So very, very old

Well, it's my birthday again. I woke up this morning feeling all grumpy and antisocial and tired (possibly a result of doing a LOT of walking yesterday) so am planning on having a quiet at-home day. Maybe buy myself a sorbet later. I have cheered myself up with hot chocolate made from 80% cocoa Lindt plus sugar and milk. Mmmm....so I may be a little erratic in that sleepy-but-on-caffiene kind of way. Also longwinded, and I haven't gotten the hang of how blogspot does "lj-cuts". Tough, it's my birthday.

As I said I'm feeling antisocial today, but on the whole would like to spend more time with people. Three things I would like to do are:

• Have a craft day, though I'm not sure how this would work.
• Have a bunch of girls get together and swap clothes (I've just gone through my wardrobe) Mine are mainly 12s but as long as we have at least two of any given size it should be ok :)
• Go into the city and use up my free Hoyts ticket.

I'd prefer to do these durting the day on a weekday since my weekends seem to always be pretty busy and I'm not a night sort of person, but I'm flexible. Any takers?

This morning Cam and I were discussing the significance of ages, and while 25, 27, and 28 are all cool numbers (being a square, a cube, and a perfect number) we couldn't think of anything cool about 26. But he just emailed me with a bunch of ways 26 is Deeply Significant. Most importantly: it's the number of sporadic simple groups(*). Best fiance ever :)

The cactus has not flowered for me this year, instead it's been "about to flower" for ages, I think as a (so far successful) ploy to avoid being pruned.(**)

Went to the wedding/formal dress shop Penny reccomended yeserday (and thus much walking, since it's in Joondalup) which was indeed pretty good. I was reminded that I don't like satin, though. Which kind of makes things difficult. I went into a nearby scrapbooking shop which was both inspiring and horrifying: it saddens me to think of all these women spending so much on supplies and putting in so much creative energy to make horrible twee monstrosities out of their photos. Still, the woman there was very helpful, and advised me to buy a $40 scrapbook, $8 photo corners and $1 card. Instead I went into officworks and bought a $1.50 folder (ringbound plastic sleeves) and $10c card, and then used these instuctions and the punch I got from Anna for my birthday to begin to make a postcard album (thanks to lilysea for the idea). This one was a trial run, I may redo it using a ruler and better colours :) I would just put them into a photo album but they're too big. This should be fun, anyway. I have quite a few postcards, since its cheaper than buying prints. Also I have a bunch of historical ones from my grandad (Perth in the 70s etc) which is cool though looking at them reminded me that I'm a Bad Grandaughter for not visiting him more often (he's in a tricky-to-get-to home with Alzheimers)

My birthday party went very well and the registry was a success (modulo my incompetence) I've already eaten much of the confectionary, drank some of the peach schnapps (So Nice!!) used the fabric pen and punch, read some of Anansi boys (good, though the plot is a bit like a cross between "Theif of time" and that Buffy episode with Xander's twin) used both loofahs and reorganised my jewellry using two of the containers presents came in.

Well, I'm hungry, so..that's it! ...wait! I'm not sure if this counts as an edit since this stupid entry hasn't shown up yet but anyway: Note the new interesting posts page I've added to my links section. I don't know that anyone but me will use it, but it's there if you care :) Now I'm off to get some sorbet (the cafe a block from my house has started selling Gelati gelati. Don't they know I'm trying to diet and save money?)

(*) This may not mean much to you, but they're the main focus of my thesis. I can't believe he had to tell me :)
(**)I don't know if you're supposed to prune cacti but I do anyway becuase otherwise putting out the washing would become an extreme sport.

BOOKS!

I have decided to attempt to read all the books that have won a Hugo(*). Since of the 30 I've already read I only actively disliked one,"The Snow Queen" by Joan Vinge, and really liked most of the others, this should be fun :) Read "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" by Kate Wilhelm (after Lily reassured me that the 70's author from unisfa is the same as the 90's author I read during my exploration of the W's of Freo Library) which was pretty good if a little old-fashioned (Asimov not Dickens :) ) in style. Currently reading the winner from the previous year, "The Forever War", which actually comes across as more modern and a Real Book. It manages to convincingly and interestingly extrapolate war of the future while including the sort of gritty, satirical take on what war is really like that "mainstream" fiction has been exploring since WWII (and even more since Vietnam, think Catch 22 or MASH) but doesn't seem to make it much into s.f.

I got this really strong sense of deja vu reading "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang", all those rather cold but not evil not-quite-human children reminded me of something I've read, I think Beggars in Spain. Which then combined with this blog entry on attitudes to the poor to help me realise that's exactly what bugged me about "Beggars..": while it was made clear that the poor and stupid needed looking after, it was implied that that's becuase they are incapable and uninterested in looking after themselves. I got the strong feeling the author had never had any lower class, ill-educated friends and tends to view them as a Scary Other.

Next week, the Postgrad Careers fair! Good timing, eh? Oh! And "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is great, I'm very glad Phlebas managaed to persuade me to see it.

Finally, a link for Katie and Penny :)

(*)I'd do the Nebulas but I can't find a decent printable list with just the novel winners. I may have to compile my own from here.

Squeezing out sentences like..stuff...from a ..thing

The last week or so it's felt like I keep saying Exactly The Wrong Thing, and I am reminded why I used to be terribly terribly shy. Oh well.

Ok, according to Cam a reasonable number of people have now reserved/bought stuff on the registry without hassle (as far as we can see). I realise it could come accross that I want everyone to buy me Muchos Gifts or I'll get all offended and think you don't like me, when really I just wanted beta testers and was getting all paranoid that it was All Going To Go wrong. I get really paranoid about parties, it's the main reason I don't do them very often. Anway, noone should feel obliged to get me anything big (or anything at all) if they weren't going to naturally. Also the reason there's So Many Gifts is that I'm using it as a general repository for things I want, including christmas or just to buy for myself at some point. *is probably being unneccesarily paranoid in the opposite direction but never mind*

Saw "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" yesterday, which was pretty good for a spin-off from an animated tv show but I'm not sure if I agree with the people who think it's the Best Batman Movie Ever. Also I've given up on "Game of Thrones", I think I should avoid long fantasy for a while it doesn't seem to be my genre at the moment. It is very good for what it is, but what it is is fairly run-of-the-mill politics-and-epic-family-history in a moderately interesting but not extraspecially original fantasy setting. The fact that all the characters are fairly well drawn and 3 dimensional, rather than the usual mildly characterised hero plus cardboard cutouts, is certainly a plus. And there was no point where I went "Oh come on that's just STUPID/cliched etc" On the other hand after a few chapters I got a feel for the rhythym and general direction of the various storylines so there was no surpise or interest. That and the way he keeps killing/maiming the main characters meant I didn't let myself get too attached :) Still, I reccomend it to anyone who likes fantasy unless they only like the super-happy light stuff.

Death by Strawberries

** EDIT:Ok, ok, I take it all back, plenty of people have signed up for the registry, just noones reserved anything. Which in the light of day probably just means either you don't want to get me a present and were just curious (acceptable) or you haven't gotten round to it yet (also acceptable, unless you all do it at the last minute and the system breaks). So...not sad. Happy :) **

A reminder about my Party weekend after next. It seems noone is using the registry. This makes me sad. Do you want me to be sad? *sniffs piteously* (People who simply aren't coming are exempt, though if NONE of you come I'll be extra sad )

After much research into cat species (read: some searching through wikipedia and google to find breeds that look anything like the characters do in my head) I redesigned the character Celeste to look more like more like this (though not really). Who's Celeste you ask? Why, you clearly haven't read my new pages in A Circle of Stars. You have, and you're still confused? Why not try the shiny new cast page.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to get the plot between pages 14 and 17 to flow nicely.

I've finally figured out why people kept sending me emails thinking I was Isobelle Casrmody despite the huge, bright red banner saying I'm not: where it now says "webmaster" it used to say "me", and people somehow managed to miss the banner not to mention my name underneath the email address, and assume "me" meant her. I geuss I help weed out the less intelligent fans leaving Miss Carmody more time to FINISH HER FRIGGING SERIES.

Finally: after eating a LOT (no really, a lot) of plums and getting hives, and then eating slightly less strawberries in a shorter period of time and getting hives again it seems the "eat lots of fruit to feel healthy" theory has some drawbacks. If I turn out to also have an intolerance for carrots I may have to start living off a pure beef diet.

Easy sausage rolls

Yes, another recipe. Also possibly an indication why it is I need to lose weight :)

Ingredients

• 1 square puff pastry
• a little bit of milk

filling

• 250g pork mince
• 3/4 piece of bread finely chopped or grated
• 2 garlic cloves finely chopped
• about a tablespoon of herbs. I use 4 leaves fresh sage and a dash of dried thyme.
• a dash of chicken stock
• salt and pepper

Method

Preheat oven to 200 C.
Cut pastry in half.
Mix filling ingredients. On each piece of pastry, place half of the filling mix in a long sausage and roll up. Use wet fingers to secure the edge. Cut each roll in half.
Place rolls on baking paper on an oven tray and brush the tops with milk. Bake for around 20 minutes until browned.
Makes 4.

I find they always go a bit soggy on the bottom, you can either put up with this or do something like drying them off and putting them in upside down on a new piece of baking paper. Some recipes call for dried breadcrumbs, that might help. Other recipes call for grated zuchinni, this does not help.

The uncooked rolls can be frozen, and the cooked ones are quite nice cold.

Also, for many years I have harboured the secret desire to put this up in the maths learning centre :)

I walked to perth today!

And thus, now I've sat down, I am trying to come up with as many things as I can do without getting up from the computer. Still, that's like 5km! I reccomend walking down Beufort street for anyone wanting a fun little street to walk down. Though it was difficult not buying food from all the little shops (I have resolved exercise more and eat less in an attempt to be healthier and thinner)

I have become rather taken with the idea of Patience with all the aesthetes replaced by goths. Now all I need is my own band of operatta singers to perform it for me...(Or I may draw it. I suppose) Googling to see if anyone had already done it I found The bizzarre adventures of Gilbert and Sullivan, indicating that I'm not the first person to note that it's pretty gothy as 19th Century comic operas go :)

Also, I just came across Alan Moore prodying Frank Miller via Linkmachinego.

EDIT: On my walk I noticed that

• Planet Video is selling off many of their videos for $4, including some anime/star trek. I got "La Cage A Follies" (subtitles) plus "Divorcing Jack".
• "Memory Lane" costume shop sells coloured fishnets for $10!

Also I seem to have gotten mildly sunburnt.