Courage Under Fire

So, yesterday I got a work email titled "Staff Presentation". I really like being able to come into work in jeans and a t-shirt when I don't have a meeting lined up with a client. "Oh no, we're all going to get told we're dressing too casually for work", I thought. Then I realised that this was a calendar event scheduled for that afternoon. Phew. Next thought was that someone was giving a presentation on something. I then remembered that we'd all been getting a fair amount of praise for various things and that this was probably to present certain members of staff with a little reward. I thought about a few things that I'd been doing well that had received a good response and thought I might be up for something. Of course, it'll probably be a bottle of red, which I don't drink anymore, so I'll pass it on to someone else.

The presentation came around and I was the first one called up. "Suzanne. For Courage Under Fire on the _client_name_ project." "No kidding!" I laughed. This was one of those projects fraught with inexperience and political issues on the client side and language and cultural barriers between us. I was then handed a nice, new, shiny, black iPod Nano. Wow. I was completely shocked, given that during the entire seven years I've been with the company, it has only ever handed out wine. They also had it engraved with my name, the company logo and the year, which was an extra bother they didn't have to go to, so it was nice.

So I'm not in fear of losing my job anytime soon.

Hello... Summer?

How amazing is this weather? I feel positively human again. I went for a walk to the growers market on Saturday for my usual Banana and Chocolate Gozleme. How I miss bananas! Since two cyclones went through our banana growing areas up north, the price of bananas has quadrupled so I just don't buy them now. I can't wait for the market to recover.

Shawn got a chorizo roll, from the South American food stand, that was incredible. He also picked up some Empanadas for us to share later on in the day.

We used to go for a long (ish) walk every Sunday morning and now that the weather is far more conducive to this we went for a walk through the neighbourhood, our local parks and down to the local creek. The birds were going insane. It's breeding season and they're all looking for new homes and territories. This means we witnessed a lot of smaller birds chasing off bigger birds. One particularly brave soul was a little Willy Wagtail dive-bombing a very patient Kookaburra, who was more interested in the people wandering around the park. We sat down and watched him for a while. After we got up and walked off he followed us for a few blocks. Not an uncommon thing for a Kookaburra to do. I've been followed by a group of three through state forest near Robyn's house.

The weather has also brought me into the backyard more often. This means Kimba gets out for a while too.



She loves it so much I hate bringing her back in again, but she isn't allowed to get sunburned and I can't have the neighbourhood cats realising she's alone and taking the opportunity to pounce on her.

Different Weekend

Could this weekend have been any more different to last weekend? So much rain and so much colder. Spring is such a tease. I can't wait until the grasping hands of winter are really gone. Winter used to be my favourite season, but I feel the cold a lot more now, so I'm very grateful when Spring starts to take over.

On the upside, Saturday was filled with dvds and junk food, mostly chocolate. We didn't eat one healthy thing on Saturday. It was fun, but I don't think I'll be doing it to the same extent next Saturday.

Sunday was more of the same. Too much rain to do much else. I also got a call from a dear friend in New Zealand. This always makes a weekend better.

Sunday Garden

On Saturday night we stayed at Robyn's house. On Sunday morning I woke up to the most amazing, warm day and took a walk around the garden to enjoy it.



Everything is in flower.



It's that time of year when all the fruit trees are flowering and only just starting to get leaves and all the flowers on bare wood look phenomenal.

I could have sat in their backyard all day, but we had to get home at some point.

Kimba's New Bed

Really it's a blanket with edges, but she really loves it. If I want to encourage her to go to a certain spot, I put her blanket there and she goes to it. It's pretty amazing. The texture is a little like fur. I suspect this is why she loves it so much.

Art Critique

An email from a fellow creative type has prompted the following thoughts. I wish that when people are giving feedback to someone on their art or design, that they would keep something in mind: You are not doing anyone a service if your feedback is destructive. Don't try to mold people into your vision of what is good, especially if you know full well you have specific narrow definitions of what is good (or what is art or what is SO last year in design ). There is a world of creativity that exists beyond you. You can have your particular likes and dislikes. This makes us the individuals we are, but that doesn't mean that your view is gospel. You may personally dislike something. It just might not be your thing. I can tell you that so much work falls into the "Meh" category for me, but when offering a critique, try to be charitable! Look at what the view of the artist or designer is, then see if you can offer something that will help them. Become part of the process! It's great to have a dialog with someone about their work if you are providing them with things to think about that may result in productivity. If what you say is just going to put them down or make them feel like crap, then don't say it, because it serves no purpose. If you can offer words that will inform their process and help them grow professionally, artistically or personally, then I think that's great, but if it's being destructive, then you haven't achieved anything for either of you.

Biscuits or cookies...

depending on where you're from.



Yesterday I baked some chocolate biscuits from a recipe book that my sister Robyn gave me. So good.



Many didn't make it to the filling stage and were eaten straight off the cooling rack.



Despite our most valiant efforts to eat all of them, we couldn't manage it, so some will have to wait until next weekend to be filled, because today I'm going to make some wholemeal apple muffins.

Yoga, Walks and Wing Chun

Now that Shawn is working, I miss not seeing him at lunch time and straight after work. I have to say that the house is lot cleaner though. I find it easier if I keep myself busy, so this usually means cleaning. Not a bad thing since we have a nice space to be in when it's done.

Yesterday afternoon I made myself do some yoga as well. I've been stacking on weight this winter and not getting much exercise, so I'm feeling very unfit and not altogether right. Although not exactly a fat blasting cardio workout and I was bored during most of it, my whole body felt a lot better afterwards and today I'm sitting up straighter. What I would really like to do, is work on my flexibility and balance with Yoga, strength with weights, and cardio with walking (and a little running). Walking around my neighbourhood is quite nice because off the main streets are lots of parks and down by an old creek they've put in a pond with little fishes and frogs.

My ideal exercise combo would be Yoga, Walks and Wing Chun. If I ever get back to a decent level of fitness I would love, finances permitting, to start taking Wing Chun at the International Wing Chung Academy. This style of martial arts appeals to me greatly because it was developed by a woman. This means my gender, height, strength etc. aren't a huge disadvantage when learning this. Also, who doesn't want to learn the one inch punch?! I think it would help a lot with focus, self-discipline and relaxation. The reason I'd want to get to a reasonable level of fitness before starting is that I think the warm-ups/downs alone would be pretty hard, lots of sit-ups, push ups, jogging, kicking/punching bags. Yeah... we'll see how that goes.

Hail Almighty

I just drove home from work in THIS. It was not fun, in the least. The hail was only the size of green peas, but there was a hell of a lot of it. The car was slipping and I thought for sure I'd have hail damage, but I didn't see any. Good car.

Mmm TVeee

We went up to Dad and Donna's for lunch this weekend. Very tasty.

While we were there Dad gave us a spare DVD/VCR combo. Life saver. I've been looking for a multi-region one everywhere since our vcr died and the dvd started being crappy... ok crappier. Now I don't have to fight sleep to stay up and watch TV. I can TAPE things now. *purr* Cheap entertainment.

On the topic on cheap entertainment, if we want to see a movie at the cinema we go on cheap nights. We're going to see The Libertine tonight.

Knitting

On the odd occassion I get the urge to knit something. This urge only comes about once every couple of years, just long enough for me to forget most of what I learnt last time I did any knitting. So, after some jogging of the memory, I've been knitting a cat blanket/bed for Kimba. Good starter project. The pattern is mostly from Stitch 'n' Bitch and also from my mind because they didn't specify yarn ply only brand name. How annoying. Also, I can't be bothered counting rows so I've been winging it a little with this. It's working out well.



This one I've knitted with "eyelash" type yarn, for the fluffy effect, together with 4 ply on 6.5mm needles. This makes for a very soft blanket which will be good for sticking on the bed when Kimba insists she needs to be on it (which ususally happens on a weekend morning and we're sleeping in). I really don't want her sleeping directly on the bed because it wouldn't be good for Shawn's asthma, no matter how much he thinks Kimba should be allowed on the bed. This way, any fur will be on the blanket which can be removed when we get out of bed.

I should probably also mention that if you're knitting something like this for a pet, go buy the yarn at somewhere like Spotlight. You don't need to spend big on really nice yarn for the cat, she won't know the difference, I promise. A cheap baby 4 ply and way cheap eyelash yarn does it for this.

Next knitting project will be something for a friend's baby.

Tax Time!

Recently I was perusing Aimee's blog and reading about all her efforts to lose debt. This made me think about taking a closer look at my finances and not take so many things for granted. First thing I did was go get my tax done for the year. Good plan! They estimate nice fat return, all of which will go straight onto my credit card. It won't completely kill off wedding, honeymoon and US trip expenses, but I'm very close! Then I just have an old, but quite large, student loan to pay off. At least the only interest that get's added to it is whatever inflation was for that year. Yay?

Another thing we're doing is getting dvd's out from the local library instead of renting them from a video store. They don't stock a lot of pure entertainment (not that I'm interested in anyway), but they have stuff we want to watch regardless: cooking shows, music documentaries, etc. I'm sure we'll make our way through what interests us pretty quickly, but it's still saving us money in the meantime.

Long Lunch

What nice up-turn my day has had. I met Shawn in the CBD for lunch after he went to see his employment agent. I decided we should eat somewhere a little nicer than the average sandwich shop for once, so I took him to Chinta Ria Temple of Love. I love that place. It aways feels like summer inside, even when it's winter. Shawn then tells me that he got a three month contract. So we definitely had cause to have something nicer than a sandwich. The food was delicious, the colour inside made me happy and the massive, smiling stone Buddah that greets you when you enter is awesome. I challenge anyone to eat at that place and feel cranky. I wish I'd brought my camera!

On my way to work...

This morning I watched a beautiful German Shorthaired Pointer get hit by a car. I watched it get hit, get rolled over, but it jumped out from under the side and started running down the street! Incredible. Although I fully expect that the poor animal had broken bones and was just running on adrenalin. I was looking for how I could turn my car around to go see if I could help it because the car that hit it kept going for a while. Thankfully it looked like it was just looking for somewhere to stop.

There are a couple of things I don't like about this whole thing, other than it's just awful to see a a living thing getting hit by a car only two meters away from you. I can imagine how the driver who actually hit the dog felt about this. The other things I don't like are that the driver who hit it should have had full visibility of the animal from where he was, although I know how easy it is to be a tad vague when you've just woken up and generally your eye looks out for other cars and things that are actually taller than the bonnet of your car. The other thing I don't like is that a dog was roaming the streets unattended, although I know that GSPs require a lot of exercise and if they aren't getting it, they'll break out and run around themselves. Pets deserve better protection. If you have a dog like that, you need a tall fence! I'll give him this though, he was crossing at the lights!

Letter From DIMIA

We received a letter from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs yesterday. Shawn was granted his Partner Visa (temporary). Very exciting and so quick! We only gave all requested information to them a couple of weeks ago. This visa goes for two years and then he gets the permanent partner visa. We were battening down the hatches in preparation for interviews, requests for more information, general interrogation and discomfort. Whilst I don't exclude these things from future enquiries, it's good to know we got to this stage without them. So happy.

While Asleep

Last night, while sleeping, I was very active. Shawn woke me up with hugs because I was having nightmares, or so he thought. I was actually having annoying-mares. The first one: I was going over something that happened at work. I had to make a fix to some game backgrounds ( a lot of my work is fixing other peoples work), but each background was slightly different in areas where it was supposed to be identical, so I had to fix that too. Waking up while making a deep, slightly Marge Simpson sounding, disgruntled "Mmmmm." is an odd sensation.

Coding Again

I've been enjoying coding for Anguish again. I have one small project (one room and one object) in the approval queue and I'm working on a larger project at the moment: 11 npc (Non-Player Characters) files, 40 object files and 40 room files. Most of it is finished, except for the hard stuff. There is quite a lot of hard stuff, so I haven't been too inspired to work on it, thinking that what's left is going to be a struggle. This is, probably, mostly true, but I've found that after a long break from coding, I can see how to code some things instantly. I have no idea how this works. It may be that coming back to it with fresh eyes, I see it old problems in a new light, or that I've had time to soak up certain concepts and add new code knowledge to my brain in the meantime. Probably all of the above.

Although not a visual pursuit, I think it's good for me to be getting into creative projects outside of work.

Backyard Visit

This beautiful red cyclamen grows between the pavers and a brick wall in our backyard. If I have to have weeds, this one rates pretty highly with me. If only it'd grow in place of all the other weeds in our courtyard.



I let Kimba join me since, sadly, she's only allowed in the backyard when accompanied. If we let her out by herself, she tends to get set upon by some cats that live two doors down. This has at least twice resulted in visits to the vet. Physically, she isn't the tough young thing she used to be, but she still won't be run out of her own backyard (and fair enough). There are pros and cons about Kimba staying indoors most of the time. One pro is that the vet told me she probably shouldn't sit outside in the sun any more due to being all white and having some sun damage on her nose (which thankfully went away after a winter indoors). Pro #2: other cats can't attack her while she's inside. Pro #3: no unnecessary vet bills! Con: she loves it out there and doesn't get all the same catty stimuli inside. As the weather starts to improve we'll spend more time out there with her.

I haven't been out into the backyard for weeks. Too cold at this time of year to spend any great deal of time out there, but I noticed the cyclamen flowering and had to get a better look. I took a look around at how all the plants were going while I was there. The Parsley was going nuts, as was the Lemon Thyme so I used both in a massive Shepherds Pie I made last night. Looking forward to the weather getting warmer and doing some general gardening, as well as repotting some bonsai and giving them some love and much needed attention.

Free E-mail Account Security

A comment prompted this one. I think my response is too big to put in a comment. This is my understanding of the subject.

Do free email account providers collect your personal information? Yes. When you sign up they ask for your real name, postcode and country. Actually, they ask for more than that, but that's the only personal info you have to give (at least with yahoo. I'd assume they are all pretty generic).

Do they sell your personal information. No.

Do they collect information about what sites you navigate to on the net. Yes. They set cookies and check what they cookies has collected later on. Can you prevent this? Yes. Go into your prowsers security preferences and delete any cookies you don't want.

Are there any cookies you would want? Yes. These email providers set cookies to provide a timeout for you email account so that if you forget to log off no one can wander up and go through your email.

Do they collect information about what ads you click on from your email page. Yes. Then they know what products and services you are interested in and will show you ads for similar services next time. They will also make this information available to their marketing department so they can more effectively sell advertising space. So they would say something like "Oh yeah, there's a huge market for pink, knitted dog coats. We've had 327,486 click-throughs on that in the last week!"

Do they capture your IP? Yep, but then anyone can do that. _I_ can do that. Most sites want to have a vague idea of where their traffic is coming from.

Do they read your email. I highly doubt it. This would contravene privacy laws in any developed country, but like our phone conversations, these can be acquired by a subpoena.

Do they capture keywords from email subject fields. Yes. This is good and bad. Good because they use this tool to keep spam out of my in box. Bad because it's something they are allowed to read and most people think all communications are private. Solution: Just don't put anything personal in your subject lines. If you don't want your subject lines used for market research, don't stick product names in there.

My Conclusion: It depends on how gung-ho you want to be about it. I figure that I get massive amounts of storage, an email service I can use anywhere in the world, they don't get as much browser info from me as they would probably like and I don't pay for it. Outside of the net you expose information about yourself all the time. I signed up for a booklover card with a bookstore. I noticed that they spelled my name incorrectly and weirdly. Amazingly I started receiving junk snail mail with the same weird spelling. When people in the street ask you to answer a few questions for research. Do you acquiesce? Lastly, your name, address and phone number are in the phonebook.

Four Things List...

A friend asked me to fill in the four things list, might as well add it to the blog as well.

Things you may not have known about me ...

(A) Four jobs I have had in my life... (other than graphic design stuff. Everyone knows that already):
1. Kitchenhand
2. Data entry clerk
3. Artist
4. Volunteer sales person for a charity

(B) Four movies I would watch over and over
1. Blade Runner
2. Labyrinth (14 times baby)
3. Lord of the Rings
4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

(C) Four places I have lived
1. Newcastle (2 different places)
2. Melbourne (3 different places)
3. Sydney (6 different places... i think)
4. Sydney... again (see above)

(D) TV shows I love to watch:
1. Gardening Australia
2. Dr. Who
3. My name is Earl
4. Farscape (missed it on tv. watching it on dvd now)

(E) Four places I have been on vacation:
1. Death Valley, USA
2. Kyoto, Japan
3. London, England
4. Wagga Wagga, Australia (school holidays at my Aunt's farm)

(F) Websites visited daily:
1. loobylu.com
2. mail.yahoo.com
3. shayley.blogspot.com
4. somethingpositive.net

(G) Four of my favourite foods:
1. Chocolate
2. Nutella with strawberries
3. Chicken and basil risotto
4. Hickory smoked lemon chicken

(H) Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Somewhere warm, nice beach, warm water.
2. Blue Mountains, in front of fireplace, looking out onto Megalong Valley.
3. Beach cottage, again in front of fire, uninterrupted view of the rain over the ocean.
4. In a house that I own.