Monthly Archives: January 2012

The Month of Love

Posted in Faith, Family, Love by

So I saw this on a friend’s facebook the other day and thought I might use it to shape my blog for the next month, coz lets face it who doesn’t like a little bit of love…  So each day for the next month, I am going to post about the corresponding day from the picture below.  I may post other things in between, but I will at least post something love related.

I do want a little disclaimer though…I know that this list has come from birth.com.au… no I am not pregnant, and some of them will not apply, or are just a little lame, no really lame so I am going to tell you now that I may change them as I go, but either way, it will be something about love.

Jake and Em… Get Things Done…

Posted in Family, Food, The List by

Usually when Jake and I hang out it is a lazy day that involves either a movie… or food… or a trip to a random location… or a mixture of all of the above… most of the time it is unplanned and a little disorganized, but today we got things done…

After a quick trip to Jake’s new uni, we decided that we would work on knocking a few things off the 2012 list, and even I say so myself, we did quite an impressive job…

Before the day started I had officially knocked 7 things off…

2. Make my own ice cream – completed 9.1.12
25. Fix up super stuff – completed (by Dave) 24.1.12

43. Make breakfast muffins – completed 16.1.12

63. Visit Castlemaine
81. Have a pot of tea – completed 1.1.12 and again on 25.1.12

86. Get an Exercise Piggy Bank – completed 23.1.12
99. Try and Espresso – completed 14.1.12

But now… wow have we been busy little bees… I can now say very happily I have also crossed off the following…
(please note are the listed in the order they happened, rather than their numerical order…)

57. Bust a move in a random location – Coles will never be the same… I have to admit that I was dreading this once the second I put it on the list… but it is now done and here is the proof…

55. Clean the gunk of  my baby havaiana – This little keychain, that usually hangs in my car had an unfortunate run in with some, I think, up and go on the floor of my old car, back when I was at uni… leaving an unsightly and questionable brown stain.  But that stain is no longer… it has been soaked and washed and it back to its original colour and will return to its place of pride in my car.

35. Make a Mocktail – being more creative with all things drinks, Jake was much more qualified to help me with this than any other family member.  He taught me how to make a Mocktail called Strawberries and cream (so he thinks), which was pretty and delicious, complete with cocktail glass and straw.

40. Have a rainbow paddle pop – it was delicious… need I say more?  Well I will I think next year I need to up the number of rainbow paddle pops in my life…

and last but not least…

71.  Play with playdough – Jake and I didn’t just play with playdough… we made playdough and then played with playdough.  I have to confess I had never made my own before, but it is a skill I am definitely glad I have learnt… we only played for a short while… but it was a very creative while…. Check out our awesome artwork…

So there you go, my total crossed off items now stand at 12… not bad for only 27 days…
only 88 to go.

Oh and the other thing that happened today…  although not on the list, Jake started a new blog… check it out here.

3 Reasons I love this Sunburnt Country

Posted in Friendship, Life, The List by

I love Australia … and I also really love Australia day…  I love almost everything about it… the only thing I don’t like is the assumption that it must include copious amounts of alcohol, but other than that I am very much down with the whole thing…  Anyway, this year I got to spend Australia day with my good mates from Castlemaine and a few more of their friends too and it was a lovely way to do it.  It also meant that I could cross number 63 off the list… so I decided that I would make it a post… but in order to avoid the grade 5 styles holiday diary… I have decided to make a Top 3 reasons I love being Australian…

  1. You can put a flag on anything… and it’s not offensive… its embraced… for example… the fence…  bathers… tattoos… plates… severities… or even a pool
  2. It doesn’t matter how ugly or ridiculous an idea can be… It can still be a friggin good idea… enter the magic punch fountain
  3. It doesn’t really matter where you are…  your can make a good time anywhere if you have the right people.

There are heaps of other reasons I love being part of this sunburnt country… but these are just a couple that came up yesterday…

Hope you had a good Australia day…

I’m too old for this…

I have decided I am getting old… I know this seems like an outrageous comment from a 24year old, but it’s true… I used to be able to stay up all night and have no issues the next day… but those days are gone. Last night I stayed up to watch Lleyton Hewitt’s match on TV, which didn’t actually finish that late, but I am really stuffed now… and it sucks, mostly because his opponent Novak Djokovic is only 24 and he was up playing tennis, full on tennis while I was whinging about being tired.

What I want to know is how did this happen? How did I get to this point where I can no longer hack the pace? And how do I get out of it? Perhaps it’s because I am not very fit at the moment, or because my diets terrible, or because I don’t get enough sleep when I should… perhaps it’s all of these things, I don’t really care what’s causing it to be honest, I just want it to stop and go back to the way it used to be… where I could party hard all night and then crash, but not a moment before I was ready! I mean what would happen if heaven forbid I got into cycling and wanted to watch the tour? I would never make it! And what concerns me even more is… what am I supposed to when the Olympics are on this year? I love the Olympics, in fact I can’t get enough of them when they are on… I love the good sports, the popular sports, the terrible sports and the just plain weird sports… how am I meant to soak up all that is London 2012 if I can’t even make it to 1am to watch the tennis? I think the only option is to pretend it’s not happening… So here is to living in denial… were I just pretend I can still do it, like right now and just have to suck it up and deal with the consequences… and in the meantime I can work or getting myself fitter… making more energy, well making my body better at using energy…and with the help of my new exercise piggy bank (no. 86 on The List)…

20120124-113119.jpg

I say… bring on the health kick… again…

Help… I don’t know how to stop!

Posted in Life by

Something I have discovered over my years of blogging is that I am a terrible blog finisher… in fact it’s probably the reason I don’t post a lot of things, I say what I need to but then I can’t bring it all to together and make it sound complete.  They just tend to stop… I am sure there is a skill to it, and perhaps I just need more practice… or perhaps I am trying too hard, if I just didn’t think about it maybe it would just happen, all I know is what ever this is… isn’t working.

Perhaps it’s because my blogs don’t have a specific format… My Curious George Blogs have an ending because they are asking for something and they have their own format, maybe that’s what I need a format for the rest… On my old blogs I used to have a tag line that I would use to tie it all together, for example on my original blog, back in 2006, I used the tag ‘Just a thought I had…’ which was ace but then there was an unfortunate incident and it stopped… When I had my 22 adventures blog I finished everything with some variety of ‘I guess that’s just all part of the adventure!’ which made sense because the blog as called 22 adventures… but now I have a blog, which is really just there for me to record and document my life as I see it and perhaps bring joy to a few people along the way.  It doesn’t have a particular feel or flavour and I kind of like it that way, but this is what I think is causing my problem… If they were letters I could sign of… if they were questions I could finish with the question (obvious I know), if they were all statements I could finish with some awesome tag line, but there are all over the shop… Maybe they have terrible ends because about now when I am writing I realise I am rambling and no one really cares about whether I have a tag or a purpose or if I even blog at all…

Anyway the point is I know it’s an issue and I am working on it, but if anyone has any suggestions… now would be a good time to share, perhaps even by using the comment button below…

What’s in a Name?

Posted in Family, Life, Love by

So ages ago some guy named William Shakespeare, in a little thing called ‘Romeo and Juliet’ wrote the line ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’, but today I would like to dispute it…  I think there is a lot in a name… in fact sometimes I think that the name of a person or a animal can shapes who they are, perhaps I am wrong but let me give you an example.

I have a dog and his name is Dexter…  I have blogged about him before… 8 times there, also a couple more times here… in fact I have even blogged about this exact issues on a few occasions, but it’s time to bring it up again because the more I know Dex, the more I think it’s my fault… Now before we go any further I need to you understand that I really do love my dog… I mean what’s not to love about this:

But sometimes my dog makes me really really mad…

Just to be clear Dexter is named after the serial killer in the TV series Dexter, because as graphic and as morally disturbing as that show is… I love it.  He is not named after Dexter the robot from ‘Perfect Match’ or Dexter from ‘Dexter’s Laboratory’ although both of those shows did have their moment.  He is most defiantly names after the serial killer… and I think it has affected his personality as Dexter is a Destroyer… of everything… and most recently my shoe…

Never in my life have I had a dog that is able to destroy things like Dexter does… new toys are gone within minutes and recently we had to get him a new bed because he had ripped his own to shreds… and in the past he has:

Chewed through a seatbelt
Destroyed a leather chew toy
Brought us dead rats… often the same rat more than once.
Plucked a dead bird of its feathers and…
Eaten an entire collection of play dough

Now I know dogs often destroy things if they are bored or not walked often enough, but he is, and he has a massive back yard in which he can do as he pleases… Dexter destroys things because he wants to and because he enjoys it and I can’t help thinking if I had named him something different… well I might still have my shoe…

Perhaps if I called him Spot he would just love hide and seek… or if I called him Barry or Bruce he would be a better guard dog… or perhaps if, like my cousins, I called him Oink… he would be so confused that he wouldn’t have time to destroy, as he would be consumed by his thoughts, pondering exactly where he fits in the animal kingdom… Perhaps not, perhaps it doesn’t make any difference and he was always going to be a destroyer, but I have to be honest I do feel a little responsible.

No. 2 Make my own ice cream

Now despite the fact that I promised I wouldn’t let the list take over my blog I still feel like I want to record my list adventures up here too, so while I will blog about other things, unfortunately you will need to endure the bragging that comes from crossing something off the list…

Last week I celebrated the fact that I had been offered a spot in the teaching course I wanted by cooking a roast and making my own ice cream… this was quite significant because I normally only do a roast on really special occasions and I had never attempted to make my own ice cream before. For Christmas this year I was lucky enough to get a new mix master, which I was very excited about, although it did come with lots of apprehension from Dave as he had always been of the believe that you should never buy your wife an appliance for important events like Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries etc. Anyway, not only did I get the mix master its self, I also got an extra bowl as well as a ‘freeze and mix’ ideal for making ice cream. So as you can imagine I was pretty keen to test it out… but I had to wait…

Anyway, after putting the bowl in the freezer for 15hrs to prepare it I had finally found the perfect occasion to test it out… and it was just as good as I hoped it would be… I made the standard vanilla and some strawberry sorbet… delicious… don’t believe me… well check out the pictures…

So there you go, no. 2 crossed off the list!  Oh and because I was making my self handy in the kitchen I also made a start on no. 54 ‘Use every appliance in my kitchen at least once’ as I used the Mix Master, food processor, blender, electric knife and the coffee machine… only a million other appliances left…

Can you get sunburnt in the car?

Posted in Curious George by

This is something that I have been thinking, and perhaps worrying about for a long time now, actually pretty much since I rotated to a new site with work, except on rainy days, because it seems less relevant then.  Anyway, since I rotated instead of having a 15minute commute, I have had a 45-60minute commute, meaning I spend a lot more time in the car… This change has also coincided with the change in season, from winter to the warmer months of spring and summer, which has meant I have seen a lot more sun, well seen from the inside of my car, and recently on really sunny days I have noticed that I feel like I am getting burnt as I drive…

The thing is for as long as I can remember I have been of the belief that I won’t get sunburnt in the car… I know that it’s probably not true and it makes sense for it to be completely plausible to get burnt as you drive, after all apparently all it takes is some bent glass and some sun to destroy bugs of all shapes and sizes, but part of me is still unsure.  So being the hypochondriac and skin cancer paranoid person I am, I decided it was time to get some answers… so I putting it to you…

Can you get sunburnt in the car?

Thanks,

The paranoid Curious George.