Before I go any further, let me just offer this:

Don’t get me wrong. I, personally, do not hate sandcastles. I quite like them. I also like this kid. The thing I find funny about it is that, after I laughed at his expression, I then noticed that it looks like he’s been eating sand. I don’t think he really hates sandcastles, I think he loves them, but in a culinary sense. Perhaps his hatred is a front, an excuse for the destruction, then afterwards he’s like, “well, it’s ruined, you won’t mind if I take a piece. Nomnomnom.”

So anyway, on with what I actually meant to say… Tim is on his way home as I type this! YAY! I think he won’t be in the best of moods when he gets in, because his plane from LA to Sydney was delayed by about two hours, so he’s going to miss his connecting flight from Sydney to Brisbane. He had caught an earlier flight from New York to LA, because he was worried about making his LA to Sydney flight. LAX can be a real bitch for connections, because they’re so pedantic and annoying. Plus it’s just a stupid airport (so I’ve heard, from several different people). So I know he’ll be tired and fed up, but I’m just going to be so happy to have him home.

A slight deviation – If you are doing an image search, check out this site: Flickr Related Tag Browser

So, this has been Tim’s journey:

Brisbane -> Tokyo -> Singapore ->London -> Frankfurt -> Paris -> London -> Boston -> New Hampshire -> Boston -> New York -> Philadelphia -> New York -> LA -> Sydney -> Brisbane

All that in three weeks. I think that list is right… It’s just the side trips I’m not 100% sure of.

Chris came over this afternoon and hung out for a while. We watched Little People, Big World (there was a weekend marathon of LPBW on) and talked about things. Then, Noelle arrived and we had to stop talking about her and talk about something else. Just kidding. We still talked about her. Not. Ok. I’m going to stop that doubletalk now. It was a lot of fun hanging out with Chris and Noelle, and Po. We watched the Pilot episode of “Dead Like Me”, and then Chris went home to his Doon but Noelle and I kept watching episode after episode of Dead Like Me. I really like it. The girl looks like she’s about 15, but she has weird, grown-up hands. They’re creepy, but it really fits in with the whole grim reaper theme. It reminds me of one of the radio shows of Ricky, Karl and Steve when they were talking about how they had watched that interview with Michael Jackson, where that guy followed him around and you got to see what his life consisted of. When they asked Karl’s opinion on Michael Jackson, he said, “‘e’s got big ‘ands, ain’t ‘e?” (substitute the extra apostrophes for ‘h’ in case you’re not familiar with his accent). Ricky and Steve laughed at Karl, just one more in a long line of extreme non-sequiturs. I can’t listen to the podcasts without laughing out loud. Sometimes I have to stop what I’m doing so that I can concentrate on not laughing too loud, because when I’m listening to the shows I am at work. It’s my escape from the daily grind (like Gloria Jeans wants to be, but we have a coffee machine in the lunch room at work so why would I go all the way to Gloria Jeans to escape the daily grind, there’s not even one near my work.)

I’m really tired. Here is another funny picture (I find it funny. Actually, I find it hilarious. I’m not sure why. Don’t get mad at me if you don’t find it as amusing as I did):

I think I really like that the thing behind it is so ugly, and the text is small and plain, and you could sort of imagine that kitten saying that. If you’re great at anthropomorphising like I am. Not as great as Karl Pilkington, who apparently saw a bee have a heart attack (because London is so stressful and all). Karl also said that ginger cats are always fat (you never see a skinny ginger cat, according to Karl) because life’s more stressful for them than other cats, because they would get picked on for being ginger. He also said they always look ‘fed up’.

Lauren and Nathan are coming over tomorrow morning to hang out before we go get Tim from the airport. Yay!

I thought I should qualify my previous angst-ridden blog post with this one, which should be less so. Perhaps it could even be contradictory, who knows? Future me will know. Hi future me! How’s it going? Why haven’t you turned Las Vegas off yet? That show suxors!

The Killers come from Las Vegas. I always thought their music had a cowboyish quality to it. Not like those old Western movies, but more like Deadwood. The gritty, real, gold-panning, gun-slinging, blood-letting west.

Then I think perhaps that’s more Kings of Leon. Those boys suddenly became all good-lookin’. When did that happen? I saw one of their film clips the other day. They really have metamorphosed into hot rock n’ roll dudes. The lead singer’s soulful, mournful, raspy voice seems somehow out of place coming from that mouth with the head with the deliberately tousled hair.

Speaking of metamorphosing, I’m still haunted by that book. The metamorphosis, that is. Not the animorphs, or the mighty morphin’ power rangers. *cough* rip off! *cough*. Though it’s hardly reasonable for me to have nostalgia for a tv show that I barely remember, I still feel the urge to defend Voltron from all the half-assed successors that kids have been fed over the last fifteen years.

I’m getting tired. I mean, I already was tired to begin with. Now I’m exhausted. Anyone have anything to add? No? Ok, cool.    

These are some ridiculously expensive presents that no one will ever get me because they are too expensive. Like Jem, they’re truly outrageous! But only in the monetary sense, because in every other sense they are just plain awesome.

1. A new Nintendo DS Lite
Yeah. now you totally see what I mean. “But Cass,” you say, “I thought you already had a DS! You’re completely DS-CRAZY!”
Well, you see, the sad part is that I am a DS-o-phile, and the even sadder part is that my DS broke a while ago (maybe a month now?) so now I am unable to finish Zelda, and also I’m getting more and more afraid of the weeding I’ll have to do when I eventually get back on to Animal Crossing

2. DVD: Nadia and the Secret of Bluewater
Don’t even try. You’re so not going to find it at JB. And no, it’s not a porn, it’s an anime. And no, it’s not hentai.

3. A new mobile phone
I’m currently using Tim’s old mobile. I would dearly love to have a phone which can use realtones and also has other fun features.

4. A drawing tablet for the computer
But not the one that’s on display/demo at Harvey Norman Indooroopilly, that one has not worked once in the million times we’ve been there.

5. Anything with mermaids
Okay so this might not be ridiculously expensive. I pretty much mean movies or tv shows. I already have the first two DVDs of the first season of H2o – Just Add Water. Yay!

6. Those little trading arts final fantasy figurines
They are so cute. And awesome.

7. Several out-of-print books, as follows:
* After the Plague – Jean Ure
* Z for Zachariah – Robert O’Brien
* A Gift Upon the Shore – M. K. Wren

I’m not sure about the second and third book, but I am a billion percents sure that the first book is out of print. And I waaaaaaant it

*Edit: I had to cross out the Z for Zachariah book, because Tim bought some books online from fishpond.com.au, and he needed another book to bring up the total for some reason. I was happy to oblige. Thanks Tim!

Well, I guess if the answer is “yes” to the second question, we can only really accuse the adults of the crime of ignorance, because obviously the kids are picking up the slack in this situation.

Are you smarter than a fiff grada?

Before European Settlement of New Zealand, the country was known to the locals as “Land of the Long White Cloud”. When James Cook and his cronies arrived, it was changed to “Land of the Wrong White Crowd”.

I was watching Animal Planet this morning, a documentary about how human beings have single-handedly destroyed thousands of different animal species for good over the centuries. When the Maori first arrived in New Zealand, they hunted a bird called the Moa to extinction within a hundred years. In Hawaii, 60% of the bird species have vanished, and the majority of the vegetation there is not native to Hawaii – they are introduced species which have choked the life out of the native trees and plants.

However, going back to the Maori – after they hunted the Moa to extinction (and the Haast Eagle, indirectly, as the Moa was its main food source), they re-evaluated their tactics, and realised that hunting their food source in an unsustainable manner was counter-intuitive to their own survival. They created nature reserves, and made the rainforest and the animals which lived there, sacred. They used different food sources, and in turn, the birds and animals in the rainforests began to repopulate and recover.

The Maori had the knowledge – they recognised that they needed to cooperate with the land and animals in order to survive into the future. They needed to be a part of the ecosystem – not destroy it.

Human beings nowadays have even more knowledge than the Maori did. We can use substitutes for things that can’t afford for us to hunt them further. But we don’t… I think that perhaps it is our lack of connection with the land that we live off. The Maori made their connection with the earth and other animals spiritual. It was a mutual respect that allowed the most skilled predator to live side-by-side with animals that would seem not to have a chance against the all-mighty, top-of-the-food-chain human being.

Last week, Ken told me about how he had been at a funeral where, in the middle of the eulogy, someone’s mobile phone started ringing. Was there the possibility that this guy had forgotten to switch his phone off, or onto silent, before the service had commenced? Apparently not, as he answered his phone and started talking right there in the church. I thought that this had to be some sort of joke, because Ken and Co. are well versed in sarcasm and facetiousness. However, Ken assured me this was no joke. He was completely serious. I can’t imagine anyone thinking that it would be appropriate to have your phone on and answer any call that might come through while you are at a *funeral*. Tim told me that the last time he had been to a funeral, the priest had requested that everyone turn off their mobile phones out of respect for the deceased and bereaved. The fact that people actually have to be TOLD to turn off their mobile phones at a funeral is astounding.

*** Enough of fangry things, I have not been able to write in a while, so I should have other things to say too. Maybe. …

1. I’ve been playing Guitar Hero II all evening (except for when I was watching Grey’s Anatomy) and the tips of my fingers are half numb and half tingling with painful pins & needles. Plus my wrist doesn’t like being held at the angle needed for holding the guitar for so long (my robotic wrist, that is – not the real one). I can tell I’m getting better, but sometimes I lose concentration after looking at the screen for too long. My favourite song that I seem to do well on is “Crazy for you” by Heart. I liked their Barracuda song too.

2. I have the new Harry Potter book. I’ve already read about 210 pages out of the 600-odd total, which is pretty good considering I haven’t really spent that much time on it this weekend.

3. This probably should have been number 1, but I’m too tired to go back through and edit these points, so let’s just all agree they are not in order of importance. Good. Today is Tim’s birthday. We went out for dinner last night to Dos Amigos restaurant, which is just down from Tim’s place. The meal was really delicious, even though I had the same thing I always get (If God really dwells within us like they say, I sure hope he likes enchiladas, cause that’s what he’s gettin’!). Then we came back to Tim’s place and had an ice cream dessert log as a cake. We put candles in and sang happy birthday. It was a nice night.

4. Tim has gone to New Zealand until Friday, which means that I will be a little bit forlorn. But not too much. It may not sound like a long time, but it feels like ages to me. Probably just because hes’ in another country and another time zone, though it’s not nearly as bad as when he was in the UK & Ireland.

5. I ordered an MP3 player and a ninjapass for my DS last week. I’m hoping they arrive very soon – especially the mp3 player because I just got the new Interpol album, and I’ve been hanging out for something to listen to at work. Ninjapass should be awesome too though.

Anyway, I am very tired so I think i shall go to bed. Gute Nacht!

I’m pretty happy right now. You know one thing that could possibly improve on my happiness? If I had a pet rabbit in the same colours as Napoleon, and they kept each other company all day while I was at work, then when I got home they both greeted me at the door. That would be the epitome of awesomeness.

Here are some shiny things:

* Only four days until Tim gets back
* Pay day tomorrow
* Napoleon
* A rabbit the same colour scheme as Napoleon

I know that the last one is not something I actually have, but I just like imagining it.

This pay period I am not going to buy any clothings. I have far too many bills to pay! Maybe I will get a couple of pairs of tights (because it’s getting colder), but that’s it. My goal for this pay: to be good and stick to my budget! I’m pretty sure I can do it. It will be an interesting experiment. I think the main thing is to cook lunches for work, so that I’m not buying overpriced food that tastes like crap anyway. I did mean to do some sewing last weekend, but never got around to it. I won’t be doing it this weekend, that’s for sure. I wonder if I’ll get time during the week?

Hi Tim! I know you will have played at Glendalough by the time you read this. How was it? How is Ye Olde London Town? I always used to say “Ye” as in how it is spelled, until I read somewhere that in the olden days, Y was the symbol for “th” sound. Therefore, “Ye” is atually just “The”. I kind of liked “ye” better. It’s like how Conor used to speak on the net, “how ar’ ye!?” and it made me think of the sea captain from the Simpsons (arrr, ’tis a shame that).

I feel like going to the movies. Anyone wanna go see a movie? Or something? Or maybe I should use this extra time to do some sewing. I have a few things that need mending.

I am posting people that I have celebrity crushes on. I’m allowed.

I’ve been reading up on the “Boiling Frog” analogy. I first came across this in high school, when the book “The Gathering” by Isobelle Carmody was part of the year 9 curriculum. I can’t remember what they’re trying to explain with the analogy. Recently I remembered it in an odd, slightly nostalgic moment, and decided to do some research because I thought there could be an interesting story behind it, and a possible debunking. So, I have found that it is a very common analogy, only recently debunked by experiments, but the argument goes that these most recent experiments heat the water at a much faster rate than that of the original experiments.

But anyway, it made me wonder at the common usage of this analogy. You could end up disproving your own point by using it. Am I making any sense whatsoever? My brain isn’t calibrated for this kind of information downloading. Well, not at the moment anyway. Come back in a couple of days and I might be more coherent. I guess what I mean is that if you use an analogy based on a scientific theory, and that is later contested or disproven, then wouldn’t the gravity of your original point be undermined somewhat? Instead of meaning “Be careful of complacency, small changes over a long period of time can have more disastrous effects than you might initially be able to comprehend”, it might become, “I don’t do my own research, can you tell?”. I still haven’t really conveyed what I had in mind. Chk chk chk.

Zomg did anyone else see the multitudes of people on platform 5 & 6 at Central Station this afternoon? Looks like Queensland Rail are improving their service! They had announcements going over the loudspeaker saying “Due to overcrowding please remain on the concourse”. This would mean nothing to me if I were one of those people being overcrowding. I’d be all, “Concourse? what concourse? do we use that word here?” I wonder what was going on. I’m surprised people didn’t look more fed up than they did. And then the 5:36 Elimbah express arrived early, at 5:26, and then they updated the time of departure to 5:28. So what about all those people who live at Elimbah (God forbid – where even is that?) which must be a fair way out because it’s an express train, who were counting on the train leaving at 5:36 because it ties in with their start and finish times, are going to miss their train because it went eight minutes early! I’d be pretty ticked off if it happened to me, and I only get off at Wilston!

But speaking of afternoon trains, how did nighttime start at 5pm all of a sudden? It’s not nice walking home in the dark! I’ll be glad when it’s colder and I get to feel cold and wear warm clothes. It was so humid today.

I want to know everything there is to know in the world. Actually, it’s mainly just the useless things I want to know. I really wanted to learn Latin so when Noelle and I sing Sub Tuum on a drunken walk from the Valley to the City, I actually know what I’m saying. This is why I ask so many questions. It’s not just a generation-y thing. Why why why? I want to know why about everything. I find almost everything fascinating. But I know I have to curb this habit of asking questions, some people don’t like it. It can be considered impolite to question people, especially those older than you. When I’m old too it will no longer matter. I’ll be able to ask as many questions as I like.

I’ve been watching Dilbert lately. The funniest episode so far was the very last one where Dilbert has been impregnated by a cow/alien/robot/hillbilly, and throughout the pregnancy he took on all these feminine traits. He was mouthing off about something or other with Asok and Wally and Loud Howard, and when they offered solutions he said “Why are you doing this? I don’t want solutions!” which is so true. Men always offer solutions to women when women complain about things, but what women really want is just sympathy. That’s difficult for men, they like to solve things. They think that a woman telling him her problem is an invitation to offer a solution to it. Women then get frustrated because they just want the man to listen and make alternately sympathetic and reassuring noises.

My opinoin on this entire issue from a female perspective is this: Your female friends are the best ones to tell your problems to. They can empathise and will give you the response you want/need (most of the time). Of course you are free to share your issues with the man in your life, but it’s not fair to get mad at him for trying to fix the problem.
And to guys… well… you can offer us solutions, but we’re not always going to appreciate them.

I agree with many aspects of the suffragette movement, and I’m grateful for what they achieved through their hard work and suffering, but I also think that there is a point at which it becomes too political when it should be scientific. For one thing, the whole “I can do anything you can do” is not necessarily true. The differences in brain structure between men and women are what causes men to be, generally, better at solving spatial problems – men can focus extremely well on one task, which leads to the conclusion that men can only do one thing at a time. That might be true, but most of the time they do it well. Due to having more connections between the left and right sides of the brain than men do, women are able to multi-task and empathise – it becomes harder to separate the emotional from the physical, which is why women will often say “I feel…” when referring to situations, whereas men will concentrate on the facts (as they see them). These extra connections between right & left cerebral hemispheres are also responsible for the difficulty that women have in reading maps, or from telling their left from right. (I have extreme difficulty telling left from right. When asked directions, I can point in the direction I need to go, but can’t tell you whether that direction is left or right.)

I guess that this should be evidence enough that I am fascinated also by the physical/mental/emotional differences between males and females. In humans, anyway. It would be interesting to study gender roles in other species and compare them. I want to go to Uni!

I’ve been watching Lost most of the afternoon. Right now, an episode with Desmond as the focus character has started. This is awesome because Desmond is probably my favourite at the moment. I love his accent, and he has the power to see into the future randomly. But then there is this side-story running throughout that is like the “Final Destination” movies so far (it might develop into something more impressive, but for now it’s not all that amazing) whereby Desmond sees Charlie dying in various ways and accordingly prevents his death. Plus i just realised why Desmond calls everyone “brother”. I was wondering about that.

The people next door are having arguments again. They yell really loudly, and because I went down to put the garbage out (good timing!) I could hear quite a lot of what they said, but I still couldn’t understand what they were arguing about. Mum thinks it is the 15 year old boy who lives there that was yelling. He apparently plays “that stupid game” in his backyard (which is how mum described it) which Rosie elaborated upon by saying, “yeah, I know what you’re talking about, he has a stick and waves it around like Star Wars, and runs up and down the yard and does noises and stuff.” Lol!

Noelle and I had our picnic at Roma Street Parklands today. As you can see, the grass really is greener… over there. There’s one big expanse of grass which has dried up and died, but the rest is still alive and well. Noelle and I had wheat-free bread (super dense but yum) with cream cheese, tomato, lettuce, jarlsberg and also some chicken from a chicken salad that we got from McDonalds at Roma St station, seeing as there were no real shops open today (Noelle said, “Those labour day sales adds were misleading! They’re the reason I thought shops would be open today.”) We also had some watermelon and some rice crackers, and pineapple juice. It was a lovely picnic. Dumb ibis.

One bad experience of the day was public transport. Brisbane Public Transport SUCKS! Allow me to explain: Noelle’s bus came fifteen minutes late, so when it arrived, another one arrived at the same time. Once Noelle had arrived in the City, we walked down to Central Station. After viewing the timetable tvs, we found a Roma Street Train would be leaving Platform 5 in approx. four minutes – plenty of time to get down to the platform and get on the train, right? Well, in any other universe but this one apparently. None of the escalators providing access to platforms 5 & 6 were going down – they were all set to go up. So, not a big problem, we hurried down the stairs. We struggled through a throng of people exiting the train we wanted to board, and just as we got to the yellow line, the doors closed – right in the face of some foreign guy who shrieked and jumped backwards. With over two minutes until the departure time scheduled on the screen, the train pulled away from the platform at the signal whistle from a QR employee. We spoke to this person, who became defensive and indignant. It wasn’t her fault she blew the whistle, apparently. She can’t control the train timetables. She doesn’t have to take this. I said to her, “You are a representative of Queensland Rail – in fact, the only one that I can see this minute. You are the person we’re speaking to about it.” Noelle said “You blew the whistle for the train to go!” But apparently this logic was too obvious for her, and she walked away from the discussion muttering under her breath.

Queensland Rail could benefit from some customer service training for their staff.

Whenever mum calls out to me, no matter what she’s saying, it makes me feel like I’m in trouble for something. This is especially true if she’s calling up from downstairs. She says “Hey Cass…” but the tone is like a warning sound, and I respond warily with “yeah….?” slowly. It’s either going to be a random question about something-or-other which I won’t know the answer to straight away anyway, or I’m going to be berrated for not wiping the bench down properly or something.

Well, I’m tired and have a headache. I’m going to go to sleep so that I’m at my best for work tomorrow, and so that I don’t seem “not myself”. Who am I if I’m not me? Someone less likeable perhaps… Sorry everyone! Here are some pictures to make up for it: