I Guess I Should Post something or another...

Okay, so it's been a really long time... again. I just have not been feeling like blogging for several reasons. Mostly it's been because I've been recovering from University, which was much more intense than I was expecting. The phrase Burnt Out leaps to mind, because it's true. I had a difficult time becoming interested in anything and I still am that way a bit. However I am now thinking about going for a Master's degree and seeing about moving forward job wise.

Overall things have been good. Not a lot to talk about. A good friend got me hooked on Pokemon games on Nintendo 3DS, which is tons of fun for me. I play that now and then... but for the most part I've just been spending time with my parents. Hanging out, watching tv with Dad, driving my Mom nuts and helping out when and where I am needed. I should probably be doing a lot more, but feel sort of odd about stepping in for things they can do themselves. Feels like I'd be stealing something from them. So I back off, unload the dishwasher, do grocery runs, drive Mom and myself off to holiday for a few days at a B&B.. etc.

I think my apathy also stems in part from having to let my dog go at the end of August. I still have trouble talking about it, thinking about it, because it was pretty awful. She was old, I know, but still the memory of the whole thing still sits on me like a heavy shadow of guilt. In short, she had a gum infection that needed looking to, so I took her in for a dental. This is something she's had done tons of times before, but this time something went wrong while she was under. A week later, I had them let her go. The vets were beside themselves as this almost never happens, and they all called to talk to me, either to apologize or to console me. Which was appreciated, and after they all worked so hard to save her, I can't blame them. Never blamed them to begin with. I shouldn't feel guilty about trying to do something that I thought would help, but I do. Probably always will to some degree. 

On the bright side, in December I got myself a puppy. Well... I got a puppy and Mom got a puppy. One puppy is awesome. Two puppies is ... insane.. LOL. We probably shouldn't have gotten them at the same time, but we did. I don't regret it, but I wish I could sleep a full night again. LOL!!

So here is my girl Liberty, Libby for short. She's very very smart, and I need to get my act together and start training her, otherwise she's going to run all over me. 

At some point I will also being checking out Universities for getting that afore mentioned Masters degree, which will probably be in Library Sciences and I want to really look at archiving because I just can't deal with the public anymore. Not on a large scale anyway. 

We'll see how it all goes I guess.

.... I'm really not good at blogging am I?

It's been yet another year at least since I last sat down and wrote on this thing. In that time I finished a double BA degree through the university I was attending, and went home. Basically I have taken the year off to rest, because by the time I got home I was fried. Emotionally, physically, everything. Just fried. So I have been enjoying home, spending time with my parents, my dog and trying to figure out what to do next. 

Logically that would be going and getting a Masters degree which was the next stage in the process, but even after a year I'm having a hard time getting excited about it. Jobs are the other option and although they do get me interested I have this feeling that I don't want to take the ones I'm looking at yet. I suspect it's because I tend to like applying for a job that's a sure hire. Never liked gambling and being unsure of where I would land. 

There are things that I know I want my future to involve. I love to travel. I like going to places I've never been before and meeting the people there, seeing the sites, trying the food. I don't mind sitting in airports for hours or days. I don't mind getting smashed into an economy class seat. It's worth it all getting off the plane on the other side and seeing something completely different. 

Whatever it is I do, it needs to involve photography or art or something along those lines because I get dead inside when I'm not creating something, or capturing things on a film. I get listless and weird even to myself. And I found out how much I love using a manual film loading camera while I was at Uni. It was the scariest damned class I took while I was there, and it turned out to be the most rewarding. 

When I'm not traveling, I need to have quiet. No Tv, no loud neighbors... no roommates. No one picking at me about things. This does not mean I don't want company at times, but I found out that I need to be on my own while I was away at Uni. It wasn't a situation where I needed quiet to work on papers or do research, it is a NEED. A MUST HAVE. Otherwise I get wickedly mean, and say things I don't intend to say, just to drive people off. I used to be able to deal with that feeling. Stash it away, so I wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings. Completely lost that ability now.

Lastly, whatever job I do get, it's got to be one where I function on my own, or with a few people I can work with. Otherwise it will be a total disaster. I'll end up miserable, my job performance will sink into the floor, and I'll either quit or I'll get fired. I can honestly tell an employer that if they have a deep dark basement that is full of stuff in need of archiving, recording, sorting, etc, you can dump me down there and I will get it done while you go have a life. I will be fine, and the job will get done.  It gotten to be a dream of mine to get hired at a huge museum somewhere that had a basement of junk no one bothered to catalog because it was all coming in too fast. 

You want someone to do that? I'm your person!

Human interaction is not required in my job search. 

I guess everyone was waiting to hear how my time in Japan went, or how I liked living in Australia, but although I loved Japan, and want to go back, I don't really want to talk about it because it was both AMAZING and ... kinda awful. So, in short, I love Japan. The people are wonderful and kind and I miss the friends I made there. I will be going back to visit when I get the money and the time, but don't count on a post about it. 

Australia. If I EVER get a chance to live and work there, I will do it. Hands down. I miss everything about it. Friends, climate, food, ... just everything. It's been over a year and I still wake up homesick. Then again if certain people get elected to certain offices I will be leaving. Post haste.

For now I'm just in a sort of limbo until I figure things out. Not the cheeriest of posts, but I'm not feeling particularly cheerful. I'm fine though, just grumpy. LOL!

Smirkles :) 

Okay... so it's been another year....

I seem to do this a lot.

I promise myself that I will post during the semester

and that never actually ends up happening.

It's been a year since I last posted, to the day, which I didn't realize until I went back and looked over my posts history. 

.... ah well. Another year down. 

On the bright side, I am currently in my very last semester of Uni for a double BA, and I'm very happy about that. Mainly because I am absolutely exhausted. The need to sleep for a couple of months is becoming a daily battle to stave off until I'm done. I've got two and a half months to go and then I can go home.

In January, I had a slight change of venue. 

Here are a few hints.... although, that first one probably gives it away...

Kinkaku-ji

Ryoan

............... does this actually need a caption?
.... apologies for the lint infested thumbnail... =_=

Once again, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to post stuff. Like this past year, which was insanely time intensive, this might end up being the same way. So, posts will probably be short. This one is fairly short, because I'm going to bed.

Nite Nite. :)

Nice and Boring...

University classes have officially started, which means...

well actually it doesn't mean much for me at all, except homework and attending classes.

Haven't really been doing much of late, except studying. I have been waking up fairly early and I've been enjoying some really spectacular sunrises.

Sunrise in WA

I've also been watching the birds who show up and looking for the birds that I used to see that haven't shown up again at all. I suspect this has to do with new 'improvements' to the park nearby. They want to make it easy to keep tidy, and in the process destroyed grazing areas for all the parrots that used to be here. 

I USED to see these:

 Ringneck or more commonly here, 28s

And THESE:

Galah

Used to see them ALL the time before they tore out all the grass that grew alongside the road. The parrots would come down in small flocks and delicately pluck the grass seeds off the grass. They'd spend hours doing it. Then the park people moved in, ripped up the entire area and replaced with it shredded bark(?) and cement. Since then I haven't seen one Galah or 28. No crazy bathing sessions by flocks of Galahs on top of the library. No 28s goofing around in the garbage bins.

And they wonder why their numbers are declining... Sure the area kept filling up with litter, but it wasn't difficult to clean up. The area is right next to a school, and I'm fairly sure they could've set up some volunteer group to keep it clean enough to run a lawn mower (which is probably the real reason they replaced the wild grasses).

The ducks are still here; I saw one in the pool yesterday with a couple of people who were swimming. And I still see the big black parrots like these:

They're huge, and I've never managed to catch them roosting except once, and took a really grainy photo of it clutching the tippy-top branches of a tree while a bunch of Willy-wag tails harassed the hell out of it.

I'm not sure what species this is so, I'm not giving a definite identification. It's either a Carnaby's Black Cockatoo (which I'd be very surprised at given how rare they are) or it's a Forest Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo, which is more likely. The photo was taken at the extreme range of my camera, so that I got it on camera at all was a minor miracle.

So... I've been doing nothing but classwork, taking pictures of sunrises .... and nostalgically looking at parrot pictures I took a year ago, because they're not around anymore...

Yes, I lead a boring life. 

For No Good Reason.... Dinner!!!

For the last six weeks, I have been a complete and total bum. I haven't gone anywhere and haven't done anything of particular interest. The places I usually went before I went home for a visit, just haven't been calling me like they were before hand... 

Sounds like I'm depressed a little bit... But no, in reality, I just don't want to go to those places because it now requires a hike to get to them, instead of a quick bus trip. The regular main station closed down and they now let you out on the other side of the train tracks as it were.

The result?

I don't want to hike and extra 15 minutes to get to the stores I like unless I absolutely have to go. 

Yep. I'm just that lazy.

... okay so some of this has to do with a pinched nerve in my back...

Tomorrow however, I do need to make a trip down there because I need to get a few things, and that's where the stores are that sell those things. Don't get me wrong, I have been going to the grocery store, and am eating actual food, rather than living on a bag of carrots, which is doable, if you don't mind being orange... 

... and then there are those awkward questions,"Was one of your parents a muppet??"

So, here's a sample of dinner...  and no, I don't prepare the same thing every night, but this is an example.

When I go to the store to get tomatoes... there is this option. Many colored tomatoes, and many shapes and sizes, and they taste a hell of a lot better than what you are presented with at the stores in the U.S. 

In the background, I have also hauled out my sauce of choice; it's gluten free (which allows me to eat it without having to worry about intestinal distress in the middle of the night... or no intestinal distress at all... for weeks.. which in and of itself actually worries me more) and made in Italy, and I really wish they'd bring back the small jars, because I can't get through an entire jar of it in under five days. 

*sighs*

Anyway, I just slice of a few tomatoes of varied shape, size and color and then toss them into a small pot with some mushrooms and olive oil and some Italian herbs (which the brand name people, in their infinite wisdom, have renamed bolonaise herbs, just to give me a headache and aid acid reflux activity.) which I then saute, simmer... something like that.

I let them sit for a little bit, and then move them around some more. Repeat that a couple of times until the mushrooms look a little smaller (uh, those are better mushrooms than back home too.) and kinda squishy. The tomatoes end up slightly wrinkled, but it works.

Then I start some spaghetti going at the back. That's what that pot is in the background. I use gluten free noodles too, and they cook faster than regular wheat noodles, but taste just as good. My only complaint is that they get rice stiff in the fridge if you don't eat all of it when it's hot. 

Cold gluten free noodles kinda suck... 

Over the mushrooms and tomatoes I dump about a third of the jar of sauce... or rather, I spoon it out, add in some fresh parsley and then let it all heat up together with no lid. Mainly because I don't have any lids. If I absolutely need a lid, then I use a plate, which gets complicated when the food is done and you have to wash the plate in order to use it. I've only got one large plate and one small plate. It keeps things interesting.

So, this is what it eventually all looks like at the end. There's the spaghetti in one bowl, a green salad with a few little tomatoes on top with balsamic and roasted garlic dressing, and three small squares of garlic and herb ... pizza thingies. I got pizza the other night and ordered a starter. Those are the remains. The cup is full of cranberry, raspberry and something else smoothie. No, I didn't make the smoothie. Bought a bottle at the store, and it's good stuff. 

This concludes my random dinner post.

Hope you enjoy the pictures.

... now i'm hungry...

*sighs*

When it's not funny....

When I was around 12, I went to a youth camp for a few weeks in the summer. At the time I lived in coastal mountains along the western U.S., so when you went to camp, you generally ended up surrounded by Redwood Trees, poison oak and a ubiquitous amount of ferns. Among the Redwoods, that tend to grow in fairy rings (granted they are HUGE fairy rings), there isn't much vegetation at all, so lacking cabins that's were you rolled out your sleeping bag. You left your stuff there during the day and went to do camp activities. This camp was literally in the middle of nowhere and the possibility of someone taking your stuff was extremely low which was good. On the down side it also left your stuff wide open for practical jokes. 

As a rule, I do not pull pranks on people. I hate it when someone does it to me, and I refuse to pull some stupid crap at someone else's expense. I have only broken this rule twice and only because both people seriously had it coming. In one case, the person was pulling pranks that were destroying people's things and not everyone can just say,"Oh well, I can just replace this $200 Nikes. No biggy." I was not pleased when she destroyed my shoes next. Granted some of the pranks were fairly harmless and although extremely annoying, were sort of funny. But what this particular girl was doing, was not. In the second case, the person just kept going on and on about how he was the best practical joker at his workplace and no one could pull anything over on him. I finally lost my temper with the bragging after three weeks of repeatedly telling him that he should stop now. Then one night he made me think there was an intruder in the house, and scared the hell out of me. He thought it was hysterical. 

I decided to traumatize him.

I observed him for a while to see what made him leave a load in his shorts.

I waited to see what really screwed with him psychologically.

... and then I put something together that made him scream in terror for a few minutes.

Yes. I'm an evil bastard.

Simply because I don't think any of it is funny. 

This is revenge.

When Halloween rolled around, I discovered he was jumpy during horror films, which was something of a surprise. Horror films are something I really enjoy, and I understand what causes the unease. Isolation of the main character. Removal of the ability to see well. A lack of knowledge of your surroundings. And possibly most insidious is the aberration of familiar surroundings, ie, everything looks normal but as you look closer everything is made of tiny blinking eyeballs. Vsauce gives an excellent explanation of "creepy"and I suggest a viewing. Often it is the things that are creepy that freak us out the most, because it doesn't fit comfortably into the categories of 'stand and fight' or 'run like hell'. It's just ... wrong. The braggart tended to flip out over small things that were out of place. Something that looked like one thing.. and turned out to be something else. So.. following a Halloween party, in which he had leant me a resuscitator Annie doll to use as a prop, I set up the prank. He told me to just leave the doll in his room because he'd be gone at work for a few days. ... which was what I'd been waiting for. I took the doll down to his room after he'd left, stuck her under the covers of his bed and then used some pillows to make it look like there was someone in his bed, facing away from the door. I then put a pirate mask with a hideous face over the face of the doll... the thing about this mask was, from behind it had very realistic looking luxurious blond hair, so from the door way, it appeared a very curvy blond had decided to take up residence in his bed to welcome him home. 

It had been two months since he'd pulled his 'prank' on me, and I hadn't retaliated, so his guard was well down.

I wasn't there when he got home, but his housemate told me she was in the kitchen when she heard a shriek of pure terror and a giant crash. Apparently he'd gotten home, found the 'blond' in his bed and thought I'd just been goofing off  with the doll...he had not expected the face when he pulled the covers back, and screamed at the top of his lungs, and leapt backwards through the closed closet door. 

He demolished the door.

i felt sorry about the door.

He stopped bragging about pranks around me, and never pulled one on me again. He said I was likely to give him a heart attack with my retaliations.

As for the girl at camp.... she was much easier to stop, although I think I may have gone over the top. She had already been warned several times to stop intentionally destroying people's property by the camp Moms and she just kept doing it. Her pranks had a lot of kids upset and in tears. And she'd just laugh at them. When she filled my shoes with a combination of shaving cream and cheese whiz (cheese whiz can eat through cement, and it does very bad things to sneakers) I had had it. During my free time in the middle of the week, I went around collecting slugs. Big ones ranging in size from 5 to 8 inches long and put them at the very bottom of her sleeping bag before bedtime. Her sleeping bag was one of those mummy sacks. Difficult to get into and impossible to get out of if you are panicking. It took two camp Moms several minutes to get her out of it and she went home the next day. 

I held a small funeral for the slugs that died that day in order to teach her a lesson.

They were heroes.

*sighs*

I suppose this makes me sound like a total psychopath. 

I'm not. I just really really hate practical jokes.

Warm Pictures for the Frozen

Because most of the U.S. is freezing it's keester off, and other parts of the world seem to be attempting to drown with torrential rains and winds and just general unpleasant weather, I figured I'd just put up a few pics from where I am. 

Hopefully they will inspire some warmth??

.... and no, I wasn't intending to tease. 

Sunshine through the trees

A Rainbow Lorikeet... shot from below... word of warning. Do not stand beneath lorikeets. They are deadly accurate with their .. leavings.

Wish I could tell you exactly what kind of tree this is, but I'm still attempting to figure it out. But it is lovely when it's blooming, and the breeze is blowing the petals off the tree like snowflakes. 

Sorry, no idea what this is either, but it sure was pretty in the afternoon light. I was attempting to get it all light up inside by the sun, but it didn't quite work. 

Anyway. I can tell you that it is HOT here... okay, comfortable for me, but for most people I know, it would be TOO hot. Still, I thought I'd share.