Blog yer pet Friday

Snout out

No, this is not a muppet. This is Lucky, our extremely inquisitive family mongrel. We know he is part Jack Russell and part fox terrier. We think he is also part whippet, as he has very long legs and a whippety chest, and he's the fastest dog I've ever known. Let's just say he's not anywhere near a pedigree dog.

However, he is a wonderful family dog, great with kids large or small, and has a ball obsession. No joke. This dog can play ball until he drops dead of exhaustion, and even then he'd try for more. He also likes sticking his snout where it's not welcome.

He is meant to belong to Bumblebee, but of course he imprinted on me, so I am Ruler of the Universe, which has made me sway away temporarily from my preference of cats. I've never been so unconditionally adored. It's addictive. I feel like I'm betraying my late beloved cat, but what else can I do when my little furry mate just sits and stares lovingly at me all day? Throw the ball, of course.

C*nty camera

Fuckaduck! 

I am so sick of my digicam dying. I bought the bloody thing duty-free on the way to Korea in June and it did a beautiful job until the second-last day of my trip, which was the first day of free time to look at all the gorgeous palaces and art districts. C*nt! I cried, in between squirts, as this was also the day on which I contracted a lovely case of giardia. I still made it around some beautiful areas, and saw most of the toilets in north Seoul, but I have no photos other than those my colleague took.

Anyway, sent the camera back, and it was returned with the message that they couldn't find anything wrong with it. Annoyingly, it did work when I opened the parcel. For a time. Then it died again. So I sent it back with printouts of the photos it was taking, like the gorgeous self-portrait above. This time it was returned after being 'fixed'. Yeah, well, if my dog was fixed the same way I'd be the proud owner of a daddy dog by now.

This time it lasted less than a month and died again. So this time I have demanded a new camera or my money back. I mean, I have not mistreated the camera! I kept it nicely padded, downloaded the photos scrupulously to the directions, lavished love and attention on it. I also mentioned to the company that I am getting married next week and I am disappointed that I won't have a camera on my honeymoon. You can all vouch that I am not scamming this company. If they don't respond honourably to that I am going to be naming names and going to my local consumer rights people.

So no more nice pics until the issue is resolved. Maybe I'll start plundering my archives. Maybe now is the time to mount some Korean snaps. Hmmm...

Text du jour

These are the most basic things to remember when playing with letterpress. This blackboard entry has not been touched for a couple of years (along with the magic number 0.918), and nor shall it be while my mind continues to operate like a kitchen thingy with lots of little holes. No one could even accuse my memory of being a steel trap. I blame all that dope in the 80s with a healthy whack of genetic demensia.

Anyway, for anyone who cares, whenever I'm swearing at a proof and wondering why the text has a little white shadow on one side, or is only just grazing the page, I look at the board and try to nut out the problem.

Just in case it is illegible thanks to the original low-res quality of the image, let me lay out the law, just in case you're interested...

Remember!
1. pressure - rollers (inking)
- packing (paper)
2. paper - humidity
- texture
3. viscosity (ink) - too thin
- too thick

Considering any combination of those factors saves my arse every time. A bit of press tinkering, and all usually runs smoothly.

Remember to breathe

This bouquet is for Jean Mulvaney, one of the kindest, sweetest, strongest and most inspirational women I have ever met.

When she was 18 she rode around Australia on a bicycle with (I think) 5 other young women. Most found husbands along the way, and Jean and one other were the only ones to finish the trip. I'm talking late 1930s. Fantastic.

I met Jean properly quite late in her life, when I worked for her husband, Professor John Mulvaney. She looked vaguely familiar, and we laughingly worked out that she'd been the Girl Guide Commissioner for Canberra when I'd been a Brownie in the 1970s (!) and I'd shook her hand at a jamboree, or whatever those things were called.

John and Jean were complete opposites: she loved dancing, swimming in the sea, eating exotic foods; he disliked all of it. She would be playing on the beach with the kids, jumping in the water, and he would be fully clothed and shod, on the sand (in the shade, if possible) reading the latest book on history -- or, more likely, writing it. Nevertheless, they were a close couple, extremely devoted to one another.

Jean was highly intelligent, had a fabulous sense of humour and a warmth and interest in humans that extended past her 6 children and umpteen grandchildren. She volunteered for many social duties, including aiding nursing mothers and visiting people in jail. She was a jail visitor for so long that she often laughed at the fact that she was visiting generations of prisoners from the same families...

Jean died on Saturday, and my thoughts go out to John and the family. She died at home, and peacefully, but after a long period of complications arising from a botched operation. She will be deeply missed by many many people in the Canberra community, and our area is the poorer for her passing. I only hope that she gets some sort of public recognition for her efforts over the years.

RIP Jean Mulvaney.

Im-press-ion

LUSH

Material Girl

So hard to blog from home these days! I don't know what the technical glitch is, but my home computer plays favorites at the moment. I can get into my own blog but I can't add a post; I can read anyone's blog except crazybrave! If it doesn't sort itself out I will take an axe to it and stuff the expense. Maybe I should treat the motherboard to a nice glass of red wine.

Anyway, I am at work, recovering from my weekend of moving art out of my huge metal map-drawers, getting Best Beloved and friend to shift it into the Horrible Decrepid Garage (HDG) and then putting all the art back in with great trepidation -- will the drawers keep the damp out? Will the mouse who lives in the corner cupboard find its way into the drawers and nibble my life drawings? I am on the lookout for a set of drawers that can fit in the beautiful new design for our lounge, preferably in wood, but until then all is banished to the HDG.

Meanwhile, 11 sleeps to go! Builder friend came over on the weekend with colour swatches and design ideas for the kitchen. Very nice, I must say. The cupboard door are to be made of frames of recycled timber with a centre panel of what looks like black cast glass, but on closer inspection turns out to be common old steel panels that trucks use as ramps! Very solid, very noice, unusual, different, yers. Feature panels, including on the lounge-side floating arc-shaped bench/breakfast bar, will be colourbond 'mini-orb' (I think he called it) which means metal with very small corrugations, in a deep blood-red, and the benchtops will be a stone-grey glossy melamine. A bit funky, a bit traditional. Hard-wearing, because I am the world's shittiest housekeeper.

Best Beloved and I went shopping for appliances and hated every moment, because frankly, we'd rather be having a lie-in with a hot cuppa and a good book (have I ever mentioned that most of our wall-space is now bookshelves?). We found a dishwasher fairly quickly, thanks to Choice Magazine. The stove and cooktop took a bit longer; we wanted gas everything, but after looking at lots of options, we ended up with a gas cooktop, electric oven, and a separate grill. We found that all the ovens with inbuilt grills made the space too small, and we didn't think we could grill and bake at the same time (the salesperson assured us we could, but she didn't look -- or sound -- like much of a cook). We already have the uber-fridge, which is so large that the kitchen space is being modelled around it, and a small microwave, and that's probably all the gizmos we'll need, apart from the small plug-in ones that rapidly accumulate. Did I mention that my sister-in-law in giving me us a pressure cooker as a wedding present? Yay! No more tinned chickpeas (rarely have time or the forethought to soak).

So this is my materialista rave. So many new things, so much to do and think about. Map-drawers done, now to pack up kitchen appliances, take down curtains, finish the bloody wedding announcements, pick up beautiful wedding clothes (and Best Beloved's ring) and try to get some sleep. Yay!

Afternoon musings

On the quick march uphill to wedded bliss (17 sleeps and counting), I'm too exhausted to be excited yet. Too much printing, too much anger about the country and the fuckwits who are leading it astray, too much furniture moving and cleaning. For now we are having our dream kitchen built while we're away getting married, which means that we have to pack up everything, eat everything in the fridge, chuck out all the crap and somehow get my plan drawers full of art out of the house and into the garage. I can't tell you how much I wish I could go to sleep tonight and wake up in a month.

The kitchen is being remodelled by a friend of ours who is a master-craftsman. We asked him just to give us some ideas on how to organise the space in our tiny Private Jetty, and he offered to do the job. We then gave him a small budget, and he is planning to do wonders with it, including knocking out a wall, pulling out a chimney, putting in a skylight, making all the cupboards himself. I feel so lucky, grateful and in awe all at once. What a wedding present!

I feel so blessed that I feel like doing something for someone else. Best Beloved and I were discussing whether to buy each other a wedding gift to give each other on the day. It's something my ex and I did and it was a lovely thing. But we're getting so much, and spending so much on ourselves, that I think I'd rather decide on an amount of money that we would have used for the gift, and give it to the charity of the other person's choice. that way I won't feel so self-indulgent when I come home. I don't know about Best Beloved, but my pet charity is Catherine Hamlyn's fistula hospital in Ethiopia. If you've never read or heard about the women she helps, have a look.

I can't stop yawning, and it's only mid-afternoon. I try to blog at night and on weekends, but it seems to be high-traffic time, and my blogs never make it through the mosh. I figure that gives me licence to blog at work. I don't smoke, don't drink coffee, so how else can I take a break without someone asking me to do something for them? Sit on the computer with a 'just give me ten minutes' look on my face, that's how. And curiously, it works.