yoohoo?

I just noticed, when I was logging in to yahoo, that they have changed stuff with profiles and stuff again ... and (in an attempt to compete with all the other similar sites, like farceblerk etc) not only do they have a tweety thingy on there (which I found a couple weeks back) the profile page also has a place to blog ... so I blogged something on there .

I suppose I should go and actually DO what I was signing in to yahoo for - LOL
(I needed to sign in so I could look at some photos someone put up on one of the (too many) yahoogroups I am a member of ;-)

... and once I have done that, I should go and do something else besides getting lost in cyberspace again.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Z is for ZZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz ... which I should be doing at this hour of night ... but ... I wanted to do my Wednesday ABC post, and I am on holidays from work and don't have to get up early in the morning ... so I have kind of ended up sliding into a time zone where is a couple hours earlier than here ... in fact dare I admit it here? - yes why not - as far as I know Mum never reads my blog anyway ... probably more than a couple hours in a different time zone at the moment actually ... seeing I kind of accidentally stayed up a bit too late last night and ended up going to bed even later than the "wee small hours" - I think one could definitely say I went to bed at "stupid o'clock"  - and I am definitely living up to my blog title at the moment - because I actually crawled into bed as the sun was coming up!
(and I STILL took half an hour or more to get to sleep because DH was snoring - not quite ZZZZZ ... but zzzzzzzz ... which are probably worse becuase they go on for longer - when he does loud ZZZ he tends to wake himself up and stop).

now - what other Z thing(s) should I mention? Zen? ... I am sure one can search the WWW and find out all about that ... and a lot of other Z things too ...

Surely there must be some place I have been to that starts with a Z ... like Zamalek - which is a suburb of Cairo - I was there in April ... I wish I could afford to go back there (to see a couple of things I know about that I didn't find the first time) ... and/or to all the other places in the world I want to go to but have not been to ... sigh ...

This might have been in Zamalek ... or it may have been nearby ... I can't remember right now and would need the map I was using over there to work it out (I had a quick look but couldn't find one that had the suburb names in English and looked the same online, and the paper one I was using over there could be anywhere - most likely in the bedroom where DH is asleep and I should be - lol)



The sheep were lying around on the footpath where Mum and I were walking around (near the hotel we wee staying in ... which is why I need the map - I can't remember what suburb the hotel was in but I can find it on that particular map)
They were there on more than one day when we were going past there ...

(here they are again a day or 2 later)



so I guess that is where they live?

yep - looks like it:


- they have a water trough, and they probably get fed there too.
On the other side of the road was a tiny shop, too small to swing a cat in - about half the size of this room (4th bedroom/office) and that is including the counter and the space behind it ... it was a squeeze to find standing room if there were 3 customers in there at the same time! ... and to go in there one had to go down a few very steep steps, because the floor level was 1m (3') lower than the footpath outside ... but the reason I went in was because there were balls of cotton crochet/etc yarn stacked up against the window - yes I bought some ... then I went back later and bought some more (one way to use up those few odd pounds and piastres that were too small to be able to change back to Aussie money ;-)  I even bought a couple of balls of yarn, from that shop, that were made in Turkey - which is where we went just before we were in Egypt - lol

I found out about some of the interesting things in Egypt/Cairo (some that I did find/see and some that I didn't) from someone I know (we know each other through both online quilt groups and the fact that we are both members of Canberra Quilters) who actually spent a while living in Zamalek - her blog is here http://jennybowker.blogspot.com/ ... she started the blog when she went over there, but has kept blogging here and there ever since ... but unfortunately she didn't know how to put the map there, that she just put there recently ... so Mum and I ended up being right next to one place I wanted to go, without knowing where it was or realising how close to it we actually were. ( I guess I will have to think of some way of making lots of money so I can go back there again ... and/or to all the other places I want to go to!)


Z is also for ZZ plant (no not ZZ Top - they are a rock group - lol)
... I was going to do some "googling" sometime and see if I could find an interesting plant or animal or something with a Z name to do this post about - but some kind person saved me the trouble today! - someone on the freecycle e-mail list (go to http://www.freecycle.org/ to find out what that is all about) just happens to be giving away some plants - and one of them is a Zamioculcas zamiifolia, otherwise known as a ZZ plant (due to it's name being such a mouthful I guess - lol) ... so all I had to do was copy and paste that name into the search box and I now know the name of, and some stuff about, yet another interesting member of the plant kingdom! (there is some more info about it here http://www.plant-care.com/zz-zamioculcas-zamiifolia.html ... or search the www for it and you will find all sorts of stuff ... in fact there is a google search thingy in my side bar - I put it there a while back because I thought someone might find it useful - lol)

... but what is really weird is - I got a really good laugh out of the page I have sent you to with that first link - I noticed from the URL that it is part of the website belonging to a company that hires/does all sorts of things here in Australia ... but I just had to laugh when I realised that a company called RentoKILL is into hiring out (live) plants for people's offices/etc!

Now I have got 2 good laughs related to that same company ... the other one was many years ago, and it is a bit weirder and maybe not the sort of thing everyone would find funny (so apologies if you find this a bit stupid/tasteless - just skip to the next paragraph ;-)  I was talking to some bloke I knew somewhere, and he was wearing a Rentokil company shirt ... so I asked if he worked there and he said no ... so silly me asked how come he had the shirt - turns out that a mate gave him the shirt in return for a favour ... and the "favour" was to go into the female toilets (in some office building or somewhere) and "borrow" one of those sanitary disposal bins (another thing that company does/did was to provide and empty sanitary waste bins) ... and the reason the person wanted the bin was so he could then put it on another mates front lawn,on his birthday, as a temporary addition to his collection of garden gnomes ...

Talking about plants ... I think it was last time we were up to the letter Z - I posted something about Zygocactus ... and I just happen to have one sitting in a pot near the front door (I kind of meant to do something about finding a nice pot and a good place to put it when someone gave it to me ages ago, but I have not got around to it yet) ... and as DH and I were heading out to walk the dog I noticed that it is flowering - so I took a photo ...




I was going to crop the photo but A: it didn't look good when I did it and B: I figured the photo shows that I have some Zany stuff in the garden!  (if you want to get a better look at the actual zygocactus flowers the photo, like all the others on here, should be a clickable link to a bigger version)

Talking about photos and Zany, Z is also for some of the Zany things I do to some of my photos when i mess around with them on the computer. I did this ...



... the other day.

I gave the photo the file name of "BehindBlueEyes-oncewasatree.jpg" ... the second half of that name was so that I could tell what photo it was that I started with - because it now looks nothing at all like the photo of a tree that I started with!
Hmmm ... I wonder what folder the original photo was in?

[find it and put photo here? ...    no - I don't know what folder I found it in and am not going looking for it now! ... nor am I going hunting for the photos I have that ARE dog fur, rather than just look like it - I might remember to find them later and do "D for dog fur" or something - now it is time to post this and go get some sleep - lol ]

I can't end the Alpabet without at least one more gratuitous scary looking spider photo - so Z is for ... er ... Zoology? ... the Zen of being a spider?



... and if those are not what you call valid exuses for posting a spider picture in my Z post - then consider it a preview for my next ABC Wednesday post (because as far as I know, we are going Around Again, for the 5th time I think) when we start the Alphabet Again with the letter A

(... And because spiders are Arachnids and I might just be too tempted to do A for Arachnid ... Again! )

Anyway ... it it zzzzzzzzzzzzz time (well and truly - 4am - where did the time go?) and I still have some other stuff I WAS going to do before I went to bed (like try and find my glue gun so I can take it somewhere tomorrow afternoon/evening, and also go and dig my bits of crochet teapot, and the load of washing I threw them in with, out of the washing machine, to see if the crochet bits felted or not, and put them somewhere so they can dry so that I can join the bits together ... "crochet what?" ... er ... I guess I will have to take photos and post about that sometime in the next week or so?)  and ... I have at least one more photo that needs to be added to this post - but I still have not even put that Zygocactus photo onto the computer so I guess I will have to finish doing this post tomorrow  [which I just did] ... which is probably ok because I think I am actually still a little bit early (or the person who puts the thingy up for us to add our link to is a bit late?)

Yikes! ... is it really 2010 already?!

It only seems like a year or 2 ago that we were all worried about the year 2000 and the Y2K bug ...
In fact it doesn't seem like that long ago that I was being amazed by the fact that I had studied the book "1984" in high school english classes and it was 1984 already ... but on the other hand that also feel like it was 100 years ago ... odd the way my memory works ... lol

Now ... for ABC Wednesday ... we are up to the letter Y ... and there are probably lots of people posting aboout the new Year ... so what else should I rave on about?

er ... maybe just the letter Z seeing it is time to post that one in a few hours!

or I could get all weird and rave on about "Y are we here?" or somesuch ... but I don't know the answer to that - except that we are here because the world has not ended ... Yet - LOL

Yes - Y do so many people think something big is going to happen in 2012?

and Y worry? - it doesn't seem like there is much we can actually DO about it ...

maybe I should start a religion? (or maybe I already did? - seeing I used to have some weird website called "The Prophet Aykayem" ... it was on some free websites thingy that kind of doesn't exist any more ... and it had a couple of weird things I wrote back when I was a teenager, and was going to have some of my poetry on it but I never got there ... I did have plans to re-do that page and actually finish it how I was originally planning to, but I have not got around to it yet ... when (if) I do it will probably be another blog ... but the only posts on it will be the poems and stuff that I have written over the years

Yes - it will be another blog ... I just realised that I probably should make sure the URL I wanted to have was actualy available - it was ... so I used it - LOL ( so I now have a very boring empty blog sitting waiting at http://theprophetaykayem.blogspot.com/ ... one day ... year? ... I will actually set it all up and then sometime after that I can put all the poems and stuff there ... once I get around to FINDING it all - lol)

Maybe I should mention the Y generation ... seeing I have 2 of those creatures (teenage kids) living here ... LOL

and I can't not mention Yahoogroups ... in fact I was going to post a list of the Yahoogroups I am on ... but I won't - there are about 50 of them! ... I am set to "no mail" on more than half of those (I joined to see what they were like and never had time to keep up with that many - so I just stayed active on a few really good/interesting ones) ... actually, I have been a member of a couple of Yahoogroups since before the even were Yahoogroups! (back when it was called e-groups, before Yahoo took it over ... in fact before they were even on e-groups - one was on a private server but it got too big for it - had 600 members when I joined and ended up with about 1200 ... it is a quilting list and it is only for Australian and NewZealanders or people who have lived here. The other one is a crochet list that used to be on something called Onelist). I am also active on a couple of newer groups too ... a couple of art quilt ones and a couple others that are actually part of the big quilting list. I mention them in some of my posts sometimes, if what I am posting about relates to one - lol

Y is also for Youtube ... I have a couple of odd videos there ... I put them there so I could put them in this blog! (before one could add videos to posts on blogger without having to put them somewhere else first)

I am still trying to work out why so many people seem to look at, and comment on my silly video of a kangaroo! (I had a quick look but I can't find the blog post at the moment - but the video is here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkvfapchuSg )
some people have put some really weird comments on there too!
... not all nice ones either - but it doesn't bother me - that is to be expected when one sticks stuff somewhere like that - I think a lot of people must find it when they are searching for those silly videos of things getting zapped/electrocuted/etc that seem to be all over youtube. (they must be so disapointed when all they find is a kangaroo noncholantly wandering around ... and walking under the electric fence ... and just being a typical kangaroo ... )

anyway ... I am not getting any Younger ... so I should not still be UP at this hour! (oops - talking about Up - the sun is about to come up I think! - it is starting to get a bit light outside! oops!)

not only should I have been doing my ZZZZZZ post by now - I should be in bed doing ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ as well!

actually it is DH who makes the ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ... I don't snore - I have never heard myself snore yet! LOL
(not that it matters if he is snoring now ... he will probably wake up, and then get out of bed, soon!)

Yes not only did I stay up late doing this, but I spared You all and did not post about YUCKY stuff - the things I do for YOU (my blog readers ... all 1 or 2 of you? LOL)

goodnight ...

X ... is for ...?

The great unknown?

or X marks the spot - but what spot should I put the x on - the spot where the cat was asleep in the middle of the floor beside me, or the spot where she is now asleep, under the desk next to my feet? LOL

I guess the cat IS "the great unknown" sometimes - especially when one wonders why she does what she does, when she does/where she does - LOL

I raved on about all sorts of x words the last 2 times we were up to the letter X for ABC Wednesday ... including posting a whole pile of photos of Xanthorrea and other eXciting? things ... like Xylem and Xenolith etc - most of which can be found by searching the www and/or looking in a dictionary ...

There are not a lot of well known words starting with X - so I am sure someone else can post about X rays and Xylophones and stuff

... and a few ppl might resort to mentioning "The X Files" or somesuch ...

and others may even resort to stuff where x is the second letter of a word (eXciting eh?) ...

or maybe even words like "Xmas" etc where X stands for something else (like in Xmas where X is short for Christ because it looks like a cross ... or something like that)

... although what is really odd is where X gets used to fill up a space because someone decides that something has to be there - like DH's work e-addy - and that of a lot of other people (mostly government employees) who don't have middle names, but their IT people decide that e-addys need to have first and second initial and last name ... so if poor old Fred Nerk has no middle name his e-addy ends up being fxnerk @ wherever (and yes I did put spaces in there - so someone won't click it and accidentally send an e-mail to the somebody who probably DOES have that for an e-addy ... then again ... if someone was mad enough to have that as an e-addy they probably did it to be silly and therefore deserve every silly e-mail they get! LOL ... unless of course there IS a family who have the surname "Nerk"? ... I feel sorry for them if there is!)

Then ... there are those, often artists or musicians and the like, who want to put an X in their name for whatever reason - most because they think it sounds mysterious or like they are some kind of unknown entity or superhero or somesuch ... oddly enough - I even know a musician who is not famous yet (so he is still an "x" - unknown), but he quite possibly will be famous sometime soonish, who goes by a name with an x in the middle - Miki X Deus ... I have known him for a few years (but only by his first name - he is a friend of some friends of mine - and he often visits them at the same time as I do) but had not heard his music (it was an x - unknown - to me - lol) - he released his first CD a few weeks back and I listened to it the other day (he gave me a copy too - hmmm - I might have to get him to sign it next time I see him ;-) ... odd thing is - the stuff on his CD is nothing like what I imagined his music might sound like - but I really like it!

(btw ... I think his music also sounds better than his website looks too ... but maybe I am just fussy about what websites look like? ... or worried that some of the people reading this might be? ... lol ... I think what I am trying to say is if you don't like the look of the website (it does look a bit like a weird heavy metal/etc website) go listen to his music anyway - you might be surprised at how good it sounds ;-)

now ... where was I?

actually ... I was sitting in front of the computer ... still here from when I posted my (late) W post (in Which I said I was about to go Walk the dog) ... I decided to start writing the X stuff while I had a few things in mind, before I forgot some of them ... but now I am going to leave this saved as a draft and see what happens ... I eXpect to post this in the neXt day or 2 ... but we will see ...

X marks the spot I was up to when I eXited this and went to walk the dog?

(and if/when I do post this later you will know that I walked the dog at 3am and came back ok without becoming a story line for an episode of The X Files or somesuch - lol)

X

ok ... it is now the next night ...
and ... actually ... it was about 4am before I got out the door to walk the dog ... and the way he dogged my footsteps as soon as I got up from the computer I am sure he must have known what I was planning to do and was making sure I didn't forget/change my mind or something - LOL
(he also took me a bit further than I was going to go too - we got to the lane way that I was going to go up and he decided that we were going to keep going a bit further down the street before we headed back toward home - LOL - but it was only another 5 minutes or so longer that way ... although I think he would have kept going even further if I had let him!)

... methinks I might go to bed a bit earlier tonight though ... lol

(not that it is early even now ... but it is not as late as I was in here last night, and the dog has already had his walk this evening)

Now ... are there any other X things I should mention? ... maybe XML? - which is what you get if you subscribe to this blog as a feed (using your web browser, a feed reader, or via one of the buttons way down at the bottom of my rather long side bar ... lol)

hmmm another x - as in another unknown factor - I was just fiddling around and noticed that there is a new version of this editor thingy ... that one can choose to use, or leave it as the old one (I think I saw that a month or 2 ago but didn't change it at the time, then forgot about it) ...  I just read what blogger says about it and it says it does a few things better ... and a couple of those things it does better/differently are things I figured would be handy - like how I can add photos ... so what better excuse to add one or 2 in here than wanting to mess around and try it out - eXperimenting - LOL

... I guess I had better FIND a photo or 3 to add ...

er ... oops - I forgot to add this Water dragon to my w post! LOL

... it was at the botanic gardens when I was there a week or 3 ago ... I Went somehere nearby and Was early, so I Went for a Walk in the garden for a While ... and took lots of photos - LOL

now ... back to X?

I have been searching the www while writing this post ... looking for any interesting x things I didn't know about ... and trying to work out if I went to any places that start with an X when I was overseas earlier in the year ... I may have been at or near Xanthos ... but I am not sure ... lol

but ... I did find an interesting Australian plant called Xanthosia rotundifolia - also known by the common name of "Southern Cross" - LOL

hmmm ... this newer version of the text editor works eXtremely well, btw ...
(well I hope it does - I guess the real test is when I post this and make sure it really does work ok - and u will see what time I actually post it, rather than the time I started writing it, or the time I changed it to, like it did with the old one ... although I can still change what time shows up if I want to, but I am not sure if I can backdate it or just schedule it for future posting ... I will probably find out if I do some eXperimenting - lol)

ok ... one more picture - also not really an x ... but it is time I went and got some sleep!

ok ... a bit weird? ... I was actually at the art gallery at the ANU School of Art (looking at their graduating artists exhibition) ... and I noticed that this collection of cleaning stuff, tucked away in full view under the stairs, looked a bit like a work or art too - LOL
(hmmm nice contrast between the white and the primary colours, pleasing composition ... whatever ...?)
I didn't notice those plastic wine glasses on top of the fire hose box when I took the photo! - looks like someone was having a good time at some time ... (probably at the opening of the exhibition in the gallery a few days earlier maybe ... which possibly means that the cleaners are better at tastefully arranging their buckets and stuff than at noticing the rubbish that needs cleaning up? ... then again - they may only be paid to do floors, not things like benches and the tops of tables and fire hose boxes ;-)

er ... now it is nearly as eXtremely late as last night ... but don't plan to walk the dog this time so if I go to bed now I will still be an hour earlier than I got there last night - lol

so ... in case I am not in here actually posting something at midnight tomorrow ...

Happy New Year ... and all that stuff ... lol

and, seeing this is an "X" post (about the letter x, not an x rated one ;-) I will even sign off like I do in my e-mails to Mum and Dad (and used to do in my letters, back in the dim dark ages before e-mail) with some kisses - XXXXXXXX

(note: these are "peck on the cheek" type kisses, like one does when greeting people etc, not sloppy romantic ones - I AM happily married after all!)

W ... is for Where have I been and Why have I not posted for a few Weeks?

What? ... actually I have not been anywhere ... but I have been busy ...

Anyone who actually reads this blog (there are one of 2 of you I think ;-) is probably wondering Where I am ... especially seeing I Was supposed to be posting something every Week, for Wednesday ABC ... in Which We just happen to be up to the letter W this Week - LOL

The second last thing I posted here (besides the post on Christmas day) was a few Weeks ago, back in November, when I cheated and posted about the letters Q and R at the same time. I did start writing a post that covered the letters S and T ... but I didn't have time to put the photos in at the time, and I kind of never got time to do that ... I might do that sometime soon, or maybe I should save it for the next time we get up to the letters S and T, if Wednesday ABC keeps going for another round. (if it doesn't, maybe I should just work my way through the alphabet again anyway? ... then I could do U for Up too late, and V for very busy/Very disorganised or somesuch?)

Anyway ... What else should I Write about for W?

Water?

yes - Why not ... how about a link to a Weird TV advert, which is currently airing here in Canberra, about saving (not Wasting ;-) Water - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxW8oRuimdM

Why Would I Want to post about a TV commercial?

Well ... becuase I am IN it!

... somewhere ... lol

It was filmed about 12 weeks ago, during the last lot of school holidays, and I got to jump on a mini bus With a few other people and go and be part of it all (then I Went for a Wander around Floriade, and Walked to a resteraunt Where I met up with DH, Who drove there, and W had a Wonderful meal).

When I Watched the ad I couldn't see any close up shots of myself (those must have ended up "on the cutting room floor ;-) but there are at least a couple of shots of lots of people pouring Water that I know I would have been in ... I think I can see someone that looks like it might be me in at least one of those ... that is if I remember correctly What I Was Wearing that day ... LOL

btw, there is one other Weird thing about that TV ad - there was/is also a bit of controversy about it - seems that some other group is upset because this lot stole their idea of using blue buckets - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/11/2768455.htm
- I don't see What the problem is myself - they are both after the same thing - trying to get people to save Water - seems some people Will argue about anything - LOL

W is also for Weird ... if you want an example of something Weird - just read any one (or more) of my blog posts! LOL
(or even just this one - I think it definitely qualifies as Weird!)

A While ago, I think I Was thinking of posting something about Wool for W ... probably the thing I Was talking about maybe posting for R, but didn't ... and Was then going to post for S becuase I could have also done that, but then I got busy and decided to do S and T together instead ... I kind of Want the Wooly one to have a post all of its own, and I don't think I have ever got around to taking any good photos of it eiher, so that one might have to Wait until We get up to another letter I can use it for (possibly C, for crochet/colour, ... but most likely D for dying, because that Would Work better, and I have other crochet stuff I can, and Want to, post about for C - lol)

Of course I also Want to say W is for Wishing you all a Wonderful Whatever it is you celebrate at this time of year - Merry Christmas/happy holiday/Hanukah/etc or Whatever, ... and a happy New Year if I am not in here again before then to say that - lol

er ... yes I was here again before Christmas - but I posted a short Season's Greetings one on Christmas Day and WAS planning to finish and post this one the day after ... but I kind of didn't get around to that until now ... oops ... as usual - lol

hmmm - I Wonder Why I didn't just post this at the time that I Wrote most of it? ... probably because I Was called away from the computer in the middle of it and never got around to coming back (blogger has this really handy thing where it automatically saves stuff as one is Working on it ;-) ... then I didn't get around to logging in and editing it because I was thinking I probably needed to add some photos ... hmmm ... but What photos Was I going to add? ... probably the one I posted on Christmas Day actually - the "Christmas Card" one that I had not actually created yet - lol - yes that Would be it ... LOL

hmmm ... methinks I might just not bother With adding any photos to this post - seeing I missed being able to add my link to the ABC Wednesday Mcklinky thingumybob anyway ... maybe I should just date this post as being yesterday - seeing that is only about 2 1/4 hours ago ... and then start working on my X post ... then again ... my X post can probably Wait a little While (as long as it isn't a Week late like this one is!) - because I kind of Want to Walk the dog before I go to sleep ... yes I know it is nearly half past 2 in the morning - the dog Won't care What time it is! ... and I have been sitting down for the last hour or 2 in here, and an hour or so before that in front of the TV with DH (and I have been inside most of the day sorting out some junk that got put in a pile in the lounge room "just for now" and stayed there for Way too long) - so I feel like I need a bit of fresh air (it is summer here and not cold outside tonight) and excercise - half an hour Walking the dog before I go to bed is probably healthier than going to bed and then lying awake for an extra half an hour (or more) While feeling Wide awake and Wondering if I should have Walked the dog before I came to bed - LOL

yes ... this post is definitely Weird, as usual ...

well - it could have been Worse - I could have posted all about Wee, or Weevils or Weeds or Wiggly bits of anatomy or Whatever that you Weally don't Want to know about ...

Seasons Greetings

Chrismas Day is almost over here so this post is sort of a bit late ... but better late than never?

Merry Christmas

... or if Christmas isn't your thing then happy whatever else you might happen to celebrate at this time of year ...




yes ... I messed around with a photo I took the other day ... I didn't do much messing around with it though (scribbled on it so the street lights became Christmas trees, added the words and re-sized it smaller)... this new(ish) computer has a slightly different lot of photo editing software on it and I can't find some of the weird stuff I used to use in the other one and don't want to spend all night looking for it/fiddling with it (and if I did do more stuff I would probably go too far and make it look worse, knowing me - lol)

btw - the reason I took that photo is because I like how the moon looked.
(you should be able to click on the photo for a bigger version if u can't see it properly)
... it also reminds me of a song I like - "The Whole Of The Moon" by the Waterboys - which will now probably end up going around and around in my head for ages ... probably while I am trying to go to sleep or something - LOL

Quilt Retreat ...

I was going to post about Quilts for the letter Q for Wednesday ABC ... but I kind of never got there ... in fact it is almost time for the letter S (I notice I have also just missed out on being in the linky list for R ... I Really should get myself more oganised - LOL)

But while thinking, the other day, about what I could post for the letter R I Realised I could cheat and post something about the Recent Quilt Retreat I went to.

It was the Canberra Quilters Annual retreat, and a great time was had by all ... and of course I took a whole pile of photos ... the first one was of some angels someone had made from some fringy stuff - I won't include that one because they are not my work, and I only took the photo so I would remember to have a go at making something similar (I have some of the same fringy stuff and the photo is all I need to remind me how she made them ;-)
The second photo I took was of some food, with my "block of the weekend" that I was sewing - the Retreat theme was "spots and stripes pyjama party" and the block was stripey and spotty stars ... and I just happened to notice that my slice of ... slice - lol ... that we had for supper just happened to have stripes on it!



(hmmm all those S words - Should I make this my "s" post as well? ... tempting ... but I am hoping to maybe post about something I did at a place that the name starts with an S ... although I might Save that idea to use for the letter T because it also involves Textile art, and/or I might find/take some pictures of some of my stitching, and/or at least I should be able to throw together a few Sunset photos if I don't get organised enough to do one of the first 2 ideas ;-)

I also took some photos of people ... but I won't put them here because I didn't ask any of them if they minded being on my blog ... and some of them might mind - especally the pictures I took while we were all dressed up in our spotty/striped PJs (and/or silly slippers - lol)
Drats ... I should have handed someone my camera to get a photo of me - I dressed up as a banana in pyjamas - LOL
(then again ... my costume wasn't a very good likeness of either B1 or B2 so it might frighten any kids who saw that photo!)

The Quilt Retreat was out of town, in a place with lots of bush/trees and stuff ... so ...

I also took some photos of Rocks



and Rabbit poo!



... on some rocks - lol

and some 'Roos (Kangaroos)



with Red clouds behind them ... I then went around the other side of the building and noticed the bright orange sunset, which then faded to a bright Red one:



... and then it Quietly faded to grey ... lol

(by which time it was getting Quite dark ;-)


Quick - Run away - before I get too ... Silly ...

Peeling Paint ... etc.

After much thinking and wondering, and some Procrastinating (which I am very good at hence the fact that I am now finishing and posting this last weeks ABC Wednesday post more than a few days late!), and noticing that although I have a few unfinished Posts, saved as drafts, that would Probably be quite good P ones for ABC Wednesday, they already have titles that suit them way better, but don't have anything to do with P ... so I have spent the last few days Pondering about a few other Possibilities ... "Playing with bleach" was one of the things I was thinking of Possibly Posting for P ... but it already has a better title ... so I got to thinking ... it really is time I Posted about something else I have actually Produced, rather than just raving on about stuff ... I can use Crochet for a C post, and Quilts are always good for Q ... but what about P ... I have not done any Painting lately ... but ... then I remembered that I have been taking photos of Paint ... Peeling Paint ... on my friend's Laundry ceiling mostly!

... there is actually a flicker Pool for Photos of Peeling Paint ... Perhaps I should Put these Pictures there?

[photos of peeling paint ... preferably from a few different years, in chronological order?]


er yes that was about where I saved this post ready to come back later and Put the Photos in ... but I Procrastinated a bit ... so now this Post is a bit late Perhaps?

now ... where about on the 'Puter did I Put those Photos?

- all over the Place actually - there have been several different occaisions where I have ended up taking photos of that same lot of Peeling Paint!

The Problem is not so much where the photos are - they are in folders filed under the dates they were taken ... Problem is - when DID I take the Photos of Peeling Paint?! LOL

I found a Preying mantis and some Prickly Plants - which I have Probably Put on this blog already, some time in the Past. I also found a Photo of DHs ripped Pants - but I would not be Popular if I Put that here becuase he was still IN them!

... no, not in that folder - that was some Primary school Play the kids were in ...

hmmm ... here is one of Pixel (the other cat we used to have) on a Pink and green mystery quilt



- yes I chose pink and green fabrics to do a mystery quilt ... and I was actually Pretty Pleased with how it came out! - in fact it was Perfect!

er ... here is the "brag photo" I got someone to take - the finished quilt hanging in the quilt show, with me standing beside it ... I don't usually bother to do that any more (unless someone comes up and says they want to take the photo for me ;-)
this was taken [andrea looks at date on photos] ... eeek - 9 years ago ...



a Pink sunset:


I took that one from the top of some mountain - a Pile of us from the Land Rover Club went up there and had a Picnic tea together ... the we all drove back in the dark and I took a Pile of Photos of People, when someone got a Puncture and we had to stop while they changed the tyre ...


[a night and most of a day Passes - I was feeling a bit Peculiar, and it was getting rather late, so I went to bed (I felt really tired, which is unusual for me at that time of the night when I have had enough sleep the few days before, which I had done - think I was fighting off some cold/bug which I seem to have fought off ok because I feel fine today)]

ok ... back to Perusing folders of old Photos ...

I just found this Purrrrfectly cute Pottery Pussy Cat that DD made when she was quite little



(I think she made it at school or somewhere - it is clay, but it kind of never actually got fired in the kiln so it is probably rather fragile ... and one ear kind of fell off too ... but I still have that so I could probably stick it back on with a bit of "waterglass" and maybe get it fired sometime ...)

ok ... right Place ... but no Peeling Paint in this lot - however this photo shows some Peeling wall Paper!



... and 2 people doing Peculiar things! LOL ...

The house we used to rent, a couple of streets away from this person's place, also had Peeling wall Paper ... and both had been done without Putting any kind of Primer onto the Plasterboard/whatever that the walls were made of ... and both have/had bodgy/dodgy elecrical wiring and other DIY stuff done to them ... I wonder if the same idiot built both of them? ... or maybe there were just a lot of idiots building houses when that area of Canberra was built on ...

oh btw - I am not sure what Peculiar thing we were doing to Poor "Mungo" (the fabric creature in that Photo) ... I ended up taking quite a few Peculiar Photos at that Party, and someone else took a few more Peculiar Photos with my camera - I think were were Probably getting Particularly P... er ... tiddly - as one tends to do when Participating in the consumption of Port and/or other alcoholic beverages, at Parties ... and I think that one was a Particularly Pleasant Party too.
(and yes that is me in the Photo ... and the top of the head of the Person whose house we were at ;-)

ah ha ... found the Peeling Paint ones I was looking for ... back in 2001 (a month or 3 after the Party ones)



Does that laundry ceiling need re-painting?


no - why re-paint it - it looks too interesting - it takes years to make a "work of art" like that! LOL

... but it doesn't take long to make a "work of art" like this one:

(this was part of one of my photos of the Peeling Paint - but I fiddled around with the colours in a Photo editing Program ... one with a P title - Paint Shop Pro - lol)

I was starting to wonder if I had been imagining that I had a Pile of Peeling Paint Photos, except for the fact that I remembered creating that blue one ...

... but I had forgotten all about this one:

Particulary silly isn't it? - I think I did that to send to my Dad or someone - lol

ok ... I am sure I had some other Peeling Paint Photos ... but I don't know when I took those either ... and I really should Post this Post before it is time to do Q ... which it will be in a day or 2 - oops?

I suppose if I find some more Peeling Paint Photos while I am looking for Q ones (I might see if I can find a few Quilt photos ;-) then I can always do P.S. for this Post before I Post the Q one ...

Yes - I am a bit Peculiar ...

Oh No, Missed ...

... a couple of weeks of Wednesday ABC ... again ...

I Must have been too busy?

My M was possibly going to be some Musings on a few things, and was definitely Meant to Mainly be Me Mumbling on about My adventures with Making a Multicoloured crochet shawl using some leftover wool (Maybe Merino?) and turning it into a rainbow with vinegar and food dye in the Microwave oven ... I guess I Might be able to use that for R or S - lol

N was going to be all about how Naughty I was to miss my M post ... and possibly I was going to find photos of a few Not so Nice (and maybe even Nasty looking?) things which I guess you are spared from ... for Now ... LOL

Oh well ... I guess it is now time to ramble On with some O things ...

Oh dear ... I wonder what I should post about?

(maybe it is a good thing that I didn't get a good video of something that someone else who was watching the same thing did get one of, and e-mailed it around to his friends with the title "Oh Dear" ... lets just say that if one is going to decorate one's house and yard like a Christmas tree, complete with lit up model reindeer on your front lawn, then one is sure to attract a bit of attention, and there is at least some likelyhood that some of that attention is the sort of attention one would not want, which upon seeing the security video the next day, might lead one to come knocking at the door of the house where the party was and ask them to make sure their guests please refrain from doing THAT sort of thing in their yard ... what sort of thing? - well, the guy who did it was a "Kiwi", and was rather drunk, and it was the sort of joke that some people consider to be (even more than?) a little bit "Off" so you will just have to do what he did and use your imagination)

Ok ... ?

... oh?

that was not ok?

oh well ... oops? LOL

sorry

I guess I will have to think of some Other things to put in here:

hmmm ... there must be some Odds and sods that I can post about?

I wonder if I took a photo of the Orange bag that I made?

[andrea saves post and logs out, goes to bed (it is rather late ... almost "stupid O'clock"), gets up, goes to work ... and hopefully comes back in here sometime b4 this has to be posted, and goes looking for photo]

A day or 2 later:

... I didn't get around to comeing in here last night, but I did happen to find (and put somewhere where I could get it if need be) that orange bag ... just in case I can't find the photo of it that I am fairly sure I did take ...

I also just decided to have a look at how many posts there are on my blog ... and thought I was getting quite close to the 250 mark ... until I noticed that I actually have 19 posts saved as drafts! LOL
(one or 3 of them are Wednesday ABC ones too ... including one called "O etc" that actually Only has a couple of ideas for P and S typed in there ... and there is also an N and an M one, each with a few ideas "jotted down" in there, that I didn't actually post LAST time we were up to those letters - so I guess I have missed those 2 letters twice around now - lol)

Anyway ... I guess I should see if I can find the photo of that Orange bag ...

but first ... if I want to call it "Oh" instead of "Zero" - O is how many friends I have on facebook ... LOL
(yes ... I sort of got side-tracked and ended up signing up to faceblerk ... somehow I can't seemyself actually using it much ... lol ... I had to do it though - because DD told me not to ... but I didn't bother to send her a friend request, I know she would only say no)

[another day passes]

... it is now Wednesday evening - I was going to finish this and post this last night, but I was still working on it (well - more like getting side-tracked with other stuff) when Tea was ready, then I went to a meeting, and didn't come back in here when I got home (because it was rather late) ... so now it actually IS Wednesday ... which means I had better finish writing this and actually pOst it.
(actually it is more finding and adding photos and stuff that I need to do - I don't think the last 2 or 3 posts had any pictures in them at all so this one needs at least one)

btw ... Facebook is stupid ... seems that if I want to have a user name (well why wouldn't I want to be "Aykayem" there, same as I am almost everywhere else online?) I have to "verify" my account ... I thought I did that ... but no - I have to put in my mobile phone number and do it via SMS ... now why would I want to do that? - I don't intend to actually USE facebook on my phone ... what if i didn't even have a mobile phone? ... and why the heck should I need to give them MY phone number (and probably access to then send me junk I don't want to be sent) just so I can call myself by my online name?! ... yet another of the many reasons why I am blogging here on blogger, rather than one of those other places - LOL

Ok ... now that I have told Facebook Off ...

Oh - I found that Orange bag photo ... found it faster than I found where the photos are on this computer (it's new, and I wasn't sure which letter the external hard drive that had them on was - there were 3 of them listed - DH likes his technology, which is fine by me because I like using it - lol) ... the photo was actually in the 6th folder I looked in ... one I almost didn't look in, and kind of only did look in there because I looked in the one before it by accident - they were both folders of 4WD trip photos ... but there were one or 2 other odd Orange O photos in there, because I took them last year when I was doing a post for some other Odd alphabetical blog thingy that used to happen (it kind of stopped because the person doing it got rather busy and was finding it a bit too Onerous a task thinking up random letters and catagories of stuff to post - we were sort of playing blog scattergories - lol)

here is the bag:

>


and the O post it was part of is here (so I didn't even need to find the photo to upload - all I had to do was what I did, and go and copy the link from that post - why put it up on blogger twice? LOL)

and ... like I said in that post - it was 3 O things in one photo - an Orange bag, an Orange crochet Ornament ... and an Odd one out (isn't a textile item, and I didn't make it) - an Orange carrot ...

I know - I am Odd



At least I didn't write all of this post in Orange!

But I did find another Odd Organge photo:



an Odd photo of Orange street lights shining Orange light Onto the road, with an Orange sunset in the background.
(I wasn't quite On my Own when I took the photo though - the dog was with me ;-)

Ok ... I think I have finished this post ... time to say "Over and Out" ...

(before I get tempted to compose an Ode to the letter O Or some Other Odd thing?)

Lost In Cyberspace

I often end up getting "lost in cyberspace" ... my excuse? - well - usually something along the Lines of "I was Looking at someone's blog/a Link someone posted to the quilting List I am on and I found a Link, which Led me to another Link ... " and it sometimes even continues along the Lines of "... I found another Link where I ended up Looking at something that I Liked ... then I found that page I had seen before and Lost ... " or "and I found that stuff I had fogotten that I wanted to go Looking for ... " and of course I kind of end up Loosing several hours of the day/evening, usually when I should have been doing something else instead!

Actually that is sort of how I ended up finding our about ABC Wednesday (well - I guess I could have ignored it and not joined in ... but ... it Looked like fun ;-)
... and as you might be able to guess from the fact that the title of this post starts with an L, and most of the L words in this post have a capital L - this week we are up to the Letter L ... LOL
(and I am acutally typing this a Little bit early - it is Sunday ... so I will probably Leave this saved as a draft and finish it Later ... or if I finish it before it is time to post it I might Let blogger post it for me when it is time - Like I have done for a few of my other posts - including that rather Loopy K post)

it was Like that today ... I was Looking at a blog post (one I am subscribed to - it gets sent to me in a daily e-mail, along with anything that is posted on any of the others I am also subscribed to that way) ... and it had a Link to this Little article that someone had in a new quilting magazine, and has posted to her blog - the article is at http://quiltinggallery.com/VirtualQuiltingBee.pdf (the blog post is here - http://quiltinggallery.com/2009/09/30/the-virtual-quilting-bee-how-quilters-connect-online/ )
and there was one of those "you also might like" links on the bottom of the post and one of them looked interesting - so of course I had to go there ... "365 Days of free motion quilting designs" sounded way too interesting to miss!
... she is up to about day 50 something ... I think I had worked my way back to about day 9 when she mentioned a website about henna designs ... which reminded me that I had been meaning to Look that up and maybe use them for quilting or embroidery designs sometime (not sure what Life I am going to have time to do that in ... probably not this one, seeing I already have a Lot of ideas and not much time to do them all ... )

hmmm - seems there is a Lot one can do with Lines ... I Like these Lines - http://www.hennapage.com/henna/what/gallery/twiddle18/
(when I work out how to find an extra 50 hours in each day I might have to print some of these ideas out and use them for inspiration for quilts/etc.)

[an hour or 2 passes]

oops ... I got lost again ...

there are Lots of Lines in these photos -
http://www.highton-ridley.co.uk/monochrome/index.html
... for some reason black and white photos often work better than if one had used colour (lines, texture, contrast etc all stand out and make thinks look different than they do in colour) ... but the colour ones are nice too.

I found that site because I folowed a Link there from his blog ... the Link to that was on another blog - becuase he has a contest on his blog, which I am in the process of entering ... to win one of his photos one has to comment on his blog post about it (here - http://www.highton-ridley.co.uk/blog/2009/10/october-freebie-prize-draw-now-open.html ), post about his contest (oh drats - now you will all enter and I will have less chance of winning ... then again ... there are only about 3 people who read my blog so I guess that is ok - LOL) with the links to his contest and gallery, and go to his gallery at http://www.highton-ridley.co.uk/ and reccomend one of his photos.

so ... I will leave him a comment once I have a URL for this blog post, I have now posted about his contest here (with the links to his blog/gallery), and I have been and recomended a photo ... I have also added to the ever growing list of blogs I "follow" on blogger - that sort of happened as part of the process of recomending a photo - LOL ... I found quite a few photos I like, but I ended up choosing one which would make a great Christmas present to Mum and Dad - I found one that I think Mum might like ... if I win it then hopefully Dad will too ... lol)
this one - http://www.highton-ridley.co.uk/colour/pages/pebble-beach-front.html - which actually isn't black and white - LOL ... in fact what I Like about that one is that the colours in it kind or work really well (er ... spot the textile artist/quilter? lol)
hmmm ... I might go and recomend a black and white one too ... I Like this one - it has Lots of interesting Lines in it -
http://www.highton-ridley.co.uk/monochrome/pages/fencing-in-the-dunes.html
oh ... I think it said we also need to be his friend ... er ... OK - I will be friends with anyone who wants to give me free stuff that I want - LOL

er ... I have kind of Lost half an afternoon and half of an evening ... and the dog would have Liked me to take him for a Long walk ... oh well ... might not be a Long one, but I had better go take him for one now (Luckily neither of us mind walking in the dark).

If I think of any more L stuff , or get Lost in cyberspace and find some more, I will add it here Later ... otherwise this will (all things working ok/etc) post itself in the wee small hours of the morning on Tuesday.

it doesn't add up ...

The other day, I was reading some blog or another ... and there was a photo of something that looked like a snake, but the person called it a "slow worm" ... so ... "curiosity killed the cat" and all that - I googled it ... no it isn't a snake, or a worm ... it is actually a legless lizard (and quite an interesting creature) - so I am now happy in the knowledge that the person who took the photo/wrote that blog post does know what she/he was holding in their hand, and I know it isn't a snake, and he/she isn't about to remove themself from the gene pool because they thought that all long brown things in the garden were worms ...

but ... when I read the entry on Wikipedia - here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anguis_fragilis

I got a bit worried about this bit ...

"it has been said that a slow-worm is the longest living lizard, living about thirty years in the wild and up to fifty-four years in captivity (this record is held by a male slow worm that lived at the Copenhagen Zoo from 1962 to 2009) "

er ... ok ... so the one at that zoo lived for 54 years? No I am not worried that a lizard can live that long, but ... it was born in 1962 - the same year I was ... and is either still alive or died this year ... either way it has been alive for about the same time I have ... eek! - am I THAT old?!!!!! ... have I lost a few years? ... have I actually been older than I thought I was all this time? ... I might feel like I am 54 sometimes ... but I am NOT - LOL
Methinks someone can't add up ... or can't coun't ... or made a typo or something.

Yes - a very good reminder that even though you find something on the www, even on a site with a good reputation/etc - it isn't always a totally accurate source of information.
(but try telling a high school student that! LOL)

... and now that you know what year I was born - you can do the maths and work out how old I am (or how old I will be when I have my birthday later in the year - lol)

hmmm what a pity I live in the wrong country to find slow worms in MY vegetable garden ... they look so interesting ...

Keeping Up

... more like NOT keeping up actually - I seem to have missed quite a few letters for ABC Wednesday ... and that isn't the only thing that I seem to have got behind with ... sigh ...

Is it just me, or does life seem to rush by faster these days?

I thought about doing a late post for J ... but I am not sure you really want to read a post about Junk - lol (I could probably find a few pictures of rubbish to put here, or I guess I could have posted pictures of my sewing/etc stash - I collect all sorts of stuff and DH says that most of it is junk!) but the next letter is due in a few days so I decided I may as well start writing a K post a bit early - then I might actually be able to put one up on time ... if I remember to finish writing it ... I guess I could set it to post automatically anyway ... but last time I did that I never came back and finished it so this time probably wouldn't be any different - LOL

I guess I could still put some photos of my junk here and call it "Keeping things" ... LOL

(probably easier than finding photos of my Knitting - seeing I don't do much of that - I prefer to crochet ;-)

hmmm - I actually DID post a J post last time around (where I did mention my Junk) ... but without pictures - so I guess I could put them in here instead - LOL

I wonder what I would have posted for the letters I have missed?

G for gee I am disorganised? or goodness me where has the time gone?

H for how did I get behind again?

I for I don't know where the last few weeks have gone/I don't seem to ever have time to get all the things done that I want to.

... and J for just another boring blog post? LOL

but if you Keep reading ... I might eventually get to the point ... if there is one ...

maybe I should post about what I have Kept up with ... just ...

I did manage to finish some stuff for that ACTTAA exhibition that I mentioned in my last post
(yes - not just that quilt, but some other stuff too)

I finished this rather odd crochet rug (could it be a Knee rug? lol) for the exhibition:



It was meant to look like paddocks seen from above ... it does to me ... and to the person who told me it made her home sick for the area of farmland where she grew up ...

I also made this bag:



it is made from some odd fabric I found in my stash (I think it is linen ... looks/feels like linen ... could be anything - my fabric has come from all sorts of odd places). I machine quilted a few wiggly lines on it then hand stitched/etc in between them ... and added a few dangly/etc bits. The light green yarn is some from a ball of acrylic yarn that I bought at a farmers market in some town in the middle of Turkey! (it cost me the equivalent of a dollar, and I wish I had bought more than one ball! ... I used it to crochet a silly beanie - which I did on the tour bus the day after I bought it! ... if I had realised how good it looked used for embroidery/stitching, I would have bought more ... I guess when the half a ball I have left is gone ... I will have to use something else instead ... )

Those 2 things (the rug and the bag) and the black hole quilt I just posted about (and yes I did just write that post ... I am trying to get this one done BEFORE it is time to post my K post ... in fact I started writing this post yesterday) ... those 3 things were what I had on display in the gallery section of that exhibition.

I also made some stuff for the fashion parade ... I also modelled the stuff I made in the fashion parade ... people took photos of me modelling it, but I never got around to taking any photos of the stuff myself ... if I do that (or get sent any photos someone else took) in the couple of days before I post this (or it posts itself if I decide to set it to do that ;-) then I will put them in here ... but if not, I won't - LOL

The other section of that exhibition is the bazaar ... and I made some stuff for that too.
I also had a pile of stuff left over that didn't sell last year ...

I made these 4 phone thingys just before the exhibition, and the ear rings are actually some I made quite a few years ago!



I also finished this scarf that has been sitting almost finished for a while ...



... and I added it to the pile of a few others that were left over from last year.

and I decided to sell this plastic bag and beanies that are made from ... plastic bags!



and I had an idea and made up a few packets of bits of interesting yarn to sell:



I don't think much of it sold though ... I guess I probably should have put a bit more effort into it? LOL

I had a few more things for sale, but I either don't have photos of them or already had photos but not recent ones that I found when I dug these out - I took these last few photos on the lawn (or the fence!) next to the car park at the place I went to before dropping my bazaar stuff off on the way home, because I kind of didn't get around to doing it any earlier!

I did sell a few things ... have not sorted it out and worked out exactly what sold, but I noticed that someone did buy a fabric bowl that I made a few years ago, it was one that didn't sell last year or the year before ... my things are probably a bit odd, and therefore have a limited appeal ... LOL
(and there are a few very talented and quite professional people in that group - so there were a lot of lovely items for sale for people to choose from)

btw ... the clothing I made for the fashion parade is rather unusual too ... a crochet shawl dyed with food dye and vinegar (and a weird hippy dress I made to match it but will probably only ever wear as a nightie or fancy dress), an outfit made from 3 of DH's old business shirts (which actually ended up looking way better than I expected so I might have to wear that somewhere), and a skirt made from a too small around the middle skirt I got from an op shop and bleached and altered/added bits to ... which I might also wear ... sometime ... on one of the few ocasions where I actually wear a skirt instead of just wearing jeans/pants - LOL

oh - and the thing I mentioned that I went to on my way to delivering the bazaar stuff - was actually the trade display part of a green energy/etc conference, where they had a sort of a workshop thingy run by some people who are getting into making re-cycled clothing - like the stuff we have already been doing in the ACTTAA group ... I didn't have a lot of time to organise much but I took along a pair of old jeans and a pretty old green cotton dress (that I think I may have bought at an op shop because I liked the lace on it and the colour of it and was thinking of making it into something else) ... I ended up doing some slicing and dicing and started yet another UFO (Un Finished Object) - hopefully when I finish it, it will become an interesting skirt ... and I might have enough fabric/lace/etc left to maybe make a bag or something to match it ... but (like this blog post ;-) who knows when/if I will ever get around to finishing it ...

(yes ... I am putting a future time/date on it so it will be scheduled to post itself when that time/date comes around ... and if I get around to taking photos of that clothing I can still add them in here before it gets posted ... but somehow I don't see that happening - lol)

hmmm ... seems there is a glitch in blogger or this poor old computer ... or something ... I just hit the post button and it changed the date/time back to today, all by itself, and posted it ... then it let me edit it and change the time and date ... but it is showing up on my blog with Tuesdays date on it ... wow - time travel - LOL (or - really scary thought - did I just loose to days and it IS Tuesday?! ... hope not ... the time on the computer screen still says it is Sunday evening ... even if my blog does appear to think it is Tuesday already ... )

ok ... I think I fixed it ... so if anyone was subscribed to my blog they may have got this post early ... or if anyone just happend to be looking during the 5 minutes this post was up there early then they may have seen it ... I hit the "save as draft" button after I added the other purple edit and it is now NOT showing up again ... but it isn't listed as "scheduled" either ... sigh ... but ... "nothing ventured nothing gained" - now that the date/time seems to be staying how I set it, and showing up as one minute past midnight on Tuesday (which is what I did change it to before it changed itself back, and what I again changed it to when it then still showed up on my blog, but as being posted on Tuesday) ... I might just see what happens and hit the "post" button again ... and if it shows up early then it shows up early - it will "fix" itself when it actually IS Tuesday - because nobody who didn't look this evening or tomorrow will know any different - LOL
(well ... you wouldn't have if you had not read this - LOL)

Exciting Stuff?

... or just plain boring?

You can decide that - I just write the stuff - LOL

... if you can call this "writing" LOL
(which is probaly why I have decided to do a weird little Experiment with this post - it is explained in the other bit of red writing further down the page - which I actually wrote after all the blue stuff, but before this bit ... lol)

er ... this Ended up being an Even weirder Experiment than I planned (and probably not very Exciting at all) - seeing I am now typing this black writing several weeks after I typed all the other stuff! - ABC Wednesday is now up to the letter K!
(I posted something for F, and missed G, H, I and J ... and have a K post scheduled to post itself in a couple of days time when it is due) ... I wrote my F post early (probably in between writing the first few bits of this one) and I scheduled it to post itself when it was due ... which it did ... then I kind of got busy ... oops? or should that be Eek!?


I was thinking of doing my E post a bit Early, but I Didn't finish my D post Early Enough to Do that - LOL

I could post something about my DD, Erin - but I am not sure the sort of people who would find that Exciting are the sort of people I have (or even want to have) reading this blog - LOL
(Er ... that whole concept of people getting ... er ... Excited by looking at pictures of children/minors is just a little disturbing - lets not go there?)


Evening I figured, when I wrote the blue bits last night, that this would be a good place to start when I came back this Evening ... [so - start here!] ok ok - I am (eek - I am also talking to myself!) ... and I am also cheating and actually writing this bit last night - LOL

(which is why it is a blueish green ... or is teal a greenish blue?)

Anyway ...

er ... ok ... considering how little sense this blog post is going to make - do I bother writing about these things or just leave them as jotted down ideas and post about them next time around?


Eggs

eggsamples of eggs even?

I do have a good egg photo ... I took it yesterday ... but I think it deserves a post all of it's own - so I will do that later ... if not soon, then maybe I can save it for later in the year when we get around to the letter E again?!
(or if ABC Wednesday stops, I might just work my way through the alphabet again anyway ... it is a good excuse to TRY and post every week ... but as you can see - it doesn't always work!)

and, of course, I did say in my D post that I could put some photos of Egypt in here ... if I had the time I could put Even more than "some" - I took an Extremely large quantity of photos on my overseas trip.

Even Eastern Turkey ?

Energy

Entropy

Existential?

Existance

Exit

Extra

Extreme

External

Entry

E=MC2

Extraterrestrials ... terrestrials - Earthlings

Earth

Earth wires?!

Exhibition
(er ... I did just post about that ... well I just wrote it ... it will post itself the day after tomorrow)

[er ... that kind of gets complicated ... one thing leads to another ... or more than one other ... and it all goes pear shaped because it isn't linear!]

(maybe I need to re-draw these notes as a kind of diagramy thingy? with arrows and lines and circles and stuff ... [do that, scan it, and stick it in here?!]

ah ... here (in red, below) is the other bit that explains what weird thing I am doing with this blog post (and why it doesn't really make any sense at all ;-)

maybe I should put the stuff I wrote tonight (quick jottings of the few ideas I had already thought of while doing my D post, and a pile of other weird stuff I thought of as I jotted ...) in blue ... then when I come back later (tomorrow I hope) to finish this I should just add to it in a different colour (and if it takes longer than one "session" of sitting here typing, then change to yet another colour) so Everyone can get all Excited about seeing what my posts start with and how they Evolve and then how they Eventually End up looking?! ... now that could be an interesting Experiment! [and this yellow can be the equivalent of highlighter/post it notes?!]
[ then I can get down to buisness and write most of it in grey green then do my adding/edditing/putting more bits in stuff in purple ?]
er yeah ... and come back several weeks later, and take 5 minutes to find a colour I like that I have not already used for something else, and finish this poor Excuse for a blog post!

I guess this Experiment is a bit different to the ones the students do at the school I work at ... talking about work - I have work tomorrow - so why am I still UP?! (yes this is a bit darker blue because I actually added it after the red bits - but I did it tonight, before saving this and logging out, which I am now about to do).

Hmmm - this post is going to be a bit more all over the place/Everywhere than usual - it could End up being Extremely hard to follow. I guess you will just have to concentrate Extra hard? LOL

ok, now where was I? (out of my mind maybe?)
ear
earwig

End

endoscope

(does it Ever End at the end?

or is it Endless?

erk! - an endless endoscope?!

eeeeewwwww!

on that note ... I probably should just give up?!

[and set this to post itself tomorrow or sometime, and hope nobody notices? ... or put a date that is about a year ago so nobody actually finds it? lol]

... I would put the time/date on this for right now, except that I just posted something a little while ago and want this on a different day ... but it will be tomorrow in a few hours time, so I might set it to go out just after midnight ...

so how come I suddenly have time to do 3 blog posts all at once? ... well ... the quilt show is over, the ACTTAA exhibition is over ... and it is school holidays for the next 2 weeks ... and I don't have a deadline for something that has to be made/done tomorrow (although I do have some red inchies to make and post sometime in the next few days ... but I do have the next few days to make them in ;-)

I wonder if the date will change itself and do silly things on this one (it did with the next one, so it ended up showing up on my blog, but after some Editing/fiddling I managed to fix it so it vanished/hid itself again, and is scheduled to appear again on Tuesday)
but then I had to spend ages and ages fiddling with html tags that seem to have ended up all over the place and caused an error message (and not letting me post it until I manage to fix whatever one of the (not sure how many but it seems like more than 50) of those particular pairs of html tags had a missing "partner" - aaaaaahhhhrrrgggghhhhh!)

hmmm - this has probably got to be my weirdest (and worst?) blog post Ever!

btw ... I just noticed I still have most of a Z post, and part of a post about N and some ideas for O/etc, saved as drafts - from last time around - I guess I will have to try to use them when we get up to those letters this time - LOL

odd socks ... and other things ...

... Ever noticed how you put 2 socks in the wash ... and one seems to go missing?

I have heard many people complain about that, and about the same thing happening to pens and teaspoons and tools and stuff ... yet wire coat hangers seem to multiply in numbers that indicate they must be breeding with each other or something ...

If you don't know what I am talking about you have probably never read the right blog posts, or been on an e-mail list/forum/yahoogroup for long enough to see the subject come up ... because the subject has come up several times on the newsgroups and yahoogroups I have been active on. (in fact the moderators on the scquilters yahoogroup recently had to tell everyone to stop going on about it because it was generating too much off topic e-mail - lol).

I decided to do a quick google search to see if I could find an example ... funny how the first result that came up in the search was this one - http://www.universetoday.com/2009/08/21/if-you-dont-have-an-lhc-heres-how-to-create-your-own-black-hole/
... hmmm - I think the reason for that might have been MY comment on there! (you should be able to find it not quite half way down the page ... or further down in this blog post if I remember to copy it here (I did - further down in this post) ;-)

the second thing that came up was this perfect example - http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=78511 ... change all the references to woodworking/screws/etc to quilting/pins/etc and it is almost exactly the same conversation as what I have seen on the quilting lists I am on - lol

hmmm - some rather odd results come up when one types "odd socks wire coathangers pens black holes" into the google search box - lol
(I found and had a read of a couple or really weird but quite interesting blogs and a rather strange, but interesting, short story ;-)

so why am I posting about odd socks/etc NOW?

er ... 2 reasons - the main one is because I just found a photo that reminded me of it.

I took the photo a few weeks ago ... after I took the washing off the line, and carefully put all the socks in pairs as I put them in the basket
(well - all those that were pairs - DS's socks never have pairs - they never get put in the wash in pairs because he usually just gathers up the first armload of dirty washing off his bedroom floor when he has a clean up of his room, and chucks it in the laundry ... and ... he doesn't usually wear them in pairs anyway! - he just grabs 2 socks that are near enough ... or the first ... or even the only ... 2 socks he can find in the mess on his bedroom floor and wears them.)

... anyway ... I DO usually wash mine in pairs
(except for the "pair" I have been wearing lately where one is pink and the other green - because they are the same type of sock, bought at the same time from the same place, and the other pink and green sock both have holes in them!)

but ... I only had ONE red sock ... and I knew I had hung 2 on the line the day before - becuase I actually remembered doing it!

The other one wasn't still on the line ... however it had been windy that day, so I had a look around under the line/around the yard to see if it had fallen/been blown off ... but there was no red sock lying on the lawn or anywhere I could see ... so I took the rest of the stuff off the line (no - the red sock wasn't IN something else - I checked - becuase our washing machine likes to play that game - it even stuffs shirts and things inside doona covers) and then I had a potter around and pulled up some weeds from the garden/lawn and picked up some other stuff that was lying around under the pergola (where the washing line that had the socks on is) ... when I just happened to glance INTO the bucket of water that was beside me ...



yep - found the red sock! LOL

... which ended up becoming one of the few examples of when one of my socks goes into the wash alone - becuase it went in with the next load of washing I did before it re-joined it's partner - lol
(well ... who knows what is in those buckets - probably a mix of whatever was in the bucket before I found it in the rubbish pile on a nearby building site, rain water collected as it ran off the side of the pergola roof, dust, dog slobber, and whatever insects/etc may have drowned in there)

btw ... this is the comment I left on that Universe Today post (which was about making tiny black holes without needing to use the LHC to do it):
aykayem Says: August 23rd, 2009 at 2:45 am
yes – let them make those black holes and do their research – before I lose any more socks! Black hole type phenomena have also been observed (by both myself and other members of various newsgroups/e-mail lists I have been active on) in relation to wire coat hangers and pens – there seem to be black holes which swallow up and/or spit out those items – and in some kind of pattern/proportion that results in this equation/rule – the number of wire coat hangers/pens/odd socks/etc that can be found in a location near one of these black holes is inversely proportional to the need one has for said item. I also seem to have a black hole in my sewing room (although I think it, or another one, may also sometimes be active in other areas of the house too) – and it seems to swallow things up and then spit them out again when I am no longer looking for them (usually when I have given up trying to find them, and used something else instead).btw – I have even made a (small ;-) quilt with a black hole on it – the photo is on my blog ( in this post – http://aykayem.blogspot.com/2009/01/other-4-journal-quilts.html )

hmmm on my comment on that post the ;-) shows up as a smiley face - I didn't know it would do that else I would have put another ) after it :-)

anyway ... that quilt leads on to the other reason I am posting all this weird stuff about odd socks, wire coathangers and black holes ...

well - not that quilt exactly - as you can see from that comment, and the link I put in there - I have already posted about that one ...

but ...

I have made another black hole quilt! LOL

and ... I have already posted a photo of that one too ... but only part of it ... in the post before this one - so now you get to find out WHY there is cat hair on my event horizon ...

The reason there is cat hair on my event horizon is because we have a cat, who likes to "help" me sew - so there is cat hair on all of my quilts (and on everything else I make) ... including this one:



(as usual - if you click on it you should get a bigger version)

I made it for the ACTTAA exhibition, which was last weekend ... which is why, in my usual manner of working to deadlines - I made the quilt the weekend before that!
... even though I have known for ages (almost a year) that the theme/title of the exhibition was "Heaven And Earth" ...

btw, the title of the quilt is "Good Heavens, Where Did All These Coat Hangers Come From? … and Where On Earth Have All My Biros/Keys/Teaspoons Gone?!"

oh - and for those who might be wondering where I got all those teeny tiny coathangers from - I made them out of paperclips!
(it created a bit of interest at work - me sitting at my desk, in my lunch break, bending paperclips with a pair of pliers - lol ... I did it at work because I knew where a pair of pliers were there ... I have a pair here at home too ... but they are "lost" somewhere in the pile of mess in my sewing room ... probably hiding in a box of bits for some half finished project or another ... )

hmmm ... talking about black holes - time seems to vanish into them too - it seems to have taken me just over 3 hours to write this blog post ... but I did eat my tea in the middle of it, and uploaded some photos, and read a few e-mails/etc ...

There is cat hair on my event horizon ...

They say nothing can be seen inside a black hole, and nothing can exist there in any recognisable form ... but I guess cat hair can exist anywhere ...




so what exactly IS this?

... well ... it is part of a quilt, which I finished on Tuesday night, and delivered Wednesday morning - for the ACTTAA exhibition that opened this evening, and is on tomorrow/this weekend ... I will post a picture of the whole quilt later, along with photos of the other stuff I have in the exhibition, and maybe a few other photos of stuff that I have done and not posted about ... but I am not sure exactly when "later" will actually be - LOL

Cloud 9?

... or #9 dream?

(well - getting all the stuff I want to do - done ... that is a dream ... LOL)

is this cloud 9?



or this?


or one of these?


or maybe this one?


or any of these?






Those were all around here ... mostly in the suburb I live in (while walking the dog) ... but the second one was near lake Burley Griffin, in the middle of Canberra.

This one wasn't in Canberra though ... it was somewhere on the way flying back to Canberra from Mum and Dad's place in Queensland



and these 2 were somewhere this side of Singapore, flying back from Dubai ...





I guess one could say I like taking photos of clouds? LOL



actually - the reason for this blog post is that I just had to have one go out at 09:09am on 09/09/09

(well - it seemed like a good idea when I thought of it earlier today ;-)

... but I will be at work at the time, and probably won't be anywhere near a computer (or if I am - I will be logged on to one to do some stuff I need to do for work, and won't have time to mess around blogging ... I have to type up some order forms, which I have wanted/needed to do for a while, seeing we have totally run out of some of the stuff I am ordering - but it is hard to do stuff on the computer if I don't actually have one on my desk! - I have to get some one else to log off theirs and use that ... ah the joys of working at a public school - no money to have all the things we would like to have ... sigh ... )

I probably should have done some reasearch and posted something interesting about the number 9 or something ... ?

Then again - that is what google search is for - lol

hmmm seems there is a movie coming out soon, with that title - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472033/ ... and I bet my DD will go and see it ... (she is mad about anything that Tim Burton has anything to do with - lol)
There are also a few bands and songs and games and stuff ...
... and there USED to be 9 planets in the solar system, until the powers that be decided that one of them wasn't big enough to be a planet.
and Wikipedia has the usual page of interesting stuff about the number 9 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_(number)

but I don't really have time to be doing all this (so why am I?! ... er ... because it is fun? LOL)

I really should be out getting some stuff ready for the textile art meeting I am going to tomorrow evening - it starts early so I am going straight there from work (via a shop or 3 and maybe an other place) ... and I should have been doing some sewing this evening ... but that kind of didn't really happen ... something to do with going out and having Italian food for tea (with some Lambrusco - mmmmm - lol) and then the evening just kind of didn't seem to have much of it left after that ... sigh ...

btw ... nothing much to do with the rest of this post - but I found the photo below when I was looking for some clouds - someone I know used to write "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade" at the bottom of her e-mails ... life?/someone/thing "handed" me some lemon colourd organza fabric, so I made a lemon quilt! - I found the bit of fabric in the op shop near work - the day before I needed to make a quilt if I was to have it to deliver the next evening for the Canberra Quilters meeting - for the recipe book (the chose the best ones to go in the book, then the rest of the entries went on the back cover as tiny little pictures ... mine was one of those - but that is ok - I like the quilt, and that is all that really matters to me ;-)




oh - one other quirky thing about 9:
I was born 9 months and 3 days after my parents got married!
(but I was actually conceived after the honeymoon and born 2 weeks early ... but apparently it really had the neighbours talking - lol)

fe fi fo fun

... or is that Phi Phi Pho thumb?
why phi twice - well - it can be pronounced as "fee" or "fi" (rhyming with eye) ... pho is Vietnamese soup ... and my thumb is one of Five digits on my hand ...
F is for Five, but what has phi got to do with Five? ... quite a bit apparently - http://goldennumber.net/five(5).htm

my mind is prone to Flights of Fancy ... LOL

I could have some Fun with Fibbonacci [or however one spells that]

I have started this ABC Wednesday F post almost a Fortnight early ... I happened to "Fink" of a Few ideas ... so I will File this away For now ...

hmmm - should I be Funny and set this to post automatically - so people will Find it here, Finished or not?

or do I want to wait a while and have another Fiddle with it (I might Find something else Fancy to Fascinate you all with?)

I guess I could have the good Fortune to "Fink" of or Find something else and Finish this beFore the date it is meant to go out ... maybe even a "Foto" or Four?

and if it goes out un Finished I could always Fiddle with it later ... if I Felt like it ...

so if I File it under "post later" or whatever (set so it should go out at Five past Five in the morning ;-) - then it will either go out un Finished ... or I might come back and rave on about Fabric or Feathers or Fur or Felt or Fibre or somesuch ...
(I Find all of those things Fascinating! ... and I use them all to make things, some Fine and/or Fantastic and some just plain Feral)
... and I have not even mentioned Fairys and Fae and Flying things (like Fruit bats and Flying Foxes)

hmmm - I wonder if this will go online before I write my E post? LOL ... actually it might even go live before my D post if I forget to log back in and Finish that tomorrow!
(I was going to do that now but it kind of got late and I still have to Find all the photos For it and probably Fiddle with a Few of them)

D4 ...

... is an even bigger explosion than you get with C4?

(or maybe one of R2D2's or C3PO's mob?)

No! - it is the Daft title I came up with when I logged in to blogger (where the first place I get taken to is my "Dashboard") and noticed that I called last year's D post "D" so that meant I would have to come up with something else ...

so what Dopey stuff can I Divulge about the letter D for ABC Wednesday?

I Definitely have to mention the Dog! (he Doesn't like to be left out of whatever is going on;-)

- I have lots of photos of our Dog, Diesel, on this blog - http://spot-theblog.blogspot.com/

(and a few on here as well - I knew labels were useful for something - )http://aykayem.blogspot.com/search/label/dog and/or http://aykayem.blogspot.com/search/label/Diesel ... another D word comes up at the top of that one - "Don't touch" - LOL - I Did enjoy writing that post ;-)

and D is Definitely for Desert - a rather Delicious part of Dinner to Devour ... oh Drats - I Don't think I have any ice cream in the freezer ... what a Disaster! LOL

(hmmm - Does anyone remember this Delightful (Disgusting?) concoction? - http://aykayem.blogspot.com/2008/01/sticky-bananas-and-other-stuff.html )

maybe I should talk about Devilled Kidneys instead (which I think are rather Delightful Do Dads to munch on, even if Dozens of people I know think they are rather Disgusting - even to the point of them Divesting themselves of whatever they were currently Digesting, and producing something Diabolical that seems to always contain Diced carrots ... oh - sorry - Did you just Do that too?)

D is also for Digress - which I tend to Do way to often - and you probably wish I Didn't after reading that last paragraph!

I probably Do that because I am Disorganised ... I am not even sure where to start Dealing with that topic of conversation - just read my whole blog and you will probably get the idea - lol

(you will also notice that this is not the only post that mentions, and/or has photos of, yucky/goopy/icky stuff that looks/sounds Disgusting - I tend to Delight in Doing that - I guess some people might find it Disturbing, and maybe they might think I have some weird Disease or Disorder? but who would Dare to Diagnose something like that? ;-)

Dictionary is one D word that I Don't need to actually go and use - I seem to be thinking of enough Darn D words as it is!

D is also for Dunlop Environment Volunteers - which is the Landcare group I belong to.
http://www.ginninderralandcare.org.au/category.php?id=26

... and for Distilled/De-ionised water ... not quite the same thing as each other but near enough for the "bucket chemistry" they do in high school science classes ... which is why they get the Dodgy De-ionised stuff whenever they ask for either one - because that is what we have ...

It is also what I Dissolve stuff in when I make up chemical solutions and stuff for the science classes to use ... but I had better stop talking about my work before I bore you all to Death - LOL

but - talking about science - DNA also starts with D ... and stands for DeoxyriboNucleicAcid or somesuch ... and is the stuff that gets Decoded to Define what we look like ... but just before I logged in here I found a rather Different page about DNA - http://goldennumber.net/dna.htm - it mentions the geometry of the Double helix and Decagons and Diagonals and Degrees and stuff - and could be Decidedly exciting for those who like to Delve into the mysteries of geometry and fractals and other weird stuff like that ... (a much more exciting part of maths than times tables and long Division!)

D is also for Dubai, which I WAS going to do most of this post about ... until I thought of a whole pile of other stuff before I even got around to opening my image editing software and finding some of my Digital photos that I took in Dubai earlier this year ...

I also just (when I first came in here and Decided to check my e-mail first) got sent a link that led me to this interesting blog written by someone who lives in Dubai - http://sonenskadu.blogspot.com/ (Definitely one I must remember to go back to another Day - and oddly enough, it was also her site that led me to the thing about DNA)

- you can Dally there for a moment or 50, while I go dig around and find MY photos of Dubai - lol


oh yes - I have Definitely got to include this rather Different one! ...



- some Daft cat ... Probably trying to lie Doggo in the Drainpipe until it felt that the Danger had passed. I Don't think it was stuck (but I wasn't about to touch it and risk having it Dive out and Dig it's teeth and/or claws into me or somesuch - not in some other country where they have horrible Diseases like rabies and stuff! ... and definitely not on the first Day of my month long overseas holiday! any kind of Disease or infection could be Dangerous when in a place where it can be Difficult to find a Decent English speaking Doctor)
I never Did see it's head - lol
but - Did you notice the Designs on the Drain cover (or whatever it is) ... a geometric Design ... and a Diamond - LOL


Mum and I also Did some walking Down at the Docks, on Dubai Creek - and we took Digital photos of Dhows (I think that is how it is spelt - they are the boats that were traditionally used for trade in these parts - and many still are) and watched the men unloading and loading stuff, and sitting around talking, and staring at us because we were female and female tourists probably don't usually wander around that area taking photos while it is getting Dark! LOL


... if you look at the horizon/buildings in the Distance (you can sort of just see them through the Desert Dusty haze) you can see some of Dubai's Distinctive buildings ... the tall skinny one on the right is the Burj Dubai ... which is probably going to become the world's tallest building (if they ever actually get it finished).

I took lots of photos of Doors:



single Doors

and Double Doors



... because I liked the interesting Designs.

I also like these Designs:



... this was part of the wall of a rather large (and rather blue) Mosque.

I am not sure what they are building here - but it also has some interesting Designs on it:



... but what on earth are those workers Doing?! (in orange clothing, on the scaffolding on the right) ... I wonder if there was a reason for them being all lined up one under/over the other like that? - maybe if was just so us tourists could take a Different photo - lol ... actually - they all look like part of one of those old "platform" computer games - like "lemmings" or something! LOL

ok ... just to prove that Dubai has/is Desert, and I went there:



not that this photo proves anything - tourist camels could probably be found anywhere - Desert or not - LOL
... I wonder if those thingys on their faces are crochet? ... could this be "Camel Crochet"?!
(yes there is a type of crochet called that - the stitches are done a bit differently than normal crochet)

The camels were where we went for our Dubai "Dune Dinner" tour (yes - we had to to the tourist thing at least once - lol) ... we went for a 4WD over some Dunes, stopped for a few desert photos, but we only stayed for a few minutes at the stop they usually use for the "Sunset photo" - because it was too Dusty and there wasn't anything spectacular to see in the way of a sunset ... it just kind of gradually got darker until it was night time ... lol
I think I did go for a camel "ride" (if you can call sitting on one and being led around in a small circle "riding" - lol - I guess that is what kids do for "pony rides" too ... but it was all pretty tame for a person like me - who has actually ridden a camel in a camel race! ... it was a long time ago ... back in "another life" - before I met DH, when I lived in Alice Springs for 3 years ... but I would ride in a camel race again now if the opportunity presented itself - LOL)

While the tourists were still fighting over the camel rides and getting henna tattoos and stuff, I went for a walk up a very big sand Dune:


... every time I thought I was nearly at the top ... another, even higher, Dune would appear behind it! I gave up when there was still at least one more much higher Dune behind the one I was standing on to take this photo - that is the Dinner "camp" Down in the Distance. Boy was I Darn puffed out when I got up there ... it probably took me 10 minutes to walk up there (I kind of needed the couple of "photo stops" I had on the way up - so I could catch my breath!) ... but it only took about 2 minutes or less to get Down - because I ran down - what fun - wheeeeeeeeee! LOL

After Dining on a Delightful Desert Dinner, while we were eating our Desert, we got to watch the belly Dancer Do her stuff:



she was actually quite good ... pity my photo wasn't!

After the show was over we got to spend a while sitting around and have a smoke on the water pipes (no - not opium or some other Deadly Drug ... just what was probably a little bit of tobacco with a pile of spices and apple and stuff mixed with it) ... then we piled back in to the vehicles for a nice Drive, in the Dark, back to our hotel in Deira City (one of the suburbs/whatever of Dubai).

Another tour we did was a Drive, in a bus, around a few of the other emirates (Sharjah, Fujira etc, and some weird little part of the country of Oman that is inside the UAE - the borders/etc do some odd things over there!)
I Didn't put a photo of it in here, but we got to take a Dip in a Different ocean Durning our lunch stop (hmmm I might have to do a whole blog post about all the different places I have been swimming - lol).

I think we were still in Fujira when I took this photo:



I actually took this out the window of the bus as we drove past! - I noticed how amazing the sun looked through the clouds, and I was taking a few photos of it over the craggy mountains beside us, when I noticed that this Minaret was up ahead ... and I did the usual thing I do on moving vehicles that are not about to stop just so I can take a weird photo - I lined it up and clicked when I thought would be about right, and hoped for the best - and in this case it wasn't "Did I get it? ... Drats, I Didn't" it was "Did I get it? - oh wow! yes I Did!" LOL
... and no - I have not Done anything to this photo, other than made it a bit smaller size so it wasn't too big for uploading - this is how the camera saw it - and how I saw it as well ... (kind of eirie, eh?)
Don't forget you can click on these photos to see them bigger (and if you want to see them bigger than that I guess you will have to ask me to e-mail them to you in their original size - lol - I doubt that anyone really wants to Do that though ...)

I actually got a few other good photos on that trip (to Dubai, etc) ... and quite a few of those "Drats I missed it" ones ... but that is enough for now - especially seeing DH got home from work while I was typing most of this last night (Monday evening), but I still had not added the photos - so I Decided to Do it "tomorrow" (Tuesday) ... which I Did ... but now it has got rather late again - in fact it is just past Midnight (so now it is actually Wednesday, but I might leave Tuesdays Date on here - lol - and the time I have just put on here is the time I was actually having my Dinner! - I kind of Didn't get around to it earlier because DH was at work and I was in here messing around finding/fixing the photos to put on here!)


The reason that the stuff about Dubai was only going to be "most" of a post is because I was also going to mention the other Deserts I have been to ... like the ones here in Australia (hmmm - maybe I should just let you google that? lol), and the other Deserts I ended up in while on the same trip that took me to Dubai - like the corner of the Sahara Desert that is in Egypt ... which had some areas that were quite Desolate, and some that were Delightfully Different (like the Black and White Deserts)

but ... seeing those were in Egypt, and, because the letter E comes immediately after the letter D, I could actually now be posting my E post - I might have to put some photos of that Desert in there!

but I Do have one for you to go on with ...



and I Didn't have to Dodge trees whizzing past a bus window to take this one ... we were camping for the night in the White Desert, and while the guide and driver were setting up camp I Decided to go for a walk - so I just had to Dash around to the right places to get the right angles to line up what I thought might make interesting photos as the sun set and Darknes Descended upon the White Desert ...
(and Mum started to wonder how much longer I was going to be as the guide and Driver had Dinner almost ready and apparently they were starting to look Decidedly worried about the fact that I was not back from my walk yet - Mum wasn't that worried because she knows me, but they Didn't know that I am me and I Do that sort of stuff all the time ... they also Didn't realise that even though I had Disapeared into the Distance, and had Ducked in and out from behind a few large rock formations, I could see exactly where the camp was and I knew it would only take me a few minutes to Dash back if it started getting too Dark - LOL)

oh Dear! - I hope you liked my (Decidedly Different? Disturbing? or just plain Daggy?) Dally into the Delights of all sorts of things to Do with stuff that starts with the letter D ...

(and I hope you Didn't find it too Disturbing? ;-)

btw - yes - D is also for Delivering this stuff Decidedly late! - oops! LOL




Note: the following paragraph probably makes no sense - feel free to Decide it is too Dopey and ignore it - I originally wrote it when I first started typing up this post ... then added the red bits later. (then I added this blue bit because it still didn't make sense anyway - LOL)
(yep - been too busy Doing other things ... maybe I should just post my E post at the same time - LOL ... nah - I Don't want to be a Day or 2 Early er ... no chance of that seeing I wrote this bit on Monday and it now IS the Day my E post is Due ! (just) ... so this whole paragraph probably Doesn't make any sense now - lol ... then again ... Early does start with an E ... but tomorrow is Early Enough - if I feel Energetic about it tomorrow Evening Energetic - maybe, but did that Eventuate? no - not when I didn't Even finish this post! ... or if I Even remember! I guess what I now need to remember is to come in here tomorrow Evening and DO my E post while there is still Enough of a chance that it will be posted in time for me to be able to add it to their silly linky thingy before it stops letting people add any more links)

wow - this post is a Doozy!

Challenging?

hmmm - it is Wednesday again already ... time to post about the letter C for ABC Wednesday!

C is for ...

Crochet - which I was going to post about last time we were up to C, but I had not got around to organising the photos I wanted to take ... hmmm - I still have not done that - so maybe Crochet will have to be next time we get around to the letter C? LOL

(besides - 2 other reasons not to do it this time - 1: I have a Couple of other C things I can post about and 2: I don't have time to write the big long post that I want to write about Crochet ... lol)

so ...

what else is C for?

Comments on people's blogs - I tend to write some odd things on other peoples blog posts - lol

... like when someone mentioned about how her guests did not eat the chocolate slice because the chocolate was "too dark" (aparently it was milk chocolate, good quality stuff) so I wrote this:

"I would have eaten the chocky slice!... light, dark, whatever - if it is chocolate I like it - LOL

In fact the only time I ever don't eat chocolate is if some silly person puts MINT in it!- mint goes on lamb roast, or maybe in mint tea or somesuch, NOT with chocolate!"

and yes - Chocolate is another thing that starts with C - LOL

hmmm - I have often thought - what a pity one can't e-mail real stuff like chocolate slice ... sigh ... (actually there was once that I made some chocolate truffle thingys for supper for some meeting, and the person whose house the meeting was meant to be at had to cancel it - so I took a photo of the chocolate thingys and e-mailed her a picture of what she missed out on ;-) ... then I made her some more and took them next time I went to visit her)

C is also for cheating - I wrote the first part of this blog post (the bit above this line) last night while I was in here posting my B post (a Bit late - lol)

C is also for Creative - which is what a lot of members of Canberra Quilters are - this afternoon I was helping hang up the quilts for the quilt show (which is part of the Craft show) that is on, here in Canberra, for the next 4 days - and, judging by the number of wonderful quilts we have this year, there are a lot of very Clever people in Canberra Quilters.

... I entered things in a few Catagories ... including a Couple of bags in the Creative Clothing Catagory ... (how Cunning of me to find all these C words - lol).

I didn't make a "Crazy quilt" - but most people probably think my quilts are pretty Crazy ... I know I am rather Crazy ... lol

hmmm - maybe I should include a photo of my Challenge quilt ... the theme was "In Your Dreams" ... most people made quilts depicting things they dream of - but I decided to be Completely different and do one depictiong what I dream WITH - brain Cells!

... trouble is ... the aforementioned photo of my Challenge quilt is still on the memory Card in the Camera ... and the Couple of USB ports on the front of the Computer seem to have external hard drives Connected to them, and I am not sure if I can be bothered unplugging stuff/etc ... nor can I be bothered walking down to the bedroom to get the Camera, and the Cable for it ... lol

er ... I posted about last year's Challenge quilt - http://aykayem.blogspot.com/2008/08/wiggly-worms.html ... and there IS a photo (or 4) in that post - lol

but - I am not sure if I ever posted photos of any of my other Challenge quilts (they have the challenge every year, and I have made quite a few of them ... probably done one each year since the first time I did one - I kind of Can't resist a Challenge - at least not a Creative one - LOL)

ok ok ok ... I went and got the Camera and the Cable ...

jeepers Creepers! - there are a LOT of photos on that memory Card!

I uploaded August first (I also have some from June and July on it - there were only a Couple of hundred photos for each month! ... the joys of having a 2GB memory card in there - lol)

Anyway ... this is my 2009 Challenge quilt:



it is also a rather Cruddy photo ... lol

(I will have to try and take a better one on the weekend, if I Can find time in between all the rostered shifts I am doing, and the bit of shopping/whatever I want to go and do down among the Craft stalls - I probably don't have enough Cash to buy too much ... but then I don't need to buy much so if I don't spend more than a few dollars then I won't need to put anything on the Credit Card - lol)

Crikey I have some odd photos on that memory Card ... I forgot about all the ones I took when some of the male staff at the school I work at let some students give them a hair Cut! - actually it was a shave rather than a Cut - one of those shave your head to raise money for someone with Cancer thingys ...

Oh ... and I also should include at least one Crochet photo - this one:



Actually, most of it is knitting, but some of it is crochet ... it is on the poles at the front enterance of the National Gallery of Australia (the one that has "Blue Poles" hanging in it) ... and one of the bits of crochet stuff on the poles (marked with the bright green arrow) is mine! - well - of course I had to contribute something for that! - how could I resist it? - the chance to have something of mine exhibited at the National Gallery ... we don't need to mention that it is ON the gallery, not actually IN the gallery (but it is only a few metres from a Monet painting, and not much further from Blue Poles ;-)



btw there are a few more pictures of those poles etc here and here

(and there are a few other related posts on her blog as well)


Anyway ... I think I have probably Covered the letter C fairly well now?



I Could include a photo of the Cat ... but I won't - lol

(there are a pile on my blog already, and probably even more here ;-)



btw ... my surname starts with a C ... just thought you might want to know that ... lol

But ... I was Busy ...

... so this B post is just a little Bit late.

(er ... it is Belated? ... such an odd word that one - usually only seen on Birthday cards for those who forgot to send the card earlier ... and it looks stupid there too ... lol)

I could probably have thought of Bazillions of B things to post about, for ABC Wednesday, if I had not Been too Busy to post this sooner (actually there probably was a couple of times I may have had time to post something a Bit sooner ... But at the time I didn't Bother, Because I was going to do it "later" - lol)

But ... seeing I mentioned it last week (well - the week before last probably, seeing I was meant to post this last week - lol) ... I had better Bore you all with what I said I would say about Black h0les ...

B is for the Big Bang theory and how the Big Bang resulted in the creation of a Bazillion galaxies (some Big and some small) ... galaxies that astrophysicists tell us each have a Black hole in the middle of them ... and which also contain Bucket loads of Big stars that have died/collapesed and formed even more Black holes ...
But ... the Big question is - where ARE all these Black holes, and what is going to Become of them in the future - will the universe just keep getting Bigger until everything is too far away from anything else for anyone to care? or will some/all the stars become black holes and eat up everything else? If that happens, then what will the universe Be like?- what will happen once the Black holes are all that is left? - will they just keep eating each other up (due to Being attacted to each other's gravitational pull) until there is one Big Black hole? ... That is where my thoughts were going when I started to wonder - where does all that stuff go?! - maybe that is when it becomes too Big to fit in so little a space and we get another Big Bang? or maybe our Big Bang (the one that created our universe) is just the other side of some small Black hole in the Backwaters of some other universe?

hmmmm ... what if our whole universe is just some weird little Blob in some scientist's Bottle?

maybe I had better stop writing all about what comes out when my Brain goes Beserk, before I drive you all Bonkers!

btw ... B is also for Boo Boo - like the Bag of tools that was lost by that astronaut working on the ISS - I just found out it was supposed to have been going to re-enter the atmosphere yesterday - http://www.universetoday.com/2009/08/02/orbiting-toolbag-will-enter-atmosphere-aug-3/ ... I wonder if it is Back yet? - actually it won't/didn't come "Back" anywhere - it will/did Burn up on re-entry - lol

(unless it gets swallowed up by that Black hole that comes and visits my place - the one that eats one sock out of each pair I put in the wash, and swallows up all the Biros/pens and spits out wire coat hangers ... )

Before I go ... I can't not say that B is for BLOG ... lol

... which reminds me (just after I actually posted it!) that I should mention that I am still trying to Blog my way to Antarctica ... hey - I even have 1 vote! - someBody has actually gone there and voted for me!
(... now that I have more than 0 votes I won't get the Booby prize? - another few thousand votes and I might actually Be able to win this - lol)

A is for ... ABC ... Again ...

A is for ...

Alphabet! ... and All the letters in it! LOL
yes - ABC Wednesday is now starting it's 5th round ... so - let's see how well I can keep up this time ... lol (it is a wonderful excuse to try and post at least once each week - lol)

A is Also for All that stuff I posted about last time (Arachnids and Aykayem and All sorts of other Amazing ... or was it Awful? ... stuff)

And ... er ... And! - that word that one should NOT start a sentence with - lol

A is for Antarctica!
... An Amazingly Awesome place that I really want to go to ... which is why I decided to try and blog my way to Antarctica ... trouble is ... I will need more than 2000 votes to win (someone else already has 2002 votes, and a few others are not far behind) ... And I don't think I have Any yet ... sigh ...
(maybe I need to change that Awful profile picture? ... or do some Advertising ... maybe I should tell the ABC radio people About it? - I could tell them that they need to help me, by doing an interview/publicity/etc, because it should be an Australian who wins? - LOL)

A is also for Astronomy ... which is Also Apt - not just because 2009 is the International Year Of Astronomy (As I mentioned in the other A post) but it is Also for the Aniversary of the first Moon landing - 40 years ago this week (I could have said "Today" if I had posted this on time - lol) and Apollo 11 and the Astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who were the first to set foot on the moon. (First humans, and first Americans ... much to Russia's disgust ... hmmm - I wonder if humankind would have made more/greater advances, or made less progress, if America and Russia had been working with each other rather than against each other?)

A is also for ACTTAA - the ACT Textile Arts Association (which I am a member of) ... and the theme for our exhibition (in a couple of months time) is partly to do with it being the year of Astronomy - the theme is "Heaven And Earth" (the other thing is the fact that it is also the year of natural fibres)
... I guess that theme kind of covers everything ... well Almost Anything Anyway ... it could be possible that there might be some where/thing that is not part of Heaven or Earth? lol
I Assume one would have to ask an Astrophysicist about that one?

I Actually had an Amazing and Awesomely odd thought About Astrophysics last night ... (it was to do with Black holes and the Big Bang theory - But that can wait for next week ... or whenever I get around to doing my "B" post - lol)

hmmm A is also for the Absence of Any images ...

... In order to make this post more Attractive, I might have to Add one:



This is from my Geocities page (the one that is about to be Absent because it will not exist any more once yahoo "flick the off switch" sometime soon) in fact I just went and copied this one from the geocities page because I can't remember where on the computer I put the original (bigger) copy of it!
(it is Also possible that it is Absent All together ... As in ... it isn't where I put it Anyway ... the likelyhood of that Awful fact being Applicable is dependant on where I Actually put it in the first place ... And ... it is possible that the image IS where I put it, but where I put it is not in Any of the places where I think I ought to have put it - it could be in Another folder Alltogether ... maybe even the other "Andrea" folder, which is on Another computer ... Ahhhhrrrrgggghhhh ...)

So ... what is it? ... well - this is what I have written under it on my geocities page:

This picture is actually an image of gaseous pillars in the Eagle Nebula, M16. It was Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, on April 1st (!) 1995 .
The image is courtesy of the Space Telescope Science Institute (ST Sci), operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., for NASA., and NASA.Material created with support to AURA/ST ScI from NASA contract NAS5-26555 is reproduced here was reproduced on my geocities page with permission.
I drew in the fuzzy bit at the top right hand corner (because it had nothing there, just black squares - the image is actually made up of several smaller ones, and there were a couple missing in the corner).

I still think there is something kind of weird and eerie about that image ... that tallest pillar on the left kind of looks like someone got a whole zoo of animals (both real and imaginary) and kind of squidged it all up together ...

... maybe some Aliens did that to it, just to drive us nuts?

A is Also for the Awfull smell of whatever DD just cooked herself for a Midnight snack (toast I think) which would probably smell ok if I was hungry and I wasn't half alseep, and hadn't had black pudding for supper A little while Ago ... hmmm - DD should be in bed - she has school in the morning ... then again - so should I, because I also have school in the morning! (actually I have to go to work in the morning ... but ... I work at a school - lol)

I can think of At least one other A word ... but that could be a bit Awkward (As it is a bit Awfull) because I want to try and keep this blog "family friendly" ... or at least not too bad mostly - lol

so .. I will bid you Adieu (or however u spell that word) ... and I could say a goodbye/goodnight/etc in a couple of other languages that have words for it that start with A, but I can't be bothered looking up how to spell them ...

Alas Poor Geocites, I Knew It Well ...

Yes ... I just found out that Yahoo are closing down Geocities, and deleting all the Geocities websites (well the ones that don't move to PAID web hosting and get the URL re-directed), in late October ...

Which is a bit dissapointing seeing I HAVE a Geocites website!
... not that I used it any more - LOL
but ... it IS the first website I ever had, so it sort of has a bit of sentimental value ...

... which is why I was happy to see that, because Yahoo were good/clever enough to tell them, the nice people at the Wayback Machine are busily archiving as much of geocites as they can before it goes offline, and I am also pleased to notice that they have already (as part of their normal crawling around the www over the last several years) archived a couple of older versions of my geocites home page, and some of the stuff on it (the photos don't work, nor do half the links ... but that is not surprising - some of the links and photos don't work anymore on my geocities site itself).
What they have archived for my site can be found at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/9279/ (well it could 10 minutes ago, but now they seem to be having "technical dificulties" ... hopefully that is just temporary ... hopefully it could be because they are adding to it already - I just submitted my URL for archiving again - the nice folks at yahoo geocites provided the link to a page on the wayback machine site where we can do that ;-)

The only bit if my geocities site that I really wanted to keep, and have it at it's original URL, was this - http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/9279/sigscquiltpic.jpg ... because the URL, and my name, was mentioned in an article in a magazine! (in Down Under Quilts magazine ... who now have digital copies of their magazine online ... but not the one my URL was mentioned in - that was 5 or 10 years ago!)

hmmm ... I guess I should just print out all the pages on my website and stick them in a folder to probably never get around to looking at in my old age ... because I don't think anybody else will really care/be interested in looking at what I had there ... LOL
but ... just in case I am wrong/you are curious (and happen to be reading this before those yahooligans delete it) the URL for my Geocities page is http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/9279/ ... or http://www.geocities.com/aykayem/ (they came up with those shorter URLs later on, so those of us with the original longer ones ended up with 2)

btw ... I do also have a few crochet patterns on my geocites site ... but I already had plans to move them to my blog (either this one or one of the others, with a link in the side bar of this one) anyway ... once I have printed them out, crocheted them again so I can find/correct all the mistakes (I know there are at least a few mistakes in there, and will probably find more) and maybe tidied them up a bit so they look/work ok when they are printed ...
(of course, me being me, and considering the fact that I have been meaning to do that ever since I started this blog - it may take me a few weeks/months/years to actually get around to DOING it ...)

Hmmm ... This post doesn't have any photos, and nor did the last one I wrote (which is now not the last one I posted - lol) - I wonder if I can find photos, of the things I wrote patterns for, on the computer?

... er ... maybe not quickly ... but I found a few photos of some other stuff I have crocheted, from way back in 2002 (which was about when I wrote those crochet square patterns that I have on geocities).

In fact I found a heap of other stuff, and I put a whole pile of photos in here ... and it made the post rather long, and disjointed (seeing it was about 2 different things - lol) - so I have just decided to cut and paste all the other stuff into a different post - and post that one before this one ... so it still appears on my blog with this bit on top of the page, and then all the weird photos under it ...
- so if you want to pretend that I left them all in here as one big long blog post, then you should be able to just scroll down a bit, skip the short paragraph that explains what they are (for anyone who just finds the post by itself somewhere/somehow without reading this first) and keep reading ... or just look ... or whatever ...

ok ... the photos are now in their own post ... and DH is waiting for me to finish this so we can go and get fish and chips for tea - LOL

A pile of old photos of crochet and stuff ...

I found all these while I was typing a blog post about how Geocities was closing down - which will now be posted shortly AFTER this one (so that for those who want to keep reading it like it was one post can just keep reading down the page to this one - lol) - most of them didn't really relate to the first part of that post, so I decided to put them in their own post instead - LOL

Anyway ...

... snip snip ... where is the glue? ... oh there ...

here are all those photos I just found:


I am not sure what this is ...

... or why I crocheted it.

This one is a discloth (or could be used as a face washer or doily or whatever)

I crocheted it for a swap/exchange I was doing on the Australiacrochet yahoogroup.
(and I made the design up as I went, so there is no pattern for this one anywhere ... yet ...)

This is one of a pile of little bears I crocheted ...

... I am not sure if this was one I swapped, or just one of the many I made because I was having fun making them at the time ... lol
(I got the idea from a bear pattern that a friend wrote, but I changed just about everything in the pattern so it isn't the same pattern any more ... but I have never actually written the "pattern" down ... I might do that one year ... )

This is a milk jug cover I made

the tassel is because I ended up with a different number of stitches around the outside than I needed for the pattern of the edging (last 2 rows) to work out evenly - so I did my usual and fudged something - which I actually like - lol
(hmmm, I think I used someone's else's pattern for this, or at least for the middle bit, but I can't remember what pattern it was or where I got it ... somewhere on the www I think ... not really helpful eh?)

This is a small bowl I made ...

... and beside it is the rest of the roll of the garden string that I crocheted it with!
(if something can be tied in a knot - I will have a go at crocheting with it!)
I think I used a coaster pattern as the basic idea, but changed it so it doesn't lie flat like the coaster did.

This is not crochet

it is a tiny quilt I made for a friend, for her birthday. I think it was also my first bit of "stipple quilting" ... but not my last ...
(I can't remember where I got that foundation peiced cat block design from - I probably got given a copy of it at a craft group I used to go to about 15 years ago, but I have seen it a lot of times, in a lot of places (books, websites, quilts, etc) since then).

here is a bookmark I crocheted

I think I made that one up as I went.

but I used a pattern for these 2 drink coasters

but again ... not sure offhand what pattern I used (one I found free on the www, probably when I did a google search for "free crochet coaster patterns" or somesuch)

This is a Christmas quilt I made ...

using quilt blocks that other people made - I went in a swap that we had on a quilty yahoogroup I am on ... I have actually been in several swaps on that group, but I think this is the only one where I have actually made a quilt out of the blocks ... in fact this was the blocks from 3 Christmas swaps, from 3 different years! (an angel block swap, and 2 different Christmas star/tree block swaps)

I tend not to go in many swaps now ... well not block swaps ... but I did just join in and do an "inchie" swap on an art quilt list ... if I have not done so sooner, I will try to remember to post about the "inchies" when we get up to the letter I again for that ABC Wednesday thing ... if we do another round that is (we are up to Z this week, not sure if it is starting at A again or not)

Ah ... found a couple of what I was looking for - those crochet squares that I wrote patterns for, and posted on my geocities page

This one is "Within"


and this one is "from big things, little things grow"

(I think, when I named this one, I was feeling inspired by a song with that same title - lol)

and these are a pile of other squares I crocheted around the same time as I designed those 2

the last 2 are the ones I designed, the rest are all from patterns found on the www and the URLs posted to the Australiacrochet yahoogroup
- we were doing a weekly mystery square at the time ... and, at the time, I was the person who was finding the URLs and posting them ... so I have a huge collection of granny square URLs ... somewhere ... lol
... if anyone reading this (IS anyone reading this?! lol) actually wants the URL for the pattern for any of these - leave a comment telling me which one (they all have numbers on them in the photo) and provided the pattern is still up at the same place it was back in 2002 (some of them are not), I can look up the URL for it in the list I have.

er ... I probably should stop looking for photos now - seeing this post has got rather long - LOL

but first ... a quick peek in the other couple of folders of photos from that year, to see if any other names jump out at me (I am just browsing the file names as I upload them, rather than opening up any photo software - because doing that seems to be what this poor old computer doesn't like ... and it also takes longer to find photos if I do that because I always get lost/side-tracked in there doing other stuff - lol)

hmmm ... a log cabin quilt block I made

I am not sure if this is the one I made into a pin cushion for a swap, or if this is the other one, that I still have not made into anything (I made 2 blocks almost the same, using the same fabrics - the idea was so i could make 2 pincushions - one for the swap and one for me ... the swap one got finished at the last minute so I could swap it ... and the other one didn't ... lol)

and ... probably a good photo to end with - 2 more crochet squares - another "pattern" that I made up

... I gave it a name, but I am not sure if I ever wrote this one out as a pattern. (I probably should one day - because I like it ... lol)

now ... back to that other post - lol

Yes

Yes ... I am having fun doing Wednesday ABC posts ... when I get around to it ... lol

... so this one is my Y post.

and Yes - I would like Wednesday ABC to keep going for another round ... then I can post about how I want to go to Antarctica when we start at A - LOL

... and I will probably also post about the other A things I probably didn't cover last time ... LOL

Y?

Y not?

(I think I actually did that for my post last time we did Y ;-)



Yes I want to blog my way to Antarctica http://www.blogyourwaytoantarctica.com/blogs/view/281

Y should you vote for me?

- Y not?!

you can read my post about it here - http://thebestblogintheentireworld.blogspot.com/2009/07/i-want-to-go-to-antarctica-i-want-to-go.html ... or you can read much the same stuff at the site where you will need to go to vote for me!

cool URL I have for that blog eh?!

one day I went to go there (there used to be something else there I think) and I saw it was vacant and so I took the opportunity and signed up for it!

Y?

Y not?! LOL

so ...
Y am I still UP at this late hour of night?

well ... because when DH went to bed I was wide awake (probably due to having been up even later last night ... er ... as in getting fairly close to sunrise this morning actually ... so I slept in until lunch time today) and then I kind of got side-tracked in here ... and joined twitter ... which I had been kind of meaning to do for ages ... but hadn't got around to because I couldn't decide on a good user name - I wanted to use aykayem (which is a name I invented for myself way back in about 1978 ... before cyberspace had even been invented!) - but ... after years and years of signing up for all sorts of stuff/junk/whatever online, and it always being available ... I tried to use it for twitter and it was TAKEN ... aaaahhhrrrggghhhh! (I wonder if he/she knows that he/she isn't the only "aykayem" hanging around in cyberspace? lol

Y is also for Yellow ... which is the colour of the lid on a jar of Vegemite ... and with both Vegemite and yellow - "a little goes a long way" ... LOL
(I briefly thought about making the text in this post a nice bright yellow, but thought the better of it and spared you - it probably would have been almost totally unreadable anyway - but yellow IS a very useful colour to put just a little bit of in a quilt that needs a little something to give it a bit of a lift/some oomph/whatever - lol)

"Yellow" is also the title of a song I rather like ... but I am not going to add music to this blog ... it has enough stuff to load as it is ... (I do have a music thingy on this blog and that song is actually already ON there! ... I think it is about half way down the list ... I just went and looked to see if it was there and still working ok (it was), but I closed it again because this poor old computer is acting up, which it has been doing a lot lately, and if I had left that window open while it was doing what it was doing, it probaly would have resulted in a blue screen of death or something ... and it doesn't want me to re-start it right now - I tried to do that a little while ago but it told me to try again later because the automatic virus scan is still going! ... besides ... very shortly I am going to hit the post button on this and go to bed - LOL
(I just need to do couple things first - like add labels, and put the current date and time on there - because I actually started typing this post a couple of days ago so it has that date/time on there until I change it)

btw ... I didn't get around to doing an X post last week ... but I probably more than covered it all last time we were up to the letter X - with all my Xanthorreas and other X words ... LOL
(oddly enough, because I happened to be at the botanic gardens and saw some nice ones, I did take several more photos of Xanthorreas a couple of weeks ago!)

Actually - I just looked at that X post and realised that it was also my FIRST post for ABC Wednesday! LOL
(but ... it wasn't my first post about the letter X/X words! - but I won't bore you with the details of that here - it is all explained in the Wednesday ABC one if you are really that interested - lol)

hmmm ... if I hadn't missed most of the letters in the middle of the alphabet I would have been a full circle ... so maybe we HAVE to do it again so I can have another go and see if I can at least fill in the gaps and do the letters I didn't do this time - LOL

anyway ... it is now even later than it was when I changed the time on this post (it is now 10 past 2 rather than 10 to 2 ... lol) so I had better post this before I fall asleep on the keyboard or something (or before this poor old computer decides that the one thing I am still doing on here is still too much for it, and totally crashes on me ... )

btw ... the name I decided to use on Twitter? - UTLAU
... which is what someone started calling me when a group of us used to chat on ICQ a few years back - UTLAU stands for Up Too Late As Usual ... and as you can see by the title of this blog - I liked it - LOL

... and as you can see from the times on most of my blog posts ... it still kind of suits me!
(although back then I was up in the wee small hours of the morning more often than not, and on any night of the week ... these days I am only up this late sometimes, and usually only when I don't have to get up for work or something the next day ... )

btw ... I could also say that it stands for Up Too Late . au - because I am up too late, in Australia - lol
(which is kind of another reason why I decided I like it, and decided to use it for Twitter)

er ...

goodnight!

W is for weird

I am sure people think I am weird ... but that is ok - I like weird ...

so - of course I have to do a W post for Wednesday ABC

W is for Weird, and for Wednesday ABC and also for Wrong ... very wrong - which is what describes what I am listening to at the moment ... which just happened to be some sound file I found on the WWW (more W s) ... I was actually finding and adding some songs to that playlist thing on the bottom of one of my other blogs

(I kind of got side-tracked while trying to work out why it wasn't playing "Poles Apart" any more) ... and I have just found some weird Star Trek parody thingy that happened to be about Kirk and Spock doing ... er ... well ... being gay together ...
(so - NO - I DIDN'T add that!)
but I did find a few different versions of "Stairway to Heaven" and a few theme songs, and some other stuff I like, and that wonderfully weird "Star Trekkin'" song by The Firm ... yes - my tastes in music are rather weird too!
The stuff on that particular blog is rather weird too ... which is probably why I put it there - I think I actually called that blog "Huh?" before I put anything on there - I created that blog to test out the new google version of blogger back when google first took over blogger and we didn't have to move our blogs from the old blogger yet ... then later on I decided to actually USE if for something ... so the "something" is a collection of photos of/posts about the kind of things that when one sees them, the first thought that comes to mind is "huh?"

The other weird thing is that DD (teenage Dear Daughter) came in here and is now "helping" me ... so - the really weird part - on her "orders" we are now listening to "Star Trekkin'" for the 3rd time in a row ... lol

W is also for washing ... which DD also Wants me to do some of (actually I have washed what needs to be washed - her Work uniform - but it is still sitting in the Washing basket Waiting until I get around to hanging it out!)

yes - w is also for Whenever ... Which seems to be the time a lot of things get done around here ...

W is also for water ... which reminds me ... I Was going to go get a drink (and some dinner!) a While ago but got lot on the WWW instead ... Water is also What lakes and rivers and oceans are made of ... and what one can swim in and float boats on ... and in the case of the sea - what has Waves to surf on ... I like messing about in/on/near the sea ... or even any other nice body of water (so Why do I live so far from the beach?!)

W is also for Work ... and DH is just about to finish work (he Works Weird hours) and if I don't hurry up with this he Will find me still here When he gets home ... lol

hmmm - my thoughts got Way laid ... I Was talking about Weird still ...

Weird also describes a lot of the quilty and crochet stuff I make ... some of which is on this blog, and some more of which will (might?) eventually get put on here When I get around to it ...

Sometimes I also blog about other weird stuff I do, and weird stuff I see, and weird stuff I find on the Weird, Wild and Wonderful World Wide Web ...

W is also for Words ... which there seem to be rather a lot of in this post ... and no pictures ...

I Wonder What I can find ...

somewhere I have some photos of Worms - but because I can't be bothered looking for those right now I will spare you those ...

hmmm some weird song comes to mind ... something I used to sing at school, and mum used to sing at school ... and probably her mum too ... but I am not sure I remember the exact words ... or if it even has EXACT words - most of those things have a few different versions ...

"nobody loves me,
everybody hates me,
I think I will go and eat worms

big fat slimy ones,
little short skinny ones,
see how the squiggles and squirms

nobody knows
how well you can live
on worms 3 times a day"

ahh ... found a Weird photo ... a good "What is this?" one:



yes ... Weird, but rather pretty ... Which is often the case With some of the odd things I have at Work ... Which is Where this is.

so .. what is it?



- a pile of glass rods, lying (drying) on a couple of cleaning cloths (the sort made from recycled rag/threads of some sort) after I washed the messy globs of Wax off them (which had been put on there by students as part of the science practical lesson they were using them for).

anyway ... time to do some house Work ... the Washing Won't hang itself up ... sigh ...

"Build it, and they will come"

... the title of this post is a quote from some movie I saw once ... quite a weird movie, but also one I liked, if I remember rightly ... I think it was called "Field Of Dreams" ... anyway ... it seemed like a good title for this blog post, which isn't about the movie, or what the movie was about, or anything to do with the movie ... except for the bit where someone says "Build it, and they will come". (actually I just looked it up here and it says the quote is "If you build it, he will come" ... but I am sure I have heard it quoted (and/or mis-quoted) all sorts of ways, for all sorts of things).

What ... I am typing a blog post?! ...

shock! horror! - yes - I am actually POSTING something on my blog!!! - LOL

A few weeks ago I went to the National Gallery to have a look at an exhibition (called Soft Sculpture) ... and to "suss out" the poles to see where my bit of crocheting (if I finish it in time) is going to be hung - yes - I am going to have something on exhibit at the National Gallery ... but not IN the gallery - it will be ON the gallery! - as part of this installation that is happening in ... eek! - a couple weeks time. (hmmm - I had better get a wiggle on and finish my weird bit of crochet)

Anyway ... I took this photo:



no the ball shaped thingy isn't a UFO floating by ... it is actually a metal sculpture, and it is hanging from several wires between a couple of buildings, high up, right over the middle of a road.

I think it has been there for years, but I was taking photos and thought this would be an interesting one ... then I noticed something IN the ball - which made an even more interesting photo:



yes - a bird's nest! ... probably a magpie, from the size and messy appearance it has.
What a great "penthouse appartment" for a bird - high up, almost impossible to get to if you don't have wings, 360 degree views, stable place to build the nest on with a protective screen around the outside - perfect! LOL

"Beam me up Scotty - there's no intelligent life down here"

Yes ... I am one of those weird people who like Star Trek ...

... which is probably why I end up doing strange things like this - lol

It is the result of me messing around with an already strange photo (of me with all my hair standing on end, because I had my hands on a Van de Graaff generator at the time) and noticing that when I did whatever it was I did to the photo it made me look a bit like a Klingon ... so I did a few more things to make the photo look even more like one - lol

this (below) was the original one ... doesn't look much better, does it? LOL

anyway ... where was I?

oh yes ... I was here typing a blog post actually ... lol

but, a few minutes ago (actually about 10 days ago now - I kind of copied something else to the "clipboard" before I pasted the comment in here so I had to wait until it appeard on the site, and then wait even longer until I remembered to go and look for it and copy it again and come back and finish this blog post - lol)

anyway ... doesn't really matter exactly when it was ... I was here reading this article - http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4319637.html

and ... me being me ... I just had to leave a comment - LOL

This is what I said:

here we go again ... everyone arguing around in circles about UFOs and aliens and cover ups etc etc etc ... yes, there are a lot of fake/out of context bits of "evidence" ... and there are also a few things that are not fake/etc but nobody can explain ... yet ... - I guess we will eventually find out one way or the other then the crackpots and the devout skeptics will have to find something else to argue with each other about. hmmm ... if there are any aliens out there watching, and if said aliens are anything like us - I can just imagine the arguments as they email/twitter/whatever each other over the subspace communication network (or whatever) ... "yes they are intelligent" "no they are too primative lets hunt them for food" "maybe they are intelligent but they could be a threat to us, lets wipe them out now" "no - everything has a right to live, lets leave them alone" "but if we do that the bipeds will blow up the whole planet and all the other species will die out and/or we won't be able to use what is left" etc ... I hope that either they don't exist, or that if they do - then let's hope they are a lot more intelligent than us ... then again ... if they don't spend ages arguing about it they might just decide we are worthless vermin/too ratty/argumentative to be worth even making contact with and wipe us all out without even bothering to talk to us ... [aykayem ducks, and runs for cover]

btw ... this computer is searching for aliens too (running SETI when it isn't doing other stuff ... although some of the other stuff is actually other stuff like SETI - things like protien folding and other "projects" than one can donate computer time to ... not sure which ones are running right now - the ones we have running are whatever takes DH's fancy at the time - LOL)
... I wonder if SETI will actually find anything?
I wonder if I will actually post something a bit less weird/silly here sometime soon?

or should I post something more silly?

... hmmm ... I wonder ...?

Hyperbolic bloom (and btw - I am back from my trip)

... in fact I have been back for about 5 weeks - LOL
But I kind of hit the ground running ... went back to work, went to a heap of meetings, did a pile of stuff, and did a fair bit of doing nothing much in front of the TV with DH as well (but I did do some sewing and crocheting while I did that).

Basically I have been doing just about anything and everything except blogging!

Anyway ... I guess I really should mention the thing that the title of this post refers to ...

which is, sort of, this:



and this is the other side of it:



... with the hook I used to crochet it ... the "yarn" I used was actually cut up loops of plastic shopping bags.

Believe it or not, I actually paid money to take my own "yarn"/etc and sit and crochet that thing!
(but we did get to drink lots of coffe and eat a rather yummy afternoon tea ;-)

So why did I go and sit and crochet that?

- because it is now going to be part of this - http://www.sydneyreef.blogspot.com/

A group of us went to a workshop that was part of it - in fact I notice there is a sort of short blog post about it too - http://sydneyreef.blogspot.com/2009/05/anca-hyperbolic-bloom.html (I possibly in that top photo ... just ... I think ... although I can't see/zoom in enough to be sure if it isn't someone else who was beside me ... all you can see is a bit of the side of ?my head and shoulder in the distance behind someone else in the other group in the foreground - LOL)

I am also planning to crochet something for this - http://dneese.blogspot.com/2009/05/you-can-help.html
and I have just found out about another one I might have to do something for as well - http://theknittedconvenience.blogspot.com/

... hmmm ... not forgetting that somewhere in there I have about 2 weeks to decide what to enter in the Canberra Quilters exhibition and submit my entry forms (including photo of finished or at least partly completed items! ... which could be a bit hard if I have not actually even started them!) ... and then I have to finish entered items in time to deliver them a week or 2 before the exhibition (in August) ... and then ... after these crochet things have happened, thank goodness - I will probably only have a few weeks to decide what to make and enter in the ACTTAA exhibition which happens at bit later in the year ...
And I also have a few other odd things to make - like a few sets of green "inchies" for a swap on a yahoogroup I am on, and a baby gift or 2 ... and who knows what else I have forgotten about right now ...

I wonder when I will find time to sort out my sewing/etc room?

Tryıng to type on a Turkısh keyboard

... ıs not very easy when you are not Turkısh, don´t speak Turkısh, don´t lıve here, and have never been here before - lol

yes - İ had to do ıt - The hotel İ am stayıng in tonıght has free internet (well it is free for those of us on the tour İ am on ...) so İ just had to see what ıt was lıke to post stuff to my blog from Turkey - LOL

btw - İ am in Canakkale, not far from Gelibolu (a town near Anzac Cove)... half an hour on a ferry and then half an hour down the road - but a whole contınent away - LOL (Anzac Cove etc, ıs on one sıde of the Dardanelles, and ıs part of Europe, but Canakkale ... and most of Turkey ... is on the other sıde of that bit of water, in Asıa... whıch ıs the name of a town near Anzac Cove)

I am stıll tryıng to work out whıch letter I İ should use ... there are TWO on the keyboard! ... and the one ın the rıght place (the one I just used here) ıs actually not the one that works ın e-addys even though ıt looks more lıke an I when İ use a capıtal i ... at least ıt does at thıs end ... LOL
Some of the other keys are in dıfferent places too ... and there ıs an extra key that works lıke the shıft key but for some thıngs the shıft key doesn´t ... lıke the @ - it took me a whıle to fınd that one when İ was ın here sendıng a couple of e-maıls earlier in the evening - lol
The , (comma) key ıs over on the sıde ... under the backspace key ... there seems to be a ö and a ç down where İ went lookıng for the comma ... and the ~ ıs one of those thıngs lıke the @ - where u need the Alt Gr key ... İ was goıng to put that key name ın quotatıon marks - but İ can,t FIND them! LOL

btw,
Mum and İ are having a wonderful tıme ... I have taken LOTS of photos, both here ın Turkey (thıs ıs our 2nd day here) and ın Dubaı (and a couple other parts of the Unıted Arab Emırates that we went to one day) ... but at thıs hour of nıght İ wasn,t goıng to dıg around ın my suıtcase and fınd my card reader thıngy and try and work out ıf I could put photos from there onto here - I only came ın here at thıs late hour of nıght - ıt ıs after 11pm here ... (and ıt ıs last nıght, for those of you ın Australıa stıll - lol) - I dıdn,t have tıme to mess around wıth my blog when İ was ın here sendıng e-maıl earlıer because ıt was a few mınutes to tea tıme, and there were also a whole heap of people wantıng to get on here and send theır e-maıls too ... but most of them are probably sound asleep and snorıng by now (Mum ıs ... asleep ... and snorıng - that ıs why İ came down here - LOL)

Anyway - I had better go back to the room and get some sleep - before İ fall asleep on thıs keyboard and make ıt look even more weırd - LOL

Goodnıght ... good mornıng ... whatever ...

J

J is for journey ... I head off in a few days for my big Journey - I fly up to Qld to Mum and Dad's place, then later that same day Mum and I fly overseas on our big adventure ... LOL

Actually - I have already left! ... I am up at Mum and Dads place in Qeensland (I flew up this morning) and we head off to the airport late this evening, ready to fly off at "stupid 0'clock" (in the middle of the night ... you know - that time when I am often still UP posting to my blog - lol)
... although by the time you read this (if scheduling the post for 2 days time actually works), I will be in Dubai ... lol

if I have got organised, I will have posts for the letters k, l, m, n, and o, for ABC Wednesday, scheduled to post themselves for the weeks I am away ... or I may run out of time and not get there (or I may stuff it up and they won't post themselves at the right times or something - lol) ... but I probably won't be near a computer/the internet to check if they work, or add them to the "Mr Linky" page ...

(I ran out if time, but I might see what I can do now while I have use of this computer at the community centre, while Mum and Dad are at a meeting there ;-)
... on second thoughts - no - I won't schedule any more after this one - because I just went and looked at what I had saved as drafts and I have not put any photos in any of them, and they make for pretty boring reading without any photos - lol ... so they might all get posted in a bunch when I get back ... or saved for next year if we keep doing ABC Wednesday again ;-)


J is also for Junk ... DH thinks most of my sewing/crafty/etc stuff is junk ... some probably is, even to me - lol

- I tend to collect "stuff" ... and a lot if it is junk, but I intend to use at least some of it eventually ... just not sure which part I will use, so I don't want to chuck it all out quite yet ... sigh ... but I have thrown some junk out ... and I will do more sorting out/chucking stuff this year - after I get back from the big Journey - lol

[b4 and after photos of pergola that now looks like a pergola again?]

er ... sorry - you miss out for now - I didn't put them in here while I was still at home - LOL
(so this post can be an example of how boring a blog post is when I don't have the photos to go with it - lol)

up up and away ...

... oh hang on - the airline that had that slogan doesn't exist any more ... but the one I flew up here to Queensland on does.

I had to get up before sunrise to catch my early morning flight from Canberra (where I live) ...



yes ... this is me I am talking about and I did mention sunRISE - lol
- usually I see (and take lots of photos of ;-) sunSET ... so this is a bit different for me ... my sense of direction got all confused seeing the red glow of the sun behind the top of the hills and told me I was looking West when I was looking East - LOL

It was worth only having (er dare I say it ... yes why not ... Mum never reads my blog anyway - about 2 hours sleep) to get to fly over the clouds and see views like this:


and this:


and this:


and


and


and this:


and these:



















hmmm - the colour of those clouds, and the sea ... is there such a colour as "steely indigo"?

Anyway ... why am I posting to my blog right now ... well ... Mum and Dad live at one of those places that has a community centre with a pool and a bowling green and and a bar/etc and also a library with a computer that is connected to the www (which is where I am right now) ... and tonight is darts night ... but I am not really into darts ... lol ... so I decided to test drive photobucket and upload the 35 pictures I took on the flight up here, and post this blog post - lol

After the darts finish, we go back to Mum and Dads place for an hour or so, then we have to leave to go down to Brisbane airport so Dad can drop Mum and I off to catch our "stupid 0'clock" (as in it leaves just before 3am!) flight to Dubai ... and my blog will probably go very very quiet for a few weeks - lol
(well, apart from this week's ABC Wednesday post that should post itself just after Midnight on Wednesday, because I set it up to do that when I was in here earlier this afternoon while Mum and Dad were at some social club comittee meeting ;-)

ok ... pile of photos are there ... photobucket seems to be a good way to add them actually ... but Darts is almost finished and they will want to lock up ...

Time to go back to Mum and Dad's unit (well it is called a unit but it is bigger than their last house was!), and get ready to fly off on our big adventure ...

... as some kid in the seat behind me said when the plane took off - wheeeee!

Inching along ...

It was Inevitable that I was going to post my ABC Wednesday post late again ... LOL

now what should I post about? ... international? invisible? ... ink? Insect?

I could stay Invisible ... but I am still Inching along with Wednesday ABC ...

btw, I am trying to get organised a couple of weeks early and starting a whole pile of posts and saving them as drafts, so that when I am off on my International travels - I can set them to ... hopefully ... post themselves. I might not be anywhere near a computer with www access though - so the links might not be added to the thingy until I get home) ... or I might not even find time to finish writing the posts before I go ... LOL

I is also for Individual ... and anyone who has been reading my blog will probably realise that I am one of those ... lol

I is also for Ink
hmmm - maybe I should have taken a photo of all the Ink splots some Idiotic student splattered all over the door of one of the science labs at the school I work at ... the pattern they made was quite Interesting - lol
... I probably did draw some stuff with Ink once, but will I remember to find it and take a photo? ... probably not - lol
I also "doodle" with pens while I am talking on the phone/listening to talks/lectures/etc - if it turns out I don't need to take a lot of notes, then I use the pen and paper to draw stuff instead. What do I draw? ... all sorts of weird stuff that probably comes from my Imagination ... lol

I also is for Insect ... there are lots of Insect photos on my blog already ... including photos of Inchworms - which are not worms, but they are Insects ... lol



This Inchworm is in my Index finger.
er - my finger looks a bit Icky - LOL
(probably mostly dirt from the garden/etc, and dry skin)


I also found a photo of an Insect Invasion:



If you click on that photo (which takes you to the full size version) you will probably be able to see that there are rather a lot of Insects (little brown beetles actually) all flying In to the yard on a sunny spring day (sometime in November - which sort of explains the Santa hat DD is wearing!) ... they were settling on those white flowered bushes (tea trees - an Australian native plant)



... and what were they doing? ... what a lot of things do in spring - I think they were meeting there for another I word ... looks like they were meeting there to make more beetles:



I actually found these 2 on DD's back, but they seemed quite happy to continue doing what they were doing on my finger!

I is also for Inchies.

"What are Inchies?" you ask? ... well ... they are one inch square bits of art ... in this case textile art (I think people do them in paper/etc too) ... they are a bit like artists trading cards - one makes a pile and swaps them with other people (often in sets of 9, or whatever). I am on an Art quilt related yahoogroup and we have had a few inchie swaps on there.
There are pictures of some inchies here and here and (a different swap) here ... these were all before the swaps I went in (they were links given to us to go and look at to find out what inchies were - lol) ... a Google search for "inchies" also turned up a lot of stuff about them too ... there is even a Flickr group ...

Anyway ... here are some photos of some of my inchies I made for the swaps we had on the Aus_NZartquilters yahoogroup (hmmm ... how many photos will depend on how many I find while I am digging around in my many folders of photos ... but if you look at all my posts that have the label "inchies" on them you might find some more that I have posted about - I know I have posted about my "plastic" ones)
We each made 7 sets of 9 - swapped 6 sets and kept one for ourselves, and we had a few different swaps, that each had a different theme.

These are my set of "Metallic" inchies:



I mounted mine on bits of black card, and the extra one at the bottom is one that I made into a dingly dangly (to hang on the Christmas tree maybe? lol) and popped it in the envelope with my inchies - a little present for the poor person who had to do all the swapping and send them all back.


Here are some more - The theme for this lot was "blue"



There are 2 sets in theis photo because these were the set I kept, and another spare set that I made for Mum ... not sure if I still have these in my sewing room or if I gave them to her ... (I might have to have a look for them and if I find them I can take them up with me and give them to her before we fly off on our trip)

Talking about flying - I is also for ...
... in flight food!



this was when the kids and I flew to Adelaide back in December 2007
(to visit a pile of relatives i have there, and also to see Mum and Dad, who were also over there visiting the same pile of relatives, while their new house was being built)

that airline food tasted ok actually (especially that little bottle of Gin - lol) ... somehow I don't think I will get a meal (or any free drinks) on the Virgin flight up to Qld, but hopefully we will be fed on the Emirates Flight to Dubai ... if not - then I guess I will be eating the chocolate bar I will be taking in my cabin baggage, and/or one or 2 of the muesli bars Mum said she will be bringing with her - LOL

Anyway ... this may or may not be the last post here for a few weeks ... depends if I get organised and finish writing ABC Wednesday posts for the next few weeks, and if they actually do automatically get posted to my blog like they should do if I set things up right ... lol
(but even if my posts "happen" ok, they probably won't get added to "mr linky" and I probably won't be online to see and reply to any comments until I get back at the end of April).

I is also for Idiot ... some people probably think I am one - especially when I stay up until "stupid O'clock" posting silly stuff like this on my blog - LOL
(it is actually after 1:30am now - the time I put on this post is about what it was when I came in here to start checking my e-mail and log in to type the rest of this blog post, which I actually started writing a week or 2 ago when I was thinking of things I could post for a few different letters of the alphabet - lol)