The Bad Egg Brigade

Easter is just around the corner and this year my gym is having a 'decorate a boiled egg' competition.
Now, I have the craft ability of a four year old but I enjoy it immensely. As I'm avoiding eggs of the chocolate variety at the moment, I got very enthusiastic about the idea and thought long and hard about what I could do. I wanted to do something different, something that wasn't just throwing a fancy scrunchie around the egg and saying it's a ballerina.
I started to think of making a 'Bad Egg Brigade'. I figured Hitler and the Devil would be pretty easy to make with eggs but I needed more than just two eggs to make a brigade. Imhotep came to mind and after rooting around a bit I found Christian's medical tape that he wraps his toes in when he plays soccer and decided that would do well as a mummy's bandaging. I wanted one more but couldn't really think of anyone else to make until Christian suggested Dracula. It seemed to fit and so I got cracking (sorry, couldn't help myself).
Here's how they turned out. I took two photos so you could see both sides of Hitler and the Devil's forked tail. There's a prize for the best decorated and even though I don't think I have a chance, I'll keep you posted.




Finally I'll leave you with some pictures of my doggies. It's been getting rather cold here at night lately, especially with the tiles and so they really have to snuggle up in their beds.
Aren't they just the cutest???

Rant time!

I haven't had a good rant for a while now and I saw something today that annoyed me so I thought 'What the heck, that's what a blog's for'.

Now, as most of you would have figured out from my previous few posts, I'm not the skinniest person in the world. I do like to dress nicely though and go to I'd say the average amount of effort in my appearance. I always try to buy flattering clothes that fit nicely but don't make me look like a granny.

Now, today I was walking across the road from the parking lot to work when I saw a young girl walk up to the ATM. She was probably a size 12, maybe 14 at the most, pretty average I'd say but the thing that made me notice her was the fact that she was muffin-topping ridiculously badly. Her jeans must have been a full size too small for her and she was wearing this tight crop top that really didn't show off her figure to it's full advantage.

I hate it when people do this! If she was wearing jeans that actually fit properly, she would have looked really nice. But instead she looked...skanky.
Is it some obscure sense of pride that makes some women only buy one size of clothing even if it doesn't fit? Because that's just plain dumb. Clothing isn't always the same size. I have clothes that differ by as much as four sizes because one brand varies so much from the next. I'm not going to squeeze myself into something that obviously won't fit just so I can claim to be a certain size.

And you know what makes this really bad? When it's a case of mutton dressed as lamb. I find it particularly frightening when it's a 45 year old woman dressing in her teenage daughters clothes. I understand that you are only as old as you feel, blah blah blah, but come on, have a little decorum. There could be children present for crying out loud.

Ok, rant's over now. I just needed to get that off my chest.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

and shake your bum...

First of all, I apologise to super intelligent, hunky sex God brother Mike for not referring to him as Sexy Mike or even just regular Mike. I hope this more than makes up for my little lapse.

Secondly, in the two weeks since I've started my new resolve, I've lost about 4 kg. Yay me! I'm very proud of myself for sticking to it and working my butt off so much.

Thirdly, I much prefer millipedes to ants. Our new house is invested with the little sugar ants and for some reason ant poison isn't working. Perhaps they're a mutant variety, immune to poison and hell bent on the destruction of my kitchen?

Fourthly, I managed to break another watch by smashing the face of it. I don't know how I do it, but I manage to whack my wrist against everything I walk past. I guess it was inevitable.

Lastly, I've been watching Farscape. I never watched it when it was on telly but my supply of quality sci-fi has dwindled so I borrowed the dvds from a work mate. It's not a bad show and if I'd watched it during the 90's when it first aired I'm sure it would have been better (remember people that I watch SeaQuest) but on the whole it's a tad cheesy.

Ok, a lot cheesy.

I just think that Aussie accents on tv sound so corny and hollow. Especially in sci-fi. I mean, why on Earth would aliens have Australian accents? Fair enough, they really shouldn't have Merkin or British accents either, but out of all the accents in the world, they wouldn't have Australian ones. Ok, that sentence didn't make a lot of sense (why on Earth??? I'm talking about Aliens who aren't from Earth.) I'm sure you get my drift anyway.
Ultimately I get to watch Ben Browder run around making calf eyes at Claudia Black. It can't be that bad, right?

May contain strong language, sexual references and adult themes

Yesterday my friend Kat had her final day at Pie Networks (where Christian, Mike and Sexy Mike also work) and so we went around to her place last night for farewell drinks.
She lives in Scarborough about one hundred meters from the ocean and the view from her backyard is apparently spectacular during the day.

Sitting in her backyard I could see some lights that were ships and a whole lot of black.

Not so spectacular.

But I wasn't there for the view. There was just the five of us there, Christian and myself, Kat of course, Mike and a girl called Mel (Kat's boyfriend Sexy Mike is in New Zealand at the moment). We had gone for a walk into Scarborough to get some dinner and then we spent the rest of the night sitting about chatting. We covered topics such as Kat's new job and what she'd be doing, a guy at Pie who the others found to be really annoying at work but great out of it, crazy customers and funny stories about them and the like.

Now, I'm sure you'll all understand that the conversation wasn't exactly PG rated up until that point (how could it be with me there and the line a long way behind me) but about one in the morning we started to explore more obscure topics.
Don't ask me how I bought this up because I can't remember the context of the conversation directly beforehand but I mentioned an article I'd read years ago about Christopher Reeve and his wife Dana. One morning Dana woke up and found Reeve had a stunning morning glory. They both got very excited and went straight to their doctor who told them that, yes it was possible for them to still have children but Dana would have to do the majority of the work so to speak.

This then led into a lengthy debate over how male erections and ejaculation actually work. A few of us were of the opinion that there must be a large psychological aspect to it and that it must be possible for men to cum without physical stimulation at all, citing wet dreams as an example.
The others disagreed saying if Reeve wanted to cum just by thinking about it, why would Dana have to do all the work. There must be a manual release mechanism of some sort seeing as he wouldn't feel her doing anything and so he wouldn't have the same sensation as the rest of the men out there.

We went round in circles on this for quite a while and it'll be interesting to see what you guys think.
Then the conversation led into the subject of porn (and you know what? I bought that up too...nothing if consistent eh?) and I asked if men really sit around and watch porn together like they do in the movies. I couldn't understand how they could watch porn and not get the urge to jack off, or do they still do and then they just sit around wanking off in front of each other?
Christian and Mike both said that they'd never watched porn with a bunch of friends before and said they'd never even heard of anyone doing it. I suggested maybe it was just private school guys and then Mike had to go and bring up 'soggy biscuit' and it all went downhill rapidly from there.

Two thirty came and so after having another ogle at Mike's R32 that he'd finally gotten licensed after importing about a year ago (and I also ogled Mike) we headed home and I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Ogle. That's an odd word. Just look at it. It doesn't even make any sense. Who on earth invented it? Was someone just sitting around one day writing down random letters and decided that ogle would be a good word?

I digress. I wanted to leave you with a link to some PG rated porn that my brother Mike (I know too many Mikes!) shared with me.

Roof Sex

Catch you all later!

The battle begins

I apologise in advance for the self pitying post.

I jumped on the scales the other day and to my dismay, found I was the heaviest I've ever been. Not exactly the most promising start to any day.
I thought about it and realised that even though I've been pretty good with the exercise bit of it (I do try and get to the gym three or four times a week and try to walk the dogs just as often) I think I fall down when it comes to what I eat.
And it's probably not really what I eat but how much I eat.
The old portion size war.

On the same day a friend of the family pointedly told me that people who are as overweight as I rarely conceive and that it shouldn't come as any surprise to me that I hadn't fallen pregnant as yet.

I got very low after that. Low enough to start falling back into my old habits and I didn't eat anything for a day and a half.
I managed to pull myself back together again as anorexia made me skinny for a couple of years and I've pretty much been this size since a year after I started eating again. I know it's not a healthy attitude to have, and I forgive myself the little lapse as this woman was quite nasty about it, but I knew it was time to make a battle plan.

I've been involved with a few strategists in the past - fad dieting, weight watchers, and I knew it was time to try something different. My sister put me onto an Australian site called Calorie King which is like an online diary that first works out your BMI (Oh God, not pretty!!!) and then tells you how many calories to consume in a day and how much exercise to do and then you can keep track of it.
It's only early days yet but hopefully it'll go as planned.

The hardest bit is finding the support I need. My sisters yo-yo back and forth when they're dieting and I often find it's when I'm with them that I afll flat on my face and give in to those Tim Tams.
My Mum is like the Will Power Queen and although she tries, she sometimes makes it sound like she's criticising.
Then there's Christian.
6"2 and about 15 kgs underweight, Christian has never had to lose weight in his life and really has no idea how hard it can be. I mean he does try and be supportive (he stopped me from making a screen saver out of an unflattering photo of myself and the caption Time to lose some weight lardass or you'll never have kids) but I sometimes find him to be a little derogatory. Not that he means to be obviously, but if we go for a walk he complains because he prefers to run, I crave a coke zero (the bastards have made it addictive) and he says he can't see why I could drink that crap, I'll measure out my food religiously and he piles his plate as high as he can and says he doesn't see how eating two cups of salad instead of one would matter (well it does if your counting calories!).

*sigh*

Anyway, we'll see how it goes. Hopefully I'll actually stick to it this time instead of going AWOL like I usually do.

Home open

We've been moved in for a while now and although we've still got a spare room chokkas full of crap I thought it was about time to post some 'before and after' photos of our house.

The before photos were taken when we were painting the house and so my dad was still living here. He had gotten rid of a lot of his stuff by then and had only kept the essentials. I took the after photos the other day.

This is the loungeroom. The way we've got it set up now means we've cut off the gas point and will have heaps of fun plugging in the heater come winter, but it's really the only way we could set it up to fit in all our crap.

The angles on this photo are a little different to the 'after' shot and we'd already painted the feature wall when I took the 'before' one, but this is our bedroom. Both photos are taken from the doorway. Oh and those pictures aren't staying. When I get some hooks I'll take them down and put my 'Electric Wolf' pic (that you can sort of see in the lounge pics) up in the middle of the wall. We loved the colour of the feature wall (passionate blue) so much that we decided we'd paint the doors that colour. We both hated the green and wanted something different. A lot of people don't like such a dark colour on the doors in such a small house, but they don't have to live here!

This is the bathroom. It didn't change all that much except for the doors and a little drawer unit I bought.

This was the only 'before' shot I had of the kitchen and I had taken it more because my Dad was in it than to get a shot of the kitchen itself. The walls in the kitchen and dining were just repainted white, Dad fixed the pantry door but not much else was done to it. My Mum gave me some cafe curtains that once belonged to my Nanna to put up which I love. Nanna bought them back from Germany with her and never got a chance to use them so I'm glad that one of her grand-daughters finally gets to use them.






This photo of the dining room is taken from a different angle to the 'after' shot. In this one I'm standing at the back door whereas in the 'after' photo I was taking it looking at the back door. I took this photo when we first began painting (back when we were naive and still enthusiastic), it was the first wall we did.

Right, so that concludes a rather boring post.

Sorry bout that...

Once our patio is up and I've finally gotten around to mowing the lawn (I thought that was a husband job but I've been informed otherwise) I'll post some 'before and after' shots of the garden.

Bye!

Photo adventure with Nettie

Today we went to a bbq at Whiteman Park to celebrate Mike graduating from Uni. Lots of his family and friends turned up for the festivities and I was there with my trusty camera to capture the moments.

This is a sign we passed when we entered the park. I automatically yelled 'COW!' and then paused and asked Christian why a cow would be on the sign. He informed me it was a bull and it's on there because, like roos, they can cause serious damage to your car if you come into contact with them at high speeds. Duh. Also, snakes are protected so you're not allowed to deliberately run them down with you car if they're crossing the road.

We were having our bbq in Shelter Q which was near Mussel Pool. I didn't see any mussels in the pool, only lots of ducks and duck poo, and I found the stream running into the pool more interesting. I actually think the pool may be technically a billabong as a billabong is 'a body of water formed when the U bend in a river or stream becomes cut off from itself'. I'm sure that's what's happened here. It's pretty anyway.

We found a playground for the kiddies that had PLUNGERS! I was so excited! For those of you who don't know, plungers (I'm not sure what the technical term is but that's what we call them) are like upside down seesaws. You sit on top of what looks to be a big plunger and you jump up and down.

Jo and I had a go and had heaps of fun. Then I got bored and hopped off without warning her. Needless to say Jo fell on her arse...

We also played a lot of the little merry-go-round thing majig. I took these photos of the kids while we were spinning around at what felt like a hundred miles an hour. Aren't they just the cutest!

Darcie wanted to have a go with my camera so she took a photo of Mum, Chiara and I. I think she did a pretty good job!

My brother Scott and his partner Michael came along (yay!). We don't usually see Scott very much as he works away as a botanist on the mines so it was really great to catch up with him.

Scott has always called me his doppelganger. I'm not sure if we're that much alike but I think the family resemblance is pretty obvious.

Me and Michael. I'm so glad Scott found such a wonderful person as Mike is just gorgeous. But really, how many Michaels can I know at once???

Christian hates having his photo taken. I don't have many photos without his middle finger raised in protest...

Tash managed to get the day off work to come along which was great as we don't see her very often anymore :(

Barb's friend Kim who is as much Barb's sister as I am.

Daniel, Mike's brother and also one of Christian's best friends. It's all so rednecky around here!

It was a really great day and afterwards a lot of the guys crammed into our house to play Wii and board games. On a related note I totally blew my diet. Oh well...