Friday Wrap-up: Haircuts, Hidden Secrets and Hell Broken Loose

The week that was!

1) One Good Thing: Cut off all my hair. Well, not all of it. It now sits about a half-inch to an inch above my shoulder, rather than halfway down my back. It no longer weighs a ton, but I can still clip it up out of my face. Plus, now it looks lighter without having to fork out for more highlights. Score!

2) One Bad Thing: I’ve been helping my Mum pack up her house to move from the country to the city my siblings and I all live in, so we can be one big happy neighbourly family. Anyway, I was packing her bookshelves last weekend and came across her wedding album from when she married my Dad. Some perspective – my parents have been seperated for 17 years. And it wasn’t pretty. And you know how many couples mellow into a somewhat-friendship, or at least tolerance, over time? Not my parents. The bitter hatred ferments like a fine wine and only gets more refined with age. (In a way my parents are like Scotch. Which would please my Dad. But might explain a lot of why they broke up in the first place.) Anyway, she came over and saw me with the album, and then there was this awful tense awkwardness where she pretended like she wasn’t upset I’d found it, and I pretended like it’d never happened in the first place, and now she’s going to want to unpack and throw it out but can’t do that because I’LL KNOW! Or HE’LL WIN! Or something. *sighs* Parents…

3) One Thing I Learned: Having gone to visit the scout section above mine, that my kids are ANGELS and my behaviour management/time management/genera child wrangling skills are AWESOME! Because that other meeting was an absolute shambles – kids tying other kids up, card-games going on at the back of the room, more squealing than I thought possible outside a piggery, and all the while adults ignoring it and talking louder…

Blogging Month Day 29: Sharing Sites, Salons, Silly Names and Sookie Stackhouse

I have something large and overarching prepared for tomorrow as the last day of June, so this is probably my last entry of day to day “good thing/bad thing/learned thing/link thing”. So enjoy!

1) One Good Thing: Taught an, um, “older” colleague (okay, he’s old. Not like my grandfather old, but probably older than my dad. I often get accused of being ageist. I’m not, I’m just observant about these things…) anyway, taught a colleague how to use LibraryThing. He’s a classic book hoarder, has sheds full of bookshelves on his property, thousands and thousands of titles, and had the idea that not only did he want a list of exactly what he had, but he also wanted to be able to sort or filter it by things like topic, year, author etc. He’s also, not to be unkind, a two-finger typing technophobe. But I showed him how my account worked, and how he could use a barcode wand to scan in the ISBNs from the back of his books to add them to his account quickly, and he’s happily going off to give it a go, and if he gets to 200 titles on his free account and likes the way it works for him, he’ll get an upgraded one. Sensei Liberrydwarf, guiding pupils to greatness!

2) One Bad Thing: My old hairdresser has moved out of town, and I’ve been putting off the decision about a new one for ages. I finally called the local salon for an appointment – painstakingly explaining what I usually have done, etc. And I get the feeling that they think I’m a complete idiot. I’m hoping that it was just the girl answering their phone who wasn’t overly thrilled to be getting my business – and that they don’t screw it up! D-day is Thursday, so hopefully I won’t have to come and put “I’m so horrified” pics up!

3) One Thing I Learned: that apparently in NZ you can name a baby “Midnight Chardonnay” but not “Fish and Chips”. By law. Ah, thank you Mental Floss!

4) Today’s Link: pinched from kalafudra – again! I know! I’m sorry! But since the Book and TV Memes proved so many #blogeverydayofjune bloggers were Charlaine Harris/True Blood fans, I absolutely had to share this new Snoop Dogg clip 🙂

Blogging Month Day 23: Models, Munchies, Making Cookies and Musicals

1) One Good Thing: thanks all of you for the lovely comments back on my photoshoot photos from yesterday. You know how to make a girl feel gorgeous! @gigglesigh and @KatieTT and @nomesd and I had a slightly tongue in cheeck Twitter chat last night that we should do a Sexy Aussie Librarians  shoot like the Swedish one – what do you think?

2) One Bad Thing: I was naughty at lunchtime – started off well eating my salad and drinking water like a good girl. Then the thought popped into my head “it’s a cold day. I would like a hot treat.” And I proceeded to buy and eat not one, but two, potato scallops. Those things are terrible for you (but delicious. Maybe even because they’re so terrible for you). Now I’m grumpy, guilty and queasy… (and the rest of the seven negative dwarfs 🙂 )

3) One Thing I Learned: a new recipe for honey cookies that I’ll be trying out to give to the Scout kids at their Teddy Bears Picnic tomorrow night. Hope it’s nice!

4) Today’s Link: In the same spirit as Improv Everywhere, there was Prangstgrüp (who by now have all graduated college and gone onto more non-exhibitionist pursuits). Anyway, their Library Musical made me grin…

Blogging Month Day 3: Floating, Fashion, Fettucine and Film Memorabilia

Nice to have a bit of a cooler morning this morning: not sure why, but it feels like a pullover-and-hot-chocolate day, very pleasant!

1) One good thing: there was a giant beer hot air balloon floating around in the sky this morning on the drive to work (an enormous inflatable pint glass of some description). This photo isn’t mine, but it did look a bit like this except over the city skyline of Brisbane. And it made me smile, and I need that this morning…

2) One bad thing: I bought a new top on Monday – pink soft wool with sewn-in white cotton collar and cuffs, those ones that make it look like you’re wearing 2 shirts at once? Well, I grabbed my size off the rack and bought it without trying it on. BIG mistake. Because apparently at this particular clothing chain, round everything 2 sizes up, and I should have gone with a 10. Because what was meant to look trim and tailored is actually loose and frumpy and unfashionable, so I think it’ll be going to the only-wear-when-desperate pile. Which is quite a shame, because if it didn’t make me look like  floppy marshmallow it would have been quite pretty…

3) One thing I have learned: um other than try things on? Actually, yesterday evening I learned how to make pasta! I bought a pasta roller on Monday too, and last night had time to try it out. And after a tiny false start with too-dry dough, I managed to churn out some absolutely fantastic fettucine! I wish I had thought to take pictures! (Next time!)

4) Today’s link: you’ve probably missed out, but for an estimated £1,000, you could have been the proud owner of Edmund Blackadder’s codpiece at auction last week…

Blogging Month Day 2: Feet, Firefox, Foreclosures and Feral Teens

Well, I made it back for Day 2 (thought that was going to be the hard part! Though I guess just wait til the weekend!). The day is young, and I only got home from work at 9pm last night so not a whole lot’s happened, but let’s see if we can’t knock a daily rundown together…

1) One good thing: I have awesome socks today. They are making me EXTREMELY happy!

You can't see from here, but there are little ribbons at the back too 🙂

2) One bad thing: Posting the previous photo of socks? Took the better part of 30 minutes to do. It also took me an hour to upload 7 photos of my brother’s band from the weekend on Flickr. WHY won’t people write Firefox-compliant code?!

3) One thing I have learned: that the Sydney Opera House might have to close. That would be so awful! Why can the Government apparently afford to guarantee bank loans but not to save what’s probably the #1 identifiable tourist icon of the country?

4) Today’s link: (although technically there are two above… oh you want a proper link…. okay…) One word: America. Actually, two words: Bloody America. And Bloody Twilight. So that’s four. Ah, just watch the stupid clip already…

“A small town is a place where there’s no place to go where you shouldn’t.”

I went back to my country home town on the weekend. They have an annual Carnival of Flowers, and I hadn’t been in years because, let’s face it, country towns and flowers are boring and I’m oh-so-cool. (Keep your derisive snorts to yourself, thankyou!)

Well, I went to the carnival. I went to the parade. I stood out in the sun for hours smelling of hay and country-people-sweat. And to be honest, it was daggy but great fun. There were unicycling garden gnomes. There were old-fashioned And miniature horses. And copious amounts of country wine. And found that actI didn’t mind at all…

So the Liberry’s lesson tonight is never to be too cool for your home town. Especially not when there’s cheese tasting and chilli-infused beer in the offering. Humble it up!

And now, to the links…

1) Link #1 tonight is tribute to my mum, who turned up at the parade featuring the Red Hat Brigade (they’re a group of older women who go out and do social stuff; go google it, it’s kinda hard to explain) inadvertantly wearing exactly the same thing as the Brigade were, and then wouldn’t share my hysterical laughter for the rest of the day when people kept asking her for membership details…

So for her, we present a gallery of people who had worse fashion-days than her by far. “Lileks Institute of Official Cheer” has shown up on this site before (think “regrettable food”) and it’s a great favourite. This time we’re bringing you their Highlights of the Sears 1973 Catalogue. ‘Cause there’s nothing better than other tragic fashion faux-pas to make you feel better…

2) Webcomics are great fun, particularly if you’re a geek, and we’ve featured lots before in the library. This week, if you’re a gamer, or a gamer fan, or even just want to laugh at gamers, take a look (best started at the beginning) at Goblins…

3) Next week is Banned Books week. I love Banned Books week! I love getting all outraged. I make sure I read one banned book every year in honor. This year it’s “The Witches” by Roald Dahl – if someone can let me know WHY people would want this book banned, please do post, because it’s beyond me…

(I secretly think part of me loves Sarah Palin, because you KNOW she’d make every week banned book week! That part of me is locked in a cage in a dark room though…)

Anyhoo, enough being creepy… erm, here’s what the ALA came up with as a video-treat for banned book week this year. It’s kind of clever…