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LiveJournal for Ameria.
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| Friday, August 8th, 2008 |
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Today I started making my corset. I decided to start with the lining because I'm special. On sewing the very first piece I managed to snag the fabric and had to unpick the seam. On my second piece I ran out of bobbin thread. Everything went well from there until I hit the very last piece of the lining, when my sewing machine decided to chew up the entire piece and vomit topthread everywhere. My machine does that every now and then, and I usually manage to fix it eventually by voodoo magics. I cracked the sads for a while, ate lunch, watched the episode of Angel I fell asleep during last night, then went into diagnostic mode: clean the stitch plate, clean the bobbin holder, change the bobbin, change the needle, re-thread. No joy. Repeat steps and try again. Still no joy. I then discovered that I could take apart the entire bobbin casing and clean underneath it. I found a couple of threads of the silver fabric I used to make Shaun's comp outfit in 2006. Replace bobbin case, still no worky. Change the bobbin and top thread, and re-thread again. Hooray! Machine working again! It's a weird beast. Unfortunately that used up most of my corset-making time for the day, as I'm now on night shift. I think I should get most of it finished tomorrow, except that I still haven't decided what sort of boning to buy or where to get it... |
| Thursday, August 7th, 2008 |
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I am going to attempt to make a corset. I am writing this down in the hope that documenting my intentions will somehow make it happen. :) I have joined ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} corsetmakers. It's so cool.
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| Monday, July 14th, 2008 |
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Shaun and I drove to Frankston for his mum's birthday last weekend. This involved adventures on the New Freeway, including much tunnel-ness, a stack of giant green smarties, rocket ships, a fake hotel and a giant blackbird eating a pixelated worm (PDF). We failed at taking the correct exit. Go us. Anyway, one of the first things Shaun's mum said to us was that she had been diagnosed with glaucoma, and would eventually go blind, and that Shaun now had a family history of the disease to tell his optometrist about. I know very little of the disease, but the first thing that popped into my head was that while glaucoma is one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide, most of those stats occur in the third world, and if she got the correct treatment she would not end up blind, and was instead being a hypochondriac trying to get attention. I dimly recall that my grandma had glaucoma, and died aged 94 with many things wrong with her, none of which was blindness. I also seemed somewhat skeptical it ran in families as strongly as she was suggesting. So that was my lay-person opinion, and I went out with the aim of getting better informed, so as to form a slightly more informed opinion. The Internet agrees that glaucoma is the second most common cause of blindness, worldwide. It is a disease of the optic nerve, linked to elevated 'intraocular pressure', which is the fluid in the eye. It mostly affects women, diabetics, Africans and old people, and short-sightedness, family history and high blood pressure are risk factors. It is estimated that 1 in 12 Australians will develop the disease, with the vast majority of these being over the age of 80. This risk is three to five times higher if one of your parents has the disease. The main treatment for glaucoma is eye drops, to lower the patient's 'eye pressure'. If this does not work laser treatment or surgery can be given. From Wikipedia: "Poor compliance with medications and follow-up visits is a major reason for vision loss in glaucoma patients" - can I assume from this that excellent compliance with medications and follow-up visits should prevent vision loss in the majority of cases? Australian National Glaucoma Week is August 17th-23rd this year. So there you go. Family history is big, so I guess there is a good chance that Shaun, and for that matter probably me too, will get the disease, if we live to be old. :) Living a healthy life is probably a good idea, and trying to keep our blood pressure low and not develop diabetes. I still don't think it's all that likely that any of us will go blind. This ends today's investigation. |
| Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 |
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| The cafe at work just put the price of dim sims up from 80 cents to $1. This is a sad day. |
| Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 |
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As a kid you get used to being told 'No' a lot. One of the wonderful things about growing up and moving out of home was that there was nobody to tell me 'no' any more. I could eat chocolate for breakfast if I wanted to. I could go for months without vacuuming. Of course common sense tells me not to do these things, but overall I still have liberating control over my own life, and end up doing lots of things I wouldn't otherwise be able to do. Like... staying out all night dancing, spending stupid amounts of money on costumes I will never wear again, and jet-setting across the country. I think I just hit my first adult 'No'. I tried to book annual leave to attend the Sydney comp, and work finally got back to me with a short, blunt and heartless "Due to current timelines there will be no leave during this period". I know they don't need me, but I don't have any bargaining power. I tried to convince them I could work off-site from IBM Sydney, but they didn't go for it. It's the first time I can think of in my adult life when I have seriously wanted something and not been able to have it. I'm not used to this feeling, and am impressed with my restraint at not throwing a tantrum. :) I think the worst part is going to be spending a week without Shaun. I don't remember the last time I went so long without seeing him. I'm so bored! I want to go home and watch Buffy. |
| Thursday, April 17th, 2008 |
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I can't wait to see the new Joss Whedon series Dollhouse. The internet won't tell me when it's going to premiere. Myer sent me a birthday card and a $10 gift voucher. I thought that was nice of them. It's got my name printed on it and stuff about my star sign and everything. Also in the mail was one of those "package at the post office" cards, with a tick on the back for international post, and now I'm super intrigued as to what it could be! Yesterday I met up with Mum and Dad and went to Medieval Imagination - the free exhibition of medieval illuminated manuscripts at the State Library. It was pretty cool. I find it hard to imagine monks so very long ago sitting down and writing things like that, in such amazing fine detail. I see they are also having a Medieval Faire on sunday, which would probably be interesting to check out. |
| Friday, April 11th, 2008 |
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Boredom has led me to become the office sudoku champion. I tried online crosswords, but I'm too stupid for crosswords. And sometimes the crosswords are too stupid for me. Like stupid crosswords that put two words as the answer for one clue. You can't do that! It's cheating! Let's see, what else have I done at work recently... I have started conducting a survey of Raisin Toast in inner Melbourne. So far I have been very disappointed, and have not found anything that even remotely matches up to Barista on Flinders Lane. That's damn good toast... Almost, but not quite worth the 5 block walk each way. Outside work hours I've actually been very busy recently. I'm going to Castlemaine this weekend to have dinner with Ashlea and Nicole, and their respective partners. I've only seen Ash twice since she went to the U.K. "for a year" three years ago. So much has happened since then... Shaun and I are also going to give Nic and Daniel their first dance lesson for their upcoming wedding. And there's been dancing... the Victorian Modern Jive Championships are on again this month. I'm entering four categories, including a team which I've never done on a competitive floor before. It's on Saturday 26th if anyone's interested. There is also a large contingent of people from Perth coming over for the comp, so Shaun and I have opened our doors to billet a few of them. I believe we are having three people stay with us, which is going to be nice & cosy, and I'm not too sure what we're going to do with all our furniture. Ahh well, it's all in the spirit of fun. I've been trying to get back in to sewing, but it's hard when I spend very little time at home these days. I've almost finished my patchwork skirt. I made a pair of pants for work. "Work Phatties" I call them, as I was going for a nice big flare. I'm planning to make a matching jacket, and another pair of pants with belt loops... I'm part-way through making a black off-the-shoulder top, but I got scared when I read pattern review and everyone was complaining that the pattern comes out too big... I bought a pattern to make a skirt for this year's ceroc ball (1920's/30's Gangsters & Gals theme). It's super slinky and long with a train at the back, and I'm not at all sure it will look good on me. The pattern I bought also came with two variations of a corset, which I've always wanted to try, but don't really want to wear... I don't know if I'm good enough at sewing for that. I'm going through a purse phase... I went op-shopping the other week, and bought some awesome old neckties that I'm turning into coin purses. The old lady who sold them to me said how nice they were, and that she hoped whoever I bought them for likes them. I didn't have the heart to tell her I was going to cut them up. So anyway, with all these half-finished projects kicking around, what I really need is some motivation to start finishing things. I will make a post with pictures at some point... Is anybody in need of a purse, or a corset that may or may not fit/fall apart? hehehe... |
| Saturday, March 29th, 2008 |
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I've been compulsively checking my email for three days waiting for a reply to an email I sent..... ( snip ) I was starting to get all tetchy that they were ignorning me! I woke up this morning, and the first thing that popped into my semi-awake brain was "You sent it to the wrong address, didn't you?" That's right, I'm the stupid. I've re-sent the email, but it's to a business that isn't open on weekends, and now I'll have to wait even longer! Grrrrr! |
| Friday, March 14th, 2008 |
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I have become a shameless weather watcher. My new hobby is refreshing the bureau of meteorology web site to see how the forecast has changed. A week or two ago the bureau of meteorology was predicting 28, fine and sunny, for about five days in a row, only to revise the forecast at about 9am each morning: "Did we say sun today? Sorry, we meant tomorrow. Today it's going to rain, since you silly people all left your umbrellas at home". (Not me. I always carry an umbrella.) This continued for about five days, until they finally got it right. Hooray! Yesterday they predicted today would be 38. Last night it was 39... and now it's 40. I suspect they think we are too fragile as a populace to cope with the truth (45, hell on earth), and so intend to let the weather sneak up on us. In high school one of our statistics assignments was to record something (anything) every day for a week, and then do something with the data, like graph it and explain any trends (or lack thereof). I set the video player up to tape the weather forecast on the evening news, and ended up plotting daily temperature, or something dull like that. (Old technology. This was in the days before I was smart enough to scrape my data off the internet). It occurred to me today that it would have been much more interesting to record the forecast for two weeks, and measure the variance in actual versus predicted temperature one week in advance, and use it to formulate a theory that the entire extended outlook is actually based on a very complex forecasting system involving a magic 8 ball. I could then have taken my theory with me when I did my Year 10 work experience at the bureau and used it to demonstrate "initiative" to my supervisor. If they hadn't been using my suggested forecasting technique, I'm sure they would have adopted it. Alas, I spent the whole week measuring ozone. It was extremely dull. Incidentally I can't spell bureau. It's one of those things my fingers don't like to type. I'm also having problems with 2008. It invariably becomes either 3008, or 2003. |
| Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 |
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Test Subject 006: Pokka Cappuccino Tall, skinny can, green with (you guessed it) coffee beans on the front. "real brewed from coffee beans". I'd be interested to know what they could brew it from if not coffee beans... It appears to be a Malaysian edition from the Japanese Pokka company. It tastes ok, but is too sweet, and has an odd aftertaste, something reminiscent of cardboard and plastic. Test Subject 007: Sangaria Mild Milk Tea While tea is most definitely not coffee, I thought I'd give this one a go anyway. Short, skinny, cream coloured can with brown, orange and red design, depicting a cute little white tea cup. I can't read anything on the can except that it is going to give me 35 calories per serve. Good thing I don't believe in calories. Predictably over-sweet, with that fake tea taste that reminds me of bubble tea an aloe vera. Test Subject 008: UCC Sumiyaki Cafe Au Lait Small, cream coloured can, complete with absence of English. Sweet, cold coffee. There is a very faint almost burnt taste to it, and the aftertaste I've come to expect from UCC: "au de faux". While there is no English on the can, it has one of those import stickers on it... the interesting thing is that while sugar is listed as the second ingredient, the nutrition table states 0.0 grams of sugar per serve. What's that about? Anti-sugar! |
| Monday, February 4th, 2008 |
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| Went out for lunch/brunch/dunch yesterday, and Shaun had Canadian French Toast (French toast with bacon, maple syrup and poached apples). Bizarre! Anyway, the conversation eventually turned to McDonalds and we started thinking: here they have the McOz burger... do they have a Canadian-specific McDonalds burger with bacon and maple syrup? It's a question Google should be able to answer, but for some reason I cannot access the McDonalds Canada website. Perhaps it's part of The Great Telstra Conspiracy of blocking interesting websites while I'm supposed to be working. If so they are doing an outrageously bad job. |
| Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 |
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Respond to this, ask for a year to write about, and write a post about what you were doing in that year.![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sassy_fae gave me the year 1999. ( Is this the 50's... or 1999? ) |
| Monday, December 10th, 2007 |
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Test Subject 004: Sangaria Regular Latte "Ichi, Ni, Sangaria!" Narrow, white can, with the sterotypical picture of coffee beans on the front. Interestingly this one only vaguely tastes like coffee. When it's in my mouth I get cold and sweet... it's not until after I've swallowed that I can taste coffee. It's not unpleasant, but it's probably not going to cure cravings for coffee shots. Test Subject 005: Pokka Coffee Premium Blend Brown barrel can, with picture of guy with broken neck on front. Nice! Sweet, but not too sweet. Nice coffee flavour, not too strong. No bizarre aftertaste. I want to try Pokka Vanilla, but the store didn't have any. :( |
| Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 |
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Since I fail at finding Dare Coffee Shots in supermarkets and convenience stores within 1km of the path between my work and my home, I have decided to review all the Asian coffee cans I can lay my hands on. Progress is slow. Something tells me it's not a good idea to drink too many of them too close to one another. I'm half expecting to die from caffeine poisoning or heavy metal toxicity. On that thought I just googled "death by caffeine" and uncovered the Energy Fiend - how much of your favourite drink would it take to kill you. Unfortunately none of my Asian coffees are on the list, but it would take a little over 201 bottles of Lipton Iced Tea to do me in. No shit. Test Subject 001: Nescafe Latte Not precisely as pictured, the Latte variety has a cream coloured can, but otherwise looks the same. The flavour itself is fairly nice, but they seem to have stuffed about six kilograms of sugar into each 180ml can. Test Subject 002: Nescafe Creme White This one comes in the "barrel" can. Like the cans they used to give you on aeroplanes - the ones that look like a coke can that's been sliced horizontally in half. It's sugared, but not as sweet as its skinny cousin. I think this is the closest to Dare I've tasted so far. Test Subject 003: UCC "Cafe au Lait" Made by the Japanese Ueshima Coffee Co, this one comes in a small, narrow, cream coloured can with a picture of coffee beans on the front. It has a strong coffee flavour, and is not sweet. It's all good until the aftertaste kicks in - somewhere between artificial and toxic. The more you drink the stronger the aftertaste becomes, until I gave up and flushed the rest of the can down the sink. Interesting facts like caffeine content are either not on the cans, or not in English. So far I have been too scared to try and of the milk free varieties. Especially "Black" - it just looks scary. Am I being superstitious? Can the Japanese really bottle pure evil? If it's made by UCC I suspect the answer is "yes". I have another three varieties in the fridge... stay tuned for more caffeinated updates. :) |
| Sunday, November 25th, 2007 |
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Well.... election day is over, and we have a new government. Squee! It's about damn time. Shaun and I used our tried and true method of enrolling to vote in one electorate (Melbourne Ports) and going to vote in another, thus by-passing the 8:30am massively long queue, and heading straight for the absentee section. It's definitely the way to do things. I was a little surprised that they didn't even ask to see ID. Once we were done exercising our democratic right (keeping the world safe from the Citizens Electoral Council), we followed the other election day tradition and ate sausages from the school fundraiser sausage sizzle. Mmmmmm.... snags for breakfast. My other accomplishments for Saturday include cleaning the bathroom and making choc-chip cookies. Here's a question for anyone out there who knows stuff about cooking: My cookie recipe begins by suggesting that I cream the butter and the sugar. I personally hate creaming things. It's slow and boring. I put the butter in the microwave intending to soften it before I started, but I forgot it was in there and melted the whole lot. So I just used melted butter instead. Now, my question is, if melting butter is so much easier than creaming, why do they always ask for it to be creamed? I can't see a reason, other than the obvious: a global conspiracy by butter manufacturers and recipe writers to irritate me personally. I went to the Christmas shop in Myer the other day. It gets worse every year. This year they have dedicated an entire section to Australiana Christmas decorations. Australian flags with "Merry Christmas" written on them. Deformed koalas wearing santa hats. It's truely hideous. I did, however, liberate a small Christmas emu, which I intend to send to the U.K. |
| Monday, November 19th, 2007 |
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At work recently, I have been spending the time waiting for my jobs to compile reading xkcd, which is probably the coolest web comic ever. It amuses me how often I read a page and go: "I do that!". What a geek I must be. :) On Saturday I made a lamb casserole for dinner. I was reading the recipe, and it mentioned diced lamb, and the first thought to come into my head was "can you dice lamb into D-20s?" We have almost completed the move into our spunky new apartment. There is only one car load of stuff left at the old place, and I've booked the carpet cleaners for Wednesday. Which means that some time between now and then I need to a) collect the remaining items, b) thoroughly clean all surfaces that are not carpet, c) clean the carpet, as they want it pre-vacuumed before they arrive, d) invent a creative excuse to be absent from work for a few hours on Wednesday. I guess I'll have to do it Tuesday night. :( Then I just need to get the services disconnected and give back the keys. Hooray! I hired some movers to shift our furnature last week. My fridge only just fits. We probably scraped the sides getting it into the alcove, but I don't care because at least it's in there and it works! We also bought a bookcase off a friend of ours. The movers put it in the foyer area and then we worked out it wouldn't fit in the lift or up the stairs. Ooops! Luckilly it wasn't glued at all so we could just take it apart and reassemble it upstairs. Otherwise, it's too darn hot! I want ice cream. Want to read a webcomic about ice cream? Joy! |
| Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 |
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| Squeee! |
| Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 |
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There are candy canes and mince pies in the supermarket, and they have already put up the Christmas tree in City Square. It's October! We should be celebrating spring and the racing carnival and... Oktoberfest or something. Not Christmas! Sheesh! In true family tradition my mum has picked the theme for this years Christmas dinner: Ultramarine blue and The Magic Pudding. Last year it was black/silver and Winnie the Pooh. The year before was brown/gold and we had yowies... Anyway, I have never actually read The Magic Pudding, despite it being a classic piece of Australian Children's literature. I did see the movie a few years ago, but it's supposedly not very true to the book. I've been reading it in pieces while I'm bored at work. ( For anyone stuck at work right now, here is an excerpt about breakfast ) I've been browsing real estate websites this morning. A pointless exercise. Rental properties come and go too quickly, and the websites are almost never up-to-date. We have to be out of our apartment in six weeks time. Gaaah. |
| Monday, October 22nd, 2007 |
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I had a day off on Friday, so my collegues had a whole day to frame my teddy! It's my work mascot - the Daffodil Day bear that Shaun gave me. Only he's stolen Pete's gun and is holding my laptop hostage. Curiously I am the only person who has shown up to work so far today, so there's still the possibility that he shot all my coworkers and chucked them off the balcony. |
| Thursday, October 11th, 2007 |
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It's a coworker's birthday today. We celebrated by going to the Elephant and Wheelbarrow to have a parma for lunch. While we were waiting for our meal to arrive the TV on in the background was depicting a fish being eaten alive. The fish was netted, then washed, cleaned, all the scales scraped off with a knife, cut down the middle and gutted with a pair of scissors. They then cooked the body of the fish while the head was still alive and gasping. Now, I have no qualms with eating animals. I understand where my food comes from. What I don't understand is the virtually global viewpoint that fish are somehow... not alive in the sense that other creatures are alive. I just googled "fish have feelings too" and came up with this.... As soon as a fish comes up with the cure for cancer or some other invention or philosophy that contributes to progress, I'll stop eating them. Fair? When was the last time a household cat cured cancer? What the fuck?? Mice aren't exactly known for demonstrating intelligence in a form that we are likely to relate to, so why do you need an ethics committee to kill a mouse, but you can torture a fish however you like. People are stupid. |
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LiveJournal for Ameria.
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creative.
sad.
intrigued.
happy.
shocked.