Squid guts

... lovely title for a blog post isn't it?

Why that title? ... well - for the next few days a group of scientists in NZ are going to be "up to their armpits", and maybe even to the tops of their gumboots, in thawed out squid ... very BIG squid ... currently frozen squid, but one is now being thawed out live on webcam, and the others, including a really HUGE one will be thawed out starting tomorrow - also live on webcam ... and they are also going to be dissected live on webcam ... and lucky for us - webcam does not yet have "Smellavision"
For those few that might be reading this before this event is all over - there is a blog that has some posts about it, and the links for the webcams are here ... enjoy ...

btw, I might not be posting stuff here quite as often as I have for the last 2 or 3 weeks ... for one thing the Scatterdays have been put on hold by the persons who were choosing the letters/things, and the other thing - the main reason I had time to post so much for the last couple of weeks has been because it is school holidays here, and I work at a school - so I have not had to go to work for the last 2 weeks ... but school goes back tomorrow so I am back at work ... sigh ... but I will still post stuff here ... just not every day or 2 ... LOL

hmmm ... I was just thinking about what photo I could put in here (because just plain text is a bit boring) and I turned around and looked behind me ... and was met with a sight that I am often met with when I am sitting here and look behind me - a sound asleep dog ... I won't sneak past him and go grab the camera right now, because then I would have to upload the photos now instead of later ... so - as they say in the cooking shows - "here is one I prepared earlier" :



this photo was taken a few days ago, and looks almost exactly like what I can see now (hmmm - I must pick up that mess in the passage ) ... except his feet are a bit further in the air and I have an even better view of the things that "stand out like dog's ____ "

< Andrea desperately resists the urge to change the post title to "squid guts and dog nuts" ... >

A different way to look at websites

... As if there are not already enough things to get me "lost in cyberspace"

actually I fell over this website one other time too ... but I was probably too busy to have much of a play with it ... or (more likely) too busy playing with a few other things as well ...

What website?
The one that uses the html tags/etc on a website, to make pretty pictures like this:



... it is the "graph" I got when I typed the URL for this blog into this website

I decided to try one of my other blogs - one with a lot less posts and junk on it:



(this one is http://wheremyblogis.blogspot.com/ )

I also found another version of the same thing - where someone has added to it so that you can "grab" the dots with the mouse and re-arrange the thing ... and when you click on the dots and hold down the mouse button you also see what the dots are (eg links, tags, etc) ... I tried it with this blog and it froze (which is probably more because of things having a go-slow at this end, rather than that website), but it worked fine on the other one ... so I spent a while re-arranging the dots ... lol

btw ... I am not sure why one photo had a border and the other didn't (not that it shows up here on my dark background ... but it does if you get my blog via e-mail/feed/whatever and it has a white background) - the border thingy happened (or didn't - lol) when I did the screen shots ... I probably should have read the instructions in the "help" menu first ... LOL
I don't do screen captures very often ... I usually use that program for messing around with my photos (cropping, rotating, fixing up photos that are too light/dark, etc).
but ... I have also been known to use it to waste time doing silly stuff like this:



... the photo I started with was in my Scatterday post yesterday (I am sure you can work out what one it was) ... I used the same photo, rather than the original photo, before I fixed up the highlight/midtone/shadow stuff (I always keep the original when I mess around with photos, even if I am only fixing stuff to make it look better ;-) but here the photo has been cropped, and I used some weird "picture tube" tool (which I hardly ever play with but DD loves) to put all those buildings and fireworks and stuff there ... not sure why I decided to put bubbles, but I left them there because I liked them - lol

oops ... where did my afternoon go?

My oh My - it is Scatterday already!

Actually it isn't Saturday yet [ it is now ] ... I am starting to type this at about 5 past Midnight last Sunday, just after posting the last one! ... because I just thought of something several things already and I don't want to forget!
[I am adding the stuff that I am writing now, in the wee small hours of Saturday Morning, in Mauve ... actually it is probably technically lavender, but so what? - lol]

This Scatterday is the letter M and Music, Dangerous, Cold Things.

Music:
... DD (Dear Daughter) has put a heap of band posters on her wall - but is any of it music? ... maybe she has one of Metallica? [ DD sugests Marilyn Manson ... "he is musical and Dangerous" or Motley Crue's lead guitarist - Mick Mars]

I decided to take a photo of the Marilyn Manson posters in the corner of DS (Dear Son)'s room -



Marilyn Manson probably satisfies all 3 things - cold, dangerous and musical! LOL

maybe a Moog synthesiser (I remember hearing about them on the radio as a kid and being fascinated ... now they are old technology ... then again ... just looked here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moog_synthesizer - seems they are popular again! ... along with other weird things like theremins - pity I don't have one of those - I could have used it last week for a T thing - lol)


Mould can be rather dangerous:

hmmm do I have a photo of some? [don't think so ... at least not that I can find easily] ... OR ... where can I hide something so it can go mouldy for a few days until I remember it next Saturday when I realise I need the photo?! LOL
[ oops - forgot to hide something ... lol ... I am sure there is something just perfect in the fridge at work - very mouldy and probably quite dangerous - the somebodys mouldy lunch that I saw in there on the last Friday of the school term, before we all went on "school holidays" ... but I was not going in to work in my time off just in case it is still there!]


Maybe Mungo is dangerous? (he sure looks dangerous in the photo DD took!)
... but she didn't e-mail/share the photo - it is still on HER computer
However I do have a photo of Mungo being Musical!



(anyone who has been reading my other scatterday posts might notice that I also posted this picture for scatterday "T" a few weeks back - lol)

DD said I should take a photo of "My daughter with scissors"


so here is My daughter being dangerous and running with scissors - lol
and ...
several photos later ...
we now also have "My Mad daughter Murdering the pink panther"





Eating the wrong species of Mushrooms can be dangerous - I don't have a photo of a dangerous mushroom species, but here is a link: http://www.anbg.gov.au/fungi/deathcap.html

hmmm - now what else is dangerous?

Maybe a Moggy?


she was rolling in the dirt on the back "lawn" (well it WAS a lawn before we had a drought!)

Maybe a Mutt?


"Mutt in the Mist"? LOL
I was facing into the sun when I took the photo and it came out all weird and misty like this - and I kind of like the effect!


Midnight snacks can be dangerous!



actually it wasn't quite midnight - it was just after 11pm last night ... DD came in here (I was messing around with e-mail or something) and asked me if I had a pancake recipe that we had the ingredients for ... in other words what she wanted was for ME to Make her some pancakes - lol
(so what's the dangerous part? - the fact that at or near Midnight one tends to do silly stuff like make smiley faces with the pancake mixture ;-)



MMMMM - this one tastes even better - the other one had golden syrup and margerine on it, this one has brown sugar and lemon juice!

Another possibly dangerous thing is Messing about with Marking pens and Metho:



I did this today - was experimenting to see if doing this worked with Metho instead of the Isopropyl alcohol that someone, on the art quilt yahoogroup I am on, saw in a magazine ... not sure if this was what they were trying to do ... but the website I found, that had instructions for doing this, also said to use Isopropyl alcohol ... but I had an idea Metho might work ok for what I wanted ... now all I have to do is see if it washes out or not (because I want it to NOT - lol)

I also did this weird circle:


I did circles of dots, and some hearts, with the markers then dropped drips of metho into the middle until it had spread out to the edges.
and I did some poppies - the ones on yesterday's blog post (that I posted a little while ago - just before I dragged this one out of the drafts folder and put the photos/this text in)

Another dangerous thing is "Mad person with camera"

I took this photo while walking the dog along the edge of the lake this evening, then played around with "highlight/midtone/shadow" in the photo editing software we have (because the sky was a bit darker and the willow tree was way to bright) ... this actually looks like it could lead to an interesting idea for a quilt ... one more to add to the hundreds I have already thought up and will never have time to make most of, unless I live to be a million years old or something!

btw - "MadPersonWithCamera" is also my name on one of my flickr accounts (I ended up with 2 when yahoo photos died and gave us the option to move to flickr - and I had 2 yahoo accounts with phtos on them - lol) ... but it is the one with hardly any photos on it ... lol
Most of my flickr photos are here (there are a few photos of crochet and quilty stuff I have made, and a few of family/friends/etc ... and I think they were all taken at least a few years ago) ... and the "mad person with camera" ones are here , but you won't see any photos there (unless I put some more there at some stage after writing this blog post ;-) because the few that are on there at the moment are in a "private" album (most of them were photos I took for DD's scout troop, and I didn't want to put them in a public album because they are other people's kids) .
The only photos I have recently put online are the ones I put here in my blog! (or the odd few I put in my other blogs, if I ever get around to posting to those)

er ... I am getting a bit off track there - lol - back to Scatterday:

Cold things:

er ... now that the nights are not so warm, My toes could be getting cold when I am in here posting this? [nope - got my nice warm slippers on ;-) ] ... or maybe I could google for "glacial Morraine"? lol - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moraine

DD says "Monday Morning at the 'goonbag'"
but I didn't go there on Monday Morning to take a photo ... in fact I have never actually seen the thing ... but from what DD has told me, it is some sculpture thingy in the middle of the city (it has only been there a year or 2 and I never go up that end of the mall it is in) apparently it is designed to sit on, and is shaped like a big silver cushion ... but those who hang around there say it looks like a bag of goon (ie the silver bag out of a wine cask!) - so they call it the goonbag - LOL

[?find a nice picture of McMurdo station, Antarctica ? ... borrow one of these? or just link here? - http://jasonsolis.blogspot.com/ (he has some good pictures on his blog) ... or google some other cold place starting with M? ... the Mars polar ice cap?]

I might have to google for the Martian ice cap ... I found a really pretty picture of it a few weeks ago and printed it - because I am thinking of using it for a journal quilt that I want to do - the one where we are supposed to do a quilt from/based on a photo ...

hmmm can't find the photo quickly ... but the top picture on this page is rather cool - http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/science_paper/f6a/ (it is the Martian South pole ... and it is another one that I have seen before and thought it would be a good quilt design ... lol

... in fact most of these images would make interesting quilts/etc and they are rather spectacular - I must remember to go back and have a good look sometime when I am not supposed to be sleeping! LOL

yes - it is 5am already ... where did my "evening" go?!

(the hours seem to vanish into thin air when I come in here and do blog posts at the same time as reading/sending e-mail and/or googling for stuff ... especially if I also end up fiddling around with photos, blog templates, or whatever as well ... which I also did ... but not this blog - this one)

This isn't Sunrise:

it was Sunset last night, next to the cold Murky lake where I walked the dog, so "Murky lake" can be my cold thing photo.
(unless you want to count one of the Markers and Metho ones - Metho is cold when you get it on your skin - something to do with the evaporative cooling as it rapidly evaporates)

I think I have enough musical, dangerous and cold M things in that lot ... too bad if I don't - I am going to post this now, and go to bed!

Poppies?

Lest we forget ...









... actually, this is a bit of fabric that I just put permanent marker dots on, and then dropped dribles of metho on ... I just got up from here and did it a little while ago! - my mind was wandering - thinking of the stuff I have been experimenting with/testing today (whether metho works to do what I just did) and thinking about what could (should?) I have posted for ANZAC day ... and suddenly (at 11:30pm!) the idea came to me - black and red dots might turn into poppies! ... they sort of do ;-)

(hmmm - more experiments probably needed - lol)

I also "drew" on the picture after I uploaded it, to see what it might sort of look like after I machine stitch over it in black thread - I think I am even worse an "aim" with the mouse than when I draw with the sewing machine!

I wonder if Hurtle Henry Holly (one of my relatives, who died in WW1) would be proud of me?
(actually - if he could see what I write in this blog - he would probably be totally confused - LOL)

(25 Challenge) Effervescence ...

= Fizz

a fizzy drink

... with caffeine ;-)

sometimes it's the perfect thing to restore my "fizz".

so is beer!

...Yes - even Together!!!

(OK - I'm weird! :-)

[ 25 challenge - next week ... Remember ]

T time (Scatterday)

Hmmm ... I started typing this post (then saved it as a draft) several days ago - when I gave it the title I must have known that I was going to be posting it in the evening! LOL (although I have actually had my tea ... sort of ... had a largeish lunch out so tea was just some "fries" from the fast food place DD works - I picked her up on my way home from where I was all day and we shared a "stunner" deal (burger, drink, chips and one of those ice creams they do in a cup with stuff mixed in) ... anyway - Scatterday time:

(btw ... I have not looked at what anyone else has posted yet - I will do that once I have finished doing this one ... which mainly involves puting the photos in ...

[later]

... and a lot of fiddling around and fussing with formatting and so on ... grrrr ...

I only look at what next week is when I am just about to publish the post and I want to put the link and next weeks letter/catagories at the bottom :-)

now where was I? LOL

ok - I couldn't resist this ...

I made a Tiny Square box out of Blue paper, and put it out in my neighbourhood! - on the ground in front of our "street tree" ... so that fits all 3 catagories in one go!

but ... somehow I don't think that is really good enough - if I was being assessed it would probably get a big red "poor effort" written on it ... lol

so ...

I found some lots more stuff:

A blue Tea bag Tag

which isn't quite square ... neither is the T bag ... but the box almost is ...

... same with this Blue Tissue box end

... to bad if it isn't quite square - it looks pretty.

how about the Turkish pizza box?

- oops - it got thrown out before I remembered to take the photo, and I am not going out and digging around in the rubbish/recycling when I have other photos I can use instead! LOL

btw, the Turkish pizza came from a Turkish restaurant that has a blue and orange front wall! (but it was more orange than blue so I didn't take a photo ... it is also the one that sells the Kusbasili that I didn't take a photo of for K ... this pizza wasn't Kusbasili either - we decided to try something else ;-)

hmmm - I wonder if any of it started with a T?

oh well - Too bad if it did - it has all been eaten now ...

Ah - this chai Teabag is square!

so that covers the sqaure T thing.

but what can I find that is blue?

Ah - here is some blue "Transport" ?

our blue Barina ... which one of our teenagers is now driving a lot - I think that was why he was cleaning it when I took this photo earlier this year - this was just after he had fixed the broken window, and just before we got it registered again so he could drive it)
- it is also in my neighbourhood (in our driveway, unless being driven somewhere)

The front of DH's Subaru is also in the corner of the photo (more blue Transport)

Now what else can I find?

a Tangled Twisted doona cover Tossed on a Teenagers bed ...

... well it does have blue squares on it ... lol

some blue "Tote bags"

(not that I ever call them that any other time except for when I need something blue that starts with a T - lol)

oh look! - more blue Tissue boxes!

pretty eh? ... so how come the one next to my side of the bed has a boring picture of pears on it?

and next to the tissue boxes I noticed I had a Blue Square Tunisian crochet cushion

yes - the one on the right is done in "Tunisian crochet" (also known as "Afghan crochet" or "Tricot") ... which is done with a different hook/techniqe than "normal" crochet (which the one of the left is) ... my Toes are also in the neighbourhood of the cushions (in the bottom of the photo - lol) ... and you can also see that on our floor we have square blue tiles! (well mostly blue - actually a sort of mix of mainly light blueish with some brown and whiteish colours mixed in)

btw, yes - I made both the cushions ... my friend wrote the patterns, but the cross stitch design on the Tunisian one was my own (I used one of her desings on the other side, but that one wasn't square and mine was ;-)

another blue square:

where does the T come in? ... er ... Toes and tiles again? lol ... and you can decide if this quilt is a Terrible or a Terrific quilt!

... it is actually made out of second hand fabric (from old sheets and old shorts and shirts!) and I made it for the dog!

I did also have a couple other ideas for stuff, but I think I already have enough in here, and I never got around to taking photos of this lot while it was still daylight ... lol

can I find some blue flowers that start with T?

[I probably could if I cheated and googled ... lol]

a T street name?

[that one is down the other end of a long laneway ... Too bad I am Too lazy to go walk there - the street is at the end of the laneway but the nearest sign is even further]

a torana/etc car starting with t?

- yes - I do have a photo for that one ... as they say in the cooking/"how to" shows on TV - "here's one I prepared earlier" ... lol

an old Toyota that belongs to one of our Teenagers - one of our Neighbours gave it to him! ... but it doesn't go ... although it is fixable with a lot of mechanical work and body work and stuff - which the Teenager will probably enjoy doing. (he wants to be a Mechanic!)

a trailer ... hmmm - that is a blue T thing!

yes we do have a blue trailer!

[er ... if you look at the "transport" picture, you can just see the front of it in front of the Landrover - it has a Tarpaulin hanging on the front and onto the spare tyre]

a Telstra/telephone/transformer box/thingy?

[yes there are a few odd ugly boxes in our neighbourhood ... not in our yard thank goodness ... and I am not walking down the laneway to find one now!]

blue "tickertape"? (if I can find a roll of blue streamer ... or a photo?)

[That photo could be taken inside now, but I probably don't actually have any to take the photo of, so I am not even going to look]

someone's blue letterbox (if it is number Ten/Twenty/Thirty something) ?
[I can't be bothered with that one at This late Time either ... lol]

a blue house? - if it has a number Ten/Twenty/Thirty something on it to make it a T thing

[ditto.]

but (last but not least) I do have a nice photo of a nearby TREE:

The big looking Tree (which is actually fairly small) is less than Two minutes walk away (about Two hundred metres away actually) ... the big tree, that looks Tiny in the photo - in the middle of the photo ... which I just cut out and put here so u can see it:

is on a nearby hill ... and I have taken quite a few other photos with the same Tree in them, and I have also seen other people's photos of the same Tree on the WWW

There is also a TV antenna in the photo too ... so that is another T thing in my neighbourhood!

This post has taken Too long to write Type ... it doesn't help that I had to stop what I was doing and go and collect a Teenager from where she had been out to Tea and it took ages to Transfer photos to the computer and even longer to Transfer them To blogger ... methinks one or the other Teenager has been downloading Too much stuff and used up all the bandwidth (meaning our connection gets slowed down until the end of the "billing period" ... grrrr ... hopefully that is not Too far away!) ... and it doesn't help that blogger puts The photos I Transfer there onto The Top of by blog and I have to move Them To wherever I want to put Them ...

ok ... who stole my evening?????!!!!!!!!

(it was about 8:30 when I came in here to finish typing this and post it ... but now, after a few interruptions and a lot of fiddling around, it is almost Sunday!)

next week's Scatterday is [Andrea goes and looks] ...

Letter M
Categories - Music, Dangerous, Cold Things

Exponential rice grains and free laptops?

Yes ... I got another one of those e-mails saying that if I forward it to 8 people I will be sent a free laptop! ... wow - that almost sounds too good to be true! ... truth is - if it sounds too good to be true - it most likely is too good to be true, and it is probably just another anoying hoax/whatever.


Think about it - do you really think someone is going to give away that many free laptops?



How many?



Interesting question that ...



I am not really that good at maths, but I think even I can work this one out:

If you were one of the 8 people someone sent the e-mail to, and all 8 of you send it to 8 more people that is 8 laptops (for you and the other 7 people) … and 64 people who got the e-mail from you/the other 7 people – so if they all send it to 8 people then that is 64 laptops … and 512 people that got an e-mail from one of those 64 people - so if all 512 of those send it on that would be 512 laptops … etc



… ok they probably wouldn’t all send it on – but at least half would – but if only half of them sent it on each time that would still start to add up after a while …


even if only 2 of the 8 people sent it on each time it would quickly mount up to a lot of laptops – in fact it is just like a story I heard once (think it was some fairy tale/folk tale/legend) about someone being asked what they wanted for a reward for something and getting laughed at and told “yes” when they asked for one grain of rice on a square of a chess board, then on the next day double that amount of rice on the next square, then the next day double that on the next square … and so on each day until they had used all the squares the chess board and then that would be sufficient …


whoever it was on the giving end laughed because they thought it funny that the person only wanted his reward to last for 64 days … but it was a different story later when he realised what happens when you keep doubling the number of grains of rice … LOL
hmmm ... 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, … doesn’t sound too bad so far … but that is only 7 squares … lol … 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 6192, …


after 2 weeks it still doesn’t sound too bad – except I guess someone has to COUNT them! … 16384, 32768, 65536 131072 262144 524288 1048576 2097152 4194304 8388608 16777216 33554432 67108864 …


do I have to go on ? … the calculator won’t go any further (is a very basic old solar one that I found lying beside the monitor – lol)


… that is nearly 4 weeks, and only 27 squares, and I am fairly sure he is already feeding his whole family … LOL …


remember – this is exponential growth here … the final number of rice grains ends up being more than we can grow in a season in the whole world!




Btw … not sure why I bothered working all that stuff out when I could have just done a google search first (instead of after doing all that typing and maths) and found it on several pages … like this one - http://www.mathsisfun.com/binary-combinations.html (scroll down to the bottom third of the page and there is a picture of a chess board with an explanation and one version of the legend). There is also stuff about it here (except that one talks about it being wheat instead of rice).




Btw … that is just fictional rice grains … but I just got to thinking (ouch?) – this kind of maths/logic also applies to the actual e-mails that everyone sends around in the hope of getting free stuff or of avoiding viruses or other nasties (like having their kidneys stolen and waking up in a bath of ice or whatever) … the rice and the chess board is a bit like if everyone who got one of those e-mails sent it to 2 people who sent it to 2 people who sent it to 2 people … etc … so if we consider that they usually get sent to 5 or even 50 people at a time, and at least some of those people send it on … no wonder these things clog up e-mail severs! LOL





Still wondering how many rice grains? junk e-mails? grains of sand on a beach?


Want to count some?


Here u go:



(sand, on a beach in Adelaide, in January ... I knew I took that odd photo for a reason!)



I don’t need a free laptop for sending 8 e-mails – I just want 1 cent for every copy of that e-mail that has been received by anyone! (then I could probably buy the whole darn laptop factory! ... and the huge house that was near that sandy beach!)


btw ... if anyone reading this has forwarded the e-mails and actually GOT a free laptop - please feel free to comment and tear me down in flames (I will read whatever it is you say ... right after I go and forward 8 copies of that e-mail! LOL)

Some reasons why I don't buy home decorating magazines

1. The house is currently too messy to bother decorating (I should be out finishing sorting out/tidying up now ... so why am I in here? lol)



2. It costs money to buy them ... and I have other things to spend my money on - there are plenty of places to borrow them/get them free ... who cares if they are a month or 3 (or even 300) out of date? ... if I am going to use a decorating idea it will be because I like it, not because it is currently in fashion!



btw - I apply the same logic to quilt/crochet/craft magazines too - I buy fabric and yarn and borrow magazines - because I can't do it the other way around!


(however I did buy the Febuary 2008 issue of Down Under Quilts - because there was a photo of one of my quilts in it! ... )



3. The fact that 3/4 of the magazines seems to be advertising, and I don't see the logic in paying money to have something that is then trying to sell me stuff I don't nescessarily want - if they want to fill them with paid advertising then why don't they give them away? - it seems to work with webpages ... lol



4. either the writers are morons, or they think their readers are - why else would they do stuff like show a picture of a nice bookcase with all the books facing spine IN - and then write in the article that "the backward facing books turn what could have been a distracting jumble into a neutral element"?!!!!!!! No - I didn't buy this magazine to find that out - I read about it in this rather amusing blog post - http://rooruu.blogspot.com/2008/04/book-rant.html



btw ... I think that particular bit of decor is just so NOT ME ... lol







I left rather a long comment on that blog post too ... but she probably won't approve it, because I think it was probably longer than her actual post! LOL

[a few days later ...]

... oh ... she DID approve it! lol

(hmmm ... I wonder if that was a good thing or not? - I just noticed at least 2 typos in it - and I wasn't even really looking hard, so there are probably a few more too!)

Talking about stupid things, and home decorating/etc ...

I was just surfing somewhere and found a link to this website - Unscrew America

er ... it that POSSIBLE?! LOL

... actually it is a website about a good idea ... pity it is also the most annoying website I have been to all year! LOL

25 challenge - "Five"

Pentagons have 5 sides. A dozen (regular) pentagons make a (regular) Dodecahedron - one of the 5 Platonic Solids.

... surely you always wanted to know that?!

25 challenge - next week = Effervescence

Oh K - it's Scatterday.

Scatterday this week is brought to you by the letter K and Something You Like The Smell Of, Hobby and Office Things

I like the smell (and taste!) of Kusbasili (I think that is roughly how they spell it - not sure where the menu is to go look - it is a Turkish pizza that they sell at the restaurant near where I work) but I have not had one this week to take a photo of, and I didn't think they would want me in there taking a photo of one today if I wasn't actually buying anything - lol (I already had lunch so I didn't need more)

so ... [Andrea opens up pantry to see what I can find] - ah this stuff smells pretty good (especially when it is in whatever else one puts this stuff in when cooking, or with the dim sims/etc one is eating it with)

Kikkoman soy sauce.

Much better than Kellogs corn flakes, which is what I thought of the other day - and which I probably do have in the pantry but they don't really smell like much at all (but they taste ok ;-) ... and definitely better than the other kind of "special K" - the one the band Placebo have a song about - and which I don't have a clue what smells like and don't intend to ever sniff it - even though some people have been known to do that (well - more like snort than sniff - lol)

... and I don't have any Kecap Manis or Kebabs or Kirsch etc either ...

A hobby is easy - I am sure a lot of us thought of Knitting:

I can sort of knit, but it isn't really my hobby - I would rather crochet!
but - due to having a teenage daughter who was sort of "into" knitting for a whole couple of months before she gave me back my needles, with 2 half finished scarves on them! - I happened to have some knitting handy (and much easier to find than the little bit of my knitting - I did some "magic squares" last year but, like most things in my sewing room, I am not sure where they are at the moment).

I guess I could include a photo of some Knotting?

This is actually a macrame lion I made rather a lot of years ago (I was quite possibly still a teenager at the time! ... I was probably not much older than my daughter is now ... she doesn't like the lion - says it looks creepy - which strikes me as rather odd for someone who picks up big hairy spiders with her bare hands, and dresses in black shirts with skulls on them! - LOL)

If I could be bothered finding a kite (there is at least one little one somewhere in the house, just not sure where) I could call kite flying a hobby too ... but I couldn't be bothered going and looking for the kite.

Now for office things - I didn't even think of taking a photo of my keyboard until I saw it on Michelle's blog a couple of minutes ago! (I went there to copy and past the categories at the top of this post) - but I don't need to do that - at work I have some office Knives:

These are in the store room at work (but there are also pictures of them in the office supply catalogues so they are office things)

Actually I tend to use this sort of knife as an "office knife"

that is why it was in one of those tins of pens, scissors and other office things on my workbench - comes in handy for cutting up cardboard/boxes, opening boxes, etc ...
(at home I use one of the steak knives if I need to cut up a cardboard box ;-)

anyway ... less photos than usual, but if you also followed the links and read what was there, then you have probably been "lost in cyberspace" for long enough (and probably know more than you ever thought you wanted to know about "special K" LOL) so this is probably enough for this week ... LOL

I guess I had better go back to MW's blog and look at what I have to find for next week ...

ah - the Letter T - Square Things, Blue, In My Neighbourhood.
(hmmm ... maybe I could make a Tiny little Square box out of Blue paper, to cover the first 2, and then I could hang it from the little streetTree in front of our house?)

Strange soles

This is what I was doing earlier this evening:


(I guess I should go pick it up B4 someone trips over it? lol)

no, it is not a demented bird or a new fashion in rugs/doormats ... it is a pile of shoe soles (the sort they use to make cheap and nasty shoes) tied together with bits of wire from inside "grey s..t" (grey computer network cable - if the network cable is blue then it is called "blue s..t" ;-)
The plastic from outside of the wire is in a heap in the cardboard box, along with a few spare shoe soles ... 2 of which are also probably going to be made into odd things ... (a sole ... not a flounder, and a shoe phone ... LOL) ... the big thing is the partly made armour for a FOOT soldier ... or something like that ... (maybe he belongs to an organisation called "SHOE" - Super Heroes Obliterating Entropy ?)

Yes, I know - it sounds rather strange and if you are still reading this you are probably confused ... too bad - there will be no more details until later - it isn't finished yet! LOL

(it is for a challenge for a textile art group I am part of, I have known what the challenge is since about November, and it has to be finished in time to take to the next meeting, in just over a week's time - so of course I only started it last night! :-)

anyway ... it is nearly Midnight - time to start writing my Scatterday post and put the pictures in - so I can post it as soon as it IS Saturday, and then go to bed (and see if I can sleep off this cold I seem to have come down with - typical - the next 2 weeks are school holidays so I don't have to go to work - so of course I have to come down with a bug NOW ... sigh ...)

25 Challenge - "Belonging"

"The bed belongs to me"

he gets away with it, because he belongs to our family.

... It's nice to belong - but would you want to?!






25 Challenge - next week = "Five"

A dark turquoise restaurant?

Scatterday this week was the letter A, and the categories were restaurant, something you find in the dark and turquoise ... and although I do have a rather large collection of my own junk, and access to an even bigger collection of odd stuff at work, I do NOT happen to have a "dark turquoise restaurant in my back shed" - even though MW thinks I do!

hmmmm ... Restaurant ... I have not been to one for a week or 3 ... although I think the last one I went to was an "All you can eat" one - does that count? There are probably are plenty of them with an A in their name (I know of a couple in the area, and there could even be an Auntie someone's kitchen or whatever - lol) but taking a photo of the name on the window/door of some restaurant is a bit boring anyway ... so I didn't bother to go hunting around and do it - lol

I thought about a photo of something one typically finds or eats in a restaurant, but I don't have any Antipasto or Artichokes or Asparagus handy ...

maybe a google search?

I don't think I want to eat at one of these! - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

but this place in Astipalea (a Greek Island) would be a rather nice place to eat out - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Greek_restaurant.JPG

... and - a bonus - it even has Turquoise paint on the gate/fence beside it, and the lights are on so it is probably still open when it is dark.

Actually ... one of the best places I have eaten (and probably the only one I have a photo of that starts with an A) is "At the side of the road" LOL

I think this one was Afternoon tea ... on a Land Rover Club trip back in 1999 - what more could one want - good company, good scenery, and good food (if there is any left in the fridge - yes we have a fridge in the back of the 4WD - way easier than using an esky)

This one was when we stopped for lunch - but it was a bit cold!

This was in June 2000 - up in the hills near here - and we were not expecting to be eating our lunch in a blizzard!

(I have never seen this much snow before or since - it was an amazing day!)

... it even snowed ON my lunch!

and I discovered that if you leave nice crusty bread rolls in the snow while you take a photo of the snow on them, and then eat them - they go SOGGY ... aaaahhhhrrggghhh! (I don't like soggy rolls much, but I guess it was worth it for the photo ;-)

"At the beach" is also a great place to eat, but I don't think I have a photo of that ...

(hmmm - sounds like a good excuse to go to the beach - pity it is so far away from here)

Something you find in the dark is easy ... I am not sure that many people would want to find these in the dark - but here is one anyway:

an Arachnid! (arachnid is the fancy scientific name for spiders, and scorpions, and a few other related 8 legged creepy crawly things - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnid ) ... actually a lot of spiders (and other arachnids) are nocturnal (come out at night).

strangely enough - I think it actually WAS dark when I took that photo - LOL (it was on the wall of the hut that a group of us were camping in for the weekend, a few weeks ago - luckily we all like spiders so this one got photographed and then left to do it's own thing)

hmmm Turquoise ... is Aqua close enough? (most people can't tell the difference ;-)

I don't think I have any bits of the mineral Turquoise (and it doesn't start with A anyway) so maybe another google search?

I don't know anyone who has a pet Turquoise-fronted Amazon (a type of parrot).

Maybe I should write in turquoise?

or maybe not ... lol

How about some Azure and Turquoise sky?

This was taken on a recent 4WD trip, a day trip in what used to be the local forest until the fires in 2003 burnt it (that is why there are black dead sticks there - but as you can see, a lot of stuff is growing back now)

or maybe some Turquoise Attire?

it's a sarong I bought at the op shop - because I love the colour and I love the fish/etc design - and I am glad DD didn't want to wear it (it is kid size - too small for me) because I want to use it to make a bag or something.

maybe a Turquoise (and blue and purple and green) "party Animal"?

I am not sure what kind of Animal he is (I made him a few years ago) but he seems to be enjoying himself at the party! (btw - the wall behind him is actually where that spider was)

Will that do?

did I pass?

or do I get an F for fail or an E for "more effort required" ?

... or do I get totally surprised and get an A+?

btw - this isn't one of the catagories but I had to include it anyway, just because I found it in a folder of old pictures -

some (digital) Art?:

This was one of the weird things I did when I first started playing around with some of the fun image editing software on the computer ... back when we had only just recently purchased our first digital camera ... the photo I used to do this to was actually the first one in this blog post.

(and I still love the colours in it ;-)

I remember that all I had to do whas choose something out of a menu and maybe select a couple of options for how curly it came out or something ... I don't think the newer version of that program still has this effect (which is a pity - I liked it, and the nearest thing I could find in there just now was not as good)

btw ... next week we have the letter K and Something You Like The Smell Of, Hobby and Office Things ...

... that doesn't sound too easy either!

(especially since the only one I can think of for now is Knitting for a hobby - and that is about one of the few crafty things I DON'T do! ... although I have and I can, so will be able to take/find pictures fo that if I have to)