The Knitting Revolutionary

Ergh

So, new runners are awesome. Wearing them in is the opposite of awesome.

Ouch.

New shoes!

When the thought of any good love

Seems as far off as the sun

And friends are cold and distant

Over some stupid thing I've done

I used to wax and wobble in the throes of misery

Now I simply just haul myself down to the mall, and buy a pair of therapy...

New shoes!

(From Deidre Flint's fantastic and very funny folk music album,you can find her here, I'd highly recommend both her albums, which are constant companions on my limited storage 2Gb mp3 player)

So, yeah. Today, I bought myself a new pair of runners. JOY! So shiny and new. Can't wait to break 'em in :) The guy at the runner's store tells me the old ones have about 100km left in them (LOL! I'm not sure why I find this amusing, but hey) and so it'll be about another 2 months with me staggering the shoes half-half. Woot! I almost wanna frame 'em - my first "serious" pair of runners - and they're just about worn out. Heh. *pride*

Trillie McSilly

She really is so cute and tame. Her latest trick is being hidden in someone's shirt, and peeking her head out for a few seconds before dragging her wings and the rest of herself out. Phoenix, the grand old lady of cockatiel land, would never allow this sort of behaviour, but Trillie is pretty cool with being lovingly mishandled ;) LOL!

C2100PU

...ye gods.

It's C25K for pushups (which I've cheekily renamed C2100PU).

http://hundredpushups.com/

Should I? I'm thinking another short(ish) term goal to work toward might be fun... but is it gonna give me footballer's neck?

Broms broms and more broms

I went to a bromeliad show run by the Brommy Society of NSW. The brom pups cost anywhere from about $8 to $15 each, some of the bigger plants were much more but I wasn't going to be blowing my budget on really big stuff, specially when I figured they were going to grow anyway ;) Well except for the dwarfy varieties.

So I've finally gotten round to taking a few pics of my favourite purchases:

I've also got the whole corner full of pots at the moment, which looks pretty cute. I need to put some more white gravel down, it always was spread a little thin, and the pots were spaced nicely until the local cats decided to knock them all over. I'm working on ways to make them more stable, but for now I've crammed them all together. It's a work in progress.

This is my pot full of succlents... I'm thinking I really need to get the big one into its own pot - it was about 20% of its current size when I first got it. Time for a new home soon! The little stripy one was a gifty from mum, and the little tiny one about to spill over the front edge was a piece that actually fell off a plant in the nursery when I poked it (oops) and rather than leaving it to die on the ground I brought it home, and it's growing. LOL. It's David's favourite, mostly because it was so tiny at the start and he didn't think it'd grow, and because it was "stolen". *grin*

Finally, the broms I got last year from mum are pupping, how exciting! Baby broms!!!

Random booky thoughts

I'm reading "What's Happening To Our Girls?" at the moment, and it's a bit scary. Well, a lot scary actually. Awesome Fakts, like:

* every hour of TV watched by a small child each day may increase their risk of developing attention problems by almost 10% by the time they turn 7
* by the age of 2, children can recognise their favourite brands in shops and let parents know they want them

 ...etc etc. Girls and fashion, brands, makeup, princess merchandise, and even with my own personal aversion to stupid revolting Girly-dolls, Barbie has never appeared so sinister. Girls as consumers. Yech.

A friend of my ex's in Sydney has a gorgeous little girl, and at 3 years old her favourite thing was "shoppinggggggg!", generally uttered with girlish delight with the word drawn out, just like I've typed it. Sure, she was hell cute, but it chilled me a little at the time, because it's the sort of thing you'd expect from a 16 year old. And the thing about this little girl is that her mother was a stay at home mum, and read to her, and did all of that positive parenting stuff that makes such a difference, so it was even more of a surprise. The book gives a few insights as to where this stuff comes from, and what I'm liking about it is that it's not just a "corporations are bad, mmk" message, there's a lot of stuff there for parents - ideas of what to do instead, how to "fight" this conditioning in their kids (and in particular their girls). 

I remember my mother buying me a tshirt when I was in my late teens. I still wonder what possessed her to buy it for me. It was sort of cute, in a weird way - it had a pink and orange dinosaur holding a variety of baggies and totes and said "Shopasaurus" underneath it with a silly fake-dictionary "definition" under that in smaller writing. It felt like a bit of a betrayal - we'd grown up in op shop clothing, and rather than buying the David Eddings novels as they were released I'd reserve them from our local library. I remember waiting 7 months for the library copy of "The Seeress of Kell" to come my way, and I devoured it like a girl starving. Heh.

It just felt wrong. I mean, how bizarrely ironic can you get... I'm fairly certain the shirt came from the local op shop! I wore it a few times to make her happy, but even though I was uncomfortable with it. Even though we'd been part of a religion which shunned fashion and labels, and had been financially disadvantaged, my mother still had these sort of ideas of what a girl should be, should like, should do. 

There was a bit of fuss one Christmas not long ago over a Disney Princess themed gift given to a young relative. Her mum gently asked for the gift to be exchanged. I was a little shocked - the child loved it, and it seemed so... mean. I find I'm changing my mind, and am impressed with the mum's wisdom, and the courage it must have taken to ask for the present to be exchanged.

We, US, and the World

I LOVE Aussie and UK text books, they just kill me. Fantastic little quote which made me laugh my head off...

"(The first, second and third forces in psychology are) terms coined by an American psychologist in arrogant fashion, rather like the way Americans refer to their national baseball championship as the 'World Series'." ( Peter Sanders, First Steps in Counselling)

...ROFL!

I'm back :) and running 13k! Eee!

Yeah yeah, I know it's the usual. I haven't been posting much. Various reasons, none of which I'm going to detail, mostly because while they're absolutely fascinating for me, I doubt they're of any interest to anyone else ;)

I'm back today, blogging again, because of a lovely post (thanks Janice!) on the Weight Watchers forums, which I've spent many happy hours toddling around in since May last year when I decided this was the last time I was going to have to ditch my unwanted kilos. I'd actually forgotten I even had my blog link in my signature. hehe!

The blog's due for a fat overhaul. I know that. I need a new me-pic (it's so old I've still got long hair in it LOL) and new colours etc etc. I find the lack of options in Typepad a little disappointing, but I'm excited to see that there's some new beta thing going on. I'm hoping it's not just for premium members - it'd be nice if we little peeps who only want to pay about $80 a year got some more exciting hoptions as well. I'm gonna wait and see. :)

I don't knit as much. This is mostly due to the nasty pains I get in my hands and arms. I'm doing a few things to help with this, including cutting back on mmorpg time (World of Warcraft, raider no more *snif*) and staggering my knitting and spinning time.

Also, running has become a big part of my life. This doesn't hurt my hands. Yay! And, as the expert injury and falling specialist science dude I spoke to a Speed Meet and Greet a Geek the other night told me, I won't ruin my knees and hips by running (contrary to popular opinion). Apparently the movement of cartilage over the joint releases magical helpful stuff (did he call it cenovin? something that sounded a bit like that) which protects it. He also said that the actual work of impacting on the ground, as long as you've got decent shoes and are aware of your gait, is beneficial in the building up of bone density, and prevention of osteo. Cool, huh? :)

So yeah. Hi again! :) More later, I'm sure. I'm not so great on consistency, so who knows how long this might last. Guess we'll just have to wait n see :):):)

Selling a spinning wheel

Hiya cupcakes,

I'm selling an Ashford trad spinning wheel on ebay for anyone who's after one: http://tinyurl.com/c65bhg - the starting bid is what it cost me. It came in pieces, and I gave it some serious lovin' with my furniture oil (which smells yummm) and stuck it all together with shiny new brass screws and voila. Very nice. I'd be tempted to fit it out with a jumbo flyer and keep it for myself if I had the room, hehe. Poor David would probably have a heart attack. He's still reeling from my last wheel purchase ;)

A new obsession

I've taken up running.

It all started with my thousandth diet.

Well, perhaps not my thousandth, though it did feel like it. It was actually about the 5th or 6th major diet I'd been on since I was 23. Each time I've lost the weight, each time it's come back again, with interest. Familiar story? Yeah, told by millions. I'd tried (approximately in this order) Prepacked Food Delivered to You, Going To the Gym Til I Thought I Lived There, More Prepacked Food Delivered to You Just in Case You Didn't Do It Right the First Time, and Drink a Milkshake Instead of Eating and Dont Eat Sugar Whatever You Do. There may have been another in there somewhere but I can't really remember.

The diets were ok. It was maintaining it that I've never been able to do. So I've finally found a diet that I'm happy with, have lost the weight, and am maintaining the loss. Awesome.

A major difference was that this diet didn't just encourage exercise as well, it rewarded it. With extra food bonuses! Whoa! This was a cool idea. So, being a stickler for rules, I started walking every couple of days so I could have a glass of wine with dinner, and maybe some chocolate. Then I started walking a long way on the weekends, up to about 2 hours or so with my podcasts plugged into my happy little ears.

Then I got impatient, and thought, if I get THIS much extra food for walking, imagine how much extra food I could get for runnning!

And off I went.

That was about last August/September, and was my third attempt at completing all 9 weeks of the Couch to 5K program (www.c25k.com) - before I'd stopped at the 20 minute mark both times, due to lack of focus and motivation. Well, turns out all the motivation I needed was FOOD! :)

I recently hit a major milestone of 10km. Sure it takes me about an hour (there were a few hills in there, ok), but 10 kilometres! Without stitches, or cramps, or feeling like I'm gonna die by the end! Freekin awesome.

Bring on the half marathon, baby. :) I'm already half way there.