Croissants, sunshine, apples, shoes

FINALLY we had some weather over 20 degrees in Melbourne today, it was sunny, and I wore a t-shirt with nothing else! Well actually I did wear trousers as well, and shoes, and underwear.. but you get my drift. I finished another chapter on Saturday, and by finished I mean super polished, no unfinished references, to all intents and purposes, ready to be hand in. Now I am 5 down and 4 to go, but the final 4 are the longest. The next one in particular I am worried will be a slog, I need to chop out maybe 3-4k of words. I also have marking, I made a start today, I always forget how hard it is to get into the swing. This marking is also harder as it involves writing up to half a page of comments for each assignment. I am a great believer in comments and feedback, except when I have a blank page and an assignment and no idea what to write. I will have to get stuck in tomorrow and do the rest. Wish me luck.

A chocolate croissant and a slice of sourdough with plum jam. I bought both at Fatto a Mano on Gertrude. Delicious.

Close up croissant. Buttery goodness.

Tea and african violets.

I went to the market on one of the Melb Bike Rental bikes. It was fun as the ride is all downhill. I am just getting back into riding and I had forgotten how many pedestrians seem to think I am angling to run them down. By preference I ride on the road, but in some places there is just no space for bikes, plus for these bikes you generally have to ride on the pavement to and from the stand. I was coasting slowly behind a group as I felt it was rude to tell them to get out of my way, and I was nearly there so just coasting at walking pace. When they noticed me they grabbed each other out of the way like I was an express train and told me off for not having using my bell. Not that these bikes have bells (why not??), but even so I was happy waiting till they turned the corner. Argh. I am planning another post soon with my thought about these bikes.

Here I am on a walk later, having an apple, enjoying the sun, working the leopard print and listening to the Dave Gorman podcast, I love it, very funny. You can download it here and if you really should. I like to listen to funny things on mornings when I have to get up early and head to uni, cheers me up.

Isn't this car the cutest thing ever. I found it on my walk. So yellow and boxlike.

Today I went for a long walk to South Yarra and visited an open garden, and enjoyed the sun.

 Today's apple, so shiny and red, pretty much a cliche apple.

 My new white shoes from Target. They were dazzling in the sunshine.

 Mmm, this apple is tasty.

 Ohh look the new sports stadium near the river, looking like some kind of alien spacecraft.

The pool in the open garden. I have jealousy.

Playing Tag

The lovely Donna Clarisse tagged me, so I am going to answer her 7 questions and then add my own seven and tagged another 7 bloggers to answer them.

1. What is your most played song on your iPod/iTunes/whatever?
Hmm, I actually more-or-less exclusively use my iPod for podcasts, which I only really listen to once, I do have lots of music on iTunes but mostly things I have on Cd and I tend to just listen to the CD, how old fashioned. But in the spirit of the game I have checked and.. actually that isn;t going to work as iTunes seems to have decided I never listen to any of my music. Humph. In that case I randomly pick Nina Simone - 'forbidden fruit' as one of my favourites.

2. Are your nails painted and if so, what colour?
Nope, I haven't painted my nails in ages. Maybe now the weather is warming up I might be tempted.

3. What's your favourite food?
Gosh this is hard. Hmm. Artichokes, specifically artichoke pizza, or deep fried artichokes. Nom. Did you know there is a whole blog just about artichokes? If you like artichokes too you should have a look.

4. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
For a long time I wanted to be a scientist, maybe a meteorologist. I guess art history is similar, maybe. Well I guess I did end up a researcher, just not a scientific one.

6. What is your favourite city in the world and why?
Rome. For all kinds of reasons. I love the art and architecture, I love the food, some of my best friendships have been made in that city. It is a place to fall in love.

7. What's your middle name and do you like it?
It is Caroline. It was my great grandmother's name, I never met her. I think it is quite a nice name. I am actually debating whether I should start using C as a middle initial when I publish things, I think it would add gravitas, and you can never have enough of that. 

My 7 questions are:

1. What is the last book you read, did you like it?
2. Do you have any travels planned in the near future, where to?
3. Do you prefer tea or coffee
4. Where were you born?
5. What is your favourite work of art?
6. What is your favourite breakfast food?
7. What is the last picture you saved/uploaded to your computer?

And I tag:

Flash in Japan
What Katie did next
Minx in black
Yikes Machine
Maxie et Zuel

The Periphery (even though she never updates much these days but this is my way of prodding, no pressure, but PROD PROD).
Two to the valley

Have a nice Saturday, I am off to the market and to Target to try and buy some cheap shoes that I can ride a bike in, as it turns out that 'slip-on' shoes become 'slip-off' shoes when you ride a bike.

I kinda love this

The big cynic in me tells me I shouldn't but it is so charming and pretty, and she is so charming and pretty and I like her dress and the way she cracks up at the end.
Am I just soppy sucker?



p.s. i found it via Clem Bastow's Tube Ray Army, which I also love but don't feel at all guilty about. I watch it on Thursday afternoons while I am trying to work and feeling sleepy and needing the occasional hand picked youtube video to watch

Dogs in Jackets and Open Gardens

I did a little bit of work this morning, actually I read a lot and that resulted in finding the correct page numbers for half a footnote. Argh. This afternoon I went to see Mum and Dad, we were meant to visit my great aunt but time got away from us. those of you keenly following the adventures of Hmaish will be pleased to see him in his coat, unless of course you think dogs should never wear coats. Mum is conflicted, she doesn't believe in dogs wearing clothes but Hamish's inimitable cuteness has won her over so much that she dressed him in it just for me to see.

My leopard print flats. I have been rationing wears as I worry about them wearing out and I luff them.

There were lots of lovely flowers in the garden and the smell of the freesias was amazing. 

The lemons get eaten by possums, sometimes they just eat all the skin off so there are skinned lemons on the tree. Funny ole possums.

I like this azalea with its pink spots.

Gorgeous, not sure what this is.

Mum and I went to some open gardens in Eltham, lots of natives and mud brick and wattle. Native gardens aren't really my taste as a confirmed Baroque lady, but they were lovely spaces. The first in particular had lots of spaces to discover.

Apparently these stepping stones used to be the only way to get to the house until the lady's grand daughter moved in and they needed a safer path. Love it.

This is the house, very cosy.

 

I found a chicken! There were three and this was watching me, probably the greedy one who is always waiting to be fed.

The yellowest wattle ever.

The swimming pool.

Looking forward to the weekend.

It is the weekend and the semester break, thank goodness! Not that my teaching is particularly onerous but I am feeling frustrated at the lack of progress on my thesis corrections. I basically get two good days a week. I want to power through several chapters over the break and hopefully get all done by mid-October. It is all dragging far too much and making me feel quite down and hopeless. I also need to get my arse into gear and start scanning and sourcing the missing images, somehow I have ended up with about 500 images for my thesis. FIVE HUNDRED. Ridiculous. Every time I try to cull my supervisor ends up saying I need more. Stupid image based arguments, they seemed like a great idea til I had to actually make my image catalogue.

Anyway, enough whinging. Here are some photos from last weekend that I took and meant to post but then forgot about.

Chickens at the Collingwood Children's farm, I went to the Farmers' Market but the chickens were more interesting.

Here is one making what I like to call a fat face, when you pull your head into your neck and make it look twice as big, and self satisfied. My pet chickens used to do it all the time.

Silky bantams. I owned a lot of these over a long period of time. One of mine lived to be over 10 years old. True story.

Lambs.

The flock. They look like little clouds, or fairy floss with legs.

I found this camellia on a back street in Abbotsford and liked the pattern.

A magnolia.

I liked this blue house and its blossoms.

This is the banana cake I made on Sunday, I used double the amount of bananas. Crazy.

Now I am considering some more tea and how to plan this weekend.

xx

Cake,shopping, birthdays, earrings, rainbows

A busy weekend, in some ways. Maybe not in the ways I intended (like thesis and, um, well, and more thesis). I haven't even looked at my thesis... Hang on.


I just looked at it then and it still isn't done.

What I did instead included.

Went for walks in the rain, not by choice exactly. I did see a rainbow and that made it worthwhile. Plus wasn't it strangely warm in Melbourne on Saturday?!

I bought this book finally. Have been meaning to buy it for ages, it is an excellent guide to Melbourne architecture, only short entries but good if you want to quickly find out a date or an architect.

I made a chocolate torte. This is the egg whites being mixed in and it looks rather pretty. You can see the finished product further down. This is the recipe, it worked out splendidly and I highly recommend it. The top of the cake had a crispy melt in the mouth crust and the inside was fudgy.

I then made a spritz and finished making some jewellery. I bought the gold bits of the earrings from sportsgirl but I took them apart to add clip ons and also added the green beads to make them more exciting and dangly.

I also made the yellow necklace, a shop in Melbourne was closing down so I bought an entire jar of the yellow beads, 75 in total and made this very long necklace. I have a thing for super long necklaces. When it isn't looped it comes down past my belly button.

Today we had a family dinner for my sister's birthday, for father's day and to see my uncle whose birthday is next week. Much fun and champagne was had.

Pumpkin tart with goat's cheese. Nomolicious.

The finished birthday cake.

The obligatory photo of Hamish the Wonder Dog. Also the only family member who doesn't mind having his photo plastered all over my blog. He is very clean at the moment as he has a skin condition that means he needs to be bathed twice a week, which is probably like me having to bathe every 10 minutes.

Then I went to look at the garden, which is growing well, weeds and all. I like this multi-coloured silverbeet.

I picked some to bring home.

Lavender

Fennel

Daisies

Some kind of star flower.

Cherry Blossoms

Daffodils, slightly rain damaged.

The Gnome. With his headless squirrel.

More blossoms