spellcheckers aren't brilliant, but they aviod mangy mistakes

It's a wonderful week for typos, folks.

-- I love Laura's job advertisement post. Mangy proofreader.

-- the San Francisco Gate published the following today: Britney Spears filed for divorce Tuesday from Kevin Federline, officials said.

Divorce Tuesday! Let's add it to the weekly calendar of things to do with your blogs, like Mogblog Friday and Nude Portrait Thursday. She's such a creative lass. I'm glad she's seen the light about that horrid man.

-- I went to get a new parking permitty thingo at the university today and saw that they still haven't replaced this lovely sign (I've lost track of how long it's been up)



Even a simple spellchecker would have picked up that one.

-- and finally, all the arts grants were listed today in the Canberra Times and I was wrongfully cited as having been granted $20,000! I got a lot of admiring backpats from people this morning until one mentioned the amount and I realised what had happened. I actually got $7,210, which is sufficient for my needs, and I rang the Arts Editor of the CT to tell her so. Apparently they totally scrubbed out the name of the poor filmmaker fellow who did get $20,000 (his name is next in the alphabet from mine) and my amount got wiped as well. I repeat, mangy proofreaders!

I'm sponsoring a mo

I tried to persuade Dean to grow a Hitler mo for Movember, but I guess he's wedded to the motorcycle cop look. Probably goes down better in the office ;)

Inspiring stuff

Call me un-Australian, but I've never been one to get excited about the Melbourne Cup, except perhaps once (years ago) when I was temporarily a public servant and it gave me an excuse to get out of my excruciatingly dull office and get pissed on work time. Maybe that's why it's so popular. Since I've been a freelancer I've managed to avoid all the hoo-haa around race-time.

I happened to drive past the Canberra racetrack today on the way back from picking up my tax and watched some pretty young things in spiky heels tottering across the road to get to the bar before Teh Big Race started, battling the rising winds. Up the road on either escape route the police were setting up the obligatory breathaliser stations. And as a special treat this year, the Vehicle Inspectors were roaming through the carparks. Mmm, spend your wad at the races and come out to a condemned notice on the car. Fun.

Zoe sent me this today, bless her. I'm very pumped up as a result. In fact I'm so inspired I've changed my mind about having an afternoon nap.


(Apologies to those who have seen this cartoon already on my website. I couldn't resist dusting it off again today.)

Early Morning Duck (with cats)

From Mr Picassohead.

Snaps to For Battle for the link!

it's all fun and games until... OR a fete worse than...

It's school fete season in Canberra; every weekend there's at least three somewhere close by. Over the past few weeks I've found some great books and the occasional piece of clothing, bought a toy or two and eaten my body weight in sausages and bread.

Today we dropped into the Orana Spring Fair, which is the local Steiner school. Lots of felted craft, meaningful activities for the kids and a pretty good book stall. At one point we were standing next to the Lucky Dip talking to some friends we hadn't seen for a while, when

WHACK!!!

and I felt a burst of pain in my face. My glasses fell off to the ground and I was totally disorientated for a few moments.

Some little f*cker had popped around the corner and hurled a very hard green apricot at my face! It scraped my temple, hit the side of my glasses and split, leaving a slight sticky residue on the glass, and forced my glasses onto the side of my nose, cutting and bruising it with the nose-rests.

It hurt. It hurt A LOT, and I'm usually quite stoic about pain, but I decided to ham it up a fair bit to really scare whoever it was that hit me, so I held my face and swore and moaned and gave some load groans for a while, then stumbled off to the first aid room. Once through the door I sat calmly down and let the First Aid officer offer me a polo clean me up while we nattered on about which little shit might have done this devious act. She fully approved of my public dramatics, but I think it worried the Events Manager, who hovered concernedly, obviously hoping I wasn't going to sue.

When the First Aid Officer filled out her paperwork so that I could sue down the track if I needed further medical attention, she described the incident as a RANDOM FLY-BY FRUITING. Oh, how we roared.

It still hurts. I have a swollen and grazed nose-bridge, and my glasses are worse for wear after bending them back into shape. The suspect is a year-four Orana student, and I was the second person they hit (the first was hit in the arm) but we didn't hang about to see any consequences. I really hope there are some, because I was damn lucky not to lose an eye or break my nose.

To cheer myself up, on the way home we visited the RSPCA and gave all the cats a prison visit. We found one that could have been Pooter & Padge's mother, 7 years old and the spitting image of them. Gosh it was hard to leave her there!

cashed up and ready to work!

I've been walking around in a bit of a daze this weekend. On Friday night we got home from late-night-shopping and I opened my mail to find that the small arts grant I'd applied for has been granted to me. Hooray!

It's not a lot of money, but it's enough to get my dream project off and running. Knowing that the ACT Arts Funding pool is quite small (but also bearing in mind that we're a relatively small pond!) I only asked for money for the materials to print the actual book pages (paper, polymer plate, wood blocks), not for payment for my time to print them, and not for the materials and time to bind them. That decision seemed to pay off, and now that I've got that far and I'm in the 'system', I should be able to raise the binding money when I need it (fingers crossed).

Blimey. I'm very excited, but also a bit nervous. It's one thing to dangle a dream in front of yourself, and another to make it real. I mean, I have no doubts I CAN make it real, but there's always that fear that the reality won't be as good as the dream. I guess that's why I admire people who get out there and just DO things. It's a leap of faith, and I'm about to take it.

I'm very grateful for the grant, because it will make me, and the people around me, take this idea seriously. I have been trying to get this off the ground for a few years now, but life keeps interfering, with commitments to other people's projects, and lack of money, etc etc. This is partly my fault for not giving my own work priority over other things!

But there's nothing as galvanising as a deadline and I respond very well to them, so I have until December 2007 to produce the pages! Now I can organise my next 13 months around my own work, and my head has started whirling excitedly. It feels very luxurious!

rain makes everything fresh and nice

Bookbinding class this afternoon, and while we stitched and glued it poured with rain outside, which made it almost a perfect day for me. Almost... but not quite, thanks to the inane conversations happening beside me between Nostalgia Woman and National Geographic Man.

NW is in her early 60s, I'd say, and is restoring childrens books that (I think) used to belong to either herself or her mother. She is one of those people who talk out loud constantly while they work, and while she's happy if you don't respond, she'd much rather you did, which can waste a lot of precious bookbinding time. I'm getting very good at keeping my eyes downcast.

NGM is a newby, and I think only a temporary member of the class. He's around the same vintage as NW, and is hard-binding his entire collection of National Geographics (collected since he was a boy, never missed an edition). He's making the cases (book covers) at home, and is coming to our class a few times to block the covers (ie, put the lettering on the spine). He wears shorts with elastic waist pulled up over his stomach, his polo shirt tucked into them, and has wonderfully bucked and protruding teeth.

These two get on like a house on fire. In fact, I think they've known each other for a while, and probably in a past life. Today they were positively flirting, and as much as I tried not to listen, it got a bit grating; lots of guffawing and simpering. I was thinking on the way home that it would be really freaky if they were actually married in real life and were just pretending not to be for class. But my imagination does tend to run away with me.

Speaking of inane words, BB sent me this today:



It's a website where you can make your own speech for Dubya and then hear him say it! Almost as much fun as this.