Doop doop doop

So I think it would be alright to call this week 'insane'. It has been. I should elaborate I suppose since most of you are not capable of hacking into my brainwaves and reading what's going on in there - and fewer still can navigate the levels of caffeinated crazy that's drifting around in there at the moment.

SO!

L left Canberra on Wednesday morning, which meant that Monday and Tuesday were rife with moving bits and pieces, sending last bits and pieces by post, and donating unwanted clothes to Salvo's and selling books to Canty's. Fruitful, if hectic. I might even go so far as to say that it was fulfilling, but I wouldn't want to stretch my sense of charity too far, that would be slightly hypocritcal.

I'm writing this entry from Sydney Airport's hectic and busy International Terminal, having travelling by taxi, plane, and bus to get to this stage, the first leg of my journey complete. I'm going 'home', to the Netherlands to visit family and friends for the Christmas season - not that Christmas is the primary reason for my going, mind you, it just happens to be that time of year is all.

It's strikingly odd, for someone such as myself who has been travelling in planes and across great distances since I was a year old, to have been this nervous about flying. Alright, let's be honest, it wasn't the flying - although I must say I will never fly the baby planes Qantas uses between cities. Either way, that's all done...now I'm waiting to check in for Singapore air to begin stage 2, which will happen in around 5 hours, at which stage I'll hop onto a plane for 9 hours or so, hit Singapore, then hop onto another plane and find myself, many hours down the line, getting off in Schiphol.

Anyways...I suppose it will be up to me - mostly - to keep you semi entertained until L regains her connection to the greater world of teh interwebs.

ClearSkies~V

Things we say...Part 30

Second Life is a place where strange people sometimes come together, and sometimes you encounter other strange people who don't quite click with the strange of your clique. So we're at a club in world, dancing, myself, N, A and her partner, when the we get company, keep in mind that there are only the four of us girls there at this point...three of us are wearing wedding rings.

Random Stranger: I like my odds here tonight ladies.

A: Two of us are prego...one's married to a mass murderer and the other one is his sis.....so start guessing.........

Random Funny

Because geek humour is funnies.

Random Pretty

As Nation Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes hold, L and I struggle to find some sort of rhythm so we can hit up the words and get them to work. Thankfully I have a colour-changing distraction on my table to help with any thought processes I might otherwise have.

Things we say...Part 29

After a string of swearing from my Second Life partner leads to the following conversation.

V: What did you do?!
X: I squashed a mosquito. Like ninja.
V: With your hurt hand.

All roads lead to....Facebook? o.O

Every now and then when I'm bored out of my mind (or unable to sleep for whatever reason) I end up wandering the vacated corners of the internet. In my case, this corner tends to be made up out of random wikipedia entries (what? I like researching random things!), various blogs, and of course my rarely visited facebook (no, I don't actually look at it all that much, my Twitter is just linked to it, it's a clever trick to keep people from thinking I'm dead).

The other night I discovered to my shock and horror (actually it was delight) that one of my old middle school friends, dare I say one of my better friends, is making headway in the music industry and has released his first album. Now, I'm aware that this might be viewed as advertising, but meh! If you're into R&B/Soul Ben-Harpery kinda music you might just enjoy listening to Yufi's album. I downloaded 'Diamonds' off his facebook page (as suggested) and I was going "Wow, someone's come a long way since Mr. Gallagher's music class!". Suitably impressed I'll be grabbing the rest of the album off of iTunes when I get the chance; what are friends for after all? I'm getting ahead of myself: the album you want is 'The Red Light' by Yufi Zewdu (there, it's all hyperlinked for you so you don't have an excuse!).

Moving along from musical advertisment, however, this got me thinking. So many people from 'that time in my life' - I'm talking Mozambique, for those of you in the know - have come so far! My best friend Alison is doing great, she's married (I still can't believe that, even though it's been years!), most of the others have steady interesting jobs and fledgling careers. It's kind of crazy when you think about it! I'm really happy that they're all living their lives. It makes me wonder what all my teachers are up to. Is Mr. H still surfing? And what on earth could Mr. McCartey be up to? I'd really like to know where the Phillipses are. Why aren't they on Facebook! *growl!*

There...I went and said it: Facebook, for all it's stalkertastic capabilities is quite useful for the diplobrat regime, least this way I can keep track of who's having babies and who's got a new PhD running.

Clear Skies~V

Potatoes!

I'll skip the whole 'ooh, haven't posted in aages thing' to say: Sometimes potatoes are exciting!

Anyway. Circumstances have *really* come together to create awesome lunch today, so I decided to share. To start with: Dutch Cream Potatoes.

These are the best potatoes ever. (Argh, if I type 'potatoes' too many more times, it's gonna start lookin' really funny. Heh. Potatoes.) If you've never had 'em, I highly recommend you fix that ASAP. 'Cause potatoes are awesome, and Dutch Creams are the best.

Right. So. My realisation of the day: there's Greek-style yoghurt in our fridge, and heaps of chives & mint in the garden. These are actually easier circumstances to achieve than getting hold of Dutch Cream potatoes, so don't go gettin' intimidated - if you have room for a couple of pots, you have room to have both chives and mint. They both grow like nobody's business, and require very little by way of gardening skill or intervention. Just water 'em semi-regularly and they'll be fine.

Right, so. Clean and cook some potatoes (heh, potatoes. Apparently 'potatoes' looking funny taps into the same part of my brain as fart jokes. Go figure). You can peel 'em, or not - if you're using something like a Lady Christl, don't bother, but the skin on Dutch Creams can get a little flaky, so if you don't like that... well, make your own damn mind up. Anyway.

Stick some yoghurt in a bowl, and finely chop in some chives & mint - enough to make it pretty obvious that they're there. You can stir some honey through too, but I like the tangyness of the yoghurt with the fresh oniony-mintness of the greens, so whatever. Keep in the fridge til you need it; this keeps fine for several days. It's also pretty tasty as dip, or used instead of mayo for tuna sandwiches. The possibilities, they are endless!

Hard-boil some eggs (obviously, proportions for all of this depends on how much potato salad you wanna make).

Wait til everything's cool; peel & chop the eggs, and combine. If you're going all out, cook some bacon til it's nice'n crispy, and crumble that in too. Feel free to also add some snow peas, or corn kernels, or whatever. You can also season this with whatever you like; sometimes I want chili flakes, and sometimes ground pepper, or maybe freshly grated nutmeg, or parmesan, or sometimes no seasoning at all, or... you get the picture. Be creative, it makes for tastiness.

Things we say....Part 28

D: This could be the onset of superpowers!
L: Or dementia.
D: I'm trying to be optimistic here!
L: Yeah, but I'm saying there are options.

So much for the onset of superpowers, sorry D.

The Things We Say....part 27

A: Any more requests from the angry lesbian?

A Second Life joke...let's not dwell on the details.

Oh, really.

I have this variant of the 'I'm not a feminist but...' comment. It goes, 'I love Penny Arcade, but...' and it's because of strips like this. Actually, it could be extended to 'I'm a geek, but...', 'cause the standard geek reaction to criticism like this is to tell feminist geeks to get over themselves, and basically stop getting the icky girl stuff on other people's fandom.

Heads up, dudes - feminist geeks call you out on this shit for one very simple reason: not funny. Rape is not funny. Racism is not funny. Slavery is not funny. It is not funny, for several well-fucking-recognised psychological reasons to joke about things which cause actual harm to actual people, even if your platform is not real. Because one of those things that we've found out about the intersection of a culture of violence and humour is that it has very real consequences.

If your answer to this is '...but, that's not what people mean when...', then go learn some shit about psychological conditioning.

Food, glorious food

So. How d'you feel about cauliflower? It's very possible that if your answer is 'ew,' you're doing it wrong.

On the other hand, p'raps you love the stuff and want to convert someone. Either way, roasting is your friend - that goes for broccoli, to. In fact, there are plenty of veggies that benefit from this treatment, so experiment! It brings out a depth of flavour that can be pretty surprising.

Anyway. What you want to do here is roast your (dry!) veggies at a high temperature, so they caramelise (omnomnom). I'm a bit laissez-faire when it comes to washing veggies (shhhh), but if you do wash 'em, either leave them to air-dry for a good long while, or obliterate that surface moisture with extreme prejudice. You don't want anything going on here that'll make the veggies squishy.

Right.

Spray a roasting sheet with oil & put it in a hot oven (about 220 C) 'til the oil's nice & hot. You want it to sizzle when the veggies hit.

Carve your cauli/broccoli into florets - don't go too small. If you're using cauliflower, halve the bigguns. Toss with olive oil, salt & pepper - or any seasoning that takes your fancy- (get everything coated), then add some sliced garlic. Take out your hot baking sheet, chuck on the veggies (if you've got oil pooled from preparing them, don't add it) and return to the oven for 20 minutes or so. Don't panic when you start getting crispy brown bits - they're the best part.

This on its own makes a pretty awesome snack, but I'm also a fan of prepping soup veggies like this. It adds a nice depth to the broth, and when you hit a mouthful of veg, it's blissful. If you want to use it as a meal component, jazz it up a little more - drizzle a little more oil over the top, chuck in some toasted nuts (pine nuts or slivered almonds work really well), and some lemon juice. I'm considering going a bit crazy next time I do this and tossing a few currants in.

How DO you walk in stilettos?

Those of you who follow my twitter feed will know that  few months ago I bought a pair of stiletto boots. They're the only pair of stilettos I have ever owned; I'm very comfortable in my normal boots, which have maybe 3-4inch wide heel. Needless to say a 5inch stiletto heel was something I was not used to. I knew that it was going to take a bit of exercise and practice, I also figured out early on that if I didn't do this right I was going to do it very very wrong, and, with my ankles, that would be a really bad idea.

I sprained my left ankle quite badly when I was 11 and despite the ballet and the Tai Chi, it's always been a bit of a weak ankle - not helped by the fact that I've sprained the other ankle a few times as well. I didn't want to make matters worse, and I'd heard somewhere - or maybe it was common sense - that you could seriously damage yourself walking in stilettos, and in heels in general. I also remembered that it took me a long time to get used to walking in my brown boots, which had two extra inches in the heel compared to my now-retired black ones. 

In light of that, I dove into Google with the very simple search stream of 'how to walk in stilettos'. I was pleasantly surprised that I was not the only one curious about how not to get shin splinters and permanent damage to my feet. I was also pleased - though  not quite in the same way - to discover that I hadn't been wrong. You can do some serious damage to your feet without even knowing it! 

Sure, I mean, heels make a woman's legs look amazing - not to mention the added height advantage if you're short like me! - but the higher the heel gets the more it affects your posture and the pressure applied to your skeletal and muscular structure... and that's ignoring the fact that you're not exactly stable on 5+ inch narrow heels, one step wrong and you run the risk of breaking an ankle and falling flat on your face, the total opposite of the point of wearing the shoes in the first place. Check this out for more information, though if you're really interested just hop into Google and do some of your own research, there's a lot of it out there and it's not hard to pick out the bogus sites from the good ones.

All that aside, because we all know that you're going to opt to wear the heels anyways - well, most of us anyways, I know there are some very sensible people out there who know better - how do you walk in stilettos?  (Disclaimer: I'm no expert! This is just me sharing my Google findings with you!)

Instructions

1. 
   
   
   Wear a shoe that fits. Some salespeople will advise you to choose a half or full size larger when it comes to stilettos, this is usually so you have the option of wearing an additional non-slip sole inside the shoe for more support and comfort.
2. Exercise your legs and ankles, espeically if you're like me and have weak ankles. The stronger your leg muscles, the more confident and comfortable you'll be. Before you put your shoes on, do some quick flex and point exercises with your feet and calves, get the circulation going and warm your feet up before subjecting them to the pressure of the stilettos.
3. Before you try walking, practice standing. That may sound silly, but do it! If you can't stand comfortably - without wobbling - you're going to fall on your face whenever you stop walking.
4. 
   
   
   When you start practicing how to walk start out with a non-slipper surface, avoid tiles to start with as they're ridiculous slippery. Practice slowly, take plenty of breaks. Don't try to stand, walk, and wear those shoes for more than a few hours a day until you feel your feet don't hurt and you're totally at ease in them. SLOW, not fast, is the best way to go here. Once you get more comfortable, try different surfaces, like hardwood (when walking on wood, check whether or not you're leaving marks!).Walk with your back straight and walk toe-to-heel instead of putting your heel down first, put your toes down first. Think of it like aiming your toes straight in front of you. It'll be weird at first, but you'll get used to it and you'll find a balance and realize that you're quite comfortable.
   
   
   
   
   
   

The most important thing above all: IF YOUR FEET START TO HURT. STOP! Don't push, take it slow. I cannot stress this enough, if you try to do it all at once you could seriously and irreparably damage your feet and your legs, not to mention your spine, and you really don't want that.

Check out this video, also, I've put some links in at the bottom that you might want to consult if you find this at all interesting - or worrying.

Safe walking & ClearSkies~V


Further Reading

How to walk in Stilettos 
Walking in Stilettos
Advantages and Disadvantages of Wearing Heels
Wearing High Heels - Effects on the Body

Blah blah blabbity blah...

So. (Already) this week I have: systematically failed several goals; missed the O-week info session for the course that starts next week; realised how abysmal my budgeting really is, and accidentally gone cold-turkey from my happy pills.

(Insert 2 dizzy, nauseous, unbalanced days here.) That's right, I need to learn to fill my script BEFORE I run out of 'em. No shit, sherlock... (insert day of sleeping through re-adjustment here).

On the other hand, I've (finally) made some serious progress on the Knitting Olympics project, and cooked some pretty tasty stuff. We won't mention the raids on the mango/macadamia icecreams.

Anyway, it's not really news that we suck at that commitment thing (blog? What blog?), but anyway. Here are some things that've managed to entertain me.

EchoBazaar: FailBetter Games have outdone themselves, although it's still under development (still awesome to play, though). Escape from New Newgate! Befriend Urchins! A little bit Neverwhere and a lot awesome.

Anagrams are awesome. A certain someone is a Ninja Veld Wok.

Also, apparently Jesus is offended by rectangles. Go figure.