Archives for 2009

Weekend off

December 1, 2009 by Jen

After much organisation to offload the spawn I went away to Melbourne with two good friends (who’ve just found out that I blog – hi girls).

It started off with hi-jinks (tots of bourbon whiskey) and continued on in fine form. In the taxi on the way to the airport we observed that we three had never been away without children and what a fantastic feeling it was. The two of us who have children are both full-time sole parents and rarely get a break.

The main reason we went to Melbourne was to see the Painters and Dockers at the Prince of Wales. They were being inducted into the EG Awards Hall of Fame and hadn’t played for 20 years. Part of the awards night was the EG Allstars band allowing us to see some great artists like Tex Perkins, Henry Wagons, Dan Sultan and The Wolfgramm Sisters. Of course I’ve seen Tex before and we’re obviously on first-name terms. But I hadn’t seen the other artists and they were fabulous. Now that I’ve seen the Wolfgramm Sisters I’ve seen them everywhere including the Melbourne Comedy awards the other night on tv.

But the Painters and Dockers. What can I say. It was like stepping into a time warp going back 2o years. Sure, we all look a bit older now but the energy was still there both from the band and from us. I loved it.

Afterwards we hung around chatting to the band and didn’t get back to our accommodation (bless friends of friends who live in a very convenient St Kilda) until around 3am. Having had very little sleep the night before I slept until 11am the next morning. I wasn’t alone in sleeping in mind you. We had promised our hosts that we’d take them out for breakfast but it turned into more of a lunch. A very delicious lunch in the city.

It was across the laneway from this fantastic looking soup bar.

I would love to have spent more time wandering around the laneways taking photos. These shoes left hanging caught my eye.

But there was shopping to be done and more food and coffee to be drunk.

More photo opportunities to be had.

A tram back to St Kilda to be caught and of course it rained. I think it always rains when I go to Melbourne.

Come Saturday evening we could have gone to see Dan Sultan at the Espy but we were too knackered from the previous 24 hours so we hung out at our hosts watching Rockwiz, eating yummy pizza and chatting.

Sunday just flew past and before we knew it we were at the airport waiting for a delayed plane and then on our way home. Back to reality.

The Melbourne Shuffle

November 26, 2009 by Jen

After having spent the weekend in Melbourne (post to come) my son has been telling me about this thing called the Melbourne Shuffle. As I’m sometimes a dreadful listener when it comes to him because he talks so non-stop a lot of the time it took a while for it to sink in.

This morning he asked if I could Google ‘Melbourne Shuffle’ to find a video of it. Google it I did and found a whole new (to me) dance style I’d never ever heard of.

It’s been around since the late 1980s and as the name suggests it’s from Melbourne.

View a video of it here:

JJ informed me that one of the guys used his hands too much. You see he’s such an expert now. I told him to learn it himself. He could use the back room floor as his dance floor as apparently the dancing surface needs to be a bit slippery for the shuffle to work.

Had you heard of the Melbourne Shuffle before?

Newspaper man

November 17, 2009 by Jen

I had to go a slightly different way to work the other morning and saw this chap sitting down enjoying the sunshine. I had to look twice because it felt like someone had forgotten to take him home.

Pedestrian

November 16, 2009 by Jen

photo credit: jazamarripae

Recently I wrote about how people act on public transport, and today I saw something that blew me away with its stupidity relating to a person crossing a road.

I’m all for crossing roads if there’s no traffic coming but I saw a young woman walk across the road today after work and while some cars had stopped, the pedestrian lights weren’t green. Traffic was stopped only in one lane and I saw this young woman saunter across the road without even looking. Cars were still moving in the other lane and just as she got to it I could see that it was going to be close.

I was on my way home and I didn’t fancy seeing this girl hit by a car. At no time would I want to see someone hit by a car so I yelled out STOP. She continued along her merry way still without looking and luckily the car saw her and was able to stop.

I looked over at the woman next to me who’d also seen the whole thing and just said, ‘Jesus, some people are stupid”. Like Jesus was going to save her – I think not.

At least if we had to offer assistance to her after she’d been hit by a car we wouldn’t have melted in the sun. After a week’s heatwave here the temperatures cooled down to the high 20s just so it can tease us for a couple of days before it goes back up to 41 degrees for two days. This is November and I’m really dreading the weather once summer actually arrives.

I spent the weekend barely moving from the house because of the heat. I think the heat affected Monty as she threw up twice on Saturday that I know of. Both times I was eating and the first time I didn’t get her out in time. It kinda put me off the rest of my breakfast. The second time as she was dry retching I opened the door and practically threw her out, but we were eating lunch this time. Seeing us eat must have made her feel sick, poor old thing.

Even though I felt really ordinary on Saturday after a most fabulous night out on Friday, I still mustered up enough energy to go and wash the car in the afternoon. At least it gave us the chance to throw some water around and stay cool. JJ didn’t know whether to be angry or happy when I threw half a bucket of water over his head. We dried in minutes anyway.

Don’t forget to enter for your chance to win a $50 EziBuy voucher. If you don’t want it for yourself it would make a good Christmas present.

Silly season

November 11, 2009 by Jen

There was a period during the winter where I hardly had any social occasions lined up and now they’re all happening at once – well sort of. The next four weekends have something on and then it’s school holidays for six weeks.

Plus there’s a heatwave happening here at present. Spring slipped buy without barely a sigh and we went straight from fairly cool weather to quite hot weather. I’m glad we have seasons as I would get sick of it being hot all the time or cold all the time and each season brings its own good things.

Summer means longer daylight hours which I like and I can spend time outside watering the garden or at least seeing whereabouts the dog poo is to pick up. In winter it’s dark when I get home and the garden is sadly neglected to allow all the weeds to flourish.

Summer also means swims at the beach. I had a wonderful evening last weekend with friends having a swim then tucking into a fantastic picnic on the beach. All of us took a plate of food to share and all the dishes complemented each other perfectly. The sea water is still slightly cool but by the end of this week it should be pretty good so I’ll have to head to the beach again I think.

Unfortunately summer and its hot days also mean hot nights and for me the last few nights a serious lack of sleep. I was pacing the house last night around midnight having gone to bed two hours earlier but unable to get to sleep. I awoke at 5am and was seriously tired all morning at work before I slipped into a sort of a lull that got me through the rest of the afternoon. I think I did say some things that didn’t make any sense at all because of a delirious lack of sleep but tonight’s another night and I’d better catch up otherwise it won’t be pretty.

My mind’s on lots of things too which probably doesn’t help the sleep factor. I’m helping organise a large annual event that a group of friends and I put on once a year and this year I’m the ticket seller so that’s taken up some of my time. I’m also going away next weekend sans child but he’s staying nearly three hours away so I’m trying to work out logistics of that. It doesn’t really seem to ever slow down around here – another reason for me to look forward to my upcoming six weeks off.

Oh, and I’m also doing the Wardrobe Challenge and you get a chance to win a $50 EziBuy voucher to buy some clothes of your own.

The popularity of photo blogs

November 9, 2009 by Jen

photo credit: Thomas Hawk

Below is a post I wrote for the Aussie Bloggers blog back in June 2008. As Aussie Bloggers is now pretty much defunct and once the domain runs out the content will be lost in the ether I gather so I wanted to get some of the content I wrote and put it on this website.

I was interested to note that out of the top five Top 100 Aussie blogs, two of these are photography blogs. Also interesting to note is that these two photography blogs are ‘how to’ blogs.

The blogs are Digital Photography School and Photoshop Tutorials and Links. While the latter is about Photoshop, it does mainly deal with editing photos.

It got me thinking as to why blogs about photography and editing photography are so popular. I wonder if it’s as simple as there are more photographers than bloggers out there. I know since I got a Flickr account I’ve become more involved in the Flickr community with meeting real people and taking photos with them. Consequently I’ve created a new category on my blog called photos because I’m developing a real interest and enjoyment in it.

Of course digital cameras make a huge difference. If we had to take photos with film, get it developed then scanned to a digital format I’ll bet lots of people wouldn’t bother.

So you’ve learned about taking photos and how to edit them afterwards, but now you want to incorporate them into a portfolio and blogging is the perfect way to do this.

A blog I’ve been reading for a while is Boudist. Daniel Boud – the author – has had a great journey of a photography hobby becoming an interesting job. Read about it.

Another Aussie photo blog I came across relatively recently is Neil Creek – Photographer. He also writes for the aforementioned Digital Photography School and runs photography competitions.

What other blogs that focus mainly on photography do you read – particularly Australian ones?

Clothes clothes clothes

November 3, 2009 by Jen

Yes, my weakness is clothes. I love to buy them and I love to wear them and I love a bargain, and I love free clothes.

Do you have a wardrobe full of stuff but only wear 20% of it? Sound familiar?

I’m taking the Wardrobe Challenge and thought you might like to as well. Go and read about it over here.

Perhaps you’ll join me?

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