Just a short note to say I’ve chosen the winner of the Ezibuy voucher. Head on over to find out who it is, winner details are at the bottom of the post.
Ezi does it
Archives for August 2009
Intensity
I’ve been doing some extra work – paid – so I have to do it. There’s a deadline and there’s SO much work to do. It’s a very content rich website that’s getting a completely new look. If I don’t say so myself, I’ve done a damn fine coding job (with a bit of help from a colleague with Javascript). I did a lot of it over the last weekend and by Monday I was proudly showing it off to some colleagues (it’s work related) because I was really proud of myself.
My CSS skills have grown exponentially over the last couple of years and I’m quite confident in what I do now. Practise makes perfect and all that, and I’ve been using the most excellent Firefox extension called Firebug. It lets you debug on the fly so you can really easily experiment with webpage development. If you’re building websites – especially ones that are built with CSS for layout and look, then you should be using it. I love it.
So I am really chuffed with my interpretation of the designer’s brief, and the ‘client’ is really happy so far and said ‘you’ve done an excellent job mate’, and he never calls me mate. Although the designer wants to come and sit with me and go through the website so I’m sure I’m going to have to explain some things about accessibility and CSS, so it could be an interesting meeting. I know from a previous meeting that he doesn’t have any or much experience with HTML etc.
But now it’s at the stage where all that content’s got to come from a single column layout into a two column layout and it’s time consuming. I spent three hours on it today and thought to myself earlier I’m going to have to sit down and work out how long each one takes me and times that by the amount of pages I’ve got to do. I’m getting some nice extra pocket money and am thinking of how to reward us, and it has to be us because JJ feels some effects of my doing my work. Although it’s been a bit tricky this weekend because he’s been banned from all electrical games for the weekend. He did inform me that taking things away like this isn’t helping his behaviour at all. Other consequence ideas anyone?
Along with this extra draw on my time other things have been happening too but that’s for another post.
My new dress
Don’t know what my problem is but this is my second self-portrait in as many posts and I can’t quite remember why I was looking up at the ceiling. The dress looks a bit splotchy but that’s my photography, not my new dress. If you want to win one like it then pop over here.
And here’s my photographic director getting into the shot.
Imperfections
Last week Picklebums posted a photo a day of her perfectly imperfect life. I participated on one of those days showing the mess on my kitchen table after a working week’s accumulation of stuff.
I tidied my kitchen table up on Friday and gave it a wipe down – it’s amazing how dusty it can get amongst all the crap it accumulates over the week but it’s back to being a bit junky again because I’ve got a freelance project on and my kitchen table is my desk. I also cooked a meal in the crock pot yesterday and took it to a friend’s place who had a knee operation this week and has been house bound. We ended up staying the night and slept in after indulging in some delicious sparkling red.
Today after we got back from my friend’s and then the farmer’s market I whipped up a carrot and broccoli soup that my son says he absolutely loves but he decided he didn’t like this batch after I took this photo. His is still on the kitchen table but I promise to tidy that up before the week’s out. It wouldn’t do to have that still sitting there on Thursday evening would it?
Notice how I cropped the photo a bit to cover up my untidy table this time? I guess that’s generally what I do on this blog and amongst all but my closest friends, that is I don’t share all my imperfections. Who wants to know everything about me that’s flawed, or that I perceive to be flawed? When people ask how I am, I’m fine thanks. Only rarely do I say I feel like shit, or I’ve had a crap day.
But despite all my imperfections I manage to put healthy food on the table (even if it’s not always appreciated), I manage to have good times with my friends and my son, I’m pretty healthy, and as I get older I’m learning more about myself and what I might like to do to make myself a better person.
Like Kate from Picklebums I also don’t like photos of myself, and like Kate, I’ve also put one here because – imperfections and all – this is what I look like. Sometimes I do wish the camera would lie and take a few pounds off and smooth up the skin. JJ took this one on our outing to Port Adelaide last week. You must all get sick of just seeing photos of my son who is much more photogenic than me which is why I exploit that here.
Perfect – moi?
This is my Thursday evening kitchen table. It’s a week’s worth of notes from school, my paperwork, my shopping bag I haven’t quite unpacked, headphones I plan on using for Skype if I ever get round to setting it up and goodness knows what else is under the top layer.
That gray cylinder is JJ’s. It’s something he brought home from school and is very adept at using it to waste time in the morning in his bedroom when he should be doing his pre-school jobs like making sure his bag is packed and all that. This morning I confiscated it because he was procrastinating. Gee I wonder where he got that from.
When I caught up with my mother’s group more often I did the very occasional pop-in with one of the mums and her kitchen/living area was always immaculate. Maybe that’s what can be achieved when you don’t work outside the home, or maybe she would get stress headaches from keeping it tidy. As my year 12 English teacher used to say about immaculate homes like this, ‘Where do they put there junk?’. Looking back I can tell that her (my teacher’s) kitchen table probably looked like mine does now.
By the end of the weekend the table will mostly be cleared so I can start the cycle all over again. The stupid thing is that it doesn’t take that long to tidy up but for some reason I don’t stay on top of it during the week.
Do you run a tidy ship or by the end of your working week is your house looking the worse for wear?
If you want to see other peoples’ perfectly imperfect lives, pop on over to Picklebums. I’m not alone here.
Oh, and I got my Ezibuy package today. Don’t forget you have a chance to win a $50 voucher for yourself.
Cook, book, film
Would peoples’ lives be the same if they didn’t blog I wonder? I’m trying to get a collection of blogging stories going on, and while doing that I can’t not mention the more famous stories.
A couple of years ago or so I remember hearing about a blogger called Julie Powell who had blogged about cooking the 500 or so the recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering the art of French cooking cookbook in a year. Julie started her project back in 2002. As she wrote, ‘365 days. 536 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen.’
Then she got a book deal, the book called Julie and Julia and now that book’s been turned into a film.
John Moore doesn’t have anything good to say about it at all in his column ‘When celebrities actually did something‘, the title says it all really.
Jennie Yabroff asks us us to please stop hating Julie Powell.
So what does Julie herself think of all this? She says on Cinemeblend.com: ‘It’s the bravest thing you can do, to see a life you’re dissatisfied with and make a dramatic change. I hear that, and i understand it.’
Sounds to me like Julie’s life would have been quite different if she didn’t take it upon herself to change her life and doing it with Julia Child’s cookbook and a blog was the way it happened for her. It was fortunate perhaps that she chose cooking as her project. I wonder if it had been something else whether it would have caught on, as cooking websites/blogs seem to be very popular. My banana cake recipe on this blog is one of my most popular posts and this isn’t a food/cooking blog.
At least she actually earned her celebrity and didn’t rely on appearing on a crappy reality tv show to try and crack it in the bigtime like so many people try and do. I haven’t read the project’s blog from back to front, but it’s a huge commitment and great perseverence.
What do you think of the whole Julie/Julia phenomenon? Julie, if you ever read this I’d love your version!
Do you have a blogging story you’d like to share?
A week of parcels
This last week was pretty exciting as I received parcels galore in the post. There were a couple of things I’d ordered for JJ but some things came for me as well.
Firstly I received a parcel from Nuffnang with a bunch of grocery items from John West, Leggos, Redken and Spring Valley and a $10 gift voucher from Coles/Myer with a challenge to try and turn it into $100. I’ll see how I go with that one. If you’re an Aussie and sign up with Nuffnang then it sounds like you also get a welcome pack, just say that this blog referred you.
Secondly I received another very exciting parcel and I’m sharing the love with that one. Hint, do you like shopping and receiving your very own parcel in the post?
