#231: Cut your own hair in a fit of rage
When I cut out chocolate I:
1. Lose the will to live
2. Cry a lot
3. Get headaches
4. Struggle to stay awake during the day (which leads to insomnia, then a vicious cycle)
5. Write less
6. Get gross skin (you’d think the opposite would happen, but it doesn’t – the effect of the no-chocolate stress outweighs the effect of the eating-less-oil)
7. Have strong violent urges eg I recently punched CJ’s iphone* (not a sane thing for a financially-stressed person to do).
The Gilmore Girls has been helping to pass the long, hopeless hours until I can eat chocolate again (which helps with #1 and #4), but it doesn’t help me express frustration at all – hence # 7. Last night was especially bad, so I grabbed a pair of scissors and hacked off about 6 inches of my flowing locks. After that my urge to kill was much diminished.** I continued to shed chunks of hair for several rather itchy hours.
At some point soon I’ll get CJ to fix it up a bit.
Here’s your pirate pic for the day. It’s for sale if you go to joshsimagination.blogspot.com (rating unknown).
In related chocolate/violent-urges news, I let myself weigh in a day early today on the basis that it’s that special (and nauseous) time of the month, so I decided that if I made my weight goal for this week I could skip exercise today. After lengthy contortions, I beat the scales into submission. Which means no exercise today, and I feel like all (or at least most) of this last week’s awfulness has made a difference. Hence, feeling a lot better. The worst dieting time is always femininity-related, so it should get better from here.
*Well it WAS giving me attitude
**. . . yay
#35: Cook with butter
I’m so depressed by the lack of chocolate in my life that I currently struggle to stay awake. Fortunately, I have a trusty envelope of Easy Awesomeness, which I cracked open today and found this gem. I’ve also been mainlining “Gilmore Girls”, and the food onscreen has been making me hungry. So today, for the first time in living memory, I made French Toast.
I mixed 1/4th cup of milk with one egg in a bowl, soaked two slices of white bread in it, fried them in butter, then spread them with more butter*, and sprinkled the results with sugar.
I forgot to take a photo, but French Toast is one of the most buttery-summery-toastedy-looking dishes on earth. Play along at home rating: extremely easy and rewarding.
Here’s another fiesty figure of history – but be warned, I was too morose to sit at the computer long enough to read it, so I don’t know the rating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalina_de_Erauso
A more detailed version of her exploits:
http://www.corrieweb.nl/amazon/historicax13.htm
*and extra butter
Coming soon: Fly a kite. A better mood. Etc.
#224: Visit a display home
Today CJ and I drove to Murrumbateman to visit a display home and see how drool-resistant modern floors really are.*
The kitchen was sooo dreamy.
You’ll notice it has the same floating-bench-with-sink-and-dishwasher that I put in my fantasy house plan the other day.
CJ had a manly swoon at the rising power point (also on the floating bench) – and of course the fact it was designed to be North-facing. It also had bathrooms with separate toilets, which I adore. I also adore the fake stone stuff out the front and under the bench.
The clock in the above picture may look familiar. That’s because CJ and I were given one** when we married.
We did actually learn some interesting stuff between the druglord fantasies. This particular company – Regal homes – can adjust almost anything in the home design to your preferences (including moving walls, chopping bits off, etc). Their cheapest homes cost about $250,000 to build (which at least gives us an idea – that’s for 3 bedrooms and a study, which is more than we’d need anyway). It costs $15,000 to knock down an old home – which is so much less than I thought that it opens up some interesting possibilities.
We’ll just see.
In the meantime, here’s a lady who might have got on with Anne Bonny (my favourite part is when she fakes her lover’s death by digging up a corpse and then burning down the nunnery where they were both, clearly, naughty nuns).
http://www.eldacur.com/~brons/Maupin/LaMaupin.html
*quite
**after some not-so-subtle hintage from yours truly
S#1: Pyjama party
Today’s awesomeness mission: “In bed. Just you, something (or someone) to snuggle, a laptop, notebook or sketchpad, some rad music, a good movie, and a hot cup of chocolate. It’s the perfect antidote for dreary weather or cancelled plans.”
I
I
In two and a half hours it will have been three and a half weeks without chocolate or lollies in the world of Louise. I’m now letting myself drink weight watcher’s chocolate milk – one a day. It really doesn’t cut it, but it’s a lot better than nothing.
Today I had breakfast and watched some “Gilmore Girls”. Then that was too much work and I went and had a lie down (both cats were way ahead of me). Then that was too much work and I fell asleep. Then I woke up and had my pretend-chocolate ration while watching “Gilmore Girls”. I expect the cycle will go around a few more times before the day is done. There’s a reason this awesomeness was #1 on the steffmetal.com list.
The rest of you can cheer yourself up, too – just click on the link below. It has very mild language and themes (the rest of the site is sometimes NOT for children). It retells my absolute favourite part of history: Real-life pirate girls Anne Bonny and Mary Read dressed as boys, fell in love, fought duels, and defied the King.
S#49: Get mentioned on TV
Yep, today is a day of double awesomeness.
An infamous twittertales blog entry was just described by the unforgettable Chrissie Swan on “The Circle” TV show – with my full writing name, and the fact that I blogged about it.
Here’s the original hilarious tale:
http://shootingthrough.net/2010/01/11/january-11-toilet-travails/
PS: Technically, this entry is “Achieve a lifelong dream”. I think, on the basis of the luck required for my cunning plan to work, this counts.
S#25: Watchword
My mission, from steffmetal.com:
“Change your passwords on your email, your bank, your paypal account, everything, to words that make you smile. Banana, elocution, duped, muggle, flippant, pumpkmen, snooty, sneed, salacious. . . the possibilities are endless!”
For obvious reasons, all I can say is that I did. Feel free to play along at home – or make suggestions, if you like. What are your favourite words?
So here’s photos of the sky creeping up on me:
.
And HERE is the post you’ve all been waiting for – huzzah for the extremely entertaining antics of real historical pirates (PG for mild language – the site itself is unrated, and not at all child-oriented):
http://steffmetal.com/history-robberies-murders-notorious-pirates-review/
This is a post I’ve been planning for months, so do click on it.
S#88: Facebook Friends
Steffmetal.com suggested making a facebook friend into an actual friend. This works great for me, because I release my twittertales on facebook as well, which means I have a ridiculous number of facebook friends, and I haven’t the faintest who most of them are.
A couple of days ago, someone initiated a conversation with me, and I responded. Turned out Complete Random # 678 was also a writer, living in Sydney, and after a genuinely enjoyable chat I ended up joining an entire online writing community on his recommendation.
So go ahead and play along at home – turn a facebook friend into a real friend.
In other news, since I now carry a camera with me (ready for awesomeness to occur so I can trap it and sell it to the London Botanical Society), I took this picture during a red light:
This awesomeness was probably a lot more interesting for me than for you, so here’s something to tide y’all over until tomorrow:
You’re welcome.
S#43: Archery
Frequent viewers will be aware that my lack of coordination is famed on three continents. My friends and CJ and I had a Discussion About Louise And Sharp Objects and mutually decided that I wouldn’t be shooting arrows anyplace, ever.
So, with any aura of practicality out of the way, I got my Lord of the Rings on.
I call that picture, “Are you taking a photo?”
The umbrella and brick wall weren’t doing it for me, so I ran and pulled down a curtain.
Good ay?
Now let’s zoom out a little (like they do on CSI):
If you look closely, you’ll notice:
1. The pirate ship in the top left.
2. My brown skirt peeking out underneath the dress due to an over-hasty change. (Superman I’m not.)
3. Three other ships.
4. One sneakered foot belonging to my curtain.*
I wasn’t strong enough to draw the bow very far at all – those things are meant to be tough. As you can tell by the fingers of my left hand in the first shot, I wasn’t especially good at just holding the arrow, let alone anything else. But it was awesome all the same.
This week I’ve written not just one but two brilliant and true pirate history posts for steffmetal.com. I’ll let you know when they’re up – possibly as soon as tomorrow.
To tide you over until then, a picture from jackiemorris.co.uk:
So, what happened with ebay on the fateful day**?
Nothing. Not a sausage. It was quite thrilling to sit and watch as each of eighteen items utterly failed to sell. They’re back online now, with better discounts, better pictures, and a better display system. I can see by the numbers of watchers (plural this time) that things are already picking up.
Also, I lost just over a kilo this week – which means I’ve lost 4.1 kilos on this current no-junk journey, and I’ve just reached the halfway point (in terms of time, not weight). I face three more weeks with no chocolate, no sugary drinks, and no lollies or cake or biscuits – and then we’ll see. To get into the healthy weight range, I need to lose 10 kilos altogether, which MIGHT be possible by the end of the year (which’d be worth a lot, since that was my main goal for 2010).
And today is Tuesday, which means Publisher B might reply. They’ve had one of my books for 18 months***, and another for a year.
*Thanks Ben.
**yesterday
***but who’s counting?
#146: Barefoot for a Whole Day
Well, I did it.
I gotta admit, I thought my feet would be way dirtier. I guess the late-stage grass and/or carpet neutralised some of the filth.
In the morning I hung out washing, then took CJ to the Carillon island (at one stage he attempted to carry both me and all our picnic supplies out of a patch of prickles). I mentioned death-defying stunts. Here they are:
It’s a lot scarier than it looks. Observe the terror in my eyes:
After that we went home, and then at night we went out to the movies (still, in my case, barefoot). Then I checked the oil level in the car (perilously low, thanks for asking), took a foot photo, washed my feet, and went to bed.
The End.
Within the next few hours, I’ll find out if anyone real is going to buy any of our surprisingly valuable jewellery. Drum roll please. You’ll all find out tomorrow. At the moment, two of the twenty items are being “watched”, and another one has had a question.
And, while we’re on the topic of barefootedness, here’s today’s scurvy villain (in terrifying statuette from wholesalecentral.com):
What kind of person would buy a statuette with skulls?
Just saying.
Speaking of barefootedness, Canberra is having a genuine Zombie Walk on November 27! It looks like hundreds of people are coming – including me, of course. Here’s the details: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=120640534658762&index=1
Will you be there? Want to arrange a place to lurk together?
Probably NOT a good idea for children. You might not be scared of zombies any more, but I certainly am. “Shaun of the Dead” gave me nightmares (nighmares with a zeppelin, but nightmares all the same).
PS: Alternate titles for “Lord of the Rings”. Read the comments; they’re just as good.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/11/alternative-titles-for-lord-of-the-rings
#222: Kidnap Your Date
You know it’s gonna be a good date when you take your partner in the car looking like this:
I took a circuitous path to the secret location, and CJ was soon lost.
My cunning plan was to walk him onto a certain island at just the right time, leaving the blindfold on until a certain sound happened, when he’d suddenly know where he was. Sadly, the route I’d taken was too circuitous, and we were about five minutes late. CJ didn’t mind. He realised where we were the instant I opened the car door.
Yep, the National Carillon. It’s usually playing from 12:30-1:20 on Sundays (pause as Louise casts a subtle eye toward the followers of this blog who have brand new boyfriends*). They played, among other pieces, “Yellow Submarine”, “The Addams Family” and the strangely appropriate “He Had It Coming.”
I’ve written about the Crillon before, sometimes even for money (go on, click the link!)
The island itself is beautiful, and we walked all the way around (something I didn’t dare do by myself, since there’s a strong possibility of stumbling across a pair making out in one of the dozens of semi-secluded spots). Along the way we spotted a Mysterious Rat-Like Creature (sleek, furry, and about a foot long – not including a presumed tail) diving into the water. That was definitely a highlight. Was it an otter? Was it really a rat (it didn’t appear to come back up)? An escaped ferret? A secret governmental water camera?
Inquiring minds want to know (but never will).
I did at least get a photo of this guy, who obligingly posed for about twenty minutes. Sit, Bobo! Stay!
We passed three patches of rose petals. I’m pretty sure that if CSI wanted to, they could analyse the rate of decomposition and work out exactly when the weddings occurred. Then they could analyse the level of sweat on the petals to determine how stressed the bridal party was, and extrapolate that into predicting whether the marriage will succeed or not.
With SCIENCE!!
CJ and I found a nice patch of grass, ate our lunch, and watched pleasure-boats pootle by.
I apologise for the above photo, featuring the High Court building. Lake Burley Griffin is surrounded by beautiful and/or intriguing buildings, and that’s just dead ugly. CJ said it was a product of its time – and that’s certainly true. There was a time when sheer naked concrete was considered special. But this is not that day. THIS IS NOT THAT DAY!!**
I feel a little sorry for those who paid to go on a ferry and meander past all these gorgeous islands without the fun of being able to dig their bare toes into the cool grass.*** Suckers.
Once we’d had lunch, CJ promptly and picturesquely fell asleep.
Tomorrow’s awesomeness is a reader suggestion – “Go entirely barefoot for one day”, which I’m actually still doing today. I’d forgotten that the island of the National Carillon is built entirely on duck poo and prickles.
The things I do for you people. And CJ and I are going out again after dinner.
So tomorrow’s blog will include pics of my death-defying Carillon island tree climb, and a fashion shoot of how dirty my feet end up after all our adventures.
Coming soon: Tomorrow is also when our initial ebay time runs out, and we may or may not (probably not) get money. I’ll let you know. Also coming soon: Archery. ZOMBIE WALK!! Watchwords. Facebook friends. And more.
In completely different news, here is an article on modern piracy (the kind with cellphones, governmental corruption/weakness, and weapons that kill innocent people). Modern piracy costs around $13 billion a year.
http://www.criminaljusticeusa.com/blog/2009/10-shocking-facts-about-modern-day-pirates/
*Two, that I know of.
**And duck poo.
***Ask Aragorn. He knows.
Felicity Banks 