The Things We Say...Part 34

N is threatening to throw me a hen's night party in some shape or form, either online or off. There was some mention of blindfolds, which of course raised my suspicions, and led to this:

N: All good, I promise! Would I lie to you? *flutters eyelashes*
V: Uhuh. Sure. I've seen that look before.
N: Never. I am innocent.
V: I think several children just died cos you said that.
N: Ooooh! Yay! I made angels!!!

Zones of Comfort

So today I'm riding the elevator up to the seventh floor of the Menzies Building on Monash University's Clayton Campus, and I'm watching the other people - students, teachers, post-grads who're a little of both - getting on and off on different floors. I wonder, nearly absently, whether any of them have been to the seventh floor, or, if like me, they've only been to their one floor. If they are like me, then the majority of their classes on this campus will only have ever been on that one floor, so they've never had a reason to get off at a different floor. I wonder what those other floors are like - are they laid out exactly like mine? do they have the same pokey corridors, bits of  construction, new bathrooms? - and whether or not I can ever be bothered to find out. After all, why would it benefit me if I drifted onto a different floor every now and then just to see what it's like when I've no actual business there. Maybe I'd just look silly. Are we caring about that?

The next thing I wonder, which makes me smile, is that I refer to the seventh floor as 'my' floor, as though it having contained all my classes on this campus gives me some sort of proprietary right to it; of course, when I get on the elevator and ride it up I get off at 'my' floor, just like everyone else gets off of theirs. I hear them say it when they're parting ways with friends or colleagues - or both: 'This is my floor. See you at lunch.', or 'This is me.' It's odd that particular places inspire that kind of level of comfort, public places in particular; if you go their regularly then you feel like you belong to that place and that place belongs to you in some shape or form, simply because you have certain experience with the place in question.

Just food for thought really...

ClearSkies~V

Ahahaha, BUTTONS!

So, I managed to break my ankle (it was raining, I slipped). It's more inconvenient than painful, but it does mean I get to sit in bed all day knitting. I now have an army of tiny adorable duckies!

I present, for your edification and amusement, Dr. TinyDuck!

You can trust him, he's a doctor. Quack.

I've also crafted myself an army of evil pumpkin heads, but I didn't have nearly enough eye-buttons for them. So I got me some more! Now I sit in bed all day sewing button eyes onto things. Totally not pretending I'm someone's Other Mother. Mwahahah.

Ah, Student Politics

Part of my Monday routine involves wasting the hours between arriving on campus and my Exotic Erotic Other class at 2pm. X usually drops me off at the station on his way to work which means I'm usually on campus by around 10am, depending on what time we're out the door. This means I generally have enough time to have a real sort of breakfast on campus - Monash's Clayton Campus is pretty awesome for food availability and variety - wander around the bookshop to see if there's anything I want to add to my collection - Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters, Gaiman's Anansi Boys - and run any other errands I can do on campus - any banking, doctor appointments, optometrists. Most of the time I end up sitting at a table with a fruit smoothie doing my readings or, ever since I got my hands on one of these little netbooks, typing things, doing research, etc etc etc. Lately of course, I've been looking at dress designs - but I'll discuss that more at a later date.

Today's time wasting took place primary in the English School Library, during which I was looking at pretty things before getting kicked out at 12:45pm by some of the members of the faculty who needed the room for a meeting, fair enough really. So I had some lunch and a ginger ale and then, out of sheer boredom and need to fill another hour with a useless activity that - preferably - didn't cost me any money, I wandered up to one of the several tables that were doing their student politic-y things. This one was trying to get as many signatures for a petition to the Australian Government to halt the 'Refugee Malaysia Solution' - for those of you not in the know, the Malaysia Solution, as it's being called apparently, involves, more or less, the government relieving the pressure of overpopulation in their refugee detention centres by sending refugees to a centre in Malaysia; the problem that has been raised with this is that Malaysia is not a signatory of the UNHCR Refugee Convention which deals with issues such as fair treatment and human rights. There's more to it of course, but that's it in a nutshell.

So anyways, I step up to said table, thinking 'eh, what the hell', and of course I ended up at the Socialist Alternative table...the group I'd spent so many years at the ANU avoiding....

Dredging up ever last thing I remembered about what not to say I ended up having a fairly basic conversation with the young woman, who in the process pawned off several bits and pieces of reading material off on me - I might even read some of them before I throw them out; can you tell I'm less than completely politically motivated? 

And so, I ended up back outside class, waiting for the meeting to end and class to start, and typing this up...because I can.

ClearSkies~V

Random Pretty

This is me...on my 2nd(?) birthday!

My Mom (who is holding my pressie) found it a little while ago.

Isn't I cute?

Random Pretty

I don't usually post up SecondLife pictures in this blog, but I just really liked the lighting in this shot that I took a few days ago, and something about it catches me. And yes, that's my avatar, Valerian Levee-Vayandar (double-barelled last name makes me giggle!).

 So there. Random pretty?

ClearSkies~V

Materialism, Epiphanies, Moving, Growin' the hell up!

There's a certain bittersweet taste to packing up one's belongings into a series of boxes (always too many) and saying goodbye to a place you've spent enough time to have unpacked them in the first place. You'd think you'd get used to it after having lived an entire life based on the uprooting of a family unit every four years; maybe some people do get used to it, I'll admit there's a certain appeal to allowing yourself to acclimatise to it, but I can say with surety, if I ever felt good about it, that part is long gone. I don't hate many things, but I do hate moving.

I don't actually dislike the packing, or the unpacking, that's doable, and often even entertaining - and a really god time to go through belongings and say 'that's really got to go'. I figure I've done my part for charity this year, to say the least.

I've re-made an astounding discovery: I have a lot of things. What can I say? I'm a material girl, and I like it that way.

Sometimes 'materialism' develops a bad connotation, certainly the drift in my nuclear family. Sure, you could want it, but why would you need it? That seemed to have been the general feeling of my growing up. Don't get me wrong, I think it's saved me from growing up into a spoiled rich brat, but I've also realised that I like shiny things, I like gadgets and technology, I like fancy cars and expensive jewelry, I like Diesel jumpers and shirts and jeans, I like my shiny new boots that I didn't really need but I really wanted. I've also come to the late-life discovery that it's okay to like these things, even if I can't get them all at once, it's alright to aspire to own that shiny plasma TV or that blu-ray player, or want to drive an expensive car after I've got a liscence.

It's weird, having these epiphanies all at once. It's probably because I'm doing this 'on my own' for the first time, with a little help from friends, but not with my parents - bar the financial aspect of course. I guess I've realised that I'm really allowed to be my own person, with my own opinions, grown up in my own right. I don't have to hold to the person people expect me to be.

Huh. It's weird, and probably a long time in the coming, but you know what? I feel damn good about it.

Little scared about the move, little intimidated by other circumstances, but excited too, really excited to be doing this and to be moving forward. I've picked what I wanted, I can work out how to get there, and then...the world is my oyster.

=^.^=

Clear Skies~V

Random Pretty

Darling Harbour, Sydney. August 2009

So!

Today's Colourful Food Tip: slice half a fresh beet into pan juices when you're reducing them down to make a jus. Purple sauce = win!

Random Pretty

This is 'De Waag', a "weigh house". It's really quite pretty, 

Dad nearly slipped down the stairs right after I took this picture.

Dinner & a Movie + The Things We Say...Part 34

So we're eating dinner, and watching television. There's nothing particularly impressive on, since there never is, so we end up watching the 2001 'The Musketeer', with Catherine de Neuve, which just happened to be on some random channel. We ended up in the middle of it so it took us a while to figure out who was who and what was where etc. You know how it goes.

Anyways, at one stage during the movie d'Artagnan is on top of the carriage with the queen in it and fires a musket at the baddies.

V's Maternal Parent: Did they even have muskets back then?

My Maternal Parent can be adorable. Dad and I made some sort of comment about who they were musketeers, and she instantly realised the silliness of her question which lead to much giggling.

The Things We Say...Part 33

V's Maternal Parent: I'm not fussy. I'm your mother.

I think it speaks for itself. =^.^=

The Things We Say...Part 32

X: Ouch.
V: Ouch?
X: I may have lost some of the hair on my knuckles.
V: Do we want to know how?
X: With fire.

I think it speaks for itself.

ClearSkies~V