It's Autumn!

Harry's tongue is so long it reminds me of one of those soup spoons you get at Chinese restaurants. His huge head, however, is only so because he was shot from above :)

There's a little story on Disturbing Search Requests in the wonderful HQ magazine this month. Three of my bizarre ones are mentioned - "walrus tampon pics", "God dammit I hate hats fluffy books" and "What's inside granny's undies". Sweeeeeeeet :)

Here's a scan of the story for curious peoples.

My life is now complete, kiddies. I just saw the man who I've been lusting after longer than Sexy Ed from Radiohead, longer than Mr Darcy, longer than The Bloke With The Cello In The LG Ad, Catherine Zeta-Jones, The Guy At Flight Centre or Arnaud Clement. I've been fixated on this particular lad since the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Yes folks, I am of course talking about Russia's finest son, swimming superstar ALEX POPOV!

My sister and I had been out Dog Kennel Shopping, which is a thrilling activity for a rainy Sunday. We were heading home, kennel-less and disillusioned (who the hell wants to pay $200 for a plastic kennel? I mean I love Harry and all, but, crikey), when Rhiannon said she was hungry and fancied one of those bread roll thingies from Baker's Delight that have cheese and tomato and herbs stuffed into them. I said that sounded nice but it meant we'd have to go to Manuka because it is the best stocked of the bazillion BD's in Canberra. But could I be arsed going to Manuka when the Civic one is right near our place? So we ummed and ahhed over this vexing issue... do we go all that way and be guaranteed to get the bread but take half an hour to find a park... or do we take a risk and go to the closer Civic and hope that they'll have what we want? Well I am such a wild thing, I live on the edge and all, so we went to Civic.

I cruised on in to the City Markets looking my sexiest in tracky dacks and sweatshirt with Harry paw-mark on my hip (he'd jumped up with muddy feet to say bye) and ratty hair (mental note: when I next look at hair in mirror, must remember: wash hair) when I see this long, lean graceful specimen of a man towering over the ATM, picking away at the buttons. I gasped audibly. Be still my raging hormones!

"Wot?" said my sister.

"Looooooook!" I hissed, as discreetly as possible, as we walked past him.

"Him? Oh. Very nice."

"Yes yes, but LOOK who it is! It's Alex Popov!"

"Holy shit, you're right!"

I busied myself with some random fruit at the vegie markets while casually looking back at him. Yep, it was him alright. That impossibly tall and long body, lovely hair, and sleek, shiny, daggy looking tracksuit that all Eastern Bloc countries bought in bulk in 1950 and have been using ever since (amidst decades of political turmoil, bloody wars, the fall of communism, one thing has remained constant - the Daggy Tracksuits).

"We're going to the bakery," Rhiannon reminded me as I gawked away. Oh yes. Bakery.

They didn't have our bread. We went into Supabarn to find an alternative, my sister looking for food while I babbled, "Should I go get my camera out of the car? I can't believe I left the camera in the car! The one time I leave it behind and something actually happens. It's only a tiny camera. A spy camera if you will. I could have taken a picture while he was at the ATM. I could have pretended I was lining up for cash. Hey he's going over to that cafe now. He's looking at the pastries. Oh there's his wife and kids too. They're very sweet. I could just duck out and get the camera. Do you think I should go get the camera?"

Rhiannon rolled her eyes at me. "You can go get the camera if you want," she said, adding silently "and if you do I'll forever think you're a fucking idiot."

He was taking his sweet time at the cafe, looking at all the pastries and sandwiches. Noooo Alex! I wanted to say. I've had those sandwiches, they're total shite! The bread always tastes stale and they slather them in mayo. Oh that poor misguided, aesthetically pleasing fool. Oh... yes. Must go get that camera.

My sister said she would wait in the car and babysit our lunch, that she would have nothing to do with my paparazzi leanings. I huffed back into the shops, my camera fired up and hidden under my sleeve, already zoomed in to the max with the flash turned off, so I could shoot from as far away as possible. I did about three laps of the cafe, which is just an open plan kind of thing plonked in the middle of the markets, hiding behind some shopping trolleys, behind the pasta place, behind a pot plant, looking for the perfect place to shoot. But then I looked at him there with the wifey and kiddies, looking all happy and ordinary eating their lunch and I thought how rude it would be for me to take their picture. I still fired the shutter in his general direction as I ran back to the car, feeling most ridiculous, and captured this lovely picture:

..which bears little or no resemblence to Mr Popov (pictured below):

Oh well. What kind of shot would it have been anyway? Not a skimpy Speedo in sight!

Thursday night I was curled up in bed when I remembered something that needed to be done the next day. I could have just got up and found a Post-It and scrawled it down but that would mean wriggling out of my blanket cocoon to find the pen and pad and you know once you've found the Right Spot to lay in, one false move and you disturb the precious comfy position that took you so long to find.

So instead I decided to employ my old technique of fixing on a vaguely related object that would trigger my memory about what I was supposed to remember. For example, I'll look at a photo of my family and say to myself, "When I glance at that photo tomorrow, I will remember I have to call The Mothership". Other times, I'll focus on Harry and think to myself, "Okay, when I look at Harry in the morning, I will remember that I have to buy dog food". Sometimes when I'm really sleepy, the connection will be pretty dodgy, "When I look at that glass of water tomorrow I will remember to go to the gym because water is a refreshing beverage that I like to gulp down after my galumphing on the treadmill".

Anyway, I was really wiped out on Thursday and incapable of any real thought, so I squinted around in the darkness to find something to zoom in on. I decided on my fan (pictured above): When I look at the FAN in the morning I will remember to call the MAN who has the VAN who can come over and take away those goddamn lounges from our front yard as soon as he CAN. Because of the logic and sheer beauty of that rhyme I would be sure to remember. And furthermore I will put the fan away because it's not summer anymore, Toto.

Friday morning I wake up and trip over the fan, stubbed three toes and neglected to remember the phone call or to put the fan away. I did remember today but I'm just too lazy to do anything about it, man.

The Glory of the Human Voice: all day the designers here at work have been playing the "wonderful" voice of Florence Foster Jenkins. If you've never heard her, think Miss Piggy meets a bagful of cats being run over by a semi-trailer. It's nothing short of appalling but it's very very very very bloody funny. Especially when four people play the songs simultaneously on their computers for truly abysmal surround sound. You must go here (or here at Amazon) and have a listen to the samples (Real Audio format) and read her bizarre story. Hee hee. I'm still laughing after 23 listens.

You should see the sky today. It's all iris blue and the clouds are crazy white streaks, like fingerpainting. All messy and blue. I like messy and blue.

Just now I was staring blankly out the window for the longest time, watching Harry sleep. He's very brown looking at the moment, coz he's dug up so much of the yard there's no grass left, so he just sleeps in the dust.

Here he is dozing with the remains of an ugly as fuck faux-Aztec rug that Mum gave us ("I can't believe you gave that rug to the dog! Do you have any idea how much that cost?"), and his new "pet", a big stick he seems to be carting round everywhere.

Then he heard the camera fire and woke up.

Then he comes up to the window and plops his big paws on the windowsill to glare at me.

Last night, between the Mango Dream and the Dream Where The Car Has No Brakes, I dreamed that I ran over the Manic Street Preachers with a bulldozer. All of em. Even that one that went missing. He came back, just so I could mow him down. Ooh I hope I dream it again tonight. Only this time I hope I will also run over their shithouse new album cover, the one that has the vaguely Primal Scream-ish font without the clever absence of vowels. To sleep, perhance to bulldoze.

Look at those stats, will ya.... Dreamweaver's Clean Up Word HTML function is a thing of beauty! *ahhh*

"It's not easy, but then again, it's not brain surgery..."

I must have heard this phrase a dozen times since I started the New Job. I think it's my panic stricken look that makes my colleagues feel the need to reassure me that the tasks ahead are not *too* difficult, but at the same time, they are not so simple that they may as well have employed a trained monkey in my place.

But the Brain Surgery cliche doesn't rest well with me. What the hell do we know anyway? Brain surgery could actually be a stroll in a park. Can you actually speak from medical experience to use this as a basis of comparison? Unless you're Dr Joe Neurosurgeon, I wish you'd all come up with something I can relate to. There are plenty of difficult tasks out there that would be perfect for this phrase. Now, if someone said to me, "Well it's a bit difficult, but it's not like trying to find a decent tasting tomato at Woolworths...", I would know for sure that I was in for a dirty bitch of a task, because everyone knows that Woolies has the most shithouse flavourless pasty looking excuses for tomatoes on the planet. Yes! Even the hydroponic ones.

So I've come up with a few subsitutes in accordance with the tasks I find personally to be as difficult as brain surgery is made out to be. To test them out, simply use your most scoffing tones and prefix with, "Oh come on! It's not like..." :

... going to a bookshop without buying anything

... sitting through an episode of Harry's Practice without wanting to kill Harry

... skating

... gardening

... lying

... making a cake without licking the bowl

... keeping your pants on after a glass of wine

... unscrewing the lid off the spaghetti sauce jar

... the evil cross-trainer machine at the gym

... wearing matching socks

What do you find more difficult than brain surgery?

The lost sex scenes of Jane Austen [via harrumph]

I don't endorse driving like a maniac, but yesterday I drove like one. It usually takes almost 2.5 hours to drive to Parentland but it only took 1hr 45 yesterday. It was because of this goddamn Kia Sportage, the name shits me for starters. Car names are getting dumber by the year. They must be running out of names. Anyway, the green beast came looming up our arse on Northbourne Avenue and followed us all the way home.

Nothing annoys me more than a jerk in a 4WD that insists on intimidating smaller vehicles, so I kept my foot down and stayed way ahead of him. On the Hume Highway it's 110 but I maintained a steady 120 to leave him in the dust. When we turned off to Boorowa, he turned too and tried to keep up. That road is deadly, so many tight curves and soft edges, not a place to hoon but he was pissing me off. He was so close I could see his huge dorky glasses and bad haircut. He looked like an accountant that's trying to be With It™. All the more reason not to let him overtake me. We were right on a bend and he decides he can pass me. But when he moves out I hit the floor and head off over the hill. Mwahahhaa. He catches up to me and looms so close I can see the blonde in the passenger seat drinking Diet Pepsi. He stupidly moves out again when a truck comes flying along so he has to quickly go back in again. Idiot!

Next there's some roadworks and we have to stop for a good ten minutes. He's drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and frowning. The lollipop guy tells us there'll be a delay and we say no worries, mate and have a good chat while Mr Sportage actually moves out into the other lane to see what's holding up the traffic. Jerk!

When we finally move off, everyone waves to the lollipop guy, or at least raises a waving finger on the steering wheel, but nooooo, not Mr Sportage! With that lack of respect for our hard-working council workers, there was no way he was gonna overtake me. There was an overtaking lane ahead, the only one between Yass and Boorowa, it was his only clear chance to get me!

So I slowed back down to 100 to lull his smug arse into a false sense of security. Just when the lane came up and he indicated to move into it, my sister screamed, "GO! GO! GO!" and we sped off again. Mwahaha. We'd foiled him for a third time. Seeing his indignant little face fade into the distance was a rush bigger than a dozen orgasms.

He tried to get back up to me and the speeds were getting ridiculous. But later we got stuck behind a slow truck with a horse and Mr Sportage caught up with me. Behind him was a Toyota Celica, fiery red and equally impatient. It was too unsafe to overtake, but Sportage did it anyway. He somehow got around me and the truck and missed an oncoming car by a whisker. It was ridiculous. Where's a cop when you need one?

But here's the kicker: as they went around us, Diet Pepsi Blonde actually turned around and made furious very rude hand gestures at us! That silly wench! That infuriating accountant! This was war now!

Me and the Celica eventually got round the truck, and Sportage wasn't too far away. The Celica had to carry the torch, because flushed with adrenaline as I was, the speedo was tickling numbers I never thought possible before, and I really can't afford to lose my licence. So it was all up to the Celica, and it did a stellar job of tailing Mr Sportage and shitting him off before eventually overtaking. Ahh, it was sweet.

Mr Sportage seemed to run out of puff after that, and by comparison put-putted the last 15 minutes before home. We were finally able to catch up to him. I noticed he had this shoddy advertisment on the back of the vehicle, on the spare tyre cover. It said SureVault Data Back-Up and a mobile phone number. Sweeeeeeet. So he wasn't an accountant, but Data BackUp Nerd was just as appopriate for such a tosser.

I convinced my sister to get out her phone and dial him up as we sneaked up behind him again and say:

"Hello? Is this SureVault Data Back-Up? Guess what buddy? I'M BACK UP YOUR DATE!"

Hehehehe.

But alas... they turned into the McDonalds before we could dial. Checkmate, Mr Sportage.

It was then I returned to my usual rational, safe-driving self. The drive back last night was quiet and slow and a thousand insects kamikazied into the windscreen. It's now so thick with tiny broken legs and wings it looks like the glass is shattered. And I'd only washed the car that morning. Bah.

HAPPINESS: when the boss says "great job, kids!" and lets you go home over an hour early.

SADNESS: getting to the car and realising you've locked the keys inside and it takes over an hour for the NRMA to arrive.

In my bag were 2 apples, 6 CDs, tissues both alive and dead, stolen post-it notes, cards, 2 books and 4 different flavours of lip balm, but no spare car key. Bah. Luckily I had my camera so I could be amused by that. It took the NRMA guy 15 minutes to break in to my car, which is kind of reassuring, it took less than 10 seconds to break into The Bird™.

Car parks aren't the most interesting place for photos. Top row: part of the MITSUBISHI badge, some rocks, a tyre. Bottom row: Fenner Hall, inside the bag, my shoe. WOOHOO.

It took 3 minutes to cruise to work today in a blur of amber lights, talking to myself all the way. Remember in American Beauty when Annette Bening is scrubbing windows, "I will sell this house today... I will sell this house today..."? With me it's all about talking myself into showing a hint of confidence instead of slinking around the place, to not look like I will crumble if there's the slightest bit of criticism, not to let it show that I get so overwhelmed by the work. I have this terrible face that is incapable of hiding anything. I never look professional. When the boss approaches me, or any colleague for that matter, I am all quiet and meek as if I was sent to the principals office at school.

Long-time stalkers may recall When Harry Met Olly, the fat fluffy dog from two doors down. They met again this eve when Harry took Shauna for a walk. Olly was looking much trimmer, he'd been to the canine hairdressers for a shave. It's amazing what a bale of fur lopped off can do for ones waistline.

Their fateful encounter went as follows: Olly sniffs Harry's snout. Harry licks Olly's nose. Olly nudges Harry's front paws. Harry runs underneath Olly. Olly runs around Harry. Leashes become entangled. Shauna leans down to untangle leashes. Olly steps on cord dangling from Shauna's headphones. Shauna loses balance, trips over Harry. Harry yelps and tries to run away. Olly tramples over Shauna and scratches her arm. Shauna swears profusely. Harry's leash wraps around Shauna's neck. Just as Olly's Mum says, "Well, looks like they missed each other!", Olly climbs aboard Harry... in the primitive sense. Harry is most indignant at this attempted invasion. Olly's Mum looks most embarrassed. "Keep your filthy mutt away from my dog's ass!", Shauna wants to say, but doesn't.

Olly and his Mum hurry off one direction. Harry and Shauna flee in the other. Harry is strangely quiet for a long while. Shauna wonders what Harry gets up to while she is at work.

Things of note about my new work:

1. I actually do work now
2. The stationary cupboard is not as exciting as previous job
3. The loos are dark and dingy and not conducive to napping
4. The lovely girl next to me plays goddamn Backstreet Boys and I can hear it out of her headphones and it SHITS MEEEE!
5. There's free Milo
6. But the Milo tin is empty

One nice thing is that my window looks out on Telstra Tower (woobloodyhoo) and Fenner Hall, one of the ANU residences. You can't tell how close it is from the picture, but it's nice and Rear Window-ish. Yesterday morning I watched a girl pick up a sweatshirt from the floor, shake it off, have a good sniff at the armpits, slip it over her head, then waltz out the door for the day. Hehe. Love them students.

Things of note:

1. I don't like coffee
2. I don't like tea
3. I don't like beer
4. I don't like any cola-related products

This renders me a Beverage Outcast™. It's very isolating sometimes. Just stock up on orange juice if I'm ever in your neighbourhood.

Hmmm, yes. Fascinating information. Once upon a time there was a more balanced links to personal drivel ratio in this so-called weblog. But now the navel gazing has stooped so low my tongue is firmly lodged in belly button. Mmm, linty. I supposed I could rename this thing What's Grossly Self-Indulgent, Pussycat? but I wouldn't get as much Google traffic.

To the kind people who emailled my pathetic arse today, I love you. Everyone else sucks for not pandering to my pitiful episodes of self-doubt. For shame.

Driving naked is not a crime. You crazy Victorians!

It's April Fool's Day and my little furry April Fool turns 2 today. Happy Birthday, Harry Pup!