It's all very posh really

I'm going to a concert this evening. It's one of those ones where everyone sits sedately on their seats in a hall charmingly done up with chandeliers and the like, you know one of those "classical" ones.. some cat called Beethoven is playing. I'm pressing my frock at this very moment.

It has been suggested by my concert going partner that we have no business going to such a do, considering what happened the last time we tried to be a bit swanky, which failed miserably of course. It was said in jest, but nevertheless I pointed out that this is different because we're not attempting to plan this one. It's something he's getting through work, so it's free, and hopefully we'll get some wine and cheese at intermission. In fact, I might not be wrong if I state that it's the major attraction of this evening for me.

That and the pub afterwards. Ok, so I might enjoy a bit of music. I mean, I'm not that much of a pleb, I think I can be prevailed upon to enjoy something other than a loud stinky pub with beer and delicacies like stinky cheese, talking loudly about something inane and taking dorky photos of the beer while other people look at me strangely.

Oh wait..

Nothing to say..

Actually I have plenty to say, but right now I'm not in the frame of mind to put it in a blogworthy way, if indeed it's something I feel like sharing here, which it isn't and I know it's Thursday and I could just post a photo to be captioned but.. eh.. no one ever does anyway, so instead I'll just say.. and yes, I do have a little to say, even excepting the aforementioned exceptions, that Cooley is better. She's eating and drinking and putting Friskies in her bowl and sleeping on her favourite bag. I'm very happy about that.

Some stuff

So Cooley is now post-op. Soon after writing yesterday Erik came home, put her in the cage which she submitted to with a minimum of fuss, we took her on the tram to the vet, during which time she was calm and quiet, introduced her to the vet, who Erik informed that Cooley doesn't have a positive reaction to strangers handling her, and suggested she give her the shot before taking her out of the cage, but she said oh no, we have to weigh her... so the cage door was opened, Cooley taken out, and then she flipped. She ran around the room trying to escape, climbing the walls, literally climbing the walls! It's amazing how far up the wall she managed to get, more than once, and hiding in whatever little hole she could.

They caught her, managed to give her an injection to calm her down, and were able to proceed from there. We went off for an hour and came back when it was done. Everything went fine, though we learnt that Cooley is too fat, apparently, which made the operation slightly more difficult. It was hard to see her, eyes open and glazed though asleep, with a stitched up stomach, but that's what they do. We took her home, she slowly came to. Today she's been groggy and I think in pain. She's recovering slowly. Not too happy with us at the moment.

In other news. I made bread. Actual bread this time, not at all like rocks. It was satisfying to have everything seem to work every step of the way, which might have something to do with using actual yeast this time... don't ask. Anyway, dough rose, the bread rose, baked and it tastes good so I'm pleased.

And one more thing. Why do they always have the cool words on the days that aren't word o the day days? And always on the weeks where I did the word of the day with some mediocre word? Well today's (yesterday's now actually) is peculate, which means to "appropriate fraudulently". Not that that explains it much better. Still like the word.

Believe me it's for your own good.

It's a big day for my adopted kitty Cooley. In just under 2 hours she's going to visit her first Czech vet. She's being "fixed". She's already an adult kitty, and the reason it hasn't been done before is mostly due to Erik needing to take her to the vet, and what would have been the convenient time for this, to get injections and papers and all that for her move here, then he was moving her here, then they were settling in and then we didn't really know of a vet, or feel such a pressing need to find one.

But after a particularly long spell of horniness, followed almost immediately by another, he got a recommendation for a vet from someone at work and made an appointment for 19:00 today for "fixing". It's supposed to be good for animals, and at very least it will alleviate (hopefully most) of her suffering when she's in heat, and I would be lying if we aren't concerned about our own suffering during those bouts.

The preparations started last night when we had to take away her food, a decision that wasn't so popular, but she coped. I had to come early today to remove her water, and by now she's pretty hungry and vocal about it, and was a bit taken aback when, instead of giving her food just now, I took away her water.

Still, apart from the occasional outburst, she seems to be taking it all pretty well, and doesn't seem to have any idea what's in store.

Just under an hour now we have to put her in a cage, get on a tram that takes us halfway across the city where she'll meet a new person who will poke and prod her and do whatever it is these vets do. Fortunately she'll be asleep for most of it, but I can't imagine she'll find the directly before and after bits too pleasant.

Poor kitty, but it really is for her own good. Or so "they" say.

Word o' the Day, the begging you please.... edition

Today's word o the day is:

beseech: to ask earnestly, implore

and if don't know what implore means, it means to beg urgently or piteously

Back to beseech, it's kind of a boring word. In the sense that it doesn't have either a rude sound or meaning, and it's one that's in common use, in the sense that it's in use at all by anyone except for people who speak to show off their vocabulary, though I suppose those who use it are probably trying to be posh, though I don't know if that makes it interesting.. and I'm really only posting about it because I don't have anything else to write. I could just not write but.. well, there's no reason not to really.

*stops writing*

Give us a break already..

before I start ranting, I have to add that it's come to my attention that this actually isn't such a big deal and this has been going on in other, more capitalist parts of the world for some time but...

I was shopping at the supermarket earlier, and passed the veggie section and went to the part where they tend to have.. stuff, chocolates, seasonal stuff er.. stuff like..

chocolate bunnies!!! yes that's what I saw, chocolate fucking easter fucking bunnies!!!
I mean, we only just got over christmas! Now I'm going to calm down.

Ok, some people who live in English speaking parts of the world said they've had chocolate eastery stuff in the shops they go to since about after the new year, so this is nothing special. Talk about a letdown, I took a photo and everything but it didn't come out too good so it ain't going up anywhere. Not sure why we're behind those places in pushing family/capitalist/religious/chocolate eating holidays actually, we're pretty big on those here strangely enough, the only thing I can think of is that they waited until after they pushed chocolate hearts and shit on us for Valentine's day, something that isn't supposed to be such a big deal here but you do get the merchandise all the same, and thus we got until the 3rd week of Feb to be free of Easter. I could be wrong, in fact I probably am.

Caption Me

Not me! This photo, I mean.

It's snowing outside.

*smirk*

I know, where would it be snowing. Actually I'm not sure if it's snowing at the moment, but it has today. I quite like the snow, in fact I really like the snow, I get giddy and silly about it and want it to snow more and more. And I have more photos that I have in mind that require snow for them to happen. I blame it on being from Australia. I've lived in places that snow for years and years, where you get gloomy cold long winters that everyone wishes was over but I still want it to snow more. What can I say, I'm a weirdo.

In other news. I'm in the middle of making bread, attempt #2. I left my dough rising this morning, and I think it may have actually been rising, and when I get back I will shape it into balls or whatever and get on with the process, *snickers*. I'm thinking this batch might turn out better than the last batch, but not exactly good. That's my prediction, we'll see how it turns out.

In other news, I had a beer or 2.

Tuesday Stupid Questions Nobody Ever Asks #3 - The thinking I might make this sorta regular edition..

Why do people ask/say questions/statements like "Is it/It is raining/snowing outside?/." ?

Well?

Ok assuming you can't make sense of that because it's jammed with too much stuff for one small sentence, I speak of the tendency for people to tack on an "outside" when they are speaking of precipitation. It is, in case you haven't figured out why I bring it up, redundant. Of course it's raining "outside"! Where else would it be raining? I mean, it doesn't rain inside, due to the tendency of roofs to thwart it's journey, and as we know, most places that are inside, (ie buildings) have these "roofs".

Now, there are unusual structures which have things like skylights, and rundown buildings that have holes in the roof, where you might be technically "inside" while being somewhere that the rain can get you, but assuming you are in a place where it's necessary to ask, or be the one to let others know if/that it's raining, then it's probably quite obvious that inside is not where said precipitation is occurring, seeing as if you/they would already know.

"Outside" is a waste of breath in these circumstances. No need for it! Why do people continue to say it?

*steps off soapbox*

Phew!

Well that was a joke. So, me and my valentine went off for a romantic night at Babylon, a somewhat posh restaurant (ie not a pub) that does "Mediterranean" so we were looking forward to perusing the lengthy menu and sampling delicious delicacies that can be scarce in this Central European home of ours. When we got there, we kinda dorked out because it's all nicely done up and there's golden oxen and stuff all over the place so we took lots of pictures, without really looking at the menu or anything. When the waitress came we realized she'd given us only this set Valentine's Day menu, so we asked for the regular one, but it turned out there was no regular one, apparently this imported American holiday is such a big deal that it was due to be too crowded to have more than a few dishes this night.

It was still early, and she tried to be helpful and said she could ask the chef if he'd do some other dishes, so she went off. We pondered about it, then the chef came up to us saying he could do some stuff, but not all up until such time as it got too busy. He stood there explaining it to us for longer than was necessary, and then left. Well.. I thought, and so did Erik, that it wasn't really worth staying, we'd be rushed, and limited in our choices and that was not what we had wanted, but now it seemed like the staff had gone out of their way for us so we felt a bit sheepish. Still, not enough to stay, so we sheepishly slunk out the door. Not really, we apologized in a sappish manner and then went on our way.

Big fail. We wanted to have a romantic dinner in a special place, we even got dressed up and everything! But no, not for us, obvs. This is what happens when we try to act like grownups, all goes awry.

We could either give up on the occasion entirely and go home, or we could be cool and slum it with the little people. So we went to U Pastyrka, or as we like to call it "The Rustic Place" a nice pub, cosy but not in a romantic way. It turned out great. We drank beer, ate pub grub and had pivní sýr, beer cheese, which is where you get the stinkiest, strongest smelling cheese, and mix it up with paprika and onions and other stuff and put it on bread, it's fucking awesome. And as I was sitting there, ingesting the foul smelling delicacy, I thought to myself, "who are we kidding? we are the little people!"

Ok no I didn't, I just wanted to fit the "little people" in there somewhere, but seriously, if you ever get the chance to, try beer cheese, it's fucking awesome. Or fucking awful depending on what you like.

So great night, but most of all it's a relief. There's now no danger of me being normal. Now I can go back to my former ways, wryly observing the conformists while living outside of society, scorning the traditions they slavishly follow, except for the ones I happen to like. I can go back to snarling, stomping and deep conversation, and caring deeply about all the sad followers and their tedious McLives consisting of work, consume, breed, watch tv, work, consume, buy expensive tacky shit on holidays and so on and so on... and be ultimately grateful that I'm above that.

Hey, what can I do. It's who I am.

*looks smug*

UPDATE: The love o' the life has written his own version of events, he has a slightly different slant than mine, but it's a good read as you can expect from someone I condescend to consort with :).

Where I become an official conformist.

It's been a fun life, scowling, marching, rebelling against everything, feeling superior and doing what I want cos I want to, changing the world for the better and making sure everyone knows it. But fuck it, you can only do so much.

Ok so my quasi-anti Valentine's stance has been pretty ineffectual and I've at most not really gone out of my way to celebrate it rather than be actively against it. I mean I've never been into heart shaped chocolate (in particular) or flowers or demanding some man fork out for something particularly expensive and pink or else, like other women (yes, every last one of them, no exceptions) so I guess I was justified in feeling holier than thou. Them, those. Whatever.

Well anyway today I'm doing the dinner thing with the bf and it's quite a swanky place so I guess we're being pretty traditional, though I'm still quite happy about the absence of heart shaped chocolatey pink jewel encrusted things, I have to point out. And I did some themed photos commemorating the day, which to be honest I do almost every year, though a few years ago I brilliantly subverted the concept with this photo, so think of it what you will.

The main reason for the change of heart, is that one year ago, said bf who then lived in Israel, visited at this particular time, so we had only a few days together, one of them coincidentally being Feb 14, so we did the dinner thing, and the romance thing. Now we live together but it's part of our personal history so we're doing it for that reason. I don't know if that redeems me to the cool gods or not, but it's my excuse.

I'm not sure this counts as equiv to rainbows and sparkly ponies. I get the feeling I'm still on a negative kick. Oh well. Deal.

So, like every other day then..

Today is a dark day. A sombre day. It is a heinous, iniquitous, loathsome, maleficent day. It's an evil day, a dangerous day, if you go out today you'll come to great harm, you mark my words. If you go to work today you'll make such a horrendous mistake that you'll be fired. If you talk to any friends, relatives or lovers you will say something that pisses them off and you'll never see them again, and they'll tell everyone what an asshole you are so you can't make new friends. If you go to the store you'll lose your money and it will rain on the way back causing you to slip over, graze your knee and drop your groceries causing the eggs to smash and run all over the rest, ruining itl. If you drive you'll have an accident. If you take the bus it will be horribly crowded and you'll be crammed up against 8 other people, all of them with terrible hygiene, and the bus will swerve causing the lot of them to fall on top of you, causing you to smash your bags and break your eggs all over the rest of your stuff, if they haven't already. If you step outside your house the branch from the tree above the door will break off and fall on top of you. If you stay inside you'll have one of the numerous accidents that occur in the home every year. If you spend the day online you'll accidentally send out pornographic photos of yourself and insulting messages to your friends, relatives, lovers and work colleagues, causing you to lose all of them/your job etc, if you haven't already.

In short, it's troublesome. So be careful, don't do anything and don't go anywhere, or should I say, don't be anywhere. Why? Well, it's Friday and it's the 13th. It just is.

I wanted to get into the history of the origins of the Friday the 13th superstition, but I haven't been able to find any that's conclusive. It might have something to do with the Templars though. I reckon it's probably them, those cats were spooky.

Bring on the beer.

OMG I haven't written like, for ages! That's 3 days, but I suppose it's a good sign, not long ago, id I posted just 3 days after the last post I would have thought I was positively prolifent. Is that the word I mean? Nevermind.

I'm so glad I like beer again. I had one of those incidents last Friday that put me off beer forever. Fortunately that lasted a total of 2 days and for most of this week I've been happily indulging. Today I'll enjoy some, for no other reason than I feel like it, and it's a special day no less.

Yes, Charles Darwin, the man who invented science, and killed god dead with a single blow of his razor sharp hand is celebratig his 200th birthday today. So have a drink for Charles, who I'm sure is beaming down on the post religion, enlightened world he invented, from wherever the hell he's enjoying his birthday drink in the afterlife. Wait.. there's a logical inconsistancy there, but I can't put my finger on it.

Whatever. I'll have a drink myself even if worm eaten corpses are unable. Actually I don't think there'd be anything left for the worms by now. There's some food for thought for you there.. guffaw guffaw.

Rainbows and sparkly ponies! Sorry, felt the need to provide a little balance after that

Tagged

I've been tagged on Flickr to do a self portrait, accompanied by 16 random facts about me. I did it and figured I'd take care of 2 birds with the one stone, and here it is.

I thought I'd get clever with the photo, which was originally supposed to have 16 of me in it, which you can imagine is a quite an ambitious project, and sure enough, after an hour spent shooting self portraits, without any plan except to shoot them in lots of different positions, I was only able to fit 11 of myself in there. So technically it's a failure, and if you were reading yesterday, that is in fact what I was referring to when I spoke of my second projct for Friday, anyway here's the photo, followed by the aforementioned facts:

1. I speak Czech poorly, relatively so, I speak it well enough to be able to say I speak it, but I wouldn't be able to say to what level of proficiency, all I know is that for someone who is from a Czech family, who grew up listening and understanding, if not speaking much, and who has lived in the Czech republic for 8 years, it is poor.

2. I take one and a half sugars in my coffee. I used to have 2 but I thought it was too much and waned to wean myself down to one, but as yet have only managed to bring myself down to 1.5.

3. I can play both the piano and the guitar, but very little and extremely ill. I've always wanted to be in a band all the same, just for the fun of it, but have yet to realize that ambition. I promise that this will be the year.

4. I consider myself something of a writer, though writing anything like a book, a play or real article is beyond me. This blog is as ambitious at that gets.

5. I have 9 photos tagged with toilet.

6. I'm quite a fan of Jane Austen, have read all the novels, seen all the 90s and 00s adaptations and a few of the earlier ones, and one of my favourite sites onlie is the home of JA, Pemberley dot com.

7. In my opinion, the very best Wikipedia page of all is the Fraggle Rock one, now that person really cares..

8. I'm a dork, and a bit of a word nerd, and a punctuation nerd. I'm not exactly the greatest expert myself, but I fancy that I pretty much spell good and speak proper. I'm usually quite easy with errors that others make, but one thing that drives me crazy is when people use unnecessary apostrophes, usually to pluralize a word eg. "dog's". Why on earth do people go to extra trouble to put in something that isn't needed! It doesn't make sense!!!

9. My favourite beer is Gambrinus, one of the beers made by Pilsner brewery, in Plzeň, Czech Republic.

10. I am, as is probably quite obvious to anyone who's paid the slightest attention, a cat person. Until recently I hadn't lived with a cat for over 10 years, though I've wanted to get a kitten for some time and didn't get around to it for one reason or another. All was solved when earlier this year, Erik came to live with me, bringing the lovely Cooley.

11. The most popular search term that leads to this blog is "fucking elephants" or "elephants fucking", and references a post featuring this photo.

12. I'm an aspiring actress. I should, at this advanced stage of my life be past aspiring to anything, but I'm hesitant about claiming the title of "actor" without a disclaimer. I simply haven't done enough stuff, and the stuff I've done is far from professional, and recently, I've done nothing at all. I mean to do more, better stuff, but from lack of motivation, confidence and opportunity, I haven't yet. This will be the year though.

13. I have issues with the number 13. I'm not generally superstitious, and I don't really believe it, I just, for some reason avoid that number and numbers associated in my mind with it on clocks and wherever else numbers are found.

14. I come from Sydney, specifically from the less salubrious Western Suburbs area, people who come from there are colloquially called Westies by other Sydneysiders (people from Sydney).

15. I've sung karaoke once in my life, but I really want to do it again, there are specific songs I really want to sing, including but not limited to "Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush, and "I've Never Been to Me" by Charlene, and I swear I only want to do those songs for the cheesiness value :). I reckon I'll do it this year some time.

16. I'm something of a procrastinator :)

Weekly review

An overview of my life in the past week:

Monday. Um.. don't really remember anything significant about Monday, went to work, had a typical day there, I guess, or I'd have more to say about it.

Tuesday. Same I think, but I have a feeling there was something different.. will get back to this one.

Wednesday. Same as the other 2.. something different about the evening, I stayed longer at "work" and had some drinks.. I recall Erik having some drinks with work colleagues and coming to meet me later up there.. oh yeah..

Tuesday part 2. I stayed later at "work" and had some chilli, Erik came and joined me and we ate, but we didn't have drinks that night.

Thursday. Typical day. Erik had another work do so I came home and watched movies while Cooley wailed her head off.. oh, one theme running through the week has been Cooley, she's been having one of her spells and has been driving us crazy most of the week.

Friday. Busy morning, I had 2 major things to do. One was make bread, solo for the first time. I started it and followed the instructions left but things didn't go so well so I called Erik, who knows and we realized that maybe the yeast was too old and inactive so the bread wouldn't rise so well, but it was worth continuing anyway. I left the dough to rise and went out to get the other project done, or at least that part of it, which I did and came back and decided I needed to get up to "work" (it is real work, just not a regular job in the sense that I have to be there a certain time or else) and walked up there. Both my big jobs of the morning have, in retrospect been technical failures.. one I'll explain shortly, and another will remain a mystery until such time as I am at liberty to reveal what it is.

So.. regular day at work.. well not really but it was irregular in a boring way, until I went to the post office, where I failed to achieve my objective in going there, due to the fucked up address someone gave us for what they sent us. I had a beer on the way back, had some more beers there, Erik came up and we had beers and Fernet and stayed late.. when I came back I wasn't in a condition to finish making bread, so I left it.

Saturday. Yesterday. I was sick all day and did nothing, and I wrote about that yesterday so you should know. Didn't get the bread done.

Sunday. That's today. Done nothing. Actually that's not true, I've finished the bread, almost. The dough had started to get crusty but still kind of doable so I made buns.. and they're in the oven... he he guffaw guffaw that sounds like a joke. Anyway we'll get to try the bread soon, and even though I'm almost sure it will be awful, I'm glad I did it, so I can get the first disaster out of the way and do it better next time. As for my other failure of that day, well, that turned out pretty cool over all, but you'll know about that soon enough.

Why don't I ever learn...

I did something very unremarkable and uninteresting today, in short, nothing. That's not what's so unremarkable about it, (though me doing nothing is quite common, and therefore, unremarkable).. not, the specific unremarkable thing I'm referring to here, is the reason I did nothing.

It was more than just general laziness, weekendness or tiredness. It was the headachey, pukey, groaning state of hangoverness.

When I left off yesterday I mentioned having a beer. Well I went on to have more, and then some more, and some fernet and, to cut to the point felt like utter shit all day, could barely raise my eyes above the covers let alone stare at this glaring screen.

I'm a little bit better now, thanks for asking.

Still not doing it..

Nut.. I actually had a second wind of inspiration about the thing I was going to write about but then didn't end up writing about and then wrote about not writing about.. but.. I started on something else I wanted to do, which took a lot of my time, and then I had to go to the post office and had to come back and on the way back had a beer and...

well anyway I didn't end up writing it.

Taking a stand.. kind of

I've decided that I'm not going to write about what I wrote about not writing yesterday, but didn't write yesterday. I know I didn't mention anything specific, or that there was anything specific that I had in my head to write about, but there was, and that's what I'm not going to write about.

Not today anyway. And considering that every day I don't do it the less likely it is to happen, I've already lost half of the stuff I had in my head the night before last when I got the idea to write it down, so after flaking out yesterday it's just going to fade more and more..

But never fear! It's Thursday, and that means..

Caption this. Please.

Oh the dilemma!

I speak of the hardship of being a genius who, nevertheless, due to laziness, lack of confidence and a sheer plethora of ideas battling for attention in my head, cannot be brought to put those thoughts down on keyboard.

It's hard. I still hold out the possibility that I might get these current thoughts out there, in some widely understandable form, but right now.. I can't be assed. Or I'm just not capable at this time. One or the other.

I'd leave you with something interesting but I can't think of and/or decide what to leave you with.

Later.

Tuesday Stupid Questions nobody ever asks #2 - The Resurrection..

Funny, when I started this little theme many months ago I thought I had many more stupid questions in me. Obviously I was mistaken. Well I thought of a new one, so it's back. At least for this week. My question is:

If when you're overwhelmed you are.. well.. overwhelmed. And when you are underwhelmed you are less than impressed, then what does it mean when you're whelmed? Does it just mean that nothing unexpected happened? That you're not disappointed with how things turned out but it's no more than necessary? In other words.. just right? Well?

And, for a bonus I give you today's word o the day, seeing as I've been skimping on the dorkism of late.

defalcate

Hehe. It doesn't mean what you think it means, not that I know what you think it means, of course. It means to "take fraudulently", or in more detail, "to steal or misuse money or property entrusted to one's care."

So there you go.

This is what I was talking about..

Sorry the bums aren't prominent in this one.. but you get the idea.

My hands are cold.

I've been home for a while but my hands still have that recently thawed out stingy feeling. Well, we went out to Mala Strana. The snow stayed around but the sun took off within 5 minutes of us leaving the house, but it was ok, all was pretty, there was snow, there were ducks and swans and babies bums.

I took lots of pictures, which is why my hands got so cold, despite having gloves on, they're pretty flimsy and if I don't keep my hands in my pockets most of the time they freeze. It's worth it to get a bunch of new scenic Prague in winter photos, so I don't mind. Makes me feel brave and hardy.

No beer though, it's a bit of a skint weekend, and though it was a pleasant day, it was kept from deserving the title of perfect due to us not being able to pop into a pub to thaw out and chill. Yes, I'm aware the latter part of that sentence is contradictory, and no, it doesn't matter that today wasn't perfect because it just gives us room for improvement on a future expedition, just in case you were interested in knowing, and yes, I do mean you, singular.

The babies bums is a sculpture, in case you were thinking it was an odd sort of thing to see by the river on a freezing cold day.

It feels so different... somehow..

Ok no it doesn't. Today is exactly like yesterday. Except for that the cat was a bit noisy this morning (she's having one of her "spells") and that probably woke me up. And it snowed last night, which isn't different in itself from yesterday because there was snow yesterday morning too, though it may have just snowed in the morning as it melted pretty quickly... but anyway there's more snow today so it looks pretty, and it's sunny as well, so we're going out for a Sunday outing.

I hope everyone else is having a happy February so far.