Christmas

Had a lovely day yesterday, despite feeling stressed in the morning. Last year I remember being so stressed all day. But this year I just relaxed and discouraged my inner perfectionist. I often get anxious cooking with others as I like to do things MY WAY. But it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. Anyhoo I obviously took photos, mainly of food.

My wrapping, I honed my skills at David Jones c. 2000. I love wrapping presents. This year I also remembered to buy loads of ribbon (9metres) I usually only buy about 2m as, you know, that sounds like heaps but you often need 1m per present. My other tips are to fold the cut edge under, use double sided tape and use less rather than more paper. I also buy bags of offcuts of pretty paper from art shops (I got some from Melbourne Artist Supplies in Lt Latrobe St).



Time for champagne and present opening. I got some lovely gifts, many of them were food oriented. NOM. I also got books, love books. Will post about some of my summer reads in a few days.
Mum is laughing at that dog under the tree, it sing and flaps its ears. It is hilarious. You can also see the lovely tree, it is about 3 years old now and has been growing quickly. I pruned it last January as it was getting lopsided and it has grown into a lovely shape, so naturally I feel very pleased with myself.
Hamish wasn't allowed to come in to open presents so he slept in the sun (he got a nice lamb shank later though).
The bbq is fired up. For a house full of feminists it was all rather divided down tradition gender lines. Men at the barbie, ladies making salad in the kitchen.
Mum and Dad's fantastic 70s tablecloth in the dappled sunlight.

Hamish helping out.

Fish and sauasages.
Home made pumpkin bread from my uncle.

Pumpkin bread made by my uncle.

Prawns and scallops.

Snapper.

Fennel and white bean salad.

Strawberry, almond and spinach salad. So delicious, must get the recipe from my sister.

The spread.

'Hey guys do I get some ham?'

My amazing cheesecake, a recipe from my nanna and a Christmas classic.

Platter of fruit, apparently it is summer fruit but I could have sworn my brother said he was bringin 'sumo fruit' so I had a mental image of fat strawberries in nappies wrestling. Nevermind.

Christmas shoes!

I am off to the city now, perhaps unwisely but I heard a rumour that Kit has nail polish on sale.

Merry Christmas from me and my little dog.

Busy busy bumblebee

I have much to do today so I think a list is in order.

- Buy final presents, it wouldn't be my Christmas without some mad shopping in the city on Christmas Eve. *remember big stick.

- Buy something to festive up the apartment, something like the loverly Lady Melbourne has done would be perfect.

- Wrap above presents (that reminds me I need ribbon.)

- Make caramelised onions.
- Make biscotti.
- Make cheesecake.

- And some bloody footnotes and editing.

1940s swimwear

Got an email about a new library search for research from the uni library, so naturally I decided to search for old fashion photographs.

A lot of the fashion pics that pop up are pretty daggy, but these are great. These are from The Argus c. 1945-50. Hot stuff.

Pictures from my brother's birthday last night. Mum made the cake, it is coconut with coconut ice icing. Very delicious.

Me and my favourite person/dog, whatever..


Here he is demonstrating the focus and dedication he brings to a task such as trying to lick the fat off the ground from under the BBQ.

New nails

Christmas breakfast

Had a nice christmas breakfast today. I prepared by going for a long run. Now I am tired and watching iron chef so you just get pictures.

Christmassy things. You can see me reflected. Arty.

Retro coffee pot, love it.
The cow milk pot wore a profiterole on its head.

And ate chocolate.
Fruit!

The pot again.
Pretty bowl.
The fruit later on.
Banana skins and profiteroles. Secret taste sensation!

Pink champagne and pink plate.

I love Katie's bike. It is awesome. And so is Katie. I would really like to have a bike again but I am loathe to keep it outside as the last one got pinched, but I don't want more clutter inside. My dad has found some fold up ones but I worry they might be a gimmick and not actually comfy to ride. If I lived on my own I would buy one like Katie's and just put it in the middle of the room cos it is so pretty.


Went into uni yesterday, hopefully last time before Christmas, though it is delightfully quiet. Worked on proof reading other people's work when I should have been doing my own. Went to the market with mum and Mark's parents. they get very excited and buy loads of delicious things. Then I caught up with Katie and Elena for drinks at Journal, which was lovely, and ever so quiet compared to the rest of the city which seemed to be filled with baboons wearing suits.

Now I am off to Christmas breakfast at lizey's.

I really need to finish my Christmas shopping, planned to go today but chickened out due to the rain. Though i wasn't completely lazy, I did run to and from uni to go to pilates. Last class of the year, twas good. Stretched my inner thigh muscles so much I could probably put my legs behind my head now.

Watched all the graduating students wandering round. Saw some in bonnets and felt sad as I want my bonnet and I feel I will never get to the bonnet wearing stage. Also sad is the fact that all the soft toys with graduation gowns on wear mortar boards instead of bonnets. No PhD bears.

Also had a monaco bar. Got very wet on the way home and ended up with all my sunscreen running into my eyes. Now I am trying to track downa quote I FOOLISHLY used in my intro and did not properly reference. WHEN WILL I LEARN??

Check out the yummy dinner I had last night at Thaila Thai on Lygon St. SO delicious, even if I was sitting outside in 37 degree heat eating a spicy curry.

Nom nom

I love nectarines. I have been buying and eating a kilo a week from the market. In winter I have to pretend they don't exist or I would be too sad about not being able to eat them.

I also like the cow plate they are on, it has a matching mug.

I feel a bit brain dead today. Spent about 30 hours marking over the weekend and yesterday. I even got up at 6am yesterday and got to uni by 7am and promptly discovered that they don't unlock the outer doors until about 7:45. Doh! Luckily it was sunny so I sat on the steps with coffee and madly marked. Had marking meetings from 10:30 to 12. Then the other tutor and I made up the spreadsheet and entered all the marks for all 6 pieces of assessment for all 70 students. Tiresome, but there is no way around it. Plus you have to be so focused, don't want to write the wrong mark down for someone. Luckily we didn't have anyone insisting we use the world's worst learning software (LMS) and spend forever entering them in gradebook. The other tutor and I had estimated that it would take an hour per student to enter the marks and comments online because the interface is so clunky and it loads like you are using dial up c. 1998. We figured if they insisted we would simply inform them that was fine and were they fine paying for another 70 hours at casual rates? But in the end they didn't care.

We don't need to put our comments up, only respond if a student actually emails us. On the one hand this is quite nice for me as writing comments takes A LOT of time and can be mentally taxing as you try and find 30 different ways to say 'the introduction was too waffly' and avoid saying anything too negative, or accidentally putting an apostrophe in wrong place as you critique their use of grammar. BUT I feel it is a huge disservice to the students, especially the many who clearly didn't know how to write an essay, or even how to write a sentence! These are the students who really need the feedback but won't be the ones who contact us. I think (hope) if everyone gets back some comments that some of it does sink in.

Anyway, I always bring this stuff up but I end up feeling like everyone thinks I am a naive idealist. Or else they just tell me that ''This subject is about opening up their minds not worrying about the little stuff." Well you must have opened up their minds a lot as it is pretty clear from the standard of writing that a lot of their brains had fallen out. Or they tell me that 'this course isn't about teaching them to write they can learn that themselves.'

Well super dooper, but if unis don't teach them how to write who the hell will? How are they meant to teach themselves? Of course students have to work on it themselves, I had to do that, but it was greatly assisted by lecturers who took the time to spell out what was expected, show us common mistakes, remind us we didn't need to 'thesaurise' every second word, explain why and how we should use foonotes and really just let us know why we got the mark we did. Otherwise, especially for students who are not good at writing, the reasoning behind an essay mark can seem all a bit mysterious.

Anyway rant over. Marking is done in record time, which was my plan as I have a tendency to let it take over my life and brain for far too long. I am pretty pleased with myself. Now I just need to cross some other stuff of my not very long but super urgent to do list.

1. Finish my Kent article. I confess it is a few weeks late, and this is after asking for more time.

2. Send Chapters 4&5 to supervisor, I finished them literally months ago, why haven't I sent them? Probably some deep seated mental block to do with fear of criticism.

3. Re-draft Chapter 3 after having it rather demolished by supervisor a few months back. All valid criticism I am just SICK of the damn thing.

4. Write draft of Chapters 6 & 7.

5. Get back to compiling my image catalogue with my ye olde worlde photo editing software.

Weeel I haven't started a new blog as I realised the impetus came partly from the desire to procrastinate. I might start one post thesis, I could call it 'Dr Kat knows best' or something.
I have decided to write here a bit more often, though I have decided that a lot this year. We will see.

I can't write much today as I must get down to my article which is woefully overdue. It is giving my email phobia, I keep expecting to see angry emails in my inbox each morning.

I woke up nice and early today and went for a run to get the brain cells going, it was a really gorgeous morning too. Warm enough that my legs didn't seize up angrily after the first 100 metres, but not so warm that I spent the whole time wanting to crawl under a nice big tree and roll in the cool grass. I have ambitions for new fitness goals now that semester is over. My first is to run more and to stay interested by doing a different run on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Friday will be my usual quick 20-25 mins around the Fitzroy gardens, Saturday will be my long run to South Yarra and back, and Sunday, well I haven't decided but this week it might be a run to Eliza's new place in Fitzroy for breakfast.

I would also like to get back into swimming, maybe Mondays and Thursdays at uni, should be easier now it is warm.

xxx

I have been pondering whether to start a new blog, obviously I have my other blog but I want to keep that about just art/architecture/garden stuff. I would quite like to have another one where I write about more random stuff, and pretty fashiony stuff. I guess I could do that here but it feels funny tacking it onto the end of a long personal blog. But then I don't want to get rid of this one, hmmm dilemmas.

P.S. I really like this photo from The Guardian, apparently the model went mssing after the shoot *spooky music* link.

Poor blog. I think I should revive you somehow except I don't know what to write about. I feel my day to day life is a bit meh and same old same old. I have no energy to rant about stuff that outrages me, I keep forgetting to take photos of the delicious food I have made. Then I feel this blog has baggage and I should start afresh, but then I quite like how long this one is already.


Anyhoo I guess I should just write something.

I have spent today trying to write my catalogue essay about this fellow to the left. Good ole William Kent. Have been having serious issues as it is a commissioned essay on something specific, but I have already published an article on this topic and I feel I can't write the same thing again. It hopefully doesn't matter that it is on something very similar, and this chapter will be longer with more discussion (and frankly we all know of many academics who write the same article over and over and over again). But whenever I try to write it the already written article comes back to haunt me. I am actually making a little bit of progress this evening. Though I am frustrated with people who don't specify what dating they are using. England was one of the the last countries in Europe to adopt the Gregorian calendar. So until 1752 the new started in March, so a letter dated January 1720, in fact refers to January 1719 according to the modern calendar. however, it is never clear whether republished letters have had their dates adjusted. Of course a writer should specify but many don't and I am left wondering if they even realise the issue. Also if someone is writing a letter from England to continental Europe you can't be certain whether they are using their date or the date of the person receiving it. SO CONFUSING. These are my troubles. Anyway back to it.

BYEEEEE.xx

Urgh for some unknown reason I agreed to go to reunion with a couple of primary school friends this arvo and I desperately do not want to, but it is only like 6 people and it shit me when people pike at the last minute on stuff like this so I will go. I just have no energy for any type of socialising today, let alone slightly awkward reunion socialising. Sigh. Stupid friggin facebook. Plus I actually have a mountain of work to get done and should be it doing it now but I am just worrying instead.

Edited to add: The reunion was actually lovely, not at all awkward and had fun reminiscing!

I just emailed the coordinator of the course asking whether my contract was ready, got an email back and hour later "just had a meeting with [school manager], might be ready by Monday but I'm not sure. Jacquie has been ill for a few days." Honestly who cares if she has been sick for a 'few days' I have been working for 6 weeks and therefore the contract should have been sorted out 7 weeks ago. I am so cross. We sat down and worked out my hours 2 weeks ago and he has just sat on it and done nothing till I prompted again. Now I will not get paid till at least week seven, which means I will get taxed a lot. When I do sign the contract I will ask if they can pay it in increments, which I think is frankly the least they can do considering how long it has taken. But past experience tells me this will be a huge issue and FAR TOO HARD. I go out of my way and fix all sorts of things up for this course and do hours of unpaid work they can't even be bothered to put in the one hour it would take to make sure I get paid. I am even on the system already, *MASSIVEGRUMBLE*

So glad to only be teaching two classes this week. Today was pretty straightforward, the students are great except that because I give them group work I'm not always sure what to do while they work, I sort of wander around asking how they are going but trying not to watch them work over their shoulders, then I usually sit and make doodles on the roll for a few minutes. Sigh.

Now I should really go and do some photocopying but feeling too lazy.

Also I am thinking of going up to Sydney in a few weeks with Dad, need a break from good ole Melbourne. Just for the weekend, he has meetings for gliding and I will go to the galleries.

Busy-ish day today. Trying to get my image catalogue sorted, I have hundreds, hundreds and hundreds and it is so horribly painful. But I think I made some decent headway today. I feel a bit like it is the image version of never really doing any footnotes till the end of the thesis. But then when I started I didn't have a scanner or even a computer that could handle much in the way of image files, or a digital camera so I guess things have evolved and arrangements for images have been constantly superseded so I never settled on anything and now it is a mess. But on the upside a lot of my images are now available to download from galleries which have digitised their collections. Making life a lot easier. I LOVE YOU BRITISH MUSEUM.

`

Just had a meeting about with the Save Lonsdale House peeps. Went well, we have had some good publicity and hopefully we will have a decent number for our protest on Saturday. I think we are all a bit amazed at how it took off. I remember when we started our facebook group ages ago and we were about 15 people for ages, now it is nearly 1500. Crazy.

Had to teach all the classes again this week, not that much in hours but just boring teaching the same thing again and again. Plus I hate the feeling that it is probably everyone's least favourite subject as it is compulsory breadth. Hey ho, I am probably being over sensitive. Also in one of the classes a few students have so much attitude. They ask if they have to come to stuff, ask if they can go early when we are in the middle of discussions. So rude. Honestly if you don't want to be there just leave, but don't expect me to give you permission to leave. Anyway we actually had quite a good discussion and the mouthy students are in the other tutor's class so I don't have to worry about them any more. Spent a while looking at this lady, she can be seen to spin in either direction. Fun.

Hello blog, sorry I neglect you so much at the moment. Very tired tonight. Had to teach all the workshops, so six hours straight teaching. It isn't too bad really, mostly it is the repetition of the same ideas again and again for each new class. Trying to write a lecture for Friday now. So glad I don't have to write a lecture every week. So time consuming, no wonder I got no thesis done when I taught at La Trobe.

Seem to have a lot on at the moment. I am helping out with the Save Lonsdale House protest. Visit the website here. We have over 1000 signatures now, which is great. It is partly just good to know there are so many other people out there who love Melbourne's architecture. Have met some lovely new enthusiasts who know so much more about Melbourne than I do.

Making slightly slow progress on thesis this week, but, I think, good progress over all. Though it is hard working on so many bits simultaneously. I am going through the edits on Chapter 3, making an image catalogue for Chapters 4&5 (150 images eek!) and re-writing Chapter 6. Funny how disjointed some of my old writing is now when I look back on it, and way too much explanation, like i am hitting people over the head with my ideas sometimes! But that is good as I need to cut words as it is currently 14 000 words over.

A picture for no other reason than that I like it. From the V&A, I keep getting distracted when making my catalogue.

Portrait of Lubaina Himid from the V&A

I was reading the Guardian and found this obituary for someone who was at the British School in Rome with me last year for three months. I was quite fond of him, he could be a bit abrasive and argumentative, but that wasn't always bad. He was also genuinely interested in other people and having long intellectual discussions, and disagreeing and sharing his wine. Sad. He gave me a few of his books, which I have to admit I am yet to read, and it saddens me to think I won't get the chance to tell him what I thought.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/20/gordon-burn-dies-aged-61

Groundbreaking author Gordon Burn dies aged 61

Cancer kills celebrated explorer of the boundaries between fact and fiction

'Far ahead of the rest of the literary world' ... Gordon Burn. Photograph: Sarah Lee

The writer and novelist Gordon Burn, whose work explored the boundaries between fact and fiction, has died aged 61, his publisher announced today. Burn died on Friday 17 July, having been suffering from cancer.

Burn examined the contemporary obsession with celebrity in a series of books spanning three decades, including an account of the Yorkshire Ripper, a study of Fred and Rosemary West and a Whitbread award-wininng novel which imagined an alternative life for the British singer Alma Cogan.

His editor at Faber, Lee Brackstone, hailed his work as "far ahead of the rest of the literary world", and lamented the loss of "one of the great literary innovators of these times".

"Gordon's subject of choice was often trauma, spectacle and dysfunction," Brackstone said. "He was drawn to the dark side of celebrity ... his literature and impulse always represented to me an attempt to find comfort, meaning and compassion in the most appalling or baffling of events."

For the author himself, the central role of fame and mortality in his own work was clear. "Almost everything I have written," Burn said last year, "has been about celebrity, and how for most people celebrity is a kind of death."

Born in Newcastle on 16 January 1948, Burn began work as a journalist, writing for publications such as the Guardian, Rolling Stone and Esquire and remained a prolific interviewer and feature writer, making a name in recent years as an expert on contemporary art. Deliberately following in the footsteps of In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song, his first book, Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son, was an attempt to tell the story of the Yorkshire Ripper from the inside out; he spent three years getting to know Peter Sutcliffe's family after the killer's conviction in 1981, turning up night after night to hear stories of the murderer's early life. He turned next to the world of professional snooker, at its zenith during the era of Steve Davies and Dennis Taylor, following the circus for a year to research Pocket Money, published in 1986.

His first novel, Alma Cogan, revisited questions of death and fame, entwining the case of the Moors murderer Myra Hindley with an imaginary post-celebrity existence for the popular singer, who died in 1966, in a meditation on artifice and obscurity which won the Whitbread first novel prize in 1992. Novels of Fleet Street and showbiz followed with 1995's Fullalove and 2003's The North of England Home Service, but it was with his most recent novel, 2008's Born Yesterday, that Burn's fiction reached its logical conclusion. Hatched in a discussion over dinner with the CEO of Faber, Stephen Page, the book was an attempt to bring the non-fiction novel into the era of 24-hour rolling news.

"The idea was to find a story, and the moment the news explosion happened to go there and write about it, turn it into a novel in the way that happens all the time through rolling news, newspapers, blogging," Burns explained. "And to turn it around fast, so that the novel came out while the news coverage was still fresh in people's minds."

For Brackstone, Born Yesterday was "an experiment as brave as anything attempted by Pound, BS Johnson, or Foster Wallace". "Having worked as a journalist with a sharp eye for a story in the 70s, Gordon understood, questioned and celebrated, more than any of his peers, the advent of 24-hour news on loop - the pornographic, compulsive intensity of it," Brackstone said. Written in a burst of just over a month at the beginning of 2008, the novel shapes the extraordinary events of the summer of 2007, including the resignation of Tony Blair and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, into the dream-like vision of an insomniac version of Burn himself. As a cast garnered from the blaring headlines of 24-hour breaking news – Kate Middleton, Carol Thatcher, Jacqui Smith – crosses the boundary between fact and fiction, Burn confronts the subject which governed his writing life: the limits imposed on fiction and non-fiction alike.

"The news is always holding out the promise that we will know more and more and more, but we don't," Burn said. "With the West case, I had everything: I had access to their belongings, to the police interviews – everything, basically, that you could possibly wish to get – and you spend three years writing a book, and you still don't know what made these two people do the kind of things that they did."

At home today, hoping my sore foot will recover. Has been sore for a while now, but I have had to be in at uni or somewhere most days that requires walking.



Just baked some biscuits.

Now time to drink more tea, file articles and listen to PM on RN.

Not much else happening.

Put some photos up of the buildings I looked at on Sunday on my other blog, click here. (please do I get despondent when no one reads it, after all I spend valuable procrastinating from thesis time upon it, which could be used to bake wonderful cakes, tidy the house, arrange my hairclips by colour, catalogue my novels.....)

I hate bra shopping so much. I managed to turn my favourite (only) white bra grey the other week by soaking it with something black. Clever. So I went to Myer today to buy a new one as they had 30% off Elle Macpherson, which are pretty much the only style I buy these days. The plain ones all trumpeted that they went up to an E, but they were ALL PADDED. Thanks, but no thanks, I'm more after day to day wear than porn star. Then most of the styles don't even come in my size, then when I do find what I what I find myself stuck between fitting the 10s in the back but busting out of the cups and feel a little loose in the 12s. Anyhoo. I didn't find what I needed but I did find what I didn't need but decided I wanted.




I am now considering buying online, though that seems a little scary as I find they fit varies even between different styles within the same brand. Hmmm.

Anyway Myer was also so damned hot, how are the staff not all raving mad? So I was grumpy by the time I left only to be held up by the Harmony Walk, which made me feel all violent instead of harmonious. Home now and attempting to work on thesis.