Sweetness and Light

Theme Thursday here again and I've been a bad blogger.  Things are about to change. All of a sudden I'm involved with three private blogs, an admin for another and two of my own. How did that happen? 

The big news . .  I left my job today. It's the first time I've ever resigned, all three of my past long term jobs have either ended in redundancy or the business has wound up and I've been left on the pavement. This time, I handed in my notice, had a wonderful lunch, nice speeches, gifts and flowers and a weight is lifted from my shoulders.  I'm writing short fiction, I have a new job starting on 9th August. A little sad that one of the bright lights in my life is, well, heading for the bright lights of LA but I know he'll shine. 

My son, who had a job, then didn't, now does . . . for the first time in a long time, I think there is a little light at the end of the tunnel.

*I  seem to have given the impression that it's Adam going to LA, he's not, he's remaining at home, it's a friend who's heading for Hollywood.



So, time to put a little light on the subject:

Christmas Lights

Angel Lights

Black Lights

Candle Light

Dappled Light

Night Light

Evening Light

High Light

Awesome Light

Light of my life No. 1

Lights of my life 2 and 3

Now run along and trip the light fantastic with others who are posting on "Light"

Aroma Festival

Quite a busy weekend this weekend past as the state of my house will testify. The only cleaning I've done is the bathrooms and a couple of loads of washing still hanging soggy on the line but, after lunch with some old friends on Saturday, normally my cleaning and faffing about day, I backed up on Sunda for another day out.  I packed up the camera, met Clare and a couple of friends in The Rocks and attended the Aroma Festival. Essentially coffee, tea and gourmet delights, cultural music and dance from the larger tea and coffee producing countries and a generally fine day out apart from having to flee a male belly dancer who was quite insistent about dragging me on stage . . ran like a rabbit . . hot tip ladies, don't wear a red coat in a crowd of grey, you stand out like a sore . . .um . . . belly dancer!

The old Coathanger . . visible just about everywhere

European Ensemble

Grinders Coffee replicate Marilyn Munroe in coffee cups

Cupcakes for Jeffscape

New Season Cherries and Apple Juice

Gourmet Wraps with Barbecue Atlantic Salmon

Floral Fruits

Whirling Dirvishes

Taste of Brasil

Turkish Fortunes

Male Belly Dancer?

Japanese Drummers (look at those bodies ladies, just look!)

Ok fellas, spot the freckle

Friday FuckwitX2

Today I almost nominated myself as the Friday Fuckwit for having an awesomely annoying worry attack when someone  I normally hear from every day was conspicuously absent. Helped not by the fact that I was rather RUDE to him last night and thought he'd had a tanty and blacklisted me from his phone and email when in fact, while I was madly emailing and messaging sycophantic apologies, he was sunning himself and visiting friends/family and had left his phone at home to charge. Felt like a total nagging neuropus when he finally called and just told me to 'Relax Helen! Its all good!" 

Anyhoo . .you've probably heard of this but the phrase "What posessed them?" comes to mind:

Beachgoers got a shock when they saw a donkey soaring in the blue skies over the balmy beaches on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia last week.
Attached to a parachute, the animal screamed in fear as it circled over holidaymakers who were sunbathing on a beach in the Cossack village of Golubitskaya in the Krasnodar region.
A regional police spokeswoman says the donkey ended up in the skies as a result of an impromptu advertising campaign by several Russian entrepreneurs to attract beachgoers to their private beach.

Instead they attracted the attention of regional police who learned of the flying donkey earlier this week and launched a probe.

"The donkey screamed and children cried," regional police spokeswoman Larisa Tuchkova said.
"No-one had the brains to call police."

Instead people reached for their cameras and bombarded a local newspaper with phone calls.
"It was put up so high into the sky that the children on the beach cried and asked their parents: 'Why did they tie a doggy to a parachute?'" the newspaper Taman wrote this week.

"The donkey landed in an atrocious manner: it was dragged several metres along the water, after which the animal was pulled out half-alive onto the shore."
After a vet check, the donkey was deemed healthy if not a little traumatised.

It's the weekend down under and I've finally got over my elevated blood pressure, teary  outburst and annoying worrying, (yes I'm a total fretter) and arrived home tonight to a gorgeous gift from Mim . . thank you so much. You and kj are so good to me, I really don't deserve it. And sorry 'Keanu', I'm a worry wort, you were right, I was wrong and I'm glad you forgave me.  I'm a git. I should have had more faith  in our friendship.

Have a great weekend everybody.

Heaven's in the front seat of . . . .

Say 'Park' to me and it brings back memories of a long snogs and heavy petting in the mini minor with the silhouette of my father beyond the glass panel in our front door, flicking the outside light switch on and off just to let me know he was there! Until  I was 18, well actually until I met my husband to be frank, my darling dad stood vigil in his boxers and singlet sure that I wasn't getting up to shenanigans. 

Of course I was, but in those days the only refuge for a little slap and tickle was the back seat of an HD Holden or in my case, the front seat of a Mini Minor. No mean feat when there's four on the floor in the way and the roof is a mere 2 inches from the sitting driver's head. Still, it made for some memorable erm  . . .athletics and some of the best sex I've ever had outside the bedroom (that's a lie but you don't need to know!) Hey, once the windows steamed up you couldn't see a thing.

Yes, my early sexual exploits and at least 10 different positions in a mini minor were in cars.  The aforementioned Holden HD, the mini, a Honda Scamp (don't even ask it was just a chassis with a lawn mower engine) a Ford Capri, Toyota Corona, VW Beetle (just as challenging as a Mini). Somewhere there was a Valiant Station wagon which was actually quite stylish with a mattress in the back and curtains on the windows, a Bongo Van a Morris Minor with stars on the roof (must have been on my back to notice), a Triumph Sprite and an Ice Cream truck Even on the back seat of a bus. Sheesh getting a little hot under the you know where with all these memories.

Imagine my absolute joy when my boyfriend bought a VW Kombi complete with kitchenette, double bed etc. Oh yeah . . definitely perfected more than 10 positions in that little baby and all while my dad was flicking the outside lights! The most fun you can have outside a bedroom . . well almost but that would be telling.

My kids and their swanky double beds 

don't know what they're missing!

Thanks Jeff for the music link, I love your taste (in music)

Ok have a cold shower and see what other Theme Thursdayers are doing with "Park" . . .

Friday Fucktopus

Well the Vuvuzelas have been piled on the proverbial garbage heap (shame they're not biodegradable) or perhaps they've been distributed to the SA police for use as whipping sticks. Spain is still partying hard after their World Cup win, my wonderful Aussie hat has been relegated to the back of the wardrobe and I guess it's just a matter of time before I have to give back the MASSIVE borrowed digital television loaned to us to watch the footy and which I will sorely miss.

This week's Fuckwit . . .the person who named the psychic octopus who accurately predicted the outcome of all the final 8 games "Paul!" . . what were you thinking!

I know! Had to post this, who ever thought of an erotic octopus but hey . . I digress.

This isn't really a Friday Fuckwit but it's a cute story anyway.  

Octopus Paul may very well have psychic powers and an ability to predict the future, says one of Australia's top cephalopod researchers.


Museum Victoria's head of science, Dr Mark Norman, has been studying octopuses, squids, cuttlefishes and nautiluses - otherwise known as the cephalopods - for more than two decades.

While Dr Norman admits to being an Octopus Paul sceptic, he says the sea creature should not be underestimated.

"They're clever animals with big brains and they do amazing things," he said. "It's very impressive what Paul has done and I don't know if it's psychic or not, but they're animals that are capable of amazing things, so who can tell.

Octopus Paul has become a World Cup sensation by correctly forecasting the results of Germany's seven games in South Africa and finishing the tournament in style by predicting a Spanish victory in the final.

The eight-limbed Mediterranean octopus would make his prediction by choosing between two containers of food marked with the flags of the competing countries. But Dr Norman says he is wary of the science behind Paul's string of eight correct predictions. For one, he says octopuses are colourblind, so the colour of the flag is irrelevant to Paul.

"But having said that I don't want to underestimate how amazing these animals are and how clever they are... they're doing pretty well for a super snail relative.

"They can recognise individual people in a crowd, they can unscrew the lids off jars, they can collect up half coconut shells and carry them around like portable armour and jump inside if something comes along.

"So they're doing cool things out there beyond their psychic abilities."  Better than psychic. Dr Norman says in the wild, octopuses do far more interesting things than predicting the future.

"We've got one octopus called the mimic octopus in Indonesia that we discovered that impersonates poisonous black and white sea snakes by putting six arms down a hole and waving the other two around like a writhing sea snake," he said.   "It can also swim up in a water column impersonating poisonous lionfish with all the barbs sticking out on its body so it's sort of like the ultimate shape changer."  He says all octopuses have an amazing ability to shapeshift and camouflage.  "Their skin is a super high resolution colour changing organ - they were doing 3D high definition TV as skin about a hundred million years before we got out of the trees," he said.  "And because they've got no hard shell, an animal that's a metre across could squeeze through a hole the size of about a 20 cent piece, they can squeeze their eyes out of shape and pull their soft brains through the middle of these holes.


"They're also very clever at finding their crab or prawn or fish prey, they can drill through shells and poison the occupant inside and then crawl inside and eat the scallop or whatever it is."

He says Australia has 76 recognised octopus species, including the spaghetti octopus, which has long, thin arms that look like spaghetti, and the deadly blue-ringed octopus.  "They have flashing blue police lights to warn everybody to keep away because they're full of poison, which is enough to kill people in about two minutes," he said.  "Some of the big octopuses get to a three or four metres arm span and some of them are the size of your fingernail, so there are many octopus variations."


Dr Norman says whether Paul has psychic powers or not, one thing is for certain: this is Paul's last set of World Cup predictions.  He says most octopuses only live to be one to three years old, and Paul is already two-and-a-half.  "It's definitely Paul's last World Cup prediction, unless he becomes a champion of octopus longevity.

A Spanish town which celebrates an annual octopus festival has requested that Paul, be allowed to join them as a guest of honour this year.  O Carballino, in the north-western Galicia region, hopes the eight-legged oracle would be allowed by aquarium staff in Oberhuasen, Germany to travel to the festival on August 8.

Paul has already been rewarded with honorary citizenship of the town with several Galician businessmen collecting 30,000 euros to make an offer to buy the soccer soothsayer, according to press reports.


He has become a symbol of Spain's World Cup victory with Andres Iniesta, the scorer of the winning goal over the Netherlands in the final, carrying a plastic octopus as the team were acclaimed in Madrid on Monday.

Travelling to this region of Spain could prove hazardous for Paul, as octopus is a delicacy, particularly in Galicia, where the speciality is boiled and served finely sliced with paprika, olive oil and boiled potatoes.

Thank you so much for your well wishes regarding the job. It's been a hard slog trying to get there but I feel good about this one.

It's a beautiful sunny but cold Friday in the antipodes . . .you northerners keep cool while we southerners stoke our fires.  Have a good one folks!

Oh and if you play Theme Thursday and you DON'T (sorry 'e') properly link your post and not your blog to the Mr Linky widget, I will out you next Friday. Name you and shame you. We Saturday catcher upperers need to link directly. Please possums. Don't make me do it. I loves yous all!

 Dear Current Workplace


Thank  you for providing me with one of the most miserable years of my working life with your silo'd structure and unfriendly staff.  As if being retrenched by your best friend's business wasn't bad enough, you've made my work life horrible. From working there for 10 weeks and being totally ignored by most, to being an EA to a total fruit loop, bi-polar nazi who you eventually fired and then demoted me because the 'new guy' doesn't need an assistant.

I have had 8 workstations in as many months, been shuffled onto projects, Exec Ass to the MD with a 'short man' attitude, ignored by the other EA's the minute I left Executive and now relegated to a life of administrative pariah processing water rates, changing photocopy paper and entering data. Apologies to my lovely builder boys who have been denied the support they need because the 'other projects' might get jealous. 

My colleague on the other side of my petition looks like she's been sucking lemons for a lifetime and I'm sick of running around like a blue arsed fly thanks to ridiculous demands such as "Can you print 5 x A3 x 250gsm documents and have them bound along the long edge in 10 seconds?" No I fuckin' can't, not without a magic wand! And the fact that we don't have chocolate biscuits in the board room won't stop the world turning you petty assholes . . . so . . . I'm leaving! You can take your droney work and shove it up your proverbial bottom.






Dear nice young Accounting firm


Thank you for your generous letter of offer for a Practice Manager/HR guru and for a decent salary to match.  Nice try making an offer below what I'm earning now but good on you for going the extra step and raising the bar.  Thank you also for being work/life balance centric and for asking me to join your happy team with FREE parking from 9th August  and for understanding that I'll be there for 3 weeks before traipsing off to France for a month. I love you.  I will hit the ground running! I promise!


Yours truly


Me!

Tea Time

Years ago, I  inherited a Shelley China tea set from my Grandma. It's white and pretty although it was terribly stained when I first received it. I soaked it in Napisan of all things for about 3 days and it bleached the fine bone china beautifully.  Ever since, it's been resting comfortably in a cabinet and never used.

Now I'm not a hoarder of things but I remember being at my Grans when the 'best china' and chocolate biscuits were brought out. The gentile afternoon tea with the Vicar and being told to behave like a grown up with a cup and saucer, so it does have some sentimental value.

However, my nickname being "Basher Bainbridge" (really) because I rarely have a glass in the house by Christmas is well earned. But what's the point of having a beautiful tea service if you never use it? Nothing. So this Sunday, Clare, Adam, Amy and I made and ate 'High Tea'. It was a cold, grey day and frankly the fun was in the making rather than the eating. Lovely afternoon, thank you kidlets.

This has become quite a popular thing over here in hotels and restaurants. Tea and scones, jam and cream, dainty cakes and savouries and the odd glass of bubbly. So, we broke out the Shelley, had an AWESOME time plooking around in the kitchen, decided that our piping bag was total shit and the old calico number my mother had deserves merit and that I can make a quiche without measuring anything. Clare can actually cook without using chocolate and I am capable of burning an entire block of dark chocolate in the microwave. Thanks Ads for noticing the smoke.  And, I mastered choux pastry . . man that's going to get some mileage. Today eclairs, tomorrow croquembouche!

Amy did the cupcakes and cucumber/cream cheese, smoked salmon sandwiches and chocolate berry tarts, Clare, prawn with rocket and garlic aeoli sandwiches, the fluffiest of scones with whipped cream and blueberry jam and I tackled mini eclairs and  mini florentine  quiches. Adam did a sterling job of assembling smoked salmon and Danish salami rolls and ribbon sarnies (not together obviously) and not one item of Shelley was broken largely due to Clare volunteering to wash up.  Oh and Sarah Lee provided the carrot cake 'cos Amy loves Sarah Lee carrot cake. The tea was Russian Caravan, apparently nutty and fragrant, frankly a little disappointing but then I like tea so strong you can stand your spoon in it. I naturally poured a Semillon Sauvignon Blanc.

Mini Quiche Florentine sans recipe

Cheaters Carrot Cake

Chocolate Custard and Mixed Berry Tartlets

Mini Chocolate Eclairs

Prawn and Roquet Sandwiches in Garlic Aoli

Cucumber Dill Cream Cheese Ribbon Sarnies

Vanilla Mini Cupcakes - Nobody fart or you'll kill the cat

And Tea . . I wish I'd taken the bar code off the strainer GAH!

The only problem, we could have done with about 8 other participants. High tea bento boxes for the next week.

Friday Fuckwit

Well it's been a busy night. Technical probs, old friends online and a job offer . . still it's Friday and we all know what that means.   Fuckwittery:

A Romanian woman did not report her husband’s death for two weeks because she thought he was faking his death to get away from her. "Can't fool me, get up, you stiff!"

 

The 72-year-old woman told police in Vaslui she wanted to make sure her husband wasn’t trying to trick her by faking his death so he could start a new life with his mistress, so she sat over his body for 14 days before going to authorities.

Police said there were no signs of foul play and that the dead man had a well established heart condition.
Till death do us part … uh, maybe not.

 Wasn't he a bit stinky?

And this, is for no other reason than I love Barber and  had a little party  on my own tonight and felt incredibly guilty at shafting my golden boy but . . there is this remarkable  piece.  When I die . . please, please, play  it at my wake . . . 

Have  a good weekend!

A Load of old Balls

Good evening! Well after a scintillating day of keying into spreadsheets, yes that's how exciting my life is at the moment, all creativity has gone to the dogs so I dug deep into the Flickr account to come up with a load of balls:

Coloured Balls

Girls Balls

Mirror Balls

Fireballs

Cold Balls

Chocolate Balls

Hairballs

Glowballs

Dogs Balls

Pool Balls

Oddballs

Yes it seems it's Thursday again, which is wonderful because that mean's tomorrow is Friday and that means that it's soon the weekend. Pop along to Theme Thursday and see what a load of old balls the others have come up with!

 You know how I'm looking for my Knight in Shining Armour? Well . . . went along to Winterfest this weekend. All on my lonesome because nobody wanted to be involved in such a gothy nerdfest but hey, it was a gorgeous day and at worst a nice walk in the park. 

Although the search for the perfect man was not easy:

There was this guy being pummelled by kids whilst in the stocks. Looked a bit wet behind the ears to me.

Then this guy, but I dunno, feathers in caps? Just a little to foppish for my discerning tastes.

 

Now this guy was nice and tall but when he turned round had a faced only a mother could love

 

 This guy had a lubly red coat but, green stockings? Fashion faux pas dahlink

 

 

This one? Nice bird but a shame about the hat!

Now this fellow was quite handy

This one just a little hirsute . .

This lot just wouldn't stop fighting . . .

Now this one just moaned too much and not in a good way .. 

Found him! Just look at that codpiece!