anyresemblance

Just my imagination

It's stopped raining but has got colder again.  I was kind of loving the rain, which was finally sinking in to the ground rather than sitting on top of the packed soil in large puddles.  I was not loving the muddy foot prints everywhere or my wet shoes which I was having to jam under a heater in lieu of sticking them on the heating vent.

The heating is still out.  The wrong part got sent from Perth, blah, blah.  The correct one is promised for this afternoon but I am not holding my breath.  

In the rain, only the hardy border collies and shepherds seem to make the effort.  The rain doesn't penetrate their coats and they just want to run.  Well, the border collies do.  One came last night equipped with a flashing light on her collar so you could spot her across the field.  I came home and ordered one on ebay.

The youngest discovers she has to be out of her dorm room by 9am Sunday which has meant a massive plan reconfiguration to pick her and her belongings up.  Good thing we are morning people.  

I had a great talk to a person at work today. I've met her a few times at different sessions and she has an easy style.  She was give me some coaching from her kitchen table with a glass of wine on a Thursday evening in upstate NY.  "Think of your current job as the one you always wanted", she said "Now, what are you going to do with it to make it just like that?"  I remembered I have a LOT of autonomy in my work and there is nothing stopping me making it even better.  

The clash of cultures

I work in a big corporate and mostly I try and keep my blogging life and my work life separate.  Of course, my work life affords me the opportunity to travel a lot, to keep a very flexible schedule and to keep learning new things.   

I've been thinking a lot about blogging and how to step up my game recently (more on that later).  I was also stuck on a problem at work and someone recommended Unstuck to me.  I've worked professionally with a few of the people at the company who make it and though it sometimes kills me to say it, they are hands down some of the smartest and creative (and pleasant) people I've met.  It's a really neat little app (unfortunately only an app on the iPad but you can use the web version if you don't have an iPad) and I have loved playing around with it.  More importantly, it's helped me be conscious about what gets me stuck and hints and tips on getting unstuck.

I'm trying to be more disciplined at work.  One of the challenges of working at home is that the days can become super long.  I don't even mean the calls which can start at 6am and might include some at midnight.  The fact that I don't have to leave the house means that I can still be at my desk at 8pm with no enforced "it's time to leave the office" deadline.  I'm experimenting with a tips on chunking effort. 

In other news, the kids are hitting that winter slough so we need to find some things to pep us all up.  The youngest has her first set of uni exams today and is feeling anxious but the good news is she'll be home on Sunday for a month.  The oldest has been working a lot of shifts and although she has a bit trip to look forward to in September is feeling the days hang heavy.  There is a limit to how cheerful you can be when you've made your thousandth flat white for the week.  The fridge is full of sad left overs and I am missing the chickens who could always be counted on to deal with culinary mistakes.  The still non-functioning central heating doesn't help so tonight needs clean sheets, a good dinner, plumped cushions and some comfort telly.

 

Damp

It's been raining since midnight but I am so excited as I have not seen rain in weeks.  Of course, this means a lot of damp, fallen leaves and muddy footprints but it counters the skin leaching dryness that is winter in Canberra. (I took this picture on bank holiday monday, crossing the river on my way to heathrow)

I have been lent a massive heater which has rapid results in heating the sitting room and means the smaller ones can counter the icy drafts in the bedrooms.

I finished the Wolf Border on Sunday.  It's a long time since a narrative moved me along so quickly.  It has some flaws but it's a good read.  Next up is something by James Lee Burke.  They all blur into one another but the writing is so lyrical it doesn't really matter.  I think this one is set in Montana which is obviously a more beautiful Montana than the border town where H lives and where I had a few visits.

There's a smell of peanut butter cookies being made.  I don't think I ever need to leave the house again.

 

Wintery wastes

It is still chilly here.  I am wrapped, refugee style, in a quilt with a heater two inches from my hand hoping today is the day the correct part arrives.

I had dinner at a very ordinary Italian restaurant on Saturday night but in good company of my friends who had just been to the Balkans.  I'd bought A, Patrick Leigh Fermor for Christmas and he delighted in showing me the photo of him in the same pose at the Rila Monastery in Bulgaria.  He was just missing the fez.

I walked home.  I do love living in walking distance of restaurants and am always grateful to be able to do it. I think I like walking on my own (or with dog) best as it is good thinking time.  Having said that I walked to the best coffee shop in Australia yesterday morning and Charlie was much admired by the under 12s (he's so cute, can I pat him, what's his name, dad can we get one….), did another walk in the afternoon with M and then took him out again in the evening.

Last night, we ate roast chicken, watched Harry Potter 3 and Masterchef and climbed into our toasty electric blankety beds.  Bliss.

Resurrection shuffle

Still cold here but nothing crippling. I read s hundred pages of The Wolf Border in bed this morning with the electric blanket on and a cashmere cardigan. It is so beautifully written I am rationing myself.

I cleaned the house, made beef rendang and walked the dog. I fished out the battery charger from the garage and put the Audi on charge. I took the kid to work and drove on to civic where I bought another jumper in Zara, a basket in Country Road, the correct Nars blusher in Mecca (having bought the wrong one in sephora) and got some sample hand cream from Aesop.

Now I'm going to have a cuppa and read some more of my book before another dog walk, collecting the kid and going to dinner.

Tilting at windmills

Does everything in the MSM make me want to shout at the screen or the tv? Feels like it these days.  But, of course, it is not the MSM but the policies they are reporting.  The latest is the PM's objection to wind farms on odious talk back radio.  Visually awful, noisy and cause health problems? 

I've done two of the Run with the Wind runs up at a local wind farm.  Both times I found the site hauntingly beautiful, like large sea birds soaring above you, with only a faint whoomp from the propellors.  Seriously, who can claim a coal fired power station is not a better contender for the claimed issues?

What with the horrifying policies resulting in babies being locked up on Naura, the contemptible proposals to remove citizenship in the hands of a single Minister (and let's not forget the Minister who walked out of the apology to indigenous people), I despair of the politics of the day.

Gross domestic happiness

The heating is still not fixed.  The part, of which there is only one in Australia, is $700 so now we are considering if we replace the whole unit.  I am waiting for the gas man to cometh.

Let's think instead on that happy place called Madrid where I was so recently.  I stayed at the airport Hilton.  It was hardly inspiring.  I had to change my room as on opening the curtains I stared right across a flat roof into the fitness centre and serried ranks of people pedalling away on bikes.  After that less than auspicious start, we headed into the city, a short 15 minute taxi ride and ate dinner at somewhere we sat outside in a leafy courtyard and drank alberino and ate stuff from pigs who had only ever eaten acorns.  Despite my complaining, the airport hotel served the best hotel food I had ever eaten.  I'd go so far as to say the dinner was in my top business meals ever and the free glass of wine didn't hurt. 

The next night we finished work at 9pm but still hot footed it to Mercado San Miguel to continue the progressive dining - so much good ham and olives (sad seafood but maybe we are just spoiled in Australia).  I loved the whole feel of being outside so late and with twilight still showing.  The following night was a dinner in a neighbourhood bar and more worshipping of the pig and ending up with some colleagues in a down town bar.  One of my work friends has a dangerous line in "I know a really great bar…" which usually means some wild taxi ride, a walk down unsuitable streets and a large bill but sometimes you just have to follow your nose.  Since we got home at 2am on a school night, I decided to pack that night and wash my hair so I earned that extra 30 minutes in bed the next morning.  A super strong dose of C and B, two panadol and a bottle of water saw me right.

We finished at 4 and my colleague, Ana, squeezed our suitcases into her tiny car and took us on a whirlwind tour of the Prado.  She literally found the parking slot 50 metres from the entrance, had bought our tickets and rushed us through the greatest hits before letting us move slowly through the Goya in Madrid special exhibit.  It was jaw droppingly good with his inspirations hung alongside his work.  So amazing.

 

Then to Plaza Goya for some upmarket shoe shopping and a dose of Zara Home, fantastic shoe shops, a shop that just sold espadrilles.  So, so lovely.  We both entertained fantasies of moving to Madrid as the rents seem half that of Sydney.  I'll take the one at the top of the turret. 

Loved, loved, Madrid.

Retro living

Did I mention the heating has broken down?  It was a long weekend and then the part is so old they are struggling to track it down but overall it is a litany of woe.  On the plus side, I have a heated floor in the bathroom, hot water, electric blankets and an array of space heaters but I dread to think what the next electric bill will be.  The kid and I are getting used to cocooning ourselves in a quilt and making the dash to the icy cold kitchen.  It's not so bad but I'll be grateful for the sudden whoosh of the heating clicking on when (if?) it gets repaired.

It is winter back here in the nation's capital.  I am lucky to mostly travel to warmer climes and have had two weeks of spring and as long as I have suitable clothing I am ok with the return to winter.  I bought three new woollies in Melbourne.  On the first trip into Zara I was uninspired as I still had my head in the spring collection I had just seen in Madrid but on return a day later, I had clicked into winter and bought some good stuff including a beautiful long length singlet with wide straps.  I need to hot foot it to the local store and see if I can find another as I can see it is my go to layering singlet having worn it every day for a week.

Melbourne was full of excellent sales and we shopped well.  The Langham hotel is super comfy if you're looking for a recommendation, with an enormous bathroom and the softest, most pillow like beds.  

We walked (and ate) a ton.  Saw an excellent exhibition on design and illustration from the V&A at the library including some nice Thackeray prints (who knew he was an illustrator as well as novelist?), pretended to be wealthy in admiring the furniture shops of Fitzroy (sadly, there is someone hoping for the order of a 12 seater table to be shipped to WA at Great Dane), and sampled the delights of Gelato Messina (I am dreaming about the salted coconut sorbet lunarover had, I had the lime cheesecake with ginger crunch which was great till I tasted hers).  Sadly, we were a month too early for the David Bowie exhibition but since I now discover I have to go for work in July I am planning to fit it in then.

We ate at Radio Mexico (two for one margaritas!), Panama Dining Rooms (great food, duck fat potatoes, woeful service) and Chin Chin. The latter was my favourite even though we waited nearly two hours for a table.  There was an excellent bar and thoughtful cocktails.  The food was amazing - we had beef rendang with a salad of papaya and something else I can't remember and it was all great.  It was so fast we ordered dessert to make sure we spent at least an hour at the table.

It was an excellent mini break - a long time in the planning but even better in the execution.

 

Wolf and Carrot

It's been a while. I was in the homeland and it was spring like perfection.  Not as hot as the same weekend I was there three years ago but beautiful just the same.  My sister made an act of extreme love and picked me up from Heathrow on a Friday afternoon.  I'm sure spending Friday evening inching along the M3 was not her idea of a good time but she did it just the same. 

It was bliss to be in her sparkly clean, comfy house.  They have the most beautiful art collection and my brother in law, who's an art history nerd, had a book to show me on every print or etching they owned. I particularly admired his Frank Brangwyn's and his own work but we realised it was totally unrealistic to think I could transport it any of my bil's prints home without damage.

On the Saturday we went to Hilliers.  I'd never been before but it was startlingly beautiful planting.   Since many of the species are from the Himalayas there is a monument to the people of Nepal.  Touchingly, there was a reunion of Nepalese families that day, more moving for the terrible plight many of their families have faced in the recent earthquakes.  Even more delightful is that this is still a garden owned by Hants County Council.  Let's hope it stays that way and isn't sold off for a housing development.

In the afternoon we walked from Hillhead to Lea and admired the boats.  My brother in law has joined the 21st century and had an app which let him spot the names of the ships, their tonnage and destination.

On Sunday, I went to London on the train and headed to ganching.  Since time was tight, we immediately hot footed it to Eltham Palace.  Another first for me but with very acceptable apple and ginger cake.  The house was interesting but I found it more of a curiosity than a thing of beauty.  The gardens were good, too.  We passed the evening in the company of the fellow denizens of the old people's commune both of whom seemed jaded from an over indulgence in something the night before.  Good food at the best Turkish in anywhere.

After a route march around the neighbourhood on Sunday morning I took a cab to Heathrow and Madrid.  More on that temple of pigginess later.

Things on my radar

Hipster business name generator - looking to waste some time between meetings?

Spotify running app - I'm LOVING spotify right now and listening to way more music so this caught my eye as something that might choose the right tracks to keep me motivated.  I'm interested in how it detects pace and choses something appropriate