Sunday, July 27, 2008

A snowball's chance...

It snowed in Sydney today. Which is...um...pretty rare. It doesn't snow here.




Granted, it was half rain, half snow, and basically made a soggy slush, but it was still snow.




Ds has never seen snow before, so he was absolutely thrilled, running around outside in his shorts and t-shirt from this morning, when it was SUNNY and WARM (relatively), lobbing snowballs at us.




I have to say..I totally don't miss the frozen feet, and wet socks, and hard bite in the air.



But sure it was a nice surprise in the middle of an average Sunday afternoon.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Alcohol ain't as pretty as they say...

Saw this over on Corine's blog, so you might have seen it already. I love it.

Salty Eyes...

I can't guarantee you will love the song as much as I do, but I adore the concept of the video, too. Borrowed and updated, to great effect, from Bob Dylan.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

The highlight of our day..

This, sadly, is the very best of the bunch of all the pics I took yesterday....can you figure out what it is??



We went up to the Northern Beaches yesterday, to visit with some friends, and spent the day sitting on the beach while the kids swam (in the middle of winter...freaks!). While we were there, a whole pod of dolphins came by, and spent a little while just frolicking around directly in front of us! (Which makes the fact that I only got that one photo all the more shameful :p ) It was definitely the highlight...it's not that often you see them like that!

Monday, July 14, 2008

Taking a hike...

We went walking near the Manly Dam last week...I took some pics. I can't say they are works of art or anything, but you know what, I spent the whole time playing catch up cause I kept trying to get a decent shot, so I'm going to just stick them up here! Make it worth SOMETHING, anyway!! :p

It's the middle of winter, and the middle of a drought, so the wildflower situation is a little dire. Or maybe it's just dire in general. I dunno. I don't do much bushwalking over here. Not being a natural nature girl, and living in the middle of urban/suburbia, you don't really get around to it much. And when you keep picturing a black snake or something crawling out of the underbrush at you, you can feel just a wee bit less inclined to get out there and commune, ya know. The spiders don't bother me, though. Our house is crawling with them, and as long as they stay out of my pants leg when I put it on, they are fine by me.

Anyway..so..what'd we see.




These two look like the same flower, only one has 4 petals, and one has 5. So I don't know. The five petal one is a Boronia, though. This flower identification thing is so not my specialty, lol.




A minor flannel flower? That's what he says, anyway. Looks like a flannel flower, but like a fraction of the size.


One of the only real shots of color...all the wildflowers we saw were like the size of my first knuckle or way smaller. Just not enough to light up the forest, lol.



A red and yellow pea flower. This site calls it a Bacon and Egg flower. Okay.



Okay, so this....the helpful, informative plaque along the trail said these were Aboriginal carvings, along a prominent lookout point. I'm totally willing to believe the nice, official plaque. The existence of a very similar carving nearby of some kind of coat-of-arms, and someone's name, kind of makes me wonder just what kind of Aborigines lived in this area. :P



We finished the hike, walked across the dam to get our money's worth (you can see the water just under the walkway on one side, and the tops of the gum trees on the other...no water being let out the other side, though...boo), and then bolted for home, worn out from a day of herding kids everywhere.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Blind to your face..


If I know you, and one day I walk past you on the street unexpectedly, there is a very high chance I am going to come off as a Grade-A bitch, totally ignoring your, or else staring at you like I have no idea who this freak is, coming up to me like they've known me for years. Not because I *am* a Grade-A bitch (I hope!), but because I am face blind. Mildly, anyway. I am not a hopeless case; I just have an incredibly poor memory for faces. AKA, I have Prosopagnosia. I am pretty sure I have the genetic kind, because I am firmly in denial that I am brain damaged. :p Also, because my sister has it, a little worse than me. And I have my suspicions about ds, too. Poor kid.



I never realized not everyone was like this; I thought it was NORMAL to not know who someone was if they weren't in their normal setting, their normal context! How odd. Anyway, like I said, I have a MILD case...I can recognize most people I know, most of the time. If I know them. If I see you every week at the supermarket, and then I see you two towns away, in someone's house, I MIGHT think you look familiar, but I probably will never place why..unless you triggered one of my coping mechanisms, and said something that I could place...or if you are very distinctive in some way...or if your voice has a pattern I can place. If I *know* you, I probably won't do that..usually (Note to NS: It had been a whole week since we had moved out of the house! I PROMISE I recognized you...2 seconds later!!! lol)



I am not bad with famous people, either...I can recognize the really famous, most of the time, if the picture isn't really weird, and I can recognize others, if there is something I can latch onto. Otherwise, IMDB is my FRIEND! :P



I get by by recognizing speech patterns and voice tones; overall facial structure and body build; walking patterns; settings; and then if I am actually talking to you, and I STILL haven't figured it out, I can listen for cue words, that will clue me in. I am not completely nonfunctional, though..some people are completely, totally faceblind. I am thinking it's like the difference between being nearsighted without glasses, and totally stone blind. I am the former, obviously. And then there are the ones who rely on others to tell them who their wife and kids are. And for the record...face blindness is NOT real blindness...we can see perfectly fine!!! We just don't retain any record of what we are seeing! Okay, *I* do, mostly, but total faceblind people don't. And I am really good at reading expressions, and seeing *other* details, to remember. Oh...and I didn't realize til yesterday that not everyone thinks all dogs, or all cats, etc, look alike. :p Apparently that's a symptom, too, lol. (I think my inability to remember the way to get somewhere, no matter how many times I've been there, if I was NOT the driver, has something to do with it, too...drives my dh freaking NUTS, lol!)



Anyway. There you have it. Totally random, useless trivia about me. I figure, it's a rare enough, unheard of condition, that you might still be interested, right? Right? :D Maybe next time I will get into my synesthesia (what...doesn't EVERYONE think in colors??? :P )

Credits:
1. Blood and Ink
2. Andrea Shishmanian
3 and 4. Magnolia Forever
5. CDT Images

Failed..

It's official..

There's just no way to make a sack of rice look beautiful, fascinating, intriguing, whatsoever.




There is just no grace of form; no personality; no creativity or originality..



But it sure as heck is nice to be able to raid the stash and have one in hand in less than five minutes, INCLUDING threading the machine, when you have a muscle cramp that won't go away. :D

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Worlds apart..



Credits:
1. Don't know...old saved pic.
2. MyShoes

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Out-posted, by golly!!


Remember this post about Julian Beever? Well, Clarity In Wonderland has written a post about him that totally blows mine out of the water. :p You should read it. It's fascinating.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Paper dolls..















It's amazing what you can do with a bit of paper....Le Jardin de Miss Clara.

Credits:

1,2, 8, and 9: MerMag
3. Moja Szuflada
4. Celestine Musings
5. DarlinDoodles
6. Liste au Pere Noel
7 and 14. Endicott Studios
10. Ullabenulla
11, 12 and 13. Petit Capitoul
Hide all

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Leather....

I avoid leather...I don't like the idea of wrapping myself in the skin of a dead animal. Blech. So, I really, really, really, REALLY wish there were some way to match the look and movement of these, without killing an animal in the process. Cause they are GORGEOUS!!!!



Credit: I have no idea...was from a pic sent to me years ago by my SIL. I am sure it's a well known designer, though, so maybe someone else recognizes it??

Friday, July 04, 2008

Happy 4th of July!!!






















Whatever else you feel like saying about America, it's still a pretty amazing place to live.

Happy Independence Day!



Credits:

1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 16, 17, 18 and 23. Larry Malvin Photography
3 and 12. Smithsonian
6 and 13. EJ Peiker
7. Macro-photo.org
8. National Geographic
10. Triangle Running Group
11. K Richard Douglas
14. Dennis Chamberlain
15, 20, 21 and 22. Tom Dempsey/Photoseek
19. Smlpx?
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