first...the weekend

two posts today and i am keeping them separate for ease of reading.

first, what we did on the weekend:

1. drove to sydney. hot when we left canberra:

cold just north of goulburn:

very weird.

2. played flyball as part of austraya day celebrations at paramatta park. here are two teams from our club st george.

i think its the dragon flames on the left and the dragon slayers on the right. is that dave running like a girl? hehehehe...... (ps i hate australia day, all that icky nationalism. i know, i know, deport me now).

3. went to taralga to watch the yard dog trials:

here is robert (the australian champion) and chief

georgina and bess

jenny and joy

jenny did very well with joy, this was her first trial and she got 93 out of a possible 100. dont you hate that?! i had thought about maybe having a go with poss but changed my mind very quickly when we got there and i realised i was still wearing my pink crocs (shoes) and a flyball cap. note to self: start shopping at r.m.williams.

it was great to watch everyone go round, i learnt heaps watching this time and am feeling a bit more confident about my scheduled first trial at the bathurst show.

3. went out to dinner for daves birthday

netty and trent

tracey and simon. tracey does a litte dance!

trent, dave and jo. i told trent to 'stick your head in' but this isnt quite what i meant

the sensible end of the table: me, nath and simon.

great food. good fun. i think dave liked his present!


4. drove home on sunday exhausted. trent kept muttering something about throttling some little dog called holly?

sock progress in next post.
k

to picot or not to picot?

so now that i have nearly finished the purple rain socks (should be done in car tonight on way to sydney), i am thinking about the ones i want to make AFTER i have done trents blue stripeys. no im not very good at staying in the moment.

i have these two skeins to work with:



and i have a very good pattern that came with my first lot of spider wool all those months ago.

but i am thinking of trying something a bit different and am contemplating some picot edges. i found this pattern on black dog knits, and am wondering which wool would go best. (not sure about the ribbon. its cute - maybe too cute?)

the berry stripey is self striping so am not sure if picot edging would work. but these will be my favourite socks ever when done so i want them to be very special. the wool seems to deserve something more than a double rib beginning!

the red mottled one is close to the sort of wool used in the pattern and is not such precious wool so wont matter so much if i get it wrong.

has anyone ever done picot socks before and are they hard?

meanwhile, we are headed to sydney tonight so we can get up early for the aust day flyball comp at paramatta park. jem has recovered from his tick and is fit to race and we are going to give possum a go and see what happens!

we are staying over fri night and getting up early again on sat to come halfway home with our crazy dog friends to watch the yard dog trials at the taralga rodeo. our instructors will be there and i am working towards entering my first trial with possum at the bathurst show so need to watch as many trials as i can beforehand.

then we head back to sydney sat night for daves birthday dinner and come home exhausted on sunday!

will post lots of doggy pix on monday. have a good weekend.
k xx

water, wool, words

this morning i set myself the task of swimming laps for one hour non stop (apart from slight pauses at end changes of course) . yesterday i swam hard and fast and made my muscles burn but was in and out in 30 minutes. today was MUCH harder. it was easier to swim it in a way because it becomes automatic after a while, arm over arm, breath, kick a bit, turn. but now i am a wreck. my hair and skin smell like chlorine even after a shower and my eyes are burning even tho i wear goggles. i am dizzy, keep bumping into walls, have an aching back and cant co-ordinate my fingers properly. how am i going to be able to hang onto tiny DPNs today?!

speaking of which, here is the second purple rain sock

which has come a long way if you compare it to its condition on being retrieved from the WIP basket on sunday. i completely forgot how to turn a heel, so much so that i forgot to slip the first stitch on each heel flap row which made picking up stitches along the instep a little difficult. i also forgot how much i love knitting socks. i cant get over the fact that you make this little triangle thing and then suddenly youre knitting in a completely different direction without having to cut the wool or anything! so now i am addicted to sock knitting again. i am also thinking seriously about what i wanted to knit myself for winter which is a brown cardigan but i cant find a simple, classic, no trizz, semi-flattering big girl pattern that isnt just a hessian sack with arms. i borrowed one from taph but wasnt happy with the test swatch or the wool i had scored for it, so now i will have to think about actually buying some project specific wool. AFTER i find the pattern of course.

on the words front, i have had problems moving on from finished chapter three to chapter four because i couldnt see how they related to each other, or how i could separate the bits i needed in chapter four from what i was planning to write in chapter five. so i had a long chat with a helpful person (subtext: NOT a supervisor) and realised all i needed to do was re-phrase chapter three to incorporate chapter four, and then move on the rest. i wont bore you with the details but suffice to say that chapter three/four are the empirical data chapters and i am not over my ethical dilemma re historical evidence. but im going to write that in, so it should be right now.

i think i can finish that by end of next week.

thats it for now, need coffee.....hmmm, shall it be lavazza or colombian fair trade this morning?!

k xx

...like a record baby....

look what i got!


yes its a wheel! a spinning wheel. and it was FREE courtesy of the spinning fairy taph. (its a rescue wheel). its gorgeous, looks like an ashford traditional.

of course i have NO idea how to use it. apparently it missing some minor parts but i have no idea what they are or even what to ask for! i have no idea how to spin wool at all and i would be a very naughty girl if i took time out to learn now.

so getting it going and learning how to use it are to be delayed until after the first full draft is in and the cooler weather comes. then i think a trip to cooma may be in order, along with a fleece afternoon at my house.

in the meantime i sit and stare at it and think how pretty it is.

you spin me right round baby right round....

k

taking stock (warning: may contain fibre content)

all events have conspired against me. yesterday we got home from sydney about 3pm, we had been at flyball training and it was 38 degrees when we left sydney. it was 26 when we got home, windy and cool. devine. i sat on the lounge in front of the tennis and attempted a sudoku puzzle. i can now crack the kids one in the saturday herald but the adult remains beyond me. not surprising. but it was too much like brainwork, as was reading 'harry potter and the goblet of fire' for the third time (book seven comes out soon and i am re-reading them all in an attempt to locate the horcruxes and to work out who R.A.B is).

so instead i pulled my little basket towards me and reached in, taking out the nearly finished second lace washcloth square i intended to knit lots of to make into a blanket (this is the brown fibre that margie gave me last year). so i am knitting away, making a complete screw up of the first row back of course, but then getting into the swing of it. then on the local news i saw the story about the merino show that was held in canberra over the weekend and i felt a pang of fleece envy. i knew that my stitchnbitch ladies would be there, and i felt another pang of how few gatherings i have been to lately because of bloody dog things. i saw the wizened hands of a lady i didnt know gently spinning raw fleece into fibre and i thought, ah, perhaps spinning and i are not to be after all. perhaps i am merely a knitter. and a fair weather one at that, as trent pointed out.

but then i got a phone call. it was the spinning fairy, otherwise known as taph, telling me that the wheel she had wanted to give me was now in the same suburb as me and all i had to do was make a phone call, go round the corner, and it would be mine.

is this all a coincidence? i think not.

so then i decided to take stock. these are all the things currently sitting in my works in progress basket.


i have resolved to finish them. it is ridiculous only knitting in winter if only because the things i am knitting then do not get finished in time for me to WEAR them. so it would make sense to have some knitted woollen things ready to wear, and then start knitting some more. i have found the idea of knitting in summer somewhat difficult to contemplate, but i was out for dinner with a fellow sheep-dog trainer, who also spins and knits, recently, and she looked at me like i had two heads when i said i didnt knit in summer.

ok ok i get the hint. i will knit in summer. i will finish the second purple rain sock and continue with trents blue stripey socks and finish those before i ball up the two other skeins of sock wool i have, including the fabulous made to order berry stripey from our favourite spider. in the meantime i will experiment with washcloth lace pattern squares to sew up into the blanket, which i will need to take to herding practice in winter.

i will knit for one hour during lunch break from chapter hell. i will knit for two hours while watching crap tv at night time.

surely little sock needles and 4 ply sock wool cant make you sweat too much?!

a reinvigorated
k :)

for dave...

this is dave
daves an "engineer" (oh sorry, a supervisor) at an aeroplane company, so we cant show you his face, but we can show you what sort of tent and car he uses:

while we were camping with dave, he gave us a really hard time about the condition of the tyres on our subaru forrester all wheel drive. they were a bit worn, but you get that when you live in canberra and race your dogs in a sydney flyball team who insist on practicing every five minutes.

so, dave, just for you, look what we got yesterday:

notice the grooves and things? i think thats called a tread.

oh and did i mention that daves car, a big macho ute type thing, is NOT a four wheel drive?

k :p

waiting for the storm

i cant get over how insanely hot its been here. i must be feeling it worse this summer because i am at home most of the time - last summer i retired to the national library to work. but this summer i am actually writing not researching so all the stuff i need is here. or should be.

i have discovered in my attempt to re-write chapter four that it requires a whole heap of primary evidence i didnt think was relevant 12 months ago and now, of course is. i am a bit peeved about this. some of it is the natural process of phd writing, you think you know what you're doing but the more you read, the more you write, the more your argument changes, becomes more defined, more specific. but part of it was the interference of supervisors sending me on wild goose chases for 'historical evidence' that i should have known just didnt exist. when i read this chapter now (which i wrote the first time 12 months ago) i cant believe how unsophisticated the argument is, the ridiculous assumptions im making, the naive belief that the 'evidence' actually tells us anything. the more 'history' i do, the less i think history is possible, that history is all really just fiction, an exercise in creative writing, taking disparate and unconnected bits of information and tying them together to create something that looks like a story, a continuous seamless narrative, that is neither truthful nor possible, given the infinite chaos, the arbitrariness (is that a word), the contingency of everyday human life.

and so i am not a good historian anymore, in the traditional sense, and find myself drawn more and more to foucault's idea that history can and must be critical, we must be critical always about what we think we know, and critical when we write.

of course, this is seriously problematic when you're trying to write something about people who didnt leave diaries or letters, so all you've got is chaos, arbitrariness and contingency. sometimes i get overwhelmed with the impossibility of this task ive set myself and wonder how i will ever be able to pull it off.

anyway, so i need to go to the library but i am not entirely free to because the situation with the NFH (neighbour-from-hell) is still a little dicey - i think she has realised she would do well to not upset us considering she is having inspections this weekend and i imagine if you were a nasty sort of person you could make selling the house next door a little difficult (if, that is, you couldnt wait yourself for the sale to happen so the people doing the selling are gonegonegone). so she keeps her mouth shut for a while and keeps her kid a bit quiet (i dont mind kid noise, i just mind being insulted by a 10 year old). but trent comes home last night and shes out the front talking to said 10 year old and explaining to him what bad people we are because we 'cant afford to buy our own house' and how this makes us f***wits (hmmm) and then he comes out the back and starts harrassing the dogs, jumping around making noises trying to get them to bark RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, while im sitting there waiting for the storm to come. of course i feel like doing and saying all sorts of immature evil nasty things but i think 'hes 10 years old, ignore it, rise above it' but really. its very annoying. so i dont feel comfortable leaving the dogs alone in the back yard right at the moment for long periods of time, esp when its so hot. its supposed to be a bit cooler next week so perhaps i will just go to the library in the mornings or something.

speaking of waiting for the storm, here are some pix i took while i waited for rain that never came. it looked good and got quite cool for a while there.




im glad we're going to sydney again this weekend where it is supposed to be marginally cooler than here, at least.

k

do a little dance...

oh yes its true the house of the neighbour from hell is for sale. heres proof:



the trailer i imagine is to facilitate removal of the skateboard ramp.

im too busy doing a little dance around the house to write more now

happy k :)

counting chickens

its amazing really how ones outlook on life can change in a matter of moments. we had a fun weekend in sydney trying to get possum ready for flyball racing at the australia day comp only to be brought back to earth with the realisation that we were counting our chooks before they hatched. lets just say she still needs some work.

and then all the way home i was dreading coming back, its just so relentlessly hot and the neighbour from hell has been too quiet which has made me sus and i want to go work in the cool library but i cant leave the dogs at home all day by themselves with the current situation.

and then i do the monthly budget and realise with me not working we are set for another few months of abject poverty and you really wonder whether the whole phd thing is worth all that stress....part time jobs at coles start to look attractive.

and so im getting in the car to go get some groceries with my non-existent money only to see a guy in a suit pull up next door and start taking photos of the house belonging to the neighbour from hell. there's all sorts of angle shots of the house and the yard and then he goes inside. hes still inside when i come back from the shops.

i take this to be a very good sign that a certain house is going to get a FOR SALE sign put out the front of it (seeing as how shes a PROPER person who 'owns' (ie, owes-money-to-bank-for) her house, while we are just lowly renters).

all of a sudden the world seemed like a much better place. i dont care if im counting chickens on this one as well. it gives me hope.

k :)

hot outside

its going to be 38 here today and at 10am its already nudging 26. i have some kind of weird pathological fear of extreme heat. i have put the house in lockdown and am ensconced in my darkened office with cooler on. when i finish my chapter today i just realised that will be one half of the first draft done (not including intro and conclusion as they dont get done till everything else is perfect). im happy with how its panning out but i can see areas that i need more research for, but im not going to do that until the whole draft is done and i know exactly what im looking for.

i just went and did some errrands and found that i am a little bit twitchy and not in a good way - everytime i see a bird flying near the road i flinch. im going to crash into a tree or something if im not careful. bloody kamikaze birds.

and i would like to take this opportunity to direct you to one of my finer efforts in procrastination - the blog of the kamp kitchen koffee klub (the 4ks). trent doesnt like the title because he says you cant spell coffee with a k but you cant spell kitchen with a c, so the ks have it. the 4ks was established on our recent camping trip where we found out some of us are a little weird about our coffee obsession, so i thought it might be fun to document our camping with coffee adventures. i dont think there will be any knitting mentioned on that blog either. sorry!

have a good hot one
k xx

doing laps and a hitchcock moment

i have now showered and breakfasted after my trip to the pool this morning, today i did 1km after yesterdays sad effort - only been a few weeks but so easy to lose your momentum. and then theres all that christmas pudding to lug around....but a few more days and i should be getting back up there. i was doing 2kms before holidays. and i have changed my pool routine, as its school hols the plan is get in and out early which means coming home still wet rather than showering there. this saves the hassle of carrying around soap, shampoo, towels, clothes etc. much more sensible.

except i was wrapped in my towel driving home when something terrible happened. i was nearly home when two magpies came flying out a tree having a fight and i swerved to avoid them but they flew straight into the side of the car! i swerved all over the road then pulled over and saw one bird hopping along the road while someone had stopped and picked it up and was getting back in their car. i just came home. i feel bad. should i have gone up to the rescuer and offered to take over the rescue or is it enough to know the bird was rescued? the weird thing is this is the third bird incident this week. on monday two parrots flew low across the road and one of them clipped the car but flew on, seemingly ok. this morning on the way to the pool in nearly the same spot as the parrots, a different bird flew low and nearly hit me. is there some hitchcock thing going on? or is it just all the baby birds learning to fly and they dont know about cars yet? anyway, its horrible and i feel like a nasty car driving earth wrecking human being right now.

on a lighter note, because i dont have kids to post cute pix of, here are the puppies this morning playing with one of the toys we found in the backyard upon return from holidays. im sure it belongs to the girl next door but given the situation, im keeping it. (hmm perhaps the bird attacks are karma for this pettiness?). anyway jem loves it cos it makes dog noises and he wont let possum play with it whereas usually she can take anything off him. very funny.



and no they are not on the bed. why would i have my working dogs lolling around on the human bed? shame on you for even thinking it!

k

101 ways to procrastinate

1. update your blog template
2. post picture of the work you should be doing

only 99 more ways to go...

gratuitous dog pictures

the sick puppy, aka jem, is improving slowly. he can walk almost normal but has trouble with stairs and cant jump up on the bed, which is kind of funny to watch. then he complains when you pick him up. some dogs. sheesh. anyway here he is looking kind of cute this morning:



note green and red austrian airlines blanket.

because jem cant do any vigorous exercise for a while we are planning on putting possum into the flyball team for racing on australia day in sydney. we did some training with her over christmas and she surprised us with her ability to focus in the face of other dogs. the test will be how she copes with other dogs running alongside her which we are planning to train this weekend in sydney. and just because i can heres a picture of her this morning.


repeat after me "she's so pretty". on sunday i took her for a walk around lake ginninderra and i met this guy with a massive big great dane puppy (10 months old and its as tall as me) and she got along really well with it after an initial freak out, and he told me about a group of people who meet every afternoon with their dogs at page oval, so i took there yesterday and she had a great time. and someone, completely unprompted by me, said 'shes very pretty isnt she'. i burst out laughing and said 'well yes we think so and sometimes thats the best thing you can say about her'! she was, however, the fastest ball chasing dog there. (yes yes i know im not supposed to let her chase balls - interferes with flyball training etc etc).

meanwhile i am about to go back to the pool for the first time since before xmas, should be interesting. i did manage to only put on one kilo of christmas cheer and it is coming back off slowly, begrudgingly! but it was worth it. hmmm maggie beer pate...

um anyway, i have also been back at chapter writing work yesterday and have rewritten sections of the chapter i was meant to have done by xmas, i had a brainwave about it while away so it affects the chapters on either side as well. making a bit more work for myself but the fact that im thinking about it and thinking of ways to improve it is a good sign at least.

thats it from me for today.
have a good one
k xx

ps the neighbour from hell has been quiet since we got home, there was a big incident the night we got home and the police came and since then two of her kids havent been there and she has been quiet as a mouse, i think there is some major custody drama going on, so she is on her best behaviour. and the landlord has agreed to just fix the fence and wear the cost so that should help a lot too. fingers crossed it stays that way :)

sick puppy

quick update on the condition of jem-the-tick-carrying cattle dog. he came home from hospital last night feeling pretty sad and sorry and couldnt walk at all:



he had had the anti-tick serum which can cause an allergic reaction but he had coped with that ok (i think i had a heart attack at the amount of money that one shot can cost) then he slept all night and has had some food and water and moved around a bit more today. this is the second time in a year he has been affected by a tick and its really knocked him around this time, not happy about it. they are really hard to find on him because of his thick coat and white skin so we dont find them until they are well attached. trent has been researching more virulent preventative measures for next time.

meanwhile jo has put up some photos on her flickr from camping and i forgot to mention that we went out for dinner the last night at the rosewood restaurant at riverwood downs and had a lovely dinner. trent decided he didnt like anything on the normal menu and had four desserts. yes thats right. four desserts. highly amusing.

thanks everyone for the kind thoughts re jem, will write replies etc later
k xx

of tents, dogs, storms and ticks

arrived safely home from our fabulous camping holiday which was deficient only in its brevity. isnt it funny how you can spend 10 days doing absolutely nothing and come home exhausted?! i think i will let the pictures do the talking:

this is some scenery from where we were camping, a place called riverwood downs on the karua river at upper monkerai near gloucester. nice.



its was practically empty when we got there, this was the only other tent, but was packed by boxing day. it got a bit noisy at times but was still a vast improvement on the usual beachside haunts. here is adventure boy trent fiddling with his new camp kitchen:


and here are all our campsites in a row, we think we had the best spot right on the river under the trees.


we definitely had the best constructed tents which weathered two major storms with only minor amendments needed to trents tarp at one point.



the rest of the tents appeared to fall down around us while we watched, perhaps a little more amused than we had a right to be.


i think in this picture the inhabitants sought shelter under their collapsed tarp. we think they ate their dinner under there. teehee.

the dogs had a great time, swimming:


riding in utes:


reclining:


possum liked this spot in the road so much that cars and people were forced to walk around her. who said she was a princess?!

meanwhile the humans did some walking:


gathered some wood:



(here we see annette supervising nathan, this reminds me of a mccubbin painting, oddly!)

looked at pretty scenery:



and ate a great deal. i didnt think it was decent to take pictures of that.

the injury count was relatively low - trent got a black eye when he tried to lift jem over an electric fence at which jem protested. cobber cut his paw pads and earned the name hop-a-long for the week and jem also got a tick but it was dead because we'd frontlined him. except he appears to have brought one home and is now in the hospital being treated for a live tick and subsequent paralysis poisoning. he isnt too far gone so should be ok but thats not even two weeks since he was frontlined. a very large vet bill awaits. and we need to get new tyres on the car. on that, trent has decided we need a bigger car and is thinking along the lines of second hand range rovers. doesnt do anything by halves my trent!

but it was all worth it. i hope everyone else had a lovely break, i have a lot of blog reading to catch up on.

cheers
k xx

xmas cheer

thats two posts in a row with an X as a substitute for a real word in it. is that some kind of blogger record? probably not

also its a little bit sarcy that title. i have about as much xmas cheer within as the grinch. i hate the crass consumerism, it reminds me how i have no family to hang around with, and the mall becomes impossible to negotiate. and then theres the neighbour from hell....quick update, had to call police last night because after an afternoon of yelling insults at me over the fence (no i dont know why) and then a domestic with husband when he gets home, she comes and starts pulling palings off the fence and throwing them at the house, yelling insults and threats like "now theres a big gap and if your dogs get in here im going to kill them". i dont know what sort of medication shes on (or perhaps should be on a larger dose of) but shes blaming my dogs for ripping down the fence (cos dogs do that) and getting into her yard when the fence shes referring to is on the other side of the carport which is further separated from the backyard by another fence with padlocked gate. i know cattle dogs are clever but im pretty sure he hasnt worked out how to undo padlocks just yet.

so i called the police. they were pretty good. she ended up yelling at them and they took her husband away - there is obviously some other history there. he was trying to tell her to leave the fence alone and at one point told her she was so crazy she should be on a current affair! funny if it wasnt also true.

anyway very anxious about the whole thing and feel like i cant even go out in my own backyard. i rang the real estate agent this morning who was very good and supportive and asked if we wanted to move out which of course i dont, too expensive, inconvenient etc. she said she would just tell the owner they needed to fix the fence and worry about getting the money out of the neighbour afterwards. she said they might get colourbond so then i "dont have to look at her". nice idea.

and at least we are going away tomorrow so thats great! perfect timing. we are spending 10 nights up at riverwood downs, a moutain retreat kind of thing near barrington tops, camping with some of our dog sport friends. cant wait. seafood christmas by the river under the stars. *sigh*

we arent back till jan 2 so will post pix after that. hope everyone out there has a great christmas and new year and hope to catch up in the new year when things are a little less hectic (laughs hysterically).

have a good one
k xx

uriarra xing

i know im doing a phd and everything but somedays im really not very smart - when we first got here i thought that sign (uriarra xing) was some reference to a long ago chinese presence in the area (perhaps in the gold rushes?). ok you can stop laughing now. of course it means Uriarra CROSSing, a place where the road crosses the Molonglo river (or is it the murrumbidgee?) and you can take the dogs there and have picnics and its very nice.

anyway im going crazy here at home, only a few days till holidays and i have this last bit of the chapter to do and i just sooooo dont want to do it. hence the two blogs in one day.

then earlier today i heard about all these parties and uni bar gatherings at wollongong and i felt very sad and angry, isolated and forgotten about and sick to death of being on my own all the time.

so i took the dogs out to uriarra xing.





it was lovely out there, there was no one there when i got there, just the birds and the wind whistling through the she-oaks and the river rippling past. the water levels have fallen in the last year but not as much as i thought and the water quality was very good. the dogs had a great time swimming and chasing lizards and rolling in kangaroo poo and in the dirt.




poss is much more self-sufficient than jem, he kept looking for a stick for me to throw and she just ran through the water making waves which she then bit at, swallowing too much river water which she then came and threw up. nice one poss. but shes very pretty!

i sat under a tree and read some of my primary sources that i collected two years ago and am supposed to be basing this chapter on but havent read yet.




of course the beautiful scenery and the lovely cool river were slightly distracting so i didnt finish and i had better go do that now. (dont ask about the guy with the beard, no idea, im reading a different story called The Larrikin Residuum - this is from the Bulletin in January 1882).

at least theres cricket on tv - im crossing my fingers the english cricket team can stay in long enough to get a draw (not likely) - i know this is very unaustralian of me but my favourite cricket team is 1. the west indies who i saw when i was a kid and 2. anyone who can beat the arrogant aussies. yes i know i should be deported. i would most definately fail an aussie-values citizenship test.

later
k.

making kasundi

we had a very rare weekend at home and i think we were both at a bit of a loss! i feel guilty these days if i just do nothing, although i am looking forward to "doing nothing" and not feeling guilty for 2 weeks from this friday when we head off on our christmas camping trip to riverwood downs (near barrington tops) with all our flyball friends and dogs.

so this weekend we got the camping stuff all ready, piled up in the garage, made lists of things we need, checked the supply crates, all that stuff.

we did a flyball demo on saturday night at the canberra capitals basketball game, that was fun.

watched a few dvds - kenny, pirates of the carribean 2, jindabyne. all good (that was our bi-monthly fix, which is about as often as we are home on weekends).

and i made kasundi, yummy indian-spiced tomato and chili relish, goes well with the ham off the bone.

this is what it looks like in the pot:


this is the finished product, three hours of simmering later. i got 5 and 3/4 jars.


today i have to write up some notes on the contributors chapters for a book i am helping to edit and also go some way to finishing up chapter three of the thesis which i want done before i go away and then there will only be three chapters left to do by the end of march.

there has been no knitting either, sorry.....

k xx

yes we have no bananas, and other freaks of nature

we did have though, for a couple of days last week. this is what they looked like:



i blog about this because it is but one of a series of freaks of nature i ( and many others) am experiencing. firstly, no bananas for AGES, not since the cyclone in qld. i bought these ones because they were 5.98 a kilo as opposed to the now usual 12.98 a kilo. im sorry for not supporting the farmers in their hour of need by buying expensive bananas, but it wouldnt have been the needy ones being supported anyway. so we had bananas last week and they were fabulous.

second freak of nature. canberra in december. as if canberra itself isnt freaky enough it now has to be the hottest driest place ive ever been in my life. except for maybe moree in the 80s in february. but i cant get over how everything has died. even if i were to sprinkle and/or hand water when i was allowed, the soil on this property is so dry none of its going in. i am scandalised everytime i see a green lawn or flourishing garden. it should be a sign of your concern re the drought to let your lawn die. the truth of the matter is there wont be any water to DRINK soon, but go ahead, knock yourself out. die thirsty, have a nice lawn. please.

the other freak of nature is my next door neighbour. shes been a pain in the neck since we got here, with one domestic after another. a few weeks ago we went out to help because there was screaming in the street, she has two young boys and a baby girl, and their grandmother was trying to take the baby girl away because the mother has been trying to get herself sorted out (which of course i fully support). but theres no way im going to let children get in the middle so i (bravely) sent trent out to ask if they needed help, only to have him be abused ever since as the f***wit neighbour who "just rents". what sort of world is it that some people who obviously need to be institutionalised think they are better than someone else because they are renting off a bank while others rent off a real estate agent?

crazy neighbour has now rung said real estate agent complaining about our wild, neighbourhood terrorising dogs. lets put aside the fact that she only knows we're renting and whom from because i gave her the real estate agents card so she could ring to get the fences repaired (which havent been), and now thinks she has a licence to ring said real estate agent whenever the mood takes her. lets just focus on the fact that i dont have wild neighbourhood terrorising dogs - they bark less than any of the other dogs around here, they have never got out of the yard unattended, never bitten anyone, and now i have to justify their existence to the real estate agent. i tried to explain to her that one complaint from a crazy neighbour does not a valid noise complaint make. i also explained to her that a half pipe skateboard ramp in crazy neighbours backyard was a little more noisy than the dogs.

so whatever little joy i was getting from living in the freaky burbs of canberra has been destroyed. cant wait to leave the place. sorry for people who were born and bred here but my time out here on the western frontier, in the place that is neither city nor country, that has a pond you cant even swim in, and is in threat of burning down every second day over summer, has been less than ideal.

i must admit that this disenchantment is enhanced somewhat by spending a weekend in sydney. once upon a time i couldnt wait to get out of sydney, thinking people rude and the lifestyle crassly materialistic. (laughs insanely). now i cant wait to get back. we had a lovely time at the flyball comp on sat night and jem ran really well with his new kelpie team who all did really well for a new team with lots of issues. it was great fun. we stayed over at jo's menagerie and then sunday went and hung out in sydney park (near st peters) in the arvo and the dogs had a lovely time with all the other lovely relaxed well socialised sydney dogs (as opposed to the uptight canberra dogs and owners) (sorry, cant help myself). then we went to the flyball clubs xmas party, with more lovely dogs and people, at which jem got the award for the fastest wombat in flyball and possum got the 'shes so pretty' award. teehee. great fun.

but the best part was for lunch on sunday we got pork rolls. yes thats right, pork rolls, from the famous hot bread shop at mascot. they were the best pork rolls ive ever had largely because its been over a year since i had one and is the one single thing i miss about sydney most. if someone in canberra will tell me where i can get one here i promise to take back every mean thing ive ever said about the place!

k
(aka, cranky pants)

dead grass and critical theory

well where has the time gone? i have been so busy the last two weeks it makes my head spin. first i had to write then deliver a paper at a critical theory conference at a uni in sydney (not mentioning any names) which is where i have been since last tuesday. what an experience that was. it was a postgrad conference and the people organising it were all postgrads and they were without exception really great people, so friendly and open and very very clever. i am very glad i met all of them and hope to stay in touch for the future. my paper was very well received, got some great feedback, esp about the application of theory to history and about the historical phenomenon im studying as well. i learnt a lot from the keynote speakers and from the postgrad papers. mostly from the postgrad papers, in terms of critical theory, its complexities and applications. from the keynote speakers i learnt that once you get a "dr" in front of your name you can turn into a right wanker. esp if youre a theory boffin. even more so if you are into 'continental philosophy'. given that this is a public blog and i would like to earn gainful employment in the tertiary sector at some point, i will say no more.

in between we have been doing lots of dog training for jems first flyball competition back with his old team, which is this sat. the other dogs have needed to get used to having a rabid cattle dog around and we dont expect to run great this coming weekend but there is definately some potential for the future. also miss possum has been doing some flyball training and runs like a flash. we hope to be able to get her to do it with other dogs around at some point too!

on my return home i found the lawn and the vegie garden dead. not just dry but completely dead. grass brown, lettuce wilted. tomato plants shrivelled up (thanks to the frost not two weeks ago, and now water restrictions and continued drought. we have a gardener and a landlord who expect us to waste water on keeping the lawn green. i refuse, its immoral). so this is what we get stuck with:





i have to admit its very depressing.

i did finish my first lace washcloth, here it is:



its wool not cotton so isnt really a facecloth. the plan is to make heaps and sew together for a blankie. the pattern is from knitty.com, its a nice easy one.

i havent had time to read anyones blogs for two weeks but will try and do that later today.

k xx