Squeak Like the Wind

beautiful things

Rather than blogging myself, I've been lurking about on other blogs. And there are so many beautiful things out there!

I love Rosie, she's a total sweety, and I'm finding that she's a great transport bike. But I've been thinking of other bikes, namely ones with things like dynamo lighting, internal hub gears, full chain guards. Sometimes it really is about functionality as well. And I'm realising that I can have a gorgeously lovely bike which is also functional.

Anyways, I've gotten these incredible pictures from other blogs:

http://rideblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/november-19-2011-ride-the-relative-thrill-of-discovery/

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.ecovelo.info/2011/11/28/gallery-steves-town-bike-project/

 

 

This one from the local Tour de Femme, was taken as one of the official pics. I have no idea who it is, despite asking all over facebook where I could.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, some new lovely shoes, looking gorgeously matching on the lovely Rosie. Maybe I won't rush out and buy a new red bike after all...

5, 6, 7, 8!

"5, 6, 7, 8!" makes me remember rather too clearly my old bootscooting days of line dancing. LOL. Whoo! Those were the days. Yeesh.

Anyways, 4 days. Three: success. One: errrr....

I blame Miss J. She's my 14 year old niece, who's been staying with us for the past week or so. She doesn't like going out and doing things much - we took her out bike riding and she had an asthma attack. She was sleeping in one morning and stretched against the window (serve me right for putting her bed right next to the window) and accidentally pushed her foot through. $250 later... and we have a shiny new window, compliments of my credit card. Yay plastic! Mountain biking? Don't wanna, too muddy. Floriade? Too old and boring (I'm somewhat inclined to agree there, and we already did Nightfest). Black Mt Tower? Nope. Another bike ride, this time armed with ventolin? Nope. Bushwalk? Nope, that's me being old again. Ten pin bowling? Now David objects, due to wrist injury. Yeeeeesh. We went to Cold Rock and had ice cream! Yay! score!

Anyways. The one thing Miss J *does* like is board games. I know, right? Totally unexpected. At 11:30pm , she's revving up and hitting her stride and I'm thinking "omg it's past my bedtime". Can you say old with the slowly dawning realisation that I may actually have to admit to having CFS? Haha. Dammit.

So, Day 5 of Buy Nothing New: Success.

Day 6: We bought board games. Oops! Momentary lapse of concentration. We got Pictionary, which I've been meaning to buy for ages, and couldn't play because there's only three of us (doh) and Creationary, which is pretty much the same, but with lego blocks, and can be played with three. Hooray!

Day 7: pretty low key. I'm gonna *not* count the $250 I spent on a new window, since it's part of the house, and the house isn't new. Muahaha. Shoulda been a lawyer.

Day 8: well, that was today. No new stuffs, just a bit of icecream, a looovely couple of hours at Floriade with a friend, her hubby and her cute 6yo daughter, and a coupla takeaway coffees in my Keep Cup.

Not doing too badly. Little Miss J is off home tomorrow, and I'm to spend half the day on a bus and half the day socialising in Sydney. Hooray!

Day 4!

Well, I survived it. It's going to be a long, long month.

Who knew it'd be so hard? I don't consider myself materialistic, and I think of myelf as being "good with money", and proud of my frugal and groovy op shopping habits.  What this is doing is really pointing out to me two things:

(1) that I buy more new stuff than I realised and

(2) I do a LOT more impulse buying than I realised.

I drove out to Spotlight in my lunch break yesterday to suss out polar fleece, thinking it'd be fun to make some of these rug thingies that you can buy from Ikea. How cute would it be with your own sweet designs cut along the edge? Turns out polar fleece costs a bit more than I thought it would, though. These cost about $5 from Ikea, and polar fleece (even the cheap unprinted non-premium stuff) costs about $8 a metre.

I drove back to work, despondent and defeated. I'd hoped it'd be a fun thing for me and my niece to do rather than another night of vegging out in front of dvds. Poor little thing, so much for me being the fun aunty, I've crashed with fatigue most days. I think that having someone at home noticing what I'm doing has made me more aware of what I'm doing - which isn't much these days.

Anyways, in short, the 4th of October brought me:

- a near-miss with Buy Nothing New - I drove out there but I didn't buy anything! Hooray!

- the realisation that I'm doing almost nothing creative these days

- an awareness that my fatigue issues may need addressing on a more formal level. Soon.

Overall, a success, I'd say ;)

The internet is not entertainment, it's sneaky sneaky advertising...

It's only Day 4 of Buy Nothing New and I'm close to breaking...

I saw this posted by Clinique on facebook earlier today. *sigh* I love Clinique, and I especially adore their lip glosses (since they don't need to be applied 10 times a day like most glosses do!)

I'm resisting. I really am. But a quiet day at work is really bad for my willpower! I keep looking at the internet and finding things to buy. Eeeeek!

This is becoming quite a good exercise in mindfulness - I know this is a materialistic society and western blah blah etc etc... but wow. The whole "must not spend anything" rule is making me even more aware that every single little corner of the internet is soaked in "buy this" and "spend here" and "you waaaant this". Yeesh.

Perhaps if these are still around by the end of October, I'll buy them as a cute litte reward for myself. :) Now that's a thought worth hanging on to.

A bike ride, and a near death experience

Another day of sleeping in. I vaguely remember sleeping in as a teenager. I didn't actually sleep, mostly. I tended to get myself a good novel, curl up in bed, and stay there until some time in the early afternoon when hunger would drive me out into the real world, seeking breakfast and perhaps even some sunshine.

My niece stayed in bed until about 2pm. I was pretty impressed. We slept until about 9ish, and blamed that on daylight saving. Heh.

We didn't have many plans for the day, and I see no reason to chuck a happily hibernating teenager out of bed if we have nowhere to be, so when she finally emerged we fed her, and threw her on a bike.

Unfortunately for her, Canberra can be a bit... thingy... in the spring. Apparently it's not a nice place to be if you have hayfever. Or asthma. She had an asthma attack about half way round the lake, despite our very easy pace on the bikes. We'd been riding for about 25 minutes at that stage. So, pollen + slightly asthmatic lungs = near death experience. Not cool! Thank goodness for my happy purchase of a bike rack, I rode home in 11 minutes flat (I told you we'd been riding slowly! LOL) and grabbed the car, and did my best Squeaking Knight in Shining Armour impression. Hooray!

Another day with no purchases, though it was pretty easy considering we spent half the day just chilling at home. Nice.

Day 3: Success! :)

Going out for food?

I don't think consumables count in the Buy Nothing New thing. I can't really see how that would work! It'd be really difficult bartering for your food for a whole month.

We went out for brekky this morning. My 14 year old niece who is staying with us spent a HUGE amount of time trying to decide what she wanted for breakfast, since she'd never actually been to a cafe for brekky before. Very exciting! After a while, and after a serve of cafe pancakes, she decided that our home made pancakes the day before were much better than cafe ones. Score!

Went home, slept lots. Damn being a girl, and susceptible to strange monthly illnesses. *Sigh* Tomorrow will be better. AND I resisted going into the quilting and scrapbooking shops at Gold Creek where we had brekky. Hooray! No more stuff in the house.

We did Floriade Nightfest, and got very wet and very cold.  It was still pretty good, though a bummer to miss the movie. I love outdoor movies. *sigh* I guess you can't have it all. Didn't buy anything at the markets, though unlike last year when I wanted to buy half the stuff there, I didn't actually see anything that I wanted to buy anyway. Score!

Actually, since we're moving house in two weeks' time, the whole Buy Nothing New thing fits in VERY well with not filling the house up with more stuff that will just need to be packed and boxed up anyway. Woot.

Day 2: Success!

Buy nothing new!

So, in the interest of regular blogging and hopping on a hellishly cute wagon, I'm joining in on the Buy Nothing New month.

So, today was Saturday and today we slept in, and hung out a bit at home, then we went to Questacon. There were many temptations in the shop there, but we bought our lunch, drank our coffees from our Keep Cups, and poked around at the science centre, Learning Stuff. Much fun! The evening was spent lazing about in front of a dvd. Where did my motivation go? ;)

Day 1: Success!

Gettin' Dirty!

I went mountain biking yesterday for the first time in ages. And the first ever jaunt on my own. Oooh, excitement and risk and stuff!

I live near one of the niftiest mountain biking spots in the universe, but I haven't really been able to get out there unless scabbing a ride from a friend, since I haven't had a bike rack on my car. And with the price of towbars being what they are, I wasn't keen on having one installed on my old bomby. So, with the purchase of a cute new(ish) car, I went with the "in for a penny, in for a pound" philosophy, closed my eyes to the price tag, and bought me a towbar and a decent bike rack.

Squee!

The excitement has been enormous! I went out to Stromlo yesterday and almost went home again without going for a ride, as there was a very large event in progress when I got there. Lucky for me, I'd accessed a different entrance to the park before, when I was going out there to do trail running. So I wandered off to this entrance, and instead of being utterly crawling with a thousand humans and their canine companions, it was relatively empty. Awesome.

Why is this important? Because I'm unco-ordinated, and keep falling off my seat, and hold people up, and get all worked up because I'm embarrassed and flustered and just generally not enjoying myself. Which, ya know, kinda flies in the face of the whole point of it. Riding = fun, right?

So off I went. There was the occasional collision with rocks and trees, which is generally how me and  mountain biking work. At one point after a few too many enthusiastic brushes with death-by-close-encounter-with-a-rock the two guys sitting on top of the hill junction were treated to a surprised "shit!" followed by a disgusted "fuck" as I staggered to a halt and toppled slowly sideways. Elegant I am not, nor polite. And not even family-friendly. Ah well. I righted myself, and pretended to fuss with my water bottle, and slunk quietly behind a bush while I waited for them to move on. Nothing to see here, boys, just a dusty, happy Squeak swearing to herself and rehydrating. Um, yeah.

  The view from the top is apparently pretty good. I haven't gone all the way up there yet, but got a nice photo from about half way up. Yesterday's jaunt was more about familiarising myself with the trail network and seeing how lost I could get myself while still being able to navigate back to the car. All in all, a pretty successful morning. And WOW, my legs are sore. Heh!

Lucky Ted is a tiny stuffed toy about 3-4cm long which I used to carry in my pocket when I rode a motorcycle, and is now happily perched on my mtb handlebars. Cute!

I'd love to hear from you!

One of my favourite podcasts is no longer being produced regularly. It's a wonderful mish mash of knitty goodness and music, and I miss it! There's an episode every few months, but over the past three years or so, Cast On has been more unplanned hiatus than even semi-regular podcast. This isn't a criticism: life trumps the internet every time, and the absolutely gorgeous and talented woman who produces the podcast has an interesting, busy and demanding life.

One of the things she would talk about regularly, though, was the need to have some feedback from listeners. I get it, I really do. It's hard motivating myself to keep up regular blogging when my last comment (thanks Beth!) was from March 2010. That's a year and a half without comments. Since then I've posted 28 times, and have had no comments. Friends have commented on the facebook link, but sadly they aren't carried over to the blog, so it all looks very much like:

... *crickets* ... *awkward silence* ...

There has been, in the past, a bit of a culture (especially on knitting blogs) for people to be what I call "comment snobs", where they roll their eyes at "me too" and "ooh that's pretty" comments. These, apparently, don't past muster. I dunno... right now I'd be pretty happy with a "me too". I got an email notification of a comment the other day and came over to click on it... and it was a spammer. LOL. Nevermind.

I'm not quite sure why I blog any more. I used to blog anonymously and quite fearlessly, over at my original blogdrive blog, but these days with inlaws, work colleagues and other must-keep-onside types having potential access to my writing, it's a different game. It's more just a sharing of things I'm doing, and so I guess it doesn't make for hugely exciting reading. I cancelled my account. I re-started it. I write enthusiastically for a couple of weeks, and then I just don't think about it for a while. I guess I see a bit of the Cast-On pattern here, and I'm not sure what to do to change it.

So, this is what I'm thinking. If you're one of my facebook buds, I'd like to see your comments here, if only because it gives me a warm fuzzy and is easier to re-access and read over than my facebook feed which seems to move at the speed of light.

If you're someone who's come here by redirection or search engine, I'd love to hear from you. Even if it's just a "me too" or "neat photo" or whatever it is. If commenting is difficult or clunky, let me know, so I can make it easier. And with any luck, it'll give me the little nudge I need to move things along and get them interesting and lively again.

And then, just like that, it was spring

Zoomed around being sociable and spending a bit of pocket money at op shops today. Awesome fun! Brekkie, biking, beautiful friends, life is good. Spring in Canberra kicks arse.

I had three people stop me to ask me about my Yakkay helmet today, two of them were mothers who said almost word for word the same thing: "my daughter won't wear a helmet and I worry about her, but I think she might wear *that*". Woohoo! I point out to people that it doesn't have an Australian Standards sticker, so technically you can still get pulled over and "booked" for not having an approved helmet. I must say, however, it'd be a pretty mean cop to issue a ticket when you're obviously wearing a proper (beautifully made) helmet, when I see so many people riding in plain caps, or just plain without.

It is a shame about the AS thing. I was speaking to a guy in a bike shop who told me it costs something like $10,000 or something outrageous like that to get a helmet tested for the standards, so it figures that bike shops are reluctant to do it. I wonder if I could raise the money for it...? ;)