolate, poured over the desserts at the table. A couple of coffees.
all absolutely perfect, in very civilised surrounds.
total cost (frightening for me, but it was his birthday): about $104 US.

we should run an ad campaign: Australia: 50% off everything.

hotel rethink: how about a cheap, clean and well located dorm room?

not that I condone cheap wog humour...but get some hair on your chest.

I hate it when ... I wander into work on a Monday morning, completely forgetting that I had a phone interview lined up with a Very Important Person.
I love it when ... I check my voice mail an hour later, readying myself to ring and grovel, and get a message from the PR saying she "can't find him" and will try to get him on the phone asap.
and did I tell her that I'd forgotten when I spoke to her? oh no. I need every brownie point I can get.

puppy photos. Batgrl and Platypus are dog angels.

other tearjerking dog rescue tails (woof woof) at Keeshond.com. If I was in the States I'd take 'em all.

hoopty's killed his comments. which is a comment in itself, I guess. and I thought I was being a control freak when I hesitated to get comments, being aware it would make this space less my space.

my back hurts. at the front of our house is a respectable pile of hard rubbish. at the back are all our plants, tucked between the garage and the fence. I spent an hour and a half this afternoon wearing a stupid face mask, picking asbestos pieces out of the soil behind the garage - and picking up smashed bits of what was once a beautiful tiled fireplace in our lounge room, which I will include in a mosaic with the bits of the mirror that smashed to the floor at 3 am yesterday morning.

so I guess the moving has begun. but right now I'm making chicken curry, having sent Andrew and my nephew off to get The Phantom Menace. yes, I know it sucks. but I have this thing about completing the set...

$50 for these? I don't think so. Ramekinworld.com will have a special section devoted to scoffing at such prices.

my new collection mania: old suitcases, those cardboard ones with metal catches and leather straps and retro-printed linings. I bought FOUR in Ballarat yesterday (one was a Samsonite case); this would not be remarkable until I add that I had to get them, plus my bag of clothes, home to Melbourne in my cute-but-miniscule MX-5. not even lack of carrying space can stop me, it seems. I think the suitcase thing is a reaction to our impending move. if we have to house-sit, I can use them as a mobile wardrobe that will look cute stacked up in the hallway; if not, they'll still make good storage for the stuff we leave in the house, (none of which will be worth stealing, if you're stalking me, unless you like 1970s paperback novels, old mismatched socks and back copies of papers I've written for)
and old suitcases are cheaper than proper boxes at only $2-$5 each

went house looking again today. found one I really like; it's a bit more than we wanted to pay, but has a great feel, polished boards and is close to a huge park where we could walk Mr B.

now that I've read the comments on Hoopty's blog, I'm even more confused. I wouldn't say this in his comments, but everyone was forgiving each other and spreading the love so enthusiastically, I wonder if there was a problem at all? or is it the virtual community equivalent of having a fight with your boy/girl just so you can have make-up sex?
;-)