I’m glad that I took the opportunity to take Quinn for a walk earlier in the week, because the last couple of days, weekend included? Nothing but rain, and fog, grey wintery days.

Walking by the lake is so nice. While Quinn isn’t a fan of water (not even a little) he does enjoy standing on the pier and watching the little fish that look like minnows swim out and about in the water. So much so that he’ll dash from side to side, almost as if he doesn’t want to miss anything :)

Also? Loving that these wintery walks give me a reason to wear the silly hat with the bobble. Yay!

There’s been alot of death in the media, recently. Having lost people I loved dearly I find it difficult to laugh at the jokes of Michael Jackson’s death. Sure, he might have lived a life to a tune that might have been a little different to ours but for me death deserves a little peace, and some dignity.

It was a little jarring to have twitter explode with Michael Jackson hate, with little jibes and mocking messages. Where was the respect, you know? What was it about his death that caused these mini messages of hate? There wasn’t any anti-mj tweets last week. Dealing with death is difficult enough, I think, without having to hear that the departed didn’t live up to someone else’s standards.

The other day I watched a women a little younger than me die in Iran, from a gunshot wound on youtube. And I felt horrible for her, that her death was being used as entertainment, or as a bargaining piece in a political struggle. That was being used to demonstrate ‘how it is’ in Iran right now.

Death deserves more than that, I think.

So yes, while I understand that perhaps mean and horrible jokes are your way of dealing with death, and that everyone is entitled to their opinion, I will delete the nasty viral emails that arrive in my inbox. I will ignore the nasty tweets, and hide the bad taste jokes that appear in my facebook feed.

I will respect that Neda Agha Soltan died protesting for what she believed in, but I’m sorry her death is being used to hype the media.

Death deserves more. Perhaps a moment of respect, acknowledgement that they lived, like we do. I think that in a world that is this convoluted with hate, a little love and a little respect would go a long way.

Earlier this week I had one of THOSE days. One of those days where everything that can go wrong does, one after the other. I would start at the beginning, but it’s more fun to start at the middle.

This is what cars flying past you at 100 kilometres an hour looks like:

And I know this because on the way home from work my car did that flashy petrol light thing. I thought I had enough time to get off the motorway and get to a petrol station. But I didn’t. And my car died on the motorway.

I probably would have noticed the little flashing light before, had I not been a bit well, GUTTED about work. I’m working on this project, see. A project that I’ve been developing for the last 3 or 4 months or so. Which has a deadline of the next week. Well it went from something I was proud of to the most horrid, most painful project ever. Because it needed to be re-written. In four days.

So anyway, I’m on the side of the motorway, not yet panicking (I had an indoor netball game an hour or so away). I call the AA and they said they’d send someone when they could. Alas, when they could turned out to be 45 minutes later. Cue the panic.

When he finally showed up, I was so excited I got out of my car and did a little dance! He laughed at me, my bald and heavily moustached AA Man. And he was nice too! He put petrol in my car, and told me two things: one, never tell the police that your car is over heated or that your out of petrol when your broken on the motorway (because they will charge $150 a ticket). And two: Instead tell them that it ‘cut out’ and the AA people are on their way to magically fix it (because they won’t charge you a $150 ticket).

So now I had petrol in my car I zipped off home, grabbed my gear and made it safely to the courts. Unfortunately, I had made it without my netball shoes, or even socks. So I played in what I was wearing: knee high fishnet stockings and black ballet slippers. It looks perfectly respectable with jeans, but not so much with the bright orange basketball shorts I’d grabbed.

Sigh.

During the game it was worse. Somehow sensing that my feet were incredibly vulnerable I got stood on. Not once, but many times. By almost every opposition that got within 3 feet. Strangely, they only liked my left foot. And this poor, poor foot is now black and blue with crazy bruising and cuts and scrapes and is most definitely swollen much larger than it usually would have been.

At full time, I limped off the court feeling very sorry for myself indeed. It was just one of THOSE days where everything that could go wrong, did.

While I’m very, very glad that day came to an end, there aren’t many instances in the world that provide you the opportunity to dance on the motorway. Bet you can’t say that you have. :P

I appear to be on a design kick at the moment. Designing cute little logos, or mocking up site ideas. The other day I came up with this:

He’s super cute, right? Sometimes its the little little jobs that make design so much fun.

Last weekend I was meant to fly to Melbourne to spend the weekend being frivilous with the brilliant Liz. We had a weekend of zoo’s and aquariums and circus visits and drinking planned. It was going to be so grand! And I was so looking forward to it. I hadn’t seen Miss Liz since her wedding in March!

But I lost my passport before I could make it to Melbourne. And after missing flights and trying to get a new passport I gave up. And brought new tickets for a couple months down the track, and spent the afternoon Skyping with Liz instead. We comiserated the waste of what would have been THE BEST weekend ever.

One good things about not going is that The Third Quarters birthday party was that Friday night. I was going to miss it and meet them in Melbourne a few days later but alas. As THAT didn’t happen I went to the party in Auckland instead.

And wow. What a party it was! It was ‘Asian Yellow Fever’ theme’d (it’s an in-joke, so no insult to anyone is meant. Please don’t take offense!) and I went in bright yellow stockings (the only yellow piece of clothing I had, other than one of my Dads ties that I stole). But everyone went so hard out! There were ninja’s, and fantastic asian fancy dress. There was a panda and face paint and hats and The Second Quarter even covered himself with Yellow Food Colouring. It was pretty phenomonal!

I had a great time. Unfortunately though, because I started the night on a bit of a downer (you know, not being in Melbourne and all) the solution appeared to be ‘drink more’. Which I did (I’m easily convinced, see). And the most ridiculous thing happened. It appears that the more drunk I get, the more inappropriate subjects become suddenly appropriate conversation. There was much talk about tail-pipes, and big-bore exhuasts and it was just BAD. Horribly horribly bad. Particularly because there where people who were mostly sober, and still remember my conversations about such things. Still, it appears that I was not the only silly intoxicated person.

While perhaps not quite as refined as Melbourne would have been (there would have been drinking in bars, in pretty dresses instead of the safety of The Square in which all manner of things happen which are not suitable for the public eye) it was still a fairly brilliant night.

Let’s hope that all weekends that start with a down can be followed with a drunken and much fun up. :)

Just some shots from one of our walks this weekend. We had fabulous weather: gorgeous blue skies and there was still a chill in the air. Good for layers and crazy hats. :)

Hopefully there will be more walks like this one :)

A friend of mine came back from the States a little while ago, and while he was there he picked me up some Twinkies (something I’d heard of) and some HoHo’s (something I hadn’t).

Now, don’t judge me or anything, but isn’t HoHo’s the most ridiculous name for some candy that you’ve ever heard of? I must have giggled for a good ten minutes over the name itself! We joked about all the possible means insinuated with such a silly name and when we got to ‘chocolate salty rolls’ we giggled even more.

And then we tried them. And then we giggled less, because they WERE Chocolate Salty Rolls. I couldn’t bring myself to eat more than one. I’m sorry if you like Hohos, but I have to say that they were the most horrible chocolate confection I’ve ever eaten. It tasted horribly fake, and was much too salty (which I suspect was less salt and more preservative) and oh, I’ve never been more disappointed.

When I think of all the chocolate things we have here (ie, Timtams, or ToffeePops, or even Mallowpuffs) they pretty much pwnd HoHos. In every way possible.

The twinkies were much better, though. Edible, at least. And I was amused that I got to try the infamous Twinkie. Still, at this point I’m still hanging on to the deliciousness of chocolate you can get here. What’s your favourite chocolate confection?

A couple of weeks after we filled The Second Quarters room with balloons, they still had a bajillion balloons around. There were balloons in bedrooms, and bathrooms and pretty much all the living spaces.

And in this rather unique predicament (because really, when else have you had 400+ balloons just hanging out at your house) we came up with some rather random games. One of them was Balloon Herding.

It’s kind of like one of those stupid, meaningless internet games (like Plants vs Zombies). Horribly addictive and generally uses up a ridiculous amount of time. Anyway, the idea is that you take the bottom off the fan, and using the top end (connected to an extension cord) you have to round up as many balloons as you can around the lounge, up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms.

The more balloons, the higher kudos you get. 5 balloons was pretty easy. 12, not so much.

Anyway, it was a ridiculous amount of fun, and The Second Quarter and I indulged ourselves until one of the other quarters shows up.

I know I say this almost every Square post, but I love that we are able to do such ridiculous things together, that they have the patience, and a drive for the ridiculous too. Good times were had. Good times indeed! :)

Every year or so the local council does an ‘Inorganic Collection’. This basically means that all the stuff that you have that isn’t recyclable is placed out on the front verge for the council to collect and take away. It means that people with no morals won’t dump it illegally somewhere else, which is nice.

This year Inorganic week came about when we were moving things around, which meant that all the things we would have ignored till next year could go out on the front lawn. And oh all the stuff that went out!

There was all the usual crap, but a bunch of cute stuff too: a pair of red kid sized chairs, Some four foot tall wooden tulips, a plastic fish bowl, a glitter-y magic wand. Three years worth of pirated movies burned to CD (yeah, CD! I know! Old school . . .), and a hair straightener (that works. But we had three and decided that we didn’t need it).

There were dressers, and broken lamps and about twenty office folders, and tacky cushions from the 90s (think heart shaped, covered in purple and glitter fur) and just a ridiculous amount of stuff.

I started to set up an outside living room – we had more than enough stuff, but I didn’t quite have enough time.

Not because of the collection people, but because of the Scavengers! They are the best part about Inorganic Week, I think. The people that drive slowly up and down the street in their giant trucks or station wagons with trailers, watching other scavengers, eyeing up the piles of possible treasure, trying to spot something worth saving.

There was one gentleman, who would wait in his car while we were putting out stuff, and the second we were up the drive was out there looking through it, with a giant giant grin on his face! I was pretty stoked, actually. He stayed with our pile for ages.

It delights me that these people come and rescue bits and pieces from a future at the tip! Alot of is good stuff, it was just that we’d outgrown it or didn’t think it was worth selling. So I was stoked to see a guy with three kids take away the little red chairs, and a lady with two girls, noses pressed to the window take away my wooden tulips. And even the broken stuff, I had a great conversation with a metal smith who was collecting old bits of metal to make sculpture with. And with a girl who was collectioning random appliances (she left behind all the power cords, though. Safety first, I think).

I spent the afternoon on the porch, watching the scavengers come and go. Watching them pick through our stuff and find something they could use. In the half hour that I was out there no fewer than 12 people came and had a look at our stuff. At first I wondered if I should go down to the verge and try convince them to take bits and pieces, share the history behind the things we had thrown out.

But alas, the sun disappeared before I could make my mind up, and the scavengers disappeared with it. When I came back from work yesterday, the pile was much smaller. I guess they didn’t need much convincing.

Ah, Inorganic Week. I wish throwing out rubbish was always this brilliant. :)

Perhaps it’s just me, but sometimes I think it’d be wonderful to have a dogs nose, and to be able to smell all the interesting smells. This weekend just past Quinn and I went for a rambling walk, and for once instead of being quick smart about it, we ambled. And the more we ambled, the more he stopped to smell everything. The fallen leaves, the ferns at driveway corners . . . it was quite sweet, actually.

There should be more paying attention to the little things, I think. The change in seasons, the leaves that fall. And more taking the time to enjoy them. Oh, I wish there more sunlit hours in the day to go on more brilliant ambling walks!