Bye bye car, hello rain!

Woot woot - massive productivity achievements here lately!

Firstly, the old car is gone. A little bit sad but mostly good. My speedy little Matiz zipped me around to uni back in the day, has carted my best friends and their dogs from place to place, and got me to work and back on very little fuel when I had to stop catching public transport. Despite its diminutive, 3-cylinder status, it could take off at the lights when required. OK, so I wouldn't have beaten a P-plater in a Skyline, but I did once beat a lady in an MX5 :D We even made it all the way to Joondalup on a sunny day once - I just had to turn the air con off every now and then to give the engine a rest.

Anyway, little Matiz served me well, but has gone to a different place. It turns out no one wanted to buy it, so I donated it to FESA. I hope they enjoying cutting it open, it always felt a bit like driving in a motorised sardine can :D Now I just need to take the license plates in to the licensing centre to get it de-registered.

What else? We've made some good progress on the design-the-new-house front, but I won't blab on about the details. We also have a shiny new printer, which we will be using to fill up our house ideas scrapbook with lots of pretty pictures. I was going to do a post called "A Tale of Three Printers" but on further reflection decided it would be too boring.

Oh, and the other big news - RAAAAAAAAAAAIN!! FINALLY!! For the first time in about 120 days, I think. Perth had a bit of a crazy storm but luckily our suburb got off lightly. I can't tell you how awesome the smell of the rain was.

Yes, I squealed and bounced and danced around like an idiot. Oh rain, how I've missed you.

Going all artsy crafty on yo' ass

I have been highly out of character this weekend. Well, sort of. We've got a person coming to the house on Monday, which necessitates some level of house and garden tidying. I'm afraid I haven't gotten very far in the garden, because it's been too damn hot. I thought it was supposed to be Autumn?!

Anyway, I have been trying to tidy up the paved area a bit - if I do get it looking half way respectable, I'll post before and after photos. I did one crazy spurt of productivity. I found these pebbley things minding their own business in a broken terracotta pot. As you do. I think they came with the garden. I once tried using them as one of those posh looking pebble mulches you see on TV in a pot plant. What an utterly stupid idea. The pebbles slowly sink into the potting mix, and then the roots of the plant grow around them. Pointless *and* irritating. Hence why they've been sitting there minding their own business for a while.

...TA-DA!

Artsy fartsy, no? The fancy jug and the artificial greenery have been sitting on the mantelpiece for a while, but it looks much better with the stones added. A sort of an earthy contrast to the shiny modernness. And that's as design-wank-speak as I get. It's nicely flanked by Marvin, whom I adore, and some cute little wooden mushrooms that just barely scraped their way through Customs. More of the mantelpiece to feature later.. before it gets demolished.

The unwritten cubicle law

Today's post will be a little left field. I've started keeping a list of things to blog about when I haven't gotten any real news (or photos), and this is #1 - pardon the pun. Hopefully this means I will be posting more often, although the posts may be shorter and with less photos.

So, the unwritten cubical law.

When you enter a public toilet, and at least one cubicle is occupied, you should always select the cubicle that puts the maximum distance between you, and the existing occupants.

Obviously there are exceptions to take into account, like the availability of toilet paper, but nevertheless. I like to think it's a pretty obvious and intuitive law - so why are there SO MANY people who flaunt it? Why would anyone pick the cubicle right next to you, when every other cubicle is empty? Please provide your theories in the comments.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaah

I should have posted much earlier, but it's suddenly gotten so busy! Busy at work, and busy at home. Aside from making more progress on the house building plans (yay!), I've been trying to make slow but steady progress in decluttering and organising.

I got an afternoon to myself recently, and used it to attack the wardrobe. I have a terrible assortment of clothes - the problem with having a weight which tends to float up and down all over the place, is that you tend to accumulate clothes in all different sizes, and at any one time a whole bunch of them don't fit. So some of the clothes I have ditched are quite new but just too big, while others are much loved and fit perfectly but have succumbed to too much wear and tear. And some should really never have stayed in the wardrobe past my teenage days :D

Well.. I say "ditched", but unfortunately they're still in the garbage bag. I'm hoping to inspire Mr Bon to likewise go through his stuff, so that we can efficiently deal with all the excess clothes in one go.

I'm not sure if that photo really does justice to the messiness of the cupboard. The bedroom cupboard is sadly home to all sorts of things which ideally I'd keep in different parts of the house - bed & bath linen, hardware/tool stuff, dog treats, and so forth. One of the things I'm going to keep in mind in designing the next house, is to try to store stuff close to where it's used. So towels in the bathroom, dog treats in the kitchen, hardware stuff in the... cellar? Hmm.

Anyway, as far as clothes go, in my ideal worth EVERYTHING would be hanging up except for the smalls. Even pyjamas! It just drives me nuts having things folded up and in drawers/on shelves - it's only a matter of time before they get all messed up and crammed in any which way.

Since we don't have that much hanging space currently, my interim place is to put stuff in boxes. I've already put the towels in a box, and it works well with the towels rolled up, so that no towel is on top of any other towel - they're all visible at the top of the box. Please feel free to leave comments with your own storage tips!

In other news, I seem to be under bombardment by people misusing 'literally' lately. I can't decide which is my favourite - someone at work "sitting on a powder keg... literally", or Kalahari ground squirrels "literally using every trick in the book" - I'd love to have a copy of that book, and a reading squirrel to boot! My all time favourite though is an oldie but a goodie - it's from a cricket commentator, and they do seem to take abuse of literally to a whole new level. "The batsman has literally buried the bowler in the outfield". Holy *#$(@, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORD FIGURATIVELY?!

I have also been considering a new type of blog post - weird stuff on my verge. Having the ugliest verge on the street for a long time, we weren't really surprised by beer bottles turning up. The tea towel was a bit strange, but I suppose these things happen.. I just have no idea how. But this is the latest find:

There were 5 or 6 others spread out across the verge, too. Fancy kind of ground fungus, eh? Gotta love the suburbs.

Squeeeeee!!

What a fantastically better than usual Monday!! Today I got to catch up with my best buddy in the world, knit-nutt, and her 'shveetie'! We've known each other since primary school and been close friends since high school, and no matter how long we go in between catch ups, it always feels like it's only been a few days when we do get to spend time together. Her wonderful, colourful blog was one of the motivations for me to start blogging, although it may be some time before Three Tomatoes Short reaches that level of popularity, if ever!

Aside from it being wonderful just to get together and chat, I got an awesome gift bag.. twice already today I've burst into a room squealing "look what I got, look what I got!!" - so now it's time to yell at the internet.. look what I got!

Such a beautiful beanie! And I get a LOT of use out of beanies. This one is fantastically snug and covers my ears perfectly, and I LOVE the long tassels!! It reminds me of having long hair, but without all the extra effort. Some other lovely goodies in my gift bag (my Christmas present - but knit-nutt's gifts are always worth waiting for :)), but the beanie is just so special - my lovely friend not only knit it up herself but also handspun the yarn herself! It will get a lot of use in Perth's winters but also whenever we go to visit our relatives in the UK in their summer, and it will be lovely to crack it out on the other side of the world and think of my best friend :)

Also, after my last post, 2paw enquired about the squeaky toy in Tess's mouth, so I thought - eh, why not take a picture of orange squeaky. It strikes me as the sort of photo you would see over at Dooce, except Dooce's would be, you know, taken with a proper camera, good lighting, and be superbly focused. I'll get there one day :D

And finally, one of the Georgette Heyer books I ordered from The Book Depository has finally arrived! I'm so excited, except.. I already started Sense & Sensibility & Seamonsters, so I have to finish that first - and I'm just not into it yet :( It feels so much more contrived than P&P&Z, not to mention - tentacles on Colonel Brandon's face?! Sure, he'd still have Alan Rickman's voice, but.. meh.

Sunday Search Terms!

OK, now that I've been using Google Analytics for a short while, it's time to see what I'm learning from it. I don't think I'll be doing this *every* Sunday, unless TTS suddenly becomes wildly popular :D

Firstly, we're now up to 5 different countries! Welcome, Swedish reader :)

Secondly, I still seem to be the place to go when you're interested in "just rolled out of bed" hair - there are now three different search terms along these lines. I really should showcase a few more of my morning hair moments for the sake of these poor, unintentionally neat and tidy people, but the thing is - my funny morning hair doesn't change much. I go to bed with wet hair, apparently spend about 50% of my time on each side, and wake up with a mohawk. I'd love to have some humorous variants, but they just don't happen. I could cheat and just comb my hair up funny after a shower, but it's not really morning hair then! I can do a pretty fair imitation of the bad guy from The Incredibles using this method though :D

I've also tried to get a photo of Mr Bon's morning hair, but it never shows up well in photos. I suppose I could ask my brother for a photo of his outlandish hair - it's even funkier than mine :D

So, what else? Two questions about bokashi - cool. I love my bokashi bucket and wouldn't be without it.

Three questions about reticulation (other West Aussies?? As far as I'm aware easterners don't say retic!). That's probably indicative of how many trials and tribulations we have with our retic - I didn't even bother posting about the last incident.

One for Spencer Quinn, and one "three tomatoes short of a salad" search term - I suppose a Midsomer Murders fan :)

Not much else interesting to report I'm afraid - no news yet on the job front, and only minor productivity this weekend. Mr Bon has engaged in a bit of casual cricket, I've washed and dried the bed linen, and this morning we washed Tess. She's lovely and soft now - none of those sticky patches from running under the fig tree! She was being her usual troublesome self however, and refusing to stay still for photos.

Oh yeh, I forgot about the manky meat! Would you believe, it's been dealt with already?? It would have stayed longer, but the smell was really starting to turn my stomach, so Mr Bon binned it. I win! :D

Woeful Wednesday - Manky meat!

A triumphant return for Woeful Wednesday.

I'm actually trying to get this post out quite quickly, before Mr Bon catches me in the act - I haven't received his permission to post this :D I think I've got enough time, because he's busy gaming. Which is fine, because he earned a lot of credit on the weekend when he tidied up the cable cupboard! Although I am getting hungry.. :D

A while ago we suddenly discovered kangaroo meat in our local IGA, and figured we'd give it a go for environmental reasons (that, and Mr Bon always likes trying new foods). It's.. okay. I'm not quite used to it yet, it could grow on me. We had a lot of leftovers last time Mr Bon cooked 'roo, and it sat in the fridge for a long, long time, until it was definitely not edible. Finally I took it out, remarking to Mr Bon, "I'll just put this on the counter to remind you to put it in the outside bin."

It has now become a sort of reverse race, to see who will be the first to snap and dispose of it. Obviously, I would rather put my effort into sharing the manky roo with the interwebs! Although the photo doesn't really do it justice =/

We also had a rather unexpected corn find, which is fine - at two corn cobs a week in the fruit & veg box we're struggling to get through it all. We offered this cob to Tess and she was instantly enamoured of it! She nommed it for a while, carried it around, got it covered in a lovely layer of dirt, then brought it inside to the beanbag to nom on it some more. I hope raw corn is fine for dogs! She had such a good time, I think we might give her half of the corn allowance from now on - must be good for her teeth too.

I'm also planning a new post category - something like Sunday Search Terms. I'm having such fun since I signed up for Google Analytics - who knew the bizarre things people are searching for to find my blog! And it's also nice to see visitors from Indonesia and the Netherlands :) So I thought every now and then I might summarise the search terms and see if we can get a giggle out of them.