Am off to New Zealand tomorrow, did a dry run of my paper tonight, I was expecting about 5 people, but instead there were about 25, yikes. Went well after some small drama with printing Mark's paper, my printer only did my paper. Then toward the end I was fighting an air conditioner.

Still have to pack, mark some papers, read some papers for our journal, go out and do an art deco walk with Lisa, but it will be fun and she is giving me tips on shopping for jewellery in NZ, my dad always buys me gorgeous things. Hopefully we will go to Akaroa where there are lots of silversmiths and such, Weee I am so excited!

Mmmmmm madeleines.



I did some maths and I have marked at least 200 000 words. I marked solidly for about 5 hours today then lugged masses of essays into uni. But we had a look at the spread of marks and it seems right so that is good.

Been marking more. Have to have it all done by Wednesday, yikes. I still have about 12 essays and then all the exams which I will have to do tomorrow. HOW? I was going to email and ask for more time but then I realised I am off to NZ in a week and have to write my conference paper for that so I really need to have all this done. Gah. I think it should be fine, marking exams is pretty fast.

Went and tried to mark in Journal today for a change of scenery, which was fine except some woman was having Italian tutoring and her tutor kept saying the wrong thing and it was distracting me. "È sbagliato!"

I am going to cook leek and tuna risotto tonight, it is a bit of a scraping the cupboard night. I bought so much last week but got excited and used all the veges at once.

I took this photo of the Fitzroy gardens opposite my flat today, all misty and pretty and I thought 'winter is beautiful, I don't mind more winter'

I made another blog about architecture and stuff.

I am really sick of feminist art history. It isn't good art history, and not really good feminism either.

I have found the solution to procrastination and writers block. Do something unbelievably dull. I am doing some marking at the moment and suddenly midway through an essay I come up with all sorts of good ideas and have to stop myself opening new documents and stopping the marking.

Strangely though housework never does this. When I have a chapter looming over me I could easily clean the entire house and not get bored. Maybe it has to be desk related.

In other news I think it should concern us that a writer this morning on the radio, who wrote about her experiences of growing up asian in Australia, said something pretty much along the lines of 'Asians and the Orient have always been seen as the other, as the Occident.' I hope I heard wrong.

Urgh I have been so unproductive, but laziness is fun! Yesterday I got up very late, mooched about, went out to get some groceries (because on Friday I somehow lost the butter between Safeway and home, go figure). Then Mark and I went to have a wine, had three instead and came home to cook lasagna at about 11pm. But it was so yum.


Today I went out to try and photograph some architecture and kept bumping into to stupid people doing shopping, then went and actually found a bra that fitted me on sale, HALLELUJAH. As I was standing in the queue I was thinking about Trinny and Susannah's bra show and felt like pointing out to a few women that there was NO WAY they were a B-cup.

I just made delicious brownies.

Beautiful winter's day.





hese are from mum and dad's

My crop of Jerusalem artichokes, freshly unearthed.

Hamish!

Does anyone else remember this show from afternoon tv (I know Nomes does!)? Actually it could still be on... I was just watching it on you tube you really can't go past good ole claymation. Me and Jarrod remember this other show, I think it was French, or at least in that strange claymation language, maybe swedish. Hmm. But it started going "a a a a, e e e e, i i i i , o o o o" No one else ever remembers but we bonded over it. Had an accidental day off today, but it was great. I went out to my parents to go to a pilates class with my sister as she was too nervous to go alone. Then I went back and ate food (we saw dad relaxing after a morning at Bunnings, the life of a retired man). Then Nomes wanted to finish an assignment and have me hand it in at CAE so I mooched around, did some gardening, dug up masses of Jerusalem artichokes, huge crunchy white ones. Picked some parsely and potted up some geraniums and some other plant I don't know the name of. Played with the dogs, got lots of cuddles and smelly dog kisses. I am so relaxed now. I must work tomorrow though.

Had a good weekend. Took both days off as always despite promises to do some reading one day.

Saturday I mooched around doing some knitting, reading, internetting, I am trying to set up a new blog to write about art, design, architecture etc. I shouldn't really it is a terrible distraction.

Then Mark and I went to a Spanish wine tasting (8 red wines in the afternoon )
They were amazing, the last one was a $173 bottle, mmmm, I finished all of that taste.

Then we dashed off to a gallery opening in Prahran, took bloody forever because apparently Connex has never experienced a rush after a football game. go figure.

The show was great, it was by a Melbourne artist Jon Campbell whose work I love, he made this, which is up in Melbourne somewhere

The work was all about text, only about five pieces in all. Does anyone else have memories of being told in school art classes that text was absolutely not allowed in you art? I do, it was called lazy, as though we were falling back on written description for what should be done in images. I felt the look of the text in the exhibition actually explored the way that text can be so visually different, i.e. t vs t . Or the way a word can encompass a whole set of imagining around an abstract concept.

I drank a glass of champagne and after the tasting that made me feel woozy. Mark was going to a concert but I didn't feel like it so I went out for dinner with the gallery crew. Went to a brilliant pub in the backstreets of Prahran, I had pizza and a lot of Pinot. Then Jarrod kidnapped me and made me go back to his and Tara's to drink a whole bottle of fancy red. We reminisced about Rome (we met there in 2000 same time I met Mark). And then I spent the rest of my weekend money on a taxi home.

Sunday I struggled out of bed at 10 because Mum was coming over at 11 with all her fresh basil so we could make pesto. We made it and it was yummy. Then we went with Mark to a concert, twas lovely, then Mark was going to another but I had tiredness so mum dropped me home. I knitted some more, watched Emma and ate pesto.