This just in

...Texas has dandruff.

Yearbook: 1968

Procrastination, thy name is Cass

It would be good if I could ever get around to actually updating this, right?

It's just that I've been extremely busy at work and; also, the dog ate my blog. Or something.

The big news around the 'hood is that my parents are moving house in September. It's the typical sea-change. Dad retired in July (-ish) and suddenly found that the concept of moving house filled him not with the crippling anxiety he'd always associated with such ventures; but with vigorous enthusiasm.

This surprised me because, as anyone who knows me or my father can tell you, we don't actually have any natural propensity for enthusiasm.

At any rate, they found a house in Rye which they really liked and subsequently won the auction which they didn't seriously consider would happen and now they've managed to sell their house for a seriously staggering sum of money and are tasked with shifting 30 years worth of accumulated crap out of the family home and off into the pale blue yonder.

This is inconvenient for the Monkey-husband and myself who are currently using their house as a surrogate home for a piano, a reproduction Georgian dining suite a, and a depression era wardrobe.

On the other hand, we will now be able to mooch free accommodation at the beach...

Am I the only person who isn't excited by Google's street view thing?

Apparently not.

(Click to enlarge)

Compulsive habits I refuse to apologise for

1. Smelling the fabric softener refills in the supermarket
2. Twirling my hair
3. Checking websites I already know won't have been updated since I last looked
4. Poking my nerd-nose where it doesn't belong
5. Watching Border Patrol
   
6. Playing Tetris DS Catch whenever I'm even moderately bored
7. Using 'stabby' as an adjective to describe my mood
8. Applying the words 'gay' and 'gaylord' to anything that pisses me off
9. Pointing out before I fix computer issues that I am not, in fact, the official IT bitch
10. Stealing my coworkers' candy

The League of Extraordinary Gaylords

Although I am a self-professed geek; I am more culture vulture than technophile.

With that in mind, imagine how much fun I am having at my very first LAN party. So far, whilst witnessing a file swapping frenzy, I have had the opportunity to explain the premise of the TV program Quantum Leap, discuss my feelings on the Alien vs Predator franchise and download all 5 seasons of Daria.

Of course this came at a price. Specifically, having to listen to the banter of 8 nerds as they battled to blow each others' virtual heads off.

I need this sign outside my office

... or a velvet rope; or maybe a roll of that 'fragile' tape.

The reason there's been no blogging around here is that I am so busy I even brought work home over the weekend.

I'm beginning to freak out a little from the sheer level of stress I'm experiencing, and I find myself making little to no time for anything other than work-eat-sleep.

and following on from the last post...

Gaiety

It is not given to all of us to be gay, but a reasonable facsimile can be achieved by throwing overboard all the dull, dreary cargo that often weighs down your heart. Out with that doubt, overboard with that fear! You are brooding because so-and-so doesn't like you.

Why worry? The person has yet to be born that everybody likes. Do you bitterly regret the past? Every day you grow a day away from it.

Are you jealous, resentful, angry? Away with jealousy, resentment, anger and anything else that makes a light heart heavy.

Gaiety can simply come from remembering that it's more fun to be gay!

~ Woman's World
M. A. White and Staff, Melbourne, c. 1952.

Mental note to self: Must remember to be more gay.

toothpastefordinner.com

playing catch-up

I've been extremely lax with the blogging. Lax +10, in fact. This is partially because I am a terrible procrastinator when it comes to writing, but mostly because I always think of the good stuff to write when I'm nowhere near a keyboard.

I should use the pen and notebook which I've squirreled away in my enormous handbag to write all these pearls of wisdom (read: over thought rubbish) down for later; but that would assume I've any facility to overcome my crippling procrastination.

The perpetuation of vicious circles is one of my special talents.

I see it's been almost 2 weeks since my last post. It stands to reason that something interesting must have happened in that time; but I'm buggered if I can think what it was.

The Monkey-husband built a media centre, that was pretty cool; and I got a 'promotion', which is probably less cool because it involves more work for a pay rise which really only cancels out CPI.

Cass = sucker; as usual.

Things have been a bit flat for me lately. Not while they're actually happening, just in hindsight. Does that make sense?

For example: the weekend was quite good at the time, but come Monday lunchtime when a coworker inevitably asked me how it was I was all "OK... I think..."

Apparently I have a three second emotional memory.

Hooray for me.

It's really just the thing to compliment my negative attention span, tinnitus and abysmal eyesight.

Bogan, bogan, bogan. Oi, oi, oi!

I spent the long weekend (happy birthday EII, even though it was in April) at Seacombe with one of the Monkey-husband's employees and his immediate family.

Those readers not familiar with the Gippsland Lakes may be wondering whether it's a worthy tourism locale. I can give you no greater advice than that found on the official Gippsland Tourism website which suggests that whilst there you might like to "visit the largest concentration of open cut mining and power generation activity in Australia."

Would I! Where can I sign up?

But I digress.

I did not, as it turned out, see any open cut mining or power generation activity. But because the monkey and his coworkers mix the bogan with a healthy dose of geek, I did witness the spectacle of a bunch of blokes destroying old computers with 4 kinds of firearm and ride dirt bikes around a disused paddock. Observe:



Film credits belong to Rob-the-coworker. It's not enough to do these things. You're not a true geek unless you film them and cut together your own shorts; thanks Rob.

And thanks for letting me ride your GF's postie-bike.

Because no one else cares

I learned two nerdy things this week. They don't exactly deserve major geek credit, but they made me happy and proud and I felt supremely useful.

Unfortunately it's not possible to make anyone I know enthuse about these sorts of things; so I'm turning to you, dear intraweb.

Item one: I can now code html emails that appear correctly regardless of the size of the recipient's preview pane.

Item two: I totally hacked into the css style guide that informs our company website and fixed that sucker up.

Nerdelicious.

toothpastefordinner.com

...of a 'certain' age

I've had this weird problem for about 18 months now where women older than myself keep offering me their seats on public transport.

It's happened about 7 times now - twice in the past 3 months - and it's really beginning to become uncomfortable because I am no longer in any doubt that the reason all these women are trying to be nice to me is that they think I'm pregnant.

I'm not. Nor am I attempting to get pregnant.

Also, I really don't see what it is that they're looking at that's giving them this impression. Admittedly, I am not the most svelte or waif-like creature; but I don't think it's merely about the proportions of my belly.

Just quietly, I think it's an age thing.

It's as if my biological clock is ringing so loudly that casual bystanders can hear it. But I'm not inclined to listen to it just now; and continual reminders from well-meaning old biddies is only serving to draw my attention to it.

If I were of a paranoid disposition, I would think that the universe is trying to give me a message from my mother.

oh dear god, no

It's official. I went and got myself a facebook.

It's something I've been resisting since the bad old days of Myspace. My excuses were, variously:

• I'm too old
• I don't need one
• they're pointless and ugly and full of horrible pictures
• Myspace is gay

Unfortunately only half of those reasons are true these days; and I'm in danger of falling seriously behind the times. Nearly everyone I know has one* and it just seems to be the best way of staying in touch without actually having to, you know, speak to anyone or leave the house or anything. I imagine it's kind of like "going together" was in grade 5.

* Apparently, even my mother has a facebook page. Sure, she hasn't actually filled out any of the profile and there's no picture of her - but the point is she has one. I did not ask her to be my friend. Is that bad?

always in threes

There are times when being married is the most comforting thing in the world because of the safety that comes in numbers.

If you've ever had a spider in your car, been invited to a friend's wedding or needed a light at the bus stop, you'll appreciate that other people aren't always hell. Sometimes other people are an absolute necessity. Other people kill spiders, fill empty chairs and light cigarettes.

Ah, but husbands... Husbands are more than mere other people. Husbands are super heroes.

When something needs fixing, burning, pruning or building; they don't worry themselves about the hows, whys or wheres. They roll up their sleeves and get straight to sorting it out. No time to worry about protecting the hardwood floor or securing the trailer; not when there's work to be done.

Which is why it's so very handy to have the Monkey-husband about the house when I pull one of my rare but spectacular fuck-up stunts.

Today I out did myself:


No, it's not The Blob. That's what happens when you put an everyday plastic chopping board in the oven.

Like a complete idiot.

It happened very simply. Despite my better judgment, I used a plastic board as a trivet while I added dripping to a roasting pan for Yorkshire pudding. Then I picked up the pan and put it back in the oven without realising that the board was stuck to it.

I was momentarily perplexed when I opened the oven 5 minutes later to lift the pan out for the pudding batter and it wouldn't budge.

There are moments in life when you regress to a pre-adolescent state, assume the fetal position and hope that someone else will make the horror stop.

This was one of those; and I've never been so grateful for the can-do attitude of the Monkey. He stepped up and totally sorted that mess o-u-t.

And he did it without a care in the world - even though it topped off a day which has already seen the demise of the Toastamatic and the toasting of his server.

Thank you, Monkey-husband. Today was truly a red letter day for the Dickersby household.

excuses

I'd dearly love to write something here. Something interesting or useful or both; but I've got nothing to work with here.

nothing

nothing

nothing

I could tell you what I ate for breakfast, I suppose. Or wax lyrical about the cyclist I saw on my way to work yesterday, blowing his nose into the air as he rode along - that made me laugh.

But I just can't seem to find the way to put one word in front of another and end up with a sentence; much less a narrative.

high school is so 1995

So, yes... That high school reunion thingy. Here is what I learned:

1. The reason I don't run into anyone I know from high school at the mall is because I don't actually know anyone from high school
2. Attending a reunion doesn't freak you out as much as you'd think, particularly if you don't actually know anyone
3. You can get the largest glass of white wine In The World for $3 at the local lawn bowls club

More than that, I learned that what happened in high school stays in high school. Sure, I remember a few things about people that I'm sure they'd wish I didn't - but no one wants to hear about it any more than I want to talk about it.

Except to you, dear intraweb.

Here are some of the things I thought but did not say to people at my high school reunion:

"Hey! You're the chick who pashed my boyfriend at the prom!"

"...wasn't your dad a chicken sexer?"

"It's not my fault you kissed like a corpse. I was just telling it like it was."

"Wow, you're skinny now. Do you have an eating disorder?"

Which brings me to the final lesson; which I didn't so much learn has confirm: I am quite the snarky bitch, yes?

Sometimes I wish I were someone else

Just now that someone was Will Betheboy because he so perfectly reflected what I have been saying about music festivals for the past 3 years at least:

"...the idea of a three-day outdoor music fest long ago changed from an awesome idea to proof that Sartre was right when he said hell is other people. This is not a knock on anyone who does attend the festival, I envy your fortitude and willingness to brave the heat and crowds in order to see live music. I am just old, bitter, and my feet hurt."

Almost a month to the day

...but I have an excuse. Well, several actually.

I've been in far north Queensland and Vietnam, respectively, for the better part of the last 33 days.

Queensland you know about, of course.

Vietnam will require much gushing and many photos; just as soon as I can locate the Monkey-husband's picasa album.

"holidays"

...as in: Dear "blank", I'll call you on Monday as I am on "holidays" at the moment.

The reason I am on holidays-in-inverted-commas and not merely on holidays is that I am too freakin' busy with work to actually be on break at all.

And yet.

Here I am in a 5 star apartment on the Fraser Coast.

The catch is, I'm doing work. I am such a sucker.

But! I did get this awesome stubby holder for $2.95. It says "Ooo... I got tanned in Banana-Land!" and the hot chick is riding/languishing on a giant banana.

It's very classy.

Keep yourself nice

Where I come from (i.e. my mother's uterus) there is a saying.

"Keep yourself nice."

Since I only have a sister I'm not sure whether it applies to the male of the species, but I'd like to hope so because boys can be truly revolting.

Keeping yourself nice means, basically, that you:

• can hold your liquor - this means not being the girl who has to have her hair held back while she vomits into the bushes at the end of the night;
• practice safe sex, including protecting yourself from STI's;
• don't say cunt - I fail at this one frequently;
• don't chew gum;
• don't dress like a slapper - which is not to say that you can't sex it up, but there are clear distinctions between flaunting your assets and just looking like a pole dancer - which reminds me;
  
• don't dance on tables, with poles or in your underwear unless you're at a midnight screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show; and
• know when you're old enough to know better.

There are about a gazillion other things I could list but you get the idea. It's about self respect, self control, autonomy and holding other girls hair back while they vomit.

With that in mind, I present to you exhibit A:

This is my cousin's birthday cake. I believe the adjective my mother applied to it was "uncouth."

I'm not entirely sure what would possess a 30 year old woman to invite her friends and extended family to feast upon an effigy of her ample bosom rendered in cake. Perhaps too much self confidence? Whatever the inspiration, it certainly ruffled a few old chooks' feathers and made some of us feel proud of our credentials as "nice" girls who are "old enough to know better."

Well, maybe that was just me. Am I a snob? Possibly. But this kind of public display does seem distinctly skank-tacular, am I right?

Also, the picture is apparently so offensive that the good people at photobucket deleted it for breaching their terms of use, or something. God bless my trashy relatives...

Our parents' generations were encouraged to settle down and become adults a lot sooner, in their early 20's. Now we've got our whole 20's and even our 30's to arse around, and nobody is quite sure what to do with it, so all we do is regress back to when we were younger and find the things that we enjoyed doing then. There's this great shift towards nostalgia and looking back... We're now being nostalgic about recent things. As soon as nostalgia catches up with the present, it will be armageddon.

~ Simon Pegg

Things I should not be nostalgic about, lest I tempt fate:

• VHS
• the Kenny Everett Show
• the Spice Girls
• canned chocolate custard
• the smell of summer rain
• sleeping over
  

Home movies = torture

...but no one said you had to click 'play'.

Sucker.

Apparently, nostalgia is an acquired smell

While I was walking to work this morning I got an unmistakable whiff of the ocean.

The smell of the ocean means many things to many people. In Australia where many of us spend long childhood summers at the beach it often conjures a happy nostalgia for sandcastles, body-boarding, summer romance and - perhaps not so happily - getting to/past third base in the sand dunes. Chaffing is a bitch, I've heard.

In me it invokes the memory of fearless sun bathing, the carnivorous gaze of young men and long afternoons playing beach cricket with family and friends.

These days I no longer have the patience for organised sports; the majority of the male population prefers their blondes thinner and with fewer opinions; and just 15 minutes in the sun will wilt me faster than a puppy in a parked car.

Despite myself, I still enjoy the nostalgia.

However.

This morning I was struck not by golden memories of happier times. I was struck by the utter wrongness of the constitution of the odour itself.

I was nowhere near the ocean but there it was: seaweed, dead things, salt and soggy sand.

Not so romantic when it's wafting from the other side of a tall brick fence in suburban Melbourne.

It was love at first sight

I spent $266 on a handbag this morning. Good for me.

I've never spent more than about $60 on a handbag before; but I saw this one on Friday in the evil shop near my office that seems to have been opened simply to suck all the cash straight from the wallets of those of us who are susceptible to the psiren call of kitchen porn and miscellaneous homewares and it was love at first sight.

I spent the whole weekend thinking about it, trying to decide whether or not I could justify spending so much. Common sense told me I shouldn't, but I just couldn't get the damn thing out of my head.

And then I got to thinking.

I would happily spend as much or more for a night out is a swanky hotel; and I really did need a new handbag - my old one is falling apart and can't hold nearly the amount of crap I seem to find it necessary to cart about with me; and this bag was soooo nice; and where would I ever find another one capable of measuring up to what would surely become mythologised, at least in my own mind, as The One That Got Away; and, and, and... I WANT IT!!!!

You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. I needed a new handbag and I knew which one I wanted. It was an open and shut case. I opened my wallet, handed over my Mastercard and shut my eyes. When I opened them again the nice sales assistant was wrapping my beautiful new bag in tissue paper, ready for the short journey to my heart.

Winning = awesome

Check it out, we won a digital camera at one of the Monkey's speed dating networking things last night.

Of course we already have a great digital camera but, now we've got two, there won't be any excuse for me not to take lots more shots-about-town.

Stand by for amateurish photos of Melbourne's Victorian and Edwardian architecture.

Week. End?

Now that I am offically no longer blogging about work I'm having trouble thinking of anything meaningful to say.

The trouble is that my brain is the consistency of soggy pound cake on account of all the everything and the what-not.

I desperately need to reinvent the sorry drone I have become but I just don't have the energy or the imagination.

Every time I feel like I'm getting just a little bit on top of things, something terrible happens; usually to the Moneky-husband, to remind me that apparently I'm not allowed to be happy or relaxed or have things go my way.

Perhaps I should spend the weekend hiding under the doona.

A flight of fancy often ends in disappointment

bodacious /b'des/

→ adjective
(N. Amer. informal) excellent, admirable, or attractive: bodacious babes.

• (US) audacious in a way considered admirable.
- ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: perhaps a variant of SW dialect boldacious, blend of boldaudacious.

and The Oxford Dictionary of English (revised edition). Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Eastern Regional Libraries. 4 February 2008 http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t140.e8312>

I so wanted the etymology of bodacious to have something to do with Boadicea; but, alas, it seems to be somewhat less ancient and deserving of only as much reverence as it gets.

Ho-hum.

toothpastefordinner.com

dooced

I used to have another blog, but then my employer found it. It's cool, I wasn't fired; but I was treated like a pariah for writing rather too candidly about my experiences of depression.

Sigh.

They even made me get a note from my GP about how "I am not a danger to myself or others." I shit you not.

In order to put it all behind me, I figured the best thing to do would be to start fresh with a new blog. One that can't be googled for by accident and taken out of context.

We shall see... Context has not often been kind to me.

P.S. It's true, scout's honour. I am not a danger to myself or others.