Nerdville

We're watching a video about scientific discoveries in Astronomy.

I LOVE PHYSICS SO MUCH. So much coolness!

I am an anxious person.

There is one thin you really should never do with me, and that is say "Can I speak to you privately when you have a minute?"

Seriously, Don't Do It.

You see, I'm paranoid. I mean, really paranoid. If it is something that you can't say in front of other people, then there is a reason you can't say it in front of other people. In a professional environment, this means that you are either talking to me about me, or about someone else. Given I don't really know about what stupid things other people are doing in this place, I can only assume that you're talking about me.

If you have something to talk to me about, just tell me what it is. Seriously. I need to know or I'll be panicky and working out how to tell my husband and housemate that I've been fired the entire time until we have that talk and I finally find out that what you actually want is my opinion on what colour to paint the wall in your office.

Cohabitation

So, Oolon and I have been living together for about a month now. A lot of people have asked me how married life feels, and I haven't really had an interesting response for them. Basically, it's not all that different to unmarried life, except that I get to keep him over night!

It helps, of course, that he was staying over about two nights/week on a regular basis for most of the year leading up to the wedding and for three nights in the last month or so beforehand.

The main difference are fairly minor and come with both going from an all-female household to one that includes a male and just generally from having a third person here. For instance, there's now men's shaving gear in the bathroom. Men's underwear on the washing line. There's even more washing that needs doing on a regular basis, which is making me think that a second clothes horse might not be such a bad idea (if room can be found for it, which I haven't been able to do yet), and there are extra dishes to be done each day.

All fairly minor things which are only vaguely noticeable. And, of course, I get to keep him after dark ;-)

Stuff for sale!

Oolon and I are in the process of massive lifestyle changes. So, we're selling two bikes and a car.

Bike 1: My Apollo. It's in good nick, recently serviced.
Step-through frame
7 gears
RRP $349 without things like the rear rack ($50), lights ($30) or mud guards ($60).
I want to sell it for around $350 WITH those extras.

Bike 2: Oolon's Canondale, also in excellent condition, also step-through. Has more gears. Contact him for details.

Car: Nissan Pulsar, 2003 model.
5-door hatch
Just under 120,000km
We're asking $7990 ono

So, if you live in Melbourne and are after a bike (or a couple of bikes) and/or a car, please get in touch!

When I grow up, I want to be just like...

There's an old cliché that all women eventually turn into their mothers. For those whose mothers are awesome, this may not be such a big deal and may even be something to aspire to. For those of us whose mothers are less than inspiring, it is something which we dread and want to avoid at all costs.


I do not want to become my mother. There are definitely some similarities between us (as is only natural, given that I spent the first 25 years of my life living with her and have half her DNA) and not all of them are ones I'd like. For instance, I'm bad-tempered and proud. These are the main two characteristics which make her unpleasant, and could potentially make me a lot more unpleasant than I already am. But I do have certain abilities which will keep me from ever becoming like her:


1) I'm aware of how bad-tempered I am. This means that, under most circumstances, I'm able to either prevent an outburst or I'm able to warn people that one is on its way. Of course, this system does fail occasionally, and this is where my other advantage comes in:


2) I'm able to let go of my pride and admit I was wrong. If I do have an outburst, I'm well aware that I'm behaving inappropriately. As soon as I'm calm enough to speak normally, I apologise for it and explain why it happened. I do this not to excuse the behaviour, but for two other very important reasons: 


1) To let the person know that I recognise that it came from me and isn't their fault
2) Because saying it out loud helps me to internalise what happened and why it happened, and helps me in the learning process of preventing it from happening again.


I guess all this can be summed up by me saying that I'm self-aware, and my mother isn't. Because of this, I will never become my mother.

Parenthood

Having a cat is a lot like having a toddler. There are a lot of advantages to the cat, like being able to leave it alone at home all day, but there are many similarities:

Their communication is limited. Cats are very good at communicating. They have a lot of different vocalisations, and you learn to recognise what quite a few of them are. But a lot of the time they'll just be going on and on and on and on about something and you have absolutely no clue what they're on about, or what they want when they're complaining but have food, fresh watter, and a clean litter tray.

They sometimes need their bum cleaned. Even well-toilet-trained kids sometimes have accidents, and so do cats. They get diarrhea, they leave a mess on the floor. If they're really fluffy (like mine), they can even get dags. So, you need to wash their bums. Stinkyyyyyyy!

They want you to wake up at a certain time of day, no matter how late the night before was. Children tend to like life to be reasonably predictable I was like this, and would be jumping on my parents' bed at 6am, insisting that it was time for dad to make coffee even though I'd kept them up until 3am the night before. Cats can be similar, and mine gets quite distressed if I'm not up when he expects me to be up. He also gets distressed if Oolon isn't up early enough as well. They don't cope too well with change.

They often decide they want hugs in the middle of the night. Most people who know parents are familiar with the toddler that wakes up in the middle of the night and wants to sleep in mum and dad's bed. Cats are like this, too. In the middle of the night, you will often wake up to a very loud rumbling in your ear, a furry weight on your chest, and your nose being sandpapered. This is your cat telling you that it thinks you're utterly brilliant and wanting hugs in the middle of the night. Just like a kid.

They are happies when snuggled between you and your spouse.  When Smudge is wanting attention, be it in the middle of the night or early in the morning, he seems happiest if he's between me and Oolon, in the way that kids tend to be. You are snug and warm in a safe place, and getting in the way of any siblings occurring :-p Unfortunately for Smudge, if we decide to get another cat, that will happen down the road at the shelter and no amount of snuggling in between us will help him!

Yet another photo post

These were taken in Adelaide, and have been tinkered with :-)

Daydreaming

 I was originally going to make this one entirely black and white, but then I got creative :-p

A Leaf on the Wind

That leaf made my opinion of this picture change a lot. Before I saw it when I actually looked at the pic on my computer, I thought it was pretty good. Then I noticed the leaf and considered it flawed; a real shame and a waste of a good photo. Then I embraced the leaf, made it a feature, and am pleased with how it turned out. A metaphor for our own flaws, perhaps?

Concentric Circles

This photo was also intended to be in B&W, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. I did some tinkering with brightness and contrast to make it look better and I'm quite happy with it over all.

This was originally just a picture of a pretty window, but then I noticed that the lights from the chandelier matched up really well with the patterns in the glass. I thought about different ways of showing this off and decided that desaturating everything else was the way to go.

So, here you have it! Me and Photoshop :-)

Proof that you can't take me anywhere.

Oolon and I are in a restaurant with is parents, about to pay for our meals. A girl behind me sneezes, and I say "Bless you!"

Half a minute later, I notice a shrimp on the floor at her feet. My response: "Did you sneeze that out??"

Well, I can take me places. You just have to apologise afterward.

Why I'm not particularly good at anything

One of the problems with ADHD is that I tend to get bored with things before I get good at them. In fact, not getting good at things quickly is more inclined to make me get bored with them. If I have to keep practicing the same skill over and over again without noticing an great difference, I get fed up with it and try to do something else.

This is one of the problems with going to the gym. If I don't see results of some sort within a few weeks, I start to get frustrated and to despair. I get sick of doing the same thing but to no avail.

It's why I'm having some trouble with my motivation to cycle lately - I hadn't noticed any increase in the ease of the ride (in fact, it got harder and harder for a while) or a decrease in how long the ride takes or even an increased ability to ride in more often, which brought my spirits way down. Even figuring out why I was finding it more difficult didn't help much, because by that point I'd regressed a bit and the thought of having to do a huge amount of work just to get back to the level at which I was a few weeks ago... My goodness, that's a horrible thought.

It's easier to just give up and not do it. Having to do the whole thing again, or having to put massive effort into achieving a really minor improvement just doesn't seem worth while, especially when I see other people putting in less and achieving the same, or even more.

Then there's the fear of seeing just how far I've regressed, which is even more reason to not do it because if I avoid it, then I'll avoid the frustration of knowing I used to be better at this, and being annoyed at myself for letting it slip.

It kind of makes you feel a bit failsome and lazy. That brings me down even further, and really reduces my motivation to do anything. So, I've employed my husband to make me do some riding. There is a point where I just need someone to help keep me going, because I am beyond being able to do it myself.

Here's hoping that it works.

About the wedding

Ok, so it's been long enough since the wedding now that I feel like writing about it. I've been having to tell lots of people who weren't there about it, so it gets a bit tiring to keep talking about which is why I've delayed so long.

So, The Big Day!

Got up at 7am. My lovely housemate greeted me with my cat, who had a blue ribbon wrapped around him. That was pretty awesome! She also got breakfast ready because she's awesome. My other bridesmaid (who flew down from Sydney) had stayed the night, so the three of us went to get our hair done. We actually had mohawks! But only to begin with - she needed to tease it to get it to stay properly.

I got picked up by Oolon's lovely aunt and and she took me to get my make-up done. At home, I was greeted by baked chips and got dressed. Now, the original plan was to take the train to the venue (in Melbourne's CBD), which turned out to be difficult which is why Oolon's aunt offered to drive us. So, while I was being force-fed food and getting my stockings on and trying not to be nervous, a LIMOUSINE showed up. My bridesmaid from Sydney had arranged it covertly, because she's also awesome.

So, limo to the city! We dropped our stuff off at the venue and I was ushered around so that Oolon (who was already there) didn't see me. We took some photos in the parks nearby, and a little girl who walked past us with her mum and sister said "They're so pretty!", which had me feeling pretty chuffed.

We had the most amazing weather, and there weren't too many people about so it was easy to take some nice shots. We got to the venue with a bit of time to spare, so we sat in our little bridal closet drinking chamagne and touching up makeup and trying to keep me from getting too much stage fright. Distracting questions included "Which is your favourite star wars movie?" and "If you had a super power, what would it be and what would you use it for?".

The ceremony was great. Our celebrant did a great job. I blushed bright red for most of it, nearly cried, and Oolon didn't let go of my hands except to put the ring on.

The rest of it was spent being social (hard to do when I had, on average, less than 3min to spend with each guest) and squeeing over the cake. The cake had ladybugs on it. Very important, given we had silk roses on it so we needed to protect them from the aphids... Yes, we're silly like that :-)

After the wedding, we went to the Windsor. The original plan was to take the City Circle tram but, like my original plan for getting to the venue, it didn't quite happen that way. One of Oolon's groomsmen arranged for a horse and carriage to take us to our hotel. Because he's awesome, too.

So, we had a brilliant time :-) That was the run-down of the wedding. I'll write about the honeymoon a bit later :-)

Things I like about Adelaide

Adelaide is a very pretty city. It has gorgeous buildings, beautiful gardens, and pandas in the zoo! It is also a lot more bike-friendly than Melbourne.

For one thing, it has free bike hire during the day, and as far as I'm aware they didn't have the issue of helmets being mandatory and yet not provided.

I also like that the city realised the folly of having bikes being unable to trip road sensors in order to change the lights, given that the sensors are in the middle of the road and the bikes need to keep to the far left, preferably in the bike lane. So, you'll see a lot of these:

It's the same as our pedestrian crossings, but for bikes! I think it's awesome.

I also liked a lot of the bikes I could see around the place, like these guys:

I especially like the one in the front, with the hand-made basket on the back and a couple of loaves of bread :-) It also has an interesting detail on one of the tubes:

I also love the autumn colours. It's seriously gorgeous. This is one from Hahndorf:

I also like seeing that people do things like this:

It's a lamp post. Wearing a jumper. You may ask "Why". I say "Why not"! :-) It also had a funky monster badge on it:

So yes, I rather liked Adelaide :-)

PHOTOS!!!!

Some photos of my adventure at Adelaide zoo, which I went to on my honeymoon. Enjoy!

Wang Wang, the male panda.

Fu Ni, the female panda.

An un-known red panda. Possibly the cutest creature in all creation!

A Wallaby with beautiful eyes.

A pretty bird.

These are mandarin ducks. How something this colourful survives without being eaten by EVERYTHING is beyond me, but my goodness they make me happy!!!

Meerkat!!! On sentry duty. Alert little fella, 'inne?

This is a dwarf mongoose.

Stand-off between a chicken and a magpie. The chicken won. I'm not kidding.