anyresemblance

On the buses

I'm on the bus to Sydney airport.  The driver of our first bus declared himself unhappy with the safety of the vehicle and we all transferred to another bus with nicer seats, wifi and a charging port for your phone.  Buses have improved significantly since my youth where you had a avoid drunks and discarded fish suppers round your ankles.

At the first roundabout, however, a violin case came crashing off the overhead rack and narrowly missed my head.  Its owner was mortified and I graciously accepted her apologies.

 

Not counting

I am going on leave for two weeks but you would think it was two years for all the semi urgent things which keep cropping up.  My boss is also away next week and weirdly we will be in the same city for a couple of days.  He invited me to use his pool in Dubai but I can think of a million things which come ahead of being in my swimmers in front of my boss.

The weather is starting to be very spring like and I am enjoying the blossom and the birds.  I did not enjoy coming home to find feathers scattered across the living room and the cat face down in devouring the source of those feathers.  I totally get why environmentalists in Australia despise cats.

I am still addicted to Taffy Brodesser Akner and went back to read the Goop article carol baby mentioned.  Her excellence at profile writing really comes through in how her characters betray themselves.

 

Unproductive

I feel like the weekend was vaguely unproductive though I did:

• have a 40 minute conversation with ganching while walking the dog
• make piri piri chicken that was fantastic with boned chicken thighs with skin which turned out to perfect for the recipe cooked on the weber
• get the first pedicure I have had since the foot operation
• finish Veronica Mars - so good and had to call my daughter up to workshop it since the other kid still has not finished it
• finish my Elizabeth Strout book and start one by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (what an impressive name!) which I started thinking was a bit meh but then found I read a 100 pages in bed last night
• buy a new duvet - I couldn't work out why my duvet was so crap at reaching the covers of my quilt covers until I realised that I had a double on my queen bed.  I declined to spend $800 on goose feathers but it was so nice to have something actually warm on my bed last night
• thoroughly clean the house including putting the rug out and sweeping underneath it before washing the floor

 

Dark night of the soul

Ugh, what is it about insomnia that makes you feel your life is hopeless and pointless?  I was awake from half past midnight to 3.30am and felt the despair you only feel in those hours.

This morning I was reading the poetry of Kim Addonizio and shed a few tears but felt much better.  As this article says, she writes poetry like Lucinda Williams sings which means she has knows the words for heartache.

On the upside:

Uplifting

I broke my Melbourne dining drought with dinner at Misuzus with my friend and her lovely daughter.  My friend turned up very jolly having exited a job she didn't think was a cultural fit but with 4 months gardening leave and an impressive set of contacts who value her ethics and capabilities.  We had a delightful dinner.  Her daughter was my fascinating friend at a wedding some years ago and as a 15 year old she is just as interesting.  We ate the best scallops I have ever tasted with a lemongrass butter and amazing vegetable tempura.  I have been a fierce opponent of cooked avocado but the batter was so light and crisp and the avocado still smooth and buttery that I was converted.

Things which have cheered me

Since there is so much shit in the universe here is a short list of things which have cheered me in the last 24 hours:

• reading this article about this lovely kid using tech for good 
• having tomatoes on toast with ricotta for breakfast from a local cafe
• having yet another crap dinner in Melbourne but being able to tease my colleague mercilessly for his less than stellar choice
• the quality of the mattress topper at the Langham hotel (heavenly sleep)
• finally scoring a Rachel Castle piece (can't find the link as it is sold out again but it's the Love print in the lower left hand corner on front page)
• reading What Red Was by Rosie Price.  If I tell you it is about a rape and its aftermath you might be put off but it is astonishingly redemptive and beautifully written.  Probably the best thing I've read this year
• starting a new (to me) book of Elizabeth Strout short stories centring around the Lucy Barton character.  Also excellent.

Cubed

The D'Arenburg Cube sits up in the McLaren Vale.  Worth seeing but not worth going to see.  The owners are as eccentric as people who host Dali exhibitions and enjoy life size models of themselves can be assured to be.  

Anyway, South Australia is beautiful and the Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale especially so.  I enjoyed my mini break but drank way too much.  I also found some parts of it extremely stressful including the beautiful young co-owner of a restaurant we went to being extremely drunk while she was serving us.  She has an unhappy life.  She was getting by but some parts of the conversation she was having with us were odd and it became clear she was plastered. 

Leaving

I went out at lunchtime to buy a leaving gift for a team member which included a beautiful set of stuff from Aesop for someone who is wound as tight as a coil and some new growth Darjeeling tea.  The tea was $48 for 200g which seems to make it the price of a truffle.  Personally, I am not a fan of truffle so a better purchase as far as I am concerned.

We had her leaving dinner at Courgette which was frighteningly expensive given the wine ordered by some of my colleagues and I was left footing the bill and the task of getting it through the expense system.  I didn't like the food that much and the service was mixed so not that great an evening as far as I was concerned.

Today I am working at home as I am leaving for a weekend in Adelaide at 2pm.  I funded it all on my points.  Qantas has changed their system slightly and it costs much more to upgrade but is much easier to use points for shorter domestic flights.

Insecure

Have I mentioned the travails of getting a security clearance for the government department for which I do work?  If you have spent any time living out of the country in the past 5 years you have to have a police check from said country certifying that you do not have a criminal record.  As a no longer resident of NYC, the only way for me to do this is to get a FBI check.  All good so far, you can do this on line, pay your money on line but then you have to submit inked fingerprints on a special form.  I have 4 times scheduled fingerprints with the fingerprint hot line (yep, it really does exist though hot is rather a misnomer as they only answer the phone between 10 and noon), turned up with my form, postal order (no cash or credit cards accepted) and had a police civilian volunteer take my prints.  Every single time they have been rejected by the FBI as not sufficient quality.

I have prevailed on the powers that be to grant me an exemption.  My client has taken pity on me and is supporting this but yesterday I had to talk to the man from government security and explain my sad story to him yet again.  I offered to do a statutory declaration.  He had me send him copies of my FBI rejections and said he would see what he could to to help me.  In the meantime, one of my team has gone over to work on a project at the agency that protects the nation and managed to get passes and access for her non citizen team within a week.   I just want to be able to enter and leave the building without an escort:(

In the meantime, I am having good success on eBay and selling small stuff.  I have learned that wrapping stuff nicely in tissue paper makes no difference to the feedback I get and sending stuff fast is what people really want so now they just get stuffed in the envelope and sent off.  It's only a trickle of $20 sales but it feels good to send stuff out in to the world that someone else values and which decreases my clutter.

Trying

Yesterday involved a long and brisk walk with Charlie.  I could see snow on the Brindabellas and feel it in the air.  Even though it was freezing, I hung the sheets on the line to get a good wind tossing.  S came by and we went to the garden centre where she bought a small bay tree as a house warming gift for someone.  We then went to get our nails done but the salon has been sold and the new owners, though nice enough, were chaotically slow.  We improved things by buying terracotta flower pots at Bunnings and having an excellent home made chicken curry at a new (to me) bakery in Fyshwick, Wildflour.  I love Fyshwick with its weird collection of businesses.

Later I went to the cinema to see the latest in the Fast and Furious franchise along with about twenty 12 year old boys who were having a group outing.  It was more like a mission impossible film but I still found it perfect for a Saturday afternoon.  When I got home Charlie and I walked to the shop where a nice man told him how handsome he was.

Today, I woke up with a headache which another long walk and two Panadol has failed to shift.  I think a nap is what is needed but I have to do some dull grocery shopping first.  I have a new work colleague who is Doing My Head in.  I need to stop reading emails from him on the weekend as his spelling mistakes make me murderous.