The Knitting Revolutionary

Words words words

I got a random email today asking if I'd like to participate in a workshop discussing what the barriers to adult literacy are. I won't be attending the workshop - I'm not really qualified anyway, and I'm not really sure how it got sent to me - but it got me thinking. I think that the biggest barrier would probably be embarrassment. The people who I know who find reading difficult or impossible are quite embarrassed about it, and do a pretty good job of covering it up. So it's a bit of a Catch-22 for people who can't read, or can't read very well. Where do you start, when the biggest barrier is their pride, or even their dignity?

I can't imagine not being able to read. I have a vague memory of not being able to read - written words have  held meaning for me from a very early age. I remember copying words out of a book, letter by letter, and I remember wondering why the typed "a" was different from the "a" we'd learned to write - yet I knew it was the same letter. Same with the "g", which I was fascinated by, and copied from the book the curly shapes as they were, to compare how it felt and looked in my own hand. Most of the words I knew, some of them I didn't, but I copied them out anyway. I think it was a Dr Seuss book.

Reading has always held such joy for me, and the thought of adult illiteracy makes me, literally, sad. A typed page must be a barren landscape of meaningless and dry symbols, rather than the rich, immediate images that flash into my brain upon glimpsing phrases and sentences. Don't even start me on calligraphy and the joy of words that are both visually and symbolically beautiful. Yum.

The weekend of heppy!

I have had a WONDERFUL weekend!

It started Friday night when Liz and Chelle came to stay with us for a night, and I went out to have nyummy asian food in Dickson with them... mmm. Laksa. How can you go wrong!

We got up reasonably early, and despite the fact that Canberra isn't very big, Chelle got lost going for a walk. It might not be big, but it's hell confusing - all the streets are curly and curvy, and because Canberra has no billboards (yeah, it's a bit Pleasantville) and the burbs aren't that old, it's actually quite difficult to find your direction because of the distinct lack of landmarks. It's all curvy roads and dry roadsides and rather conservative looking homes, and poor dehydrated drought ravaged gardens. (Well except for the parliamentary circle and anywhere near the lakes, which are divinely green and rather lovely). Anyway. I go rescue Chelle, who was half way back to Sydney, and we all took off to Belconnen fresh food markets and had brekky at the organic cafe there. Pretty nice. The eggs are amazing, though the quality of their roasted veg has gone down - no zucchinis or other greens, just sweet potato, pumpkin and carrot. Other than that it's a gorgeous little cafe with really good organic coffee and incredibly indulgent chocolates, and lots of hippy-chick sorta things like ear candles and organic sushi ingredients and stuff. We were having so much fun that we forgot to take photos. Always a good sign :D

Then I took off to work for a few hours, and after that the foody joy continued.

I was wailing away a week or so ago about how it's a bit sucky that Lebanese food is so luscious, but takes so long to prepare, so a few girlies put their hands up for the experience of coming over and making stuffed vine leaves. If you do this alone, you need about 3 or 4 hours. If you have girlfriends and a bottle of wine, you can knock it over in 2. And the 2nd hour is when they're cooking on the stove top, so it's an hour of rolling spliff-type munchies, and an hour of hanging out, drinking wine and gossiping enthusiastically about all sorts of silly stuff.

Divine, wonderful, beautiful way to spend a Saturday arvo! There will definitely be repeats of the experience, next time I'm doing stuffed zucchinis. *droool* The recipe for the stuffed vine leaves is very accessible, you can find it in this little Woman's Weekly book. A lighter, more traditional lemon-flavoured style can be found elsewhere, but I love this one because it's so sweet and rich with the tomato sauce.

And finally, the roast of doom later that night. Need I say more? Despite a no-show (silly boy doesn't know what he's missing, nor how sought-after a seat at the Doom Roast is), it was a raging success, especially with Maddi's home made margarita ice cream. Mmm.

Could it have been any better? Not in a million years. Bring on the 4 day week, I feel like a million dollars :D Now I'm just hanging out with a glass of rose and reading Jane Austen by candlelight. *heppy heppy heppy*

shtuff

Firstly, blogging when you don't own your own camera sucks.

Rightyo, now that I've gotten that off my chest, I can talk about other stuff. I'm listening to an audio book called "Germaine Greer, Untamed Shrew" in the car at the moment. I get about a 25 minute snippet on the way to work in the morning, and 15 minutes on the way home, and incidental doses of the narrator's voice in between.

I never knew much about Greer except that she's a feminist icon, and well known for being enormously opinionated. And loud. This is always a good start, I think. It's something of a biography - but apparently it's less of a biography of Greer and more a biography of her book The Female Eunuch. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through it, but it's somewhat confronting for me in that the author's description of Greer reminds me eerily of a friend to whom I used to be very close, and only talk to these days if we happen to be at the same social occasion (which happens very rarely, as we live in different cities). I'm interested, wanting to know more about this woman, but not sure how willing I am to have old painful memories and feelings forcibly unearthed.

Life is good. I'm starting my internship and feel absolutely wonderful about it. Still. I thought for a while that I'd never get there. But here I am, pulling out my degree paperwork and my passport and other ID, ready to have it all sent off to the ACT Board of Psychologists.

I'm knitting socks. I always get the urge to knit them as the weather starts to get cool in the evenings and mornings, and I stare wistfully into my sock drawer wishing that the 4 pairs of handknitted ones would just... you know... magically multiply. What utter luxury soft woolly knitted sockies are. Yum.

Mmm. Pass the wine. I feel winter coming on. *purr*

New Year

Apparently nicorettes are one of the highest selling products from chemists at this time of year.

It's all the new years resolutions, you see. I didn't make one. In fact on NYE, I had a delightful time - I ate tender, delicious, rare roasted kangaroo with crispy-edged baked potatoes, and drank an enormous amount of pink champagne, and gobbled strawberries and chocolate ice cream. I chatted with a couple of friends and my honey, and enjoyed their company, and listened to music, and sat outside on a gorgeous Hobart terrace with candles lit and fireworks popping and crackling in the distance.

It was divine.

I was unconscious by 10-30pm.

Ah well, you get that. And I had a fantastic night of cheerful indulgence. Yum. So I didn't really make a resolution. An 8am flight makes it the last thing on your mind on New Year's Day. Mine's just an ongoing one - to exercise 2-3 times a week, and lay off the sweeties and stuff a bit. Yah, just a bit. Bugger eschewing them completely - life is too short. But I've got my cute little calligraphy calendar up on the wall, and I've bought me a packet of gold stars, and I'm giving myself a star for every day that I exercise.

So far I've got 4. Not bad considering one day out of this year's 9 so far included a hangover and an interstate flight, and another included plasma donation ("now, you won't exercise for 24 hours, will you dear?"). Yay me! Though I've had 2 Heaven ice creams so far this week already. Oops. Ah well. I did say "just a bit", didn't I? *phew*

It's Friday, and all is well...

Life has been pretty good to me lately.

So far, I'm enjoying my new job as youth worker. Unfortunately I don't really get to talk about work at all on the blog, so booooo to not being able to share one of the coolest and most interesting bits of my life with you all. Those of you who know me in person will have to catch up the old-fashioned way. :D

The weird thing about me is that the more I'm doing, the more I get done. No, wait. That sounds like a statement of the obvious, but it's not really. I mean... when I was not working, I tended to just get around to the housework whenever. But now that I'm working again, I'm remembering how much energy I used to have, and am rediscovering. So I'm actually doing more housework, and getting back to the gym (whee!) and knitting! Because my work hours aren't flexible (double boooo) I get up at about 7ish, but don't have to be there until 9am... and I usually have about 1/2 an hour free in the morning to hang out and do whatever.

So instead of playing WoW for that 1/2 hour (30 mins isn't really enough to get into it and have a proper play) like Marty-Bear has been (tsk tsk Marty, you'd better start leveling that shaman), I've been doing a little bit of housework some mornings, and knitting. Yay! AND... the days I'm in the office for lunch (it happens occasionally), I pull out my knitting. It's attracted less comments than I thought it would, but my work colleagues are slowly realising that I'm not likely to poke them if they're nice to me. *evil giggle*

I finished the back of my green jumper last night, yay! And I'd be casting on for the front of it, but I felt like bragging instead. :D Isn't it loverly? After the setback which saw me frogging a good 20% of the back, I put it aside for a little while and voila! I get a job, have hardly any time any more, and the only thing that's suffered is my gaming time. *blush* Funny that.

SSK last Saturday was AWESOME! The piccies will go up sooner or later, but M-H is even busier than she usually is these days, and for now you'll just have to believe me that it was huuuuge and there were so many people there that I didn't get to talk to most of the new peeps. My priority was more to catch up with my buds that I hadn't seen for so long though, so no biggie. Ooh! There's my alarm... I'm off to work, more later! :D:D:D

The other *other* white meat

I have a new car.

The new car has been the source of much joy and much woe, and a few hiccups have been had getting it on the ACT road (which apparently requires something of an initiation ceremony. Special roads here. Ya huh.)

So I got an inspection done by one place, a nice sort of place with clean shaven, respectable looking dudes working there, and a nice man who didn't perv at me or snigger when I walked in, as generally happens in mechanics' workshops. He went over the car in the same way a cop would go over a young hoon's car, frothing at the mouth with a big "UNROADWORTHY" stamp in one hand and a Sherlock-esque magnifying glass in the other. Wow, he was mean. Nice, but mean. My report card came back with a great big F on it, and a huuuuge ($1,500 or so) repair bill attached. Mmm.

He told me that if I wanted to I could get a 2nd inspection somewhere else, so off I toddled today. It was something of an experience.

I had a little trouble finding the place, and when I did, it made my heart sink. I opened the door, and two tattooed, pierced, grungy-looking baby-eaters glared at me. One was on the phone, and continued to growl into it menacingly, and the other took one look at me and said in a commanding tone "yeah, wait." After a few seconds of me standing stunned in the doorway, bunny-in-headlights impression at its very best, the skinny one with the beanie snapped, "You're late".

Eep.

Long story short, they didn't have a fine-toothed comb or a magnifying glass, and didn't list obscure stuff like "play in left front seat". Ya huh! Way to save myself about $750. It still needs new tyres of course, and a new muffler. But hey. I'm much much happier with this quote. Oh yeah. I have two new friends, and their choice of white meat is really none of my business. Is it now.

Oh, Joy!

... and because every woe in life should be balanced by joy...

I have a new job! Woot!

5 days a week (omg a REAL job!), regular hours, outreach work (woot not chained to a phone and a desk), the possibility of turning it into an internship, and... well... lower than average pay. Ah well. You can't have it all, and I know that Bernie *did* spoil me in the way of my pay packet. Hehe.

AND!

I'm going to SSK! Woot! I'll be coming along to the 23rd. With any luck the car will be all spick n span and ready to roll by then.

YAY!

Oh, woe!

... and weeping even!

My lovely new car, which only cost me $2500, needs repairs of somewhere between $1,300 and $1,900. Rust. Bald tyres (I need 4 new ones). Several other things including brake pads, wheel bearings, blah blah blah. Should have bought that one I saw for $4,000 after all, despite it being (!!!) out of my price range.

WOE!!!!!!

Angry angry angry

Grr.

I was talking to a woman today who stated firmly that she thought feminists were all wrong, had it all wrong, and that men and women are just not meant to be equal. Uhhh... right.

"Look at our origins", she said. "Men were hunter-gatherers, women stayed at home, men brought the food home. That was it. That's why we are like we are now".

"Soooo", I replied slyly, "you mean as in 10,000 years ago? Evolution's natural course?"

"Yes", she replied.

"Aren't you Christian?" I asked.

She... didn't like me pointing this out a whole lot. The conversation degenerated into her telling me her opinion, and me masking my rising and completely unexpected rage. I didn't really reply to anything after that, and extracted myself as quickly as I could. I see no point in continuing conversations with people who haven't properly thought through their opinions, and who claim enough of evolution to support their half-baked theories, and enough of religion to claim some sort of superiority.

I didn't expect to feel so angry about this. But... willing female submission makes me so utterly furious. And people who attack feminism make me equally furious. The definition of feminism is so innocuous it's just ridiculous, what's so scary about it? Feminism does NOT mean "I hate men". Feminism does NOT mean "Men should be stomped on and they can see what it's like". It means equality. I think the social equality bit of the definition is the hardest one.

But, I digress. The conversation had been about why men often act as though they can't do stuff like remember their appointments, or put vacuum cleaners together, or cook, or whatever. Her point was that they weren't designed for this and shouldn't be expected to. Because their job was to be the hunter, and get the dead animal, and that's it. Uh huh. Totally logical. It doesn't surprise me so much to hear this utter fucking bullshit coming out of the occasional male mouth. But it just HURTS to hear it coming from a woman. How utterly revolting.

So, yah. Whaddya do? Me, I bite my tongue, and feel angry, and blog it, and get over it.

*sigh*

It's finally over

After way too many hours of unpaid work, as wives and partners of so many Australian small business owners are wont to do, I finally did my last hours today.

The business that my ex and I co-owned closed about a year ago, and it's taken me this long to get my act together and finalise all of the paperwork. What a nightmare.

It was hard doing it.I mean emotionally difficult. I suppose this was my final tie to the inlaws, although a tenuous one. I don't miss Luke - he and I are on good terms, and chat on the phone occasionally, and have made our peace with one another. Amazingly enough, we remain friends.

But his family... I miss them so much it hurts, especially my ex-muminlaw, who was like my own mum for the years I remained married to her son. Maybe taking so long to get on with it was my way of trying to hold on to that one last little tie. I did try to re-establish contact, and sent a hand-made chrissy card to her last year, and the reply was polite, but cold. She wished me luck. I suppose that's as gentle a dismissal as I could have hoped for. Asking forgiveness for hurting her baby is a lot of forgiveness to ask for; and when I take a step back from my own hurt, I can see why it has to be this way.

And so today, it's all finished. My desk is clear of bank statements, old cheque butts and random dockets and invoices. This it the last of it, off to its new home at the accountant's (who will probably be very relieved at not having to nag me any more!). Freedom!!!

cool!

...just saw an 84 year old man with spiky gel hair (his own colour, tyvm) and a t shirt which read

I dont have a job

I dont have a car

I dont have money

But, I am in a band...

Hehehehehe!!! *cacklage ensues*

Shtuff and Fings

...so I continue to chase jobs and put in applications.

Experience? Nope, got none. But on the upside I'm having a fantastic time playing with wool and dyes and playing waaay too much WoW. Hm. Maybe the ridiculous amount of game money I have to "farm" in order to buy a cool flying gryphon isn't so unreachable after all. Muhaha!

I've been a more social little bunny lately. I actually remembered the spinning guild's night of fun this fornight, so nicked of with the boy's car and hoiked my wheel in the back, and badaboom! "I'll probably only swing by for an hour or two" I told him as I took off, and wandered on home about 3 1/2 hours later. Ooh what fun! I had lots of wool dyeing to show off, and the lovely gals there suggested that I dye a heap up for the guild exhibition. Fancy that!

Which brings me to my point. Oh boy! I actually have something to say today! Which is lovely, because the blog has been sadly neglected, mostly because I haven't had anything of much import to impart. (Woot! I'm on FIRE today!)

Anyway, for the first time in ages, I'm spinning again. I haven't really done any spinning of significance since I landed in Canberra about 15 months ago. No real reason except that I haven't really felt like it, and I've had other things that I wanted to do more. And the whole point of it is to enjoy oneself after all. So I go through knitting phases, dyeing, spinning, cross stitch, whatever. At the moment it's dyeing. But there's not a whole lot of intrinsic reward in it - I enjoy it only to a certain degree, most of the fun lies in the fact that I'm able to sell it and make myself a little bit of pocket money.

So the whole thing is - community shtuff. I found that when I started going to SSK, I knitted more. Now that I'm here and I don't go to many SnB days (dont ask) I don't knit as much. But going along to the spinning nights, I'm feeling the urge to pull out my wheel. Many of the knitting podcasts I've been listening to ask the question: what do you get out of your stich n bitch meetings? Why do you do it, and what makes them so compelling?

For me, it's mostly one thing, and that's inspiration. There's the social aspect as well, but it's more about the creative exchange of a group of fibre artists for me. It's so encouraging to spend time with talented people who are also generous with their time and experience, which pretty much sums up most of the people in the groups that I hang with. It's hard not to be moved and inspired when surrounded with such beauty. So a big happy thank you to all my stitchin' bitches, and see you at the next SnB!

Happy today

If I believed in God, I'd say I was blessed. But for now I'll just have to say that I'm happy.

Today was my last Saturday working. On the one hand this is fantastic! Because I'll be able to get to SSK occasionally, and not have to work weekends for a while. Maybe not ever again.

On the other hand, it's a bummer, because I'll only be working 9 hours a week now, and my credit card is carrying about $6k more than someone working 9 hours a week should really be carrying as debt. Hm. But... I'm lucky enough that I don't have a mortgage, and I have a partner who earns enough to look after us both after my rather meagre financial contribution to the pot.

And I have my Saturdays back! *bliss*

Life is good.

Life, in full technicolour

Colour brings me an enormous amount of joy in my life.

I can almost hear the laughter now. What, you? Wearing all that black stuff? Hey Monica, you're a pretty funny girl... *hysterics*

OK fine. I wear lots of black for several reasons, one which involves a story, but it's a short one, so I'm gonna tell it quickly. See reason number four. Mostly these days I only wear all-black in a work situation, but again, that's coming up soon. Patience, grasshoppers!

Reason number one to wear black: When you eat laksa (or spill coffee or whatever it is that you tend to do because you're a grot, like me) it doesn't show. Hallelujah for instant clothing repair.

Reason number two to wear black: It's easy to pick outfits in the morning. Does this colour go with this colour? Of course it does, you nit, the top's black, the skirt's black, the stockings are black and bugger me but those black undies are gonna keep you feelin sexy all day long. Yum.

Reason number three to wear black: Well duh, it's slimming. Hello! And that actually is true. Though if you're gonna wear black hipsters 2 sizes too small for you so your flesh resembles top of an overfilled muffin pan, that's your own fault, and black ain't helping you, honey. Actually, nothing and no one's helping you. But. Most of the time it works. As long as you admit that while it's slimming, this works within the reality parameter.

Reason number four to wear black: Less people give you shit.

The fourth is one I discovered by accident during my working life as a receptionist (secretary, PA, EA and other associated roles). Picture this: (or dig if you will... mmm... Prince...) anyway. There I was, all of 22 or 23, much cuter than I am these days and about 20 times more clueless. Standing behind the reception desk at AMP, shooing the advisers away (no Harry I don't want to hear your girlfriend jokes again and Michael I don't want to learn how to say "take me f--- me" in Turkish, ok), and wondering, do I have a magnet on my head that invites every moron in the building to leer at me, flirt at me (not even with me, that takes skill and it becomes fun then), and give me shit, day in and day out.

Fast forward about 6 or 7 years. I'd noticed that if I just wore a bit more black, which I started wearing for reasons one to three, pretty much in that order, people (sleazy men, in particular) gave me much less shit. Then I noticed that if I wore slacks instead of a skirt, the results were tripled. Fantastic! Add a bit more makeup (young freshfaced harmless girls don't wear makeup. Women-not-to-be-messed-with do) and voila! I was a practically impenetrable fortress. So to speak. Ahem.

So one day working for Bernie, our particularly charming and flirty computer repair guy who I'd known for some years, comes in to the office and is flirting outrageously with Nada (gorgeous, blonde hair, great bosom, why wouldn't he really) and he compliments her on her hot pink top. And, as usual, she did look very feminine and glamorous. He rolls his eyes at me, grinning, and says "so Monica, why don't you wear pink a bit more often?"

I smiled my sweetest and most dangerous smile. "Because, Tony", I said, "Men don't flirt with girls who wear black."

He looked thunderstruck. "Well," he said thoughtfully, as though digesting a morsel of divine insight "I think you're right." He looked at me carefully, and backed away slowly, returning to the other, safer side of the room.

It hadn't really occurred to me that the reason why I wore black to work every single day was exactly that. Or mostly that. But I rarely wore colour to work again after this happened, although since moving to Canberra, where it's very conservative, I try to wear a dark coloured shirt (red, olive green, whatever) to the medical centre so I don't scare the locals too much *evil laugh*. And I tend to not get half as much crap as I used to. But maybe that's also because I've gotten older, fatter, and generally less worried about telling someone to bugger off and really meaning it.

What started this again? I've gotten off track. Oh, yes. Colour. Doh. Maybe I'll come back to this...

Of major works

On Thursday, I went in to uni, and printed out four copies of The Thesis.

The uni grounds felt surreal. There's a concert coming up called Metal for the Brain and there were carnie-roadie-types crawling about the place, trailing large pieces of white canvas around and occasionally assembling them into marquees, the mysterious black and silver boxes on wheels holding magical technical music-making ingredients. I wandered through them all, my three copies tucked under my arm, my feet just knowing where to go, my mind strangely numb. I ran into my least favourite person at uni, who made unintelligible and insincere noises of congratulation at me as I walked past.

The printer wasn't working properly, so I ended up with a fourth copy which is now sitting on my coffee table at home, looking innocuous and boring. If I ever can't get to sleep, I'd say about 3 pages should do the trick. Mum and Dad crashed at our place last night on their way to Adelaide, and brought me a box which has been sitting in their home for ... fourteen years, once it came home from the art show? I didn't bother doing the maths, but I pulled it up onto the table and prepared for half an hour of showing off. It held my year 12 major work, all thirty two pieces of it. Well, thirty three if you count the chessboard, or thirty seven if you count the custom made partitioned box.

There was probably the same number of hours in each major work. A year long art project, a year long research project. There were tears and disappointments in both, and at the end of both, a sense of relief. Both involved a mentor, but other than advice and encouragement, both were entirely my own work. Strange to think that at 17 I had the dedication required to undergo such a project, and strange that at 32 it was just as difficult. Different though in so many ways as well... six hours of straight painting I must say was far more enjoyable than six hours of straight factor analysis. I'm hoping that as I enter the workforce and reclaim my evenings and weekends that I might get a little more time for artistic pursuits once again. Here's hoping :-)

I was a bit numb when I wandered back home after handing in. I had to be at work in an hour, and wasn't really keen on going in early to plunge myself into a big bin of files and paperwork, so I stopped at the letterbox and found that my postie had done his best to cram several letters and two bulging, squishy packages into the tiny space. And I knew *exactly* what they were, too. Ah!

Soft, softer than any cloud of dreams and even fuller of possibility, a baggie of golden-brown llama fibre. Hairy and prickly and oddly sheened, Icelandic fleece the dyed the colour of a sunset.  A delightfully sparkly green nylon roving, blue-faced leicester from a sheep named Mimi (*giggle*) and some corriedale in garden colours - is it that different from merino? And finally, some north ronaldsay fleece which has been washed, but still smells of lanolin and sheep, literally drenched in memories of learning how to spin. This was all from Sarah, who was my fibre swap pal, and it turned a very exciting day into an even more special one.

An extra bonus hiding amongst the fibre-filled baggies - oh! The chocolate. Not just regular chocolate, but exotic stuff. Raspberry and rosehip in organic dark bitter chocolate. And chai flavoured chocolate. I sat at the table thinking about thesis, and recentring myself with sweet chocolate in my mouth and divinely soft fibre underneath my fingers.

If the whole point in life is to create something, then I am living. I am truly, wonderfully, intensely alive.

I would walk five hundred miles...

The long distance thing.

I swore, many years ago (ooh listen to me, I'm so OOOOLD) that I'd never do it again, and then of course I met Luke and it was certain - of course I'd never do the long distance thing again cos I was stuck with this guy and he was stuck with me and that's what being married was about. But you know how these things end sometimes, and this one did end, and the next thing I knew I was in another LDR, as they're now acronymically known.

Long story short that most of you know already... I detest long distance relationships, and so I figured my two options were to find myself someone new, or move to where he was. He happens to have a job he adores, that pays ok, and that he can't have anywhere else in Australia. Doh. I thought about how much I liked living in Sydney, and wondered if I'd like living in Canberra, and decided that there was pretty much one way of finding out, and here I am.

My friend Em found herself in a similar situation with Osk, not so long after she'd warned me off LDRs and moving cities for somone, and there was much hilarity in Sydney as she good-naturedly ate her words and took off (after much soul searching) to Adelaide to be with him. But at the end of the day, you do what you feel is the best thing to do, and off you go. Incidentally, this lovely couple apparently featured in a Marie Clare article about LDRs, but I never saw it. Send me a photocopy, Em? *winning smile*

So I get a message from a friend yesterday expressing her apprehension about starting an LDR with someone she's just met and rather likes. What do I say about LDRs? In short: I hate 'em, but I'm not very independent in my relationships anyway. But life is short, and you don't want to spend it wondering, so why not try it, and see where it goes?

I said to a work mate yesterday that I'd really like to think of myself as the sort of person who could be happy in almost any city, being happy with myself and within myself, and so at peace wherever I am. She made the rather dry observation that this was a big ask, and maybe she's right. But that's what I'm working towards right now.

Thoughts? Stories to share? This blog is getting frighteningly boring these days as I pour all of my energy into my uni work and staying sane in this city, so I could do with a bit of shared writing here. Tell me what you think? Would you walk 500 miles? Have you?

... word count: 5,118

... days to go: 48