I'M IN A BAD SAD MOOD

I need him to worship at my feet and bring me one dozen

gorgeous (match to him) pink iced (go well on him too) Hummingbird cupcakes and

a dozen Sticky Date cupcakes. ( he can stick to me anytime, anywhere)

Cupcakes courtesy of SuYin, Cookingismypassion.blogspot

The other cupcake courtesy of genetic serendipity.

SO DO YOU REMEMBER.....

Just where you were when you first saw the 'Grim Reaper' ads warning us of the danger of AIDS.

It's the 20th anniversary of that ad and now the experts want a new campaign. You can read it here http://www.ssonet.com.au/display.asp?ArticleID=6392 (nice work Harley) I think if they've got $10 million for this, it should be put towards sex education in schools. That ad certainly put AIDS in the minds of every person who saw it but quite a number of gay men think that instead of demonising the virus, it demonised them and they had to live with even greater prejudice. According to Paul Kidd, editor of 'Positive Living' people became aware there was a disease they could get from gay men and that created a division between the gay and straight worlds. On the other hand that fear generated a great deal of money for research into the virus.
Australia handled the epidemic a lot better than America ever did, with less hysteria and lower infection rates.

The ad which screened at the same time as the reaper was, to me, more effective in showing how easily the virus could spread. I don't remember the exact wording but it had two people in bed and the voice over asked 'Do you know who you slept with last night?' The camera then panned over a number of beds with couples. Would either of them work today? For a start, teens are not in front of a TV screen, they're in front of a computer downloading their favourite shows without ads. With the reaper ad, would this frighten anyone who watches the news at night with its war deaths, tsunami deaths, motor fatalities let alone watching films like 'Saw' or 'Wolf Creek'.

Twenty years ago 'teen' age was around 16, these days it's down as low as 13. There are more drugs, binge drinking, underage sex and sexually transmitted infections than ever before. Information and education about STIs haven't kept up with information about drugs and drink. There are no stats I can give you, just word of mouth from teens. I have no patience with adults who say if there's sex education and information taught in schools, then their kids will want to run out and try it. Halfwits, they're already doing it. As well as condom vending machines in toilets of both genders, put a rack of STI information beside it and load it with graphic photographs. The problem is, we have more religious nutjobs than we had twenty years ago and with a lot more influence than they should have.

When people stopped dying from the complications of AIDS and drug regimes became the norm, HIV went from being a gay disease to a druggie's disease to a sex worker's disease and now it's a third world disease. It's still a death sentence in Africa and S.E. Asia but here it's thought of as an inconvenience that can be controlled with a pill. It's not a death sentence but it's a life sentence and that's the message that has to be pushed at young people, gay or straight.

THE MOON

I'm sitting here at 10.35 watching the moon rise over the rooftop. I can't remember if it's waxing or waning gibbous because I haven't got one of those neat little moon phase thingys and even if I did blogger would somehow shove it to the bottom of the page.

So I've written about the moon rising before but it was earlier in the evening and it looked bigger and it was in the left corner of my window. Now it's later and it's in the right corner of my window. I wonder why it's like that, I say to myself.

Because the Earth's turning you cloth-brained bint.

BAKING

I am baking or perhaps baking isn't the right word for a pavlova. I may have a visitor tomorrow so I thought I'd treat us to a pav, cream but not the usual fruit, crushed peppermint crisp and Cadbury's dark velvet flakes.

The diet is not dead. The grand weigh-in today was a bit disappointing - 134.4kg but as my sister pointed out that is over a pound in the old fat.

This is where I get confused. I keep thinking I have to lose a kilo a week because I'm still thinking in pounds where a good loss was a pound a week. I had to rat around in the bottom of the cake pan cupboard to find my scales and work out pound to kilo ratio and the news is good not disappointing. Now to work out the other stuff, 14 pounds in a stone and I've lost about 9 so that makes 5 to go before I really celebrate. I stopped trying to work out how many stones there are in 100kgs, it was making my brain hurt. I can visualise in pounds but not kilos and it's the same with centimetres. Say 2 inches and I've got it but in centimetres, I have to get the tape measure. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

I was busy measuring the ingredients with my teaspoons/tablespoon and I got all old feeling because I had been given these as a wedding present. I can't believe something plastic lasted longer than he did. A look in that drawer where all kitchen usefuls live (oops, quick dash to the oven and pav is cooked and looking yum, a little sugar weepy but cover it with cream) brought to light all manner of odments that have outlasted him. What did the man want with 7 bottle openers apart from getting terminally pissed? I recognised a few as Christmas presents, how well the family knew him. They got shoved to the back when stubbies were invented and the family gave him stubby holders instead. Some terrible person burnt them in the barbecue just after he left.

In case there's interest, I'm also having salmon, sour cream and feta cheese tarts tomorrow possibly with a golden soy mayonnaise with herbs. I can't leave egg yolks hanging around doing nothing. Bless those happy chooks on Kangaroo Island.

UNEXPECTED SURPRISE

I have a portable DVD player courtesy of my sister's big feet. She has a TV at the foot of the bed and watches it when insomnia takes over. She bought the portable DVD for herself and it is now mine. She managed to fall out of bed, get her foot caught in the power cord of the TV and sent the whole thing flying. It wasn't much fun watching everyone looking like the green part of the Hulk so she went to the scratch and dent warehouse and now has a TV with an inbuilt DVD player. But be warned about these, the warehouse is full of televisions with DVD players that don't play, very cheap but hardly a bargain really.

After a year of buying my favourite movies, I can watch them. I can't watch them in bed, I can't get comfortable but set up on a TV table in front of my chair it's passable. Any film that has a lot of action tends to make the eyes shoot around and Harry Potter is just not the same on a 5 by 7 inch screen.

It's better than the tripe that's playing on the box this week. Fascinated as I am with all things forensic, the sixth repeat of any CSI program tends to be boring. Why was it necessary to remove 'Stargate Atlantis' this week and does 'Crossing Jordan' have to be moved around to accommodate 'Dancing with the Stars'? Well I don't care now I can turn it all off and watch 'Serentity'.

TALKING ABOUT MY KITCHEN.....

Well we weren't but I will. After one step up a ladder today, that's one step, the first step, any higher and I get altitude sickness, I realised that the body is getting old. (insert sniggering here)

In my younger days and married to an object of decoration masquerading as a husband, I was the one who painted, wallpapered, cooked but never cleaned unless the month had an 'R' in it.

I remember him moaning in bed supposedly with the flu but in reality just his Monday morning 'brown ale virus' and me in the kid's room slapping up the second coat of paint while tending to a roast in the oven. He took his life in his hands by asking for food and pointing out an area I'd missed in a corner.

Now the kitchen which I had specified to be painted in gloss before we moved in, wasn't, so with himself being the greatest splasher and splotcher of all times, it wasn't long before a paint job was necessary. In my innocence I decided that I would paint it Gloss, a bright cheery pale lemon Gloss and not just the walls, I would paint the roof.

I painted the kids, the dogs, (lemon works well on black labs) and the cats. I didn't even have a ladder in those days. I stood on chairs, walked around the benchtops and utilised the kitchen table. I discovered one of life's truths, gloss paint takes forever to dry......on kids, dogs, cats and walls but especially when it's dropping off a ceiling onto the kids, dogs, cats etc. It doesn't peel off the skin like flat plastic paint, you have to scrub down several layers to basement epithelia.

But I had my lemon kitchen which made me happy until I saw "the wallpaper". It was white with lemon wild flowers and pale green leaves, delicate and fresh. I left the ceiling lemon and the walls were delicate and dainty as were the lace curtains framing the dirty dishes. Wallpaper 101, do not put anything but vinyl in a kitchen especially with a splotcher in residence.

Painters hate Gloss. They will do anything but paint Gloss. I paid the equivalent of the GNP of a small country to get one to paint Gloss in the kitchen. I scraped off the wild flowers while the decoration sat on his decorative backside. But I had my white gloss kitchen with the white gloss ceiling. He flicked spaghetti bol across the ceiling a week later. It washed straight off. I love Gloss.

PROBLEMS

I have a few of them, problems that is.

Anybody know why blogger has decided to plonk my witchy gravatar and profile to the very bottom of the blog?

Why aren't ladders made with wider steps?

Why do stupid women go up ladders instead of washing the wall with a broom while standing on solid ground?

Why is it murphy's law that if I bang my shin on the blanket box, I'll do it again in the same spot at least three more times?

Why does it take this government no time at all to send the rodent around the world but takes days to get aid to tsunami victims?

IT'S APRIL ALREADY

My feet hurt because I walked 6 kms just to find out I've lost some more weight.

135.1kgs

I really wanted to take off my dress to lose that .1 but I didn't want to frighten the horses.

No applause?

It's only been two weeks but there could be a slight cheer, a mild clapping of hands, a well done now get on with the big lose.

I need another incentive. I think I'll have one of those 'Starshots' done. This time they won't have to airbrush out the blubber, they can use it to fill the wrinkles.

DEAR DIARY TODAY I.........

Thought about food again and got pissed on by the Heavens again as I walked home again.

My food thinking is actually doing me good. The more recipes I read, the more I remember how hard cooking is, well not the cooking, all the chopping and washing up is tiresome and this is keeping me to the diet. (apart from yesterday's delicious little slip up)

Since it's coming on to soup season I bought a carton of Campbell's REAL STOCK, vegetable. All ingredients are listed on the side which has confused me a little. This carton contains, water, vegetable stock (?) 3% (water, carrots, celery, beetroot, parsley, lettuce, watercress, spinach), food acid (citric acid) natural flavour, sugar, soy sauce (contains soy and wheat), salt, onions, garlic, vegetable paste (contains milk products) herbs. So the way I read it, I have bought a carton of vegetable stock which contains vegetable stock as one of its ingredients. I'm glad I didn't buy a bridge.

I also grabbed the free magazine that Safeway uses to shamelessly plug all manner of packaged chemically enhanced natural food. This little gem caught my eye. It's another use for those morsels of patriotic delight, Anzac biscuits. You soften them in the microwave for 30 seconds, then while they're soft, press them into muffin tins (sounds very prOn) and hey presto, when cold you have little cases to fill with caramel and cover with chocolate. I would like some with chocolate mousse, lemon curd even or a liquer truffle mix, lovely but labour intensive. I'd have to stand up a lot to make them and then make coffee to have while eating them, then wash the cup and all the utensils etc. but if the Anzac fairy leaves any on the doorstep, they'll be appreciated. HINT.

If anyone is thinking of using the new Ajax superdooper bathroom cleaner, read the directions first. You don't want to go spraying it around then find out that it's a level 8 corrosive, to be used only with gloves and don't breathe the fumes. It's not a bathroom cleaner, it's a chemical weapon of mass destruction. I'm still hacking up bits of lung and that's after I poured it down the shower drain with cold water. I figured it would probably dissolve all that red hair that the drain trolls weave into gold in the pipes.

That finishes the shopping report for this week.

TODAY STARTED........

It didn't start well at all. The cat has not adjusted his internal clock and woke me at 6.30 by jumping on the bed. He missed. He saved himself by throwing his claws into the only anchor he could find.......my foot. Slasher managed to leave a neat surgical incision across the top of said foot. Standing on one foot trying to drip Betadine onto the other foot is not my idea of early morning fun.

I left home at 8.30, 20 minute walk to the bus unusually slow but then I was crippled by searing pain in one foot. Two buses to get to the doctor's and joy, my blood pressure is down so no pills. I almost made it back to the bus stop but I have to pass by the BohemiancakeshopwherethegenuineViennesealmondcreamcroissantslive. I couldn't help it, they banged on the window like puppies in a pet shop saying, 'bite me, bite me, bite me'. So I did, but I had a long black without sugar so it counts. Anyway I only go to the doc's every three months and it helped me negotiate the 2 million tonnes of chocolate covering Westfield for Egg Sunday.

My sister and I have a system. I top up my mobile then transfer credits to her phone and she gives me the cash. It's worked well up to now but optus have a new website but I don't find that out until half an hour later when I ring customer service because I'm still trying to transfer money in a black hole. I had all the details for the poor wage slave at the call centre except my own number which is on the phone I'm using to talk to the call centre. I don't call me so how am I supposed to know what the number is. This has taken me nearly an hour of internet time and mobile.

I finish the day as I started it, the slave of the cat. Three cans of food and a bowl of milk later he decides to sit on my foot to get warm. Wrong foot, #*&@* cat!

THE POEM

WHEN I'M AN OLD WOMAN

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick the flowers in other people's gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

Or only bread and pickles for a week

And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So People who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Jenny Joseph

WHO IS IN CHARGE?

Right then, who's in charge of all these Ad Agencies producing the crap ads on TV at the moment?

The little kid running up the stairs to find her bedroom is a brick wall because the insurance company wouldn't cough up enough to build it. Have you looked at the size of the house? And not a stick of furniture in the joint.

That Magnum ad with good old botoxed to the hilt Hurley. Swans down the red carpet in a dress that's almost there and grabs a bloke's ice-cream and EATS IT! Who are they kidding? That woman hasn't had a decent meal let alone a chocolate covered ice-cream in the last ten years.

And since I'm totally obsessed with food at the moment and my only comfort is the numerous food blogs I visit, here's one I particularly like http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com and I hope he won't mind me nicking his quotation for the day.

"The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found."
Calvin Trillin.

I can relate to that. The Brick Outhouse is always amazed when I take something out of the fridge and make a meal from it. I've converted him to putting sliced roast meat in batter or layering it with onions and gravy to simmer in the oven with or without a topping of fried breadcrumbs with cheese or mashed pototoes. It's even easier now that gravy comes in liquid form ready to microwave. He did remember a recipe I used to make when they were little and I'm surprised I wasn't arrested for child abuse for giving them sausages cooked with baked beans, pineapple, green pepper and onions.

UP HERE! UP HERE! NOT DOWN THERE

Far TMI in that last post, have to distract 'em quickly. Easter Eggs and more Easter Eggs.

Who in their right mind diets just before Egg Sunday? Normally not a problem, the chocolate in these eggs was always terrible but not now.

Safeway have a recipe for a Rocky Road egg. All the ingredients are on the page, ready to buy in your supermarket aisle. It looks gorgeous but I'm strong, skip that page.

Target, on the other hand, have an egg I'm going to have a lot of trouble with. A Jessica Walker totally indulgent nut egg. Caramelised macadamia nuts coated in milk chocolate and formed into a 600 gram egg, with a ribbon. It's on special, $24.99, I save $5.00 but even at $24.99 I'd want Ioan Gruffudd naked, with a ribbon, to deliver it.

I could go for the Rocky Road egg with 9 Rocky Road clusters or the Ernst Hillier Liqueur Creme and I definitely have to buy a Fair Trade Egg to be fair.

Or I could just eat the page.

WHEN IS IT FINISHED

Adrian Phoon who used to blog as Gay Erasmus has been having counselling and his post is very well written with good links to organisations dealing with depression. http://adrianphoon.wordpress.com/2007/03/20/counselling

But it was one of his commenters that had me going back over my dealings with various counsellors over the years. How do you know when it's finished? What is the cut-off point to go it alone? With me, it was more a case of when do I start trusting these people to help me instead of fighting them. It was only when I saw a female psychiatrist who asked if I had problems with men in authority positions that cathedral bells went ding dong boom. My other two shrinks and hypnotherapist, males, authority figures which meant the drawbridge went up and the moat filled with piranhas.

She was good. I always left the session with a question she put in my mind and by the next week, I usually had an answer and another step on the road. The question was important because it showed that she was not only hearing what I was saying in words but also listening to the gaps in between.

It took a little over a year before I uttered the one sentence that had been locked away in a dungeon in my mind. I thought I'd be struck by lightning for that but instead I burst into such hysterical sobbing that I ended up in hospital for the night. It wasn't the great 'I'm cured' breakthrough but it was the start of me being able to do the hard work for myself.

The New Age gurus say every phase of our life has to be completed in order to move to the next challenge and survive it. I survived everything that has been thrown at me over the last 12 years. My father's cancer and death, my son's month in intensive care and watching him die, my granddaughters being taken far away, my husband's infidelities and our eventual divorce and now my mother's slow decline. I'm down from 40mcg of medication a day to 3. The battle with my other drug, food, is now being fought.

I don't mind growing old. For every year I live my mind expands more not less. Youth is wasted on the young, hand it over kids, I won't waste a minute.

THE 400THHH

For my 400th post, an announcement and joyous I am to announce it.

TheMuriels, Kelly and Samantha have passed the first trimester of their pregnancy.
The nuchal fold ultrasound showed a perfectly healthy baby.
There is an extremely low risk of Down Syndrome.
BabyMuriel has a normal skull and abdomen and is 5.24 cm long.

Of course, this means the end of civilization as we know it.
Two lesbians in a 13 year relationship, having a child will bring down fire and brimstone on every hetero family in Australia. Johnny told me so, and Abbott and Costello too. I won't get hurt, I have a tinfoil hat.

Go Team Muriel. I'll dance at your wedding yet.

WHAT I DO TO KEEP FIT MEME

1. Laugh hysterically at anything that has the word "fit" in it.

2. Open 15 cans of cat food, a day, for notoriously fussy geriatric pain of a cat.

3. Walk to the shop for milk whenever the snivelling swine of a cat wants it.

4. Build up biceps by turning pages of cake recipes and wiping drool from chin.

5. I'm all for spectator sports. Anything that walks past me in tight jeans will get mentally stripped and in case you're wondering that strengthens the eye muscles.

6. I dance very gracefully, it's the fat that wobbles. (don't come looking, nekkid dancing is over, summer's gone)

7. I ride horses, ice skate and climb mountains. (try proving I don't *blows raspberry*)

8. I'd like to swim, but whaling season, you know. I'd like to surf, but shark season, you know.

9. I lift weights, these artificial knees weigh a ton and the body ain't made of marshmallows.

10. I walk kilometres, to the fridge, the computer, the coffee shop, the pub.

I tag anybody who can tell lies better than I do.

WAIIIIIIIT FOR IT!

136.6 kilograms.

My scales are nearly a kilo out so I was 138 kgs when I started last Monday so that is a good result.

3kms to the hospital and 3 back in the pouring rain. I walked in the back door straight into a hot shower, clothes and all, to try and shave off frostbite.

On Thursday, I staggered home trying not to succumb to heatstroke.

Thanks to all who are supporting me, especially Cellobello who, in a noble gesture of sacrifice, ate only a small packet of chocolate chip tiny teddy biscuits. *sobs* I love tiny teddy biscuits.

Don't mention exercise, I can do enough damage walking. I've been catching buses, good, cracked my spine on a bus seat, not good.

Last night I had to figure out how to attach the two sticky paddles of my TENS unit to a spot between my shoulder blades. That's really hard with one dodgy arm but I'm a woman and female brains are wired for just this sort of problem. I measured my back, measured the chair and pinned the paddles to the exact spot, sat down and leaned back, brilliant.

Now to get through Sunday without cappuccino, croissants and chocolates. I can do it, I can do it, stop thinking tiny teddies, don't think tiny teddies, crush the tiny teddies. *sobs*

KEEP IT PRISTINE

This is from the astronomy picture of the day website and I have it on my desktop. I can't stop looking at it, the detail is amazing.

The image was taken from the International Space Station in 2006 and shows the layers of the atmosphere and that beautiful crescent moon.

Air molecules scatter blue light making the sky clear blue for ground observers and the horizon blue for astronauts. The molecules are deflecting the moonlight making the lower part of the moon appear to fade. The black at the top of the photo shows the increasingly thin atmosphere.

OCEANS AND CLOUDS

That is a true-colour image from NASA's Visible Earth project. It shows a phytoplankton bloom off South Georgia Island in January, 2004.

In November 2006, atmospheric scientists started to look at chemical emissions from ocean phytoplankton and how those chemicals could influence cloud formation and reduce the absorption of sunlight.

Discovery of this link came from efforts to explain the increased cloud cover over an area of the Southern Ocean where a phytoplankton bloom was occurring. This part of the world normally has relatively few particles around which cloud droplets can form. The hypothesis was that air borne particles produced by oxidation of the chemical isoprene which is emitted by the phytoplankton contributed to the doubling of cloud droplets.

Dimethyl sulfide (DMS) which is also emitted affects the formation of clouds by increasing the number of sulphate particles to form cloud droplets. Isoprene may enchance the affect of DMS by not only increasing the number and size of the particles but chemically attracting more moisture. The more droplets in clouds, the brighter they are and the more sunlight they reflect back into space.

The Southern Ocean is ideal for this type of study. It's largely untouched by pollution and has relatively steady temperatures and meteorological conditions during the seasons in which phytoplankton blooms. If this connection is confirmed by field studies it will be added to global climate modelling.

Atmospheric scientists believe that increased cloudiness partially mitigates the effects of global warming. Now they're looking at the role of oceanic biology on cloud formation and how it can alter the impact of greenhouse gases. They have to identify all the chemical components in the aerosols then estimate the amounts of these and other gases rising from the organics in the oceans.

I don't know why we are making so many plans to plant our ecological bootprints all over the solar system when we know so little about our own planet. It took a year before anyone knew about the Ayles ice shelf by looking at a satellite image, it's the same with phytoplankton and clouds, another satellite image, another new hypothesis. Scrap 'a man on Mars' mission and stick to Earth.

EVERYTHING'S FAT OR FOOD

Murphy's Law, on a diet everything you read or see is about food or fat. Now I find my recipe for Plum tart with Frangipane topping, serve with creme anglaise and plum syrup. Pardon me while I eat the page.

I love Dawn French and I agree with her views on Chocolate.
Q. Is there ever a circumstance under which you would share chocolate?
A. "No. There is none whatsoever. No matter who you are or how much I love you. Chocolate is not to be shared."

Every December, New Scientist has a competition. This year it was to compose a text message in no more than 160 characters, sent by an alien who has just arrived on our planet. This wasn't a winner but I loved it.

Natives wonderful. Send Ketchup.

(I think this would make a fantastic meme for bloggers)

From America comes more research. Greg Fonarow, U of California, Los Angeles and his colleagues looked at the records of more than 100,000 patients hospitalised because their heart failure was worsening.

They found the fatter the person the less likely they were to die during a week-long hospital stay.

Fonarow suggests that fat people may cope better with heart failure because they have more metabolic reserves to draw on when the heart isn't pumping blood fast enough to meet the body's needs.

Well if they survived the week they probably wouldn't survive the hospital bill at the end and if they had the money to pay the bill I bet they were in better health to start with regardless of the blubber. Nevertheless I'll add it to the 'plus' list for fat along with surviving 3 months on an ice floe.

Westfield, that haunt of cakes, chocolate and soft serve ice-cream have opened an Oxfam fair trade shop selling tea, coffee and other goodies. I'll be buying my coffee there after a report by the WWF that says Kraft, Nestle and Starbucks are among companies inadvertently (ha!) selling coffee grown illegally in the Selatan National Park, Sumatra. Excuse me, I'm to believe that huge multi-nationals don't know where their products are comng from. I should have known, Starbucks coffee is crap in a cup and what's a few endangered tigers compared with profits.

Just to round off the day, The Cook and the Chef is on at 6.30. I like to watch them eat, it reminds me of something I used to do.

DIET DAY ONE

Made it, just.

Time 6.00 pm. and home from Mother's.
Telephone rings.
Drop bags and run in case it's a telemarketer and I miss slamming the receiver down on the wage slave.

Me: Yeah
Mother: When did the doctor say to take the pills?
Me: Every four hours for the past 12 months.
Mother: When should I have taken the last ones?
Me: Three o'clock.
Mother: Am I late taking them now?
Me: Just a tad.
Mother: When's the hairdresser coming?
Me: She'll ring me tomorrow and come next week.
Mother: The blood people are coming on Wednesday.
Me: Fine.
Mother: Now I've got it all straight, the doctor came today, the blood people come Wednesday, the hairdresser comes next week and I take the tablets every four hours.
Me: What's today?
Mother: Tuesday.

WHO WANTS TO BE BOB OR GILLIAN?

My weight is 137 kilograms.

Yes it's in very small letters, as it drops I'll make the letters bigger.
Tomorrow the fat lady starts to drop weight. My goal for the week is 1kg.
Posting weight day will be next Sunday.
Ultimate goal for the moment is to drop the 10kgs I've put on last year.

So you lot get to play Bob or Gillian.
You get to insult, encourage, abuse or shout the fat lady into losing weight.
You may leave comments but only on Sundays, go for it, I have a broad arse and I can take it.
You can't see me cry anyway.

It's got to the stage where I can't look at the biggest loser and think 'I'm not as big as that'.
I can no longer throw insults at 'fat hanging over their trackies' bogans.
I can only see the scales by breathing in, a lot.

I have one item of clothing to judge if the diet is working. It's the petticoat I wore on Friday night, the one I thought had caught on my bra because it wouldn't pull down. It was caught on the Firestone retread that's appeared around my waist.

Now if you lot don't help me with this, I'm going to have the ultimate revenge.......I'll post photos.

It won't be pretty.

YEA FOR GROGBLOG

A good night was had by all. Lovely bloggers to speak to but then I've been locked up for so long a trip to an outdoor dunny and conversation with spiders under the seat would rate right up there with winning Tattslotto or the rodent getting a ratsak enema.

A highlight of the evening was the Brownie and I descending the staircase in our best elegance school way, that is, sideways, crawling down the banister, watching that our grannyboots didn't slip and slide but still talking and laughing at the same time. We're still the tops, Paris, eat your heart out. But next time Brownie, when you see me opening a door you know is the gents, give me the nudge, bloody woman was too busy laughing.

The upstairs at the Exford wasn't bad except for the music. Now, I know that we're a bit loud in a mob but raising the sound to override us doesn't work, anything you can do we can do better. The seating was good, comfortable and I nicely fitted into a two seater lounge, I'm dieting on Monday. Thank you Sedgwick for that delightful photo of my double chin. If the bar staff had any brains, they'd have turned the sound down and sent a boy out for Chinese take-away and we'd probably still be there.

I haven't been into the CBD since this time last year so I'm still amazed at the crowds of people and the places to eat. Flinders Street Station, (still called that is it, I mean it hasn't been tizzied up like Spencer St., has it?) is so full of light compared to the old days of dirt and grot that it's a pleasure to stand there waiting for the late train which was absolutely filthy. I love the escalators instead of walking down a slope that rivalled the Matterhorn and I used to do that in high heels. The only bit of trouble was when three goons spat over the windows at one station, on the outside fortunately.

If the government want a bit of extra cash, how about hiring out a tram with a bar that stops at various food venues and after we're all seriously mollythemonk drops us off where ever we need to get home. A little sign on the front that says 'Bloggers' and low rise steps and we'd be in business. Take that on board Kosky.

STICK IT TELSTRA

Telstra must think a lot of me. They want me to get active and help put pressure on the Federal Government to get moving on broadband for everyone. It's necessary for the economy and only a couple of million people have broadband. Telstra wants to invest billions in delivering high-speed broadband but the government's stopping them. They want me to register as a Telstra Active Supporter. Talk to family, friends and colleagues. Contact my local Federal MP. Organise a community meeting. Set up a local supporters group. Write letters to the editors of newspapers. Ring talkback radio. Involve influential community members.

That's a lot of work they're putting on my shoulders. Isn't that what Sol's getting the big dollars for? Aren't they, up there in the ivory towers, supposed to be working for the good of the customers? Is there going to be pensioner discounts for the broadband? It doesn't mention the cost of this wonderful high speed broadband. How much did this little advertising campaign cost me to tell me to do the company's work?

In today's mail, I received a questionnaire. If I don't fill in all the details and get it back to them by 26th April, they're cutting off my pensioner discount for phone calls. That's a great way to get me on side, Sol.

FORENSICS

I'm very partial to the CSI shows and their British counterparts such as 'Silent Witness' . Last night was CSI:New York. I know that forensics don't work like this but I always pick up the odd bit of information but last night........Bungee Sex!!!!!!!

I wouldn't trust a bloke to put on a condom the right way round. The thought of stripping off and letting him buckle me into a bungee harness for a bit of slap and tickle after jumping off a very big bridge is not something I want to think about.

I mean Bungee Sex......Bungee jumping is insane but Bungee Sex!!!!

What would happen if he kept going down (stop that thought) and she whipped up, fast. She'd sort of be left holding the ...um...bungee as it where.

ACTRESS/ACTOR

I don't get this new affectation of calling an actress, actor. It's as though actress is being downgraded to stripper or 'B' movie status. Anyway here is an excerpt from an interview with actress, Kerry Armstrong.

"For years and years, I wanted to be a missionary. Unitl one day my friend - and here's a bit of a name drop - Tim Robbins said to me, "Well if you want to be a missionary so badly, why don't I come over to your house tonight and rearrange your furniture. That will give you a taste of what it's like to have a missionary come in" It was one of the best things anyone's ever said to me because I don't like interfering with people's lives. I like integrating."

Best definition of a missionary ever. Why am I posting this? Because we're coming up to Easter and the Godbotherers are out in force already. I prefer my Easter images to be of fluffy bunnies not nails and thorns, put it down to the goddess in me.

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

This is me at eighteen. Down there is one of Titian's Courtesans. Re-incarnation would explain my love of long velvet dresses, red hair and antique jewells. It would also explain my loathing of fleas, lice, unwashed bodies and chamberpots. I have a portrait taken at seventeen with my hair done in almost the same way. I look a bit sad, Titian probably hadn't coughed up the fee for the sitting.

ALMOST ANNIVERSARY

I was having a coffee halfway through the 3km stagger to Mummy's and I realised the hand movement I was doing reminded me of the ex, so much so I nearly slapped myself silly. I've found myself doing this occasionally and it always makes my skin crawl. I don't suppose you can live with a person for so many years and not pick up a mannerism or two but we've been divorced for nearly 6 years. It means that little bits of him are still lodged in my brain and crawl out when I'm not looking.

I am making a list of these mannerisms in case it's just seasonal, like anniversary time, divorce, leaving home, birthdays. It's hard enough to break free of the mould (not a typo) of marriage without looking for jetsom and flotsom washing up in my mind. I don't care to remember him at all because I can't remember anything nice and you know what Bambi's mother said. He was never violent or anything just a walloping great twit with mannerisms.

The anniversary means it's my annual beat myself up for not having the courage to leave him at the Altar. For not having the courage to live according to my life plan. I've had to acknowledge that I cared about him but he came a long way down the list after kids, cats and dogs. We probably both look at each other now and think, "what was I thinking". Maybe not since he was pissed most of the time and I was the only one doing any thinking for most of those years.

My sister ran into him the other day. Funny how I knew who she was talking about when she said, "I saw that fat-arsed pinhead on the way home". That image floated out of my brain immediately. See what I mean about flotsom and jetsom.

RETURN OF THE CAT MAGNET

I've finally gone back through the google searches to find out what was so fascinating about a fridge magnet. It is a giggle and I love it.

DISASTER

According to experts it will be a while before victims of the Garuda air crash can be identified. This isn't new for Indonesia with victims of theTsunami still listed as missing because the bodies couldn't be properly identified.

In February this year, Monash University, the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine along with the governments of Australia, Singapore and Indonesia started to develop a program to deal with disaster victims identification. This is a specific plan to train the Indonesian emergency services and communities.

Senior Lecturer of the Monash Indonesian Studies Program, Basoeki Koesasi, who is helping to establish the program, was in Aceh after the tsunami and saw the devastation. He knows what it means to families to be able to claim and bury their dead.

Indonesia is a country where natural disasters occur frequently so working out a way to properly identify bodies quickly is vital. Professor Stephen Gardner, Director of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine and Head of Monash University's Department of Forensic Medicine, has also played a key role in establishing this training.

The Indonesians expertise and practices have been basic but now procedures, such as pathology testing, taking photographs of victims, identifying their location, personal markings, labelling belongings, are being taught to professionals and community leaders. The idea is to have a system in place before a disaster happens to start the identification process as soon as possible. As we've seen this week, the region will need the program all to often.

ANOTHER GREAT WOMAN

Chanda Shroff, Rolex Laureate, aged 73 is a woman with faith in herself. In 1969 she set up Shrujan - Sanskrit for creativity - to promote and save the Kutchi embroidery techniques.
Kutch is virtually an island in a corner of the Indian state of Gujarat. It is bordered to the south by the Arabian Sea and to the north by vast salt deserts.

Embroidery here is for personal, social and spiritual expresson and traditionally, embroidered articles formed an integral part of a girl's dowry. There are 16 distinct styles, vigorous, bold shapes, designs from mythology, curvilinear motifs of peacocks, parots, scorpions, elephants and flowers, geometrical counted thread and the use of tiny mirrors stitched to the cloth.

Chanda Shroff has a teaching diploma in crafts and started by providing 30 women from one village with raw materials and assistance with designs. Today Shrujan has helped 22,000 women from 120 villages across Kutch. The craftswomen primarily use silk and cotton to create high quality work and each craftswoman is encouraged to stitch her name into each piece. The national recognition and the income from the sale of the embroidery have brought the women respect in their communities. It allows them to invest in land, pay for health cae and improve nutrition for their families.

The second phase of Shrujan is to inspire younger craftswomen to keep creating. In 2004, 1,200 hand-embroidered display panels representing the different styles were made. Each panel, measuring 90cm by 120cm, took between three months and a year to complete depending on the complexity of the design. About 600 rural craftswomen took part including 85 year-old Parma Balasara who was one of the first to join Shrujan. The co-operation of these women also began to break down the caste system still operating in the rural villages.

Chanda Shroff is using the money from the Rolex award to fund a mobile resource centre which will take selected panels to craftswomen, many of whom are not permitted to leave their villages. A preliminary collection of 50 panels has already been taken to nine villages and self help groups are training the women to assume the roles of designers, saleswomen, entrepreneurs and teachers. There are also plans for informal craft schools to overcome the social isolation of women. Small groups would attend the schools for a three-month cycle.

Shroff was chosen as a laureate for her plan to ensure the survival of an art form flowing on to create a sustainable source of income. In her own words, "a support system for home-based women, as well as a reminder of the creativity and potential inherent in all women". Her aim is to bequeath a legacy that she hopes will survive for thousands of years to come.

The Rolex Awards for enterprise were initiated in 1976 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the waterproof oyster chronometer and to encourage human endeavour.

ECLIPSE

This is the best series of images of the March 3rd lunar eclipse that I've seen so far. They were taken from New York City. I should give the photographer credit but I forgot to write it down.

Michael Zimmerman is the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Butler University in Indianapolis. He is also the founder of Evolution Sunday where Christians hold special services to celebrate Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

To Zimmerman, the biblical account of creation is allegorical. "Creationists fear that if you believe evolution, you're an atheist," he says. But he believes that trying to prove God exists by using the intelligent design argument signifys lack of faith.

"If you have enough faith, you don't need science to prove God exists, and science can't prove this anyway," he says.

That's exactly what religion is, faith in something you can't see or touch, faith in a God that can exist only by people believing that a God exists.

I don't believe in anything much except that we have the ability to take a leap of faith and believe in ourselves.

HAPPINESS IS.......

Happiness is dragging feet down the drive, rounding the corner of the house to find the apple tree full of little green parakeets enjoying the fruit, at least 20 of them.

Happiness is finding art imitating life. Does everyone remember the Simpsons' episode, "Whacking Day"? I was looking at the Tristan Da Cunha Times to see if there was an update on the stranded oil rig I blogged about last year. Instead I came across one of the major events on their calendar, Ratting Day.
The men and boys go out with dogs and mouse traps to hunt.
The women follow later with refreshments.
Prizes are awarded for most tails, 2nd most tails, third most tails and there's a booby prize.
Prizes are awarded at the dance after the hunt.

Unhappiness is moving the furniture to find it doesn't fit and having to move it back.

Unhappiness is cooking a cockroach in your toast.

ABC'S BEST

One of my favourite shows is 'Gardening Australia' and tonight they showed a beautiful garden in Geelong. The owners have ripped out the lawn and re-planted the beds with drought resistant plants. They use grey water and carry buckets to keep everything going. That's not their place above, that's my dream garden. As soon as I win Tattslotto, the grass gets bricked.
I get to keep the fruit trees but all in nice little brick walls so I'll have shade but no grass. My mower man nearly had a fit but he weeds and prunes and I'll be rich enough to make him an offer he can't refuse.

Another show I was glad I didn't miss was the first part of 'Not all Tea and Scones' about the Country Women's Association. Hard working, good cooking, very large ladies, not an anorexic in the bunch. I was impressed by the fact they sang the National Anthem at their meetings and knew all the words. I mightn't share their politics but I admire the hard work they do and I'm looking forward to the next part of their story.

CATAHARI

This is from Ronald Searle's Big Fat Cat Book and is posted here for Brownie. Like her, I love his St. Trinian's school girls especially since I went to an all girls school which was so bad that this was our nickname.

I loved all the films and St. Trinian's is about to be re-filmed with Rupert Everatt as the Headmistress (rumour) but I can't think who they would get to replace George Coles as the bootboy turned bookie. Would it be as good in colour? Some of those old films seemed to be perfect in black and white. Time will tell.

DEAR???????

Dear Goddess, God, Intelligent designer, Creator or the geek operating the controls for the sims game I'm in.

I can understand Sun to make flowers grow.

I can understand rain to give the trees a drink.

But HUMIDITY!!!!!!!

Won't somebody up there think of my hair. I woke up this morning looking like a demented squirrel with its paw stuck in a power outlet.


I can't help sweating the little things, it takes my mind off the important ones like my television finally dying. Thirty-one years of devoted service and it had the nerve to die on me. Thankfully I had a spare which is only half that age and it took the Brick Outhouse 15 minutes to hook it up and get it running through the VCR remote. I was back in business for Veronica Mars.

CARBON CREDITS ANYONE?

This was taken over Yass last night and then the hailstorm hit Canberra. That's as far as I've got with the news today. I hope our Canberra bloggers are unharmed because I know they'll have been out in this to get some great shots.

I have some carbon credits for anyone who needs them. I was doing the ironing today and wondered if I was wasting water putting it in the iron or would I be better spraying it on the clothes, then ironing or going way back to when and sprinkling it on the items and rolling them up for an hour or so like my mum used to. That seemed to much of an effort so I just put the water in the iron but it's a small iron and I haven't got much ironing so there must be some carbon credits there for a big ironer (is that a word?).

I've got this ironing thing right down to practically zero. I hang my dresses up on the bathroom door, smooth down the fabric and leave til dry. Never iron tea towells except for the ones the cat eats off on the lounge room floor. Ironing takes 10 years off anything and as my tablecloths are heirlooms, I don't use them, they don't get dirty, I don't wash them so no ironing. There must be a saving of at least 50 credits there. Nightdresses are for emergencies only and I haven't had any emergencies so there's another 20. No husband, so no business shirts not that I didn't cheat with the Blight's. He was so rotund that I only ironed the fronts, by the time he got to work, he would have ironed the backs himself. That could be a good 200 credits there.

The only things I iron with loving care are my pillowcases, all 600 of them. Kidding, 200. I like ironing them now because they're mine and I don't dribble on them, snot on them or snore on them, like I said, no husband. I don't fold and iron in creases, effort and extra carbon emissions, just smooth them with my hands. Lovely silky soft cotton with pretty flowers and lace and no oily head resting marks. That will have to be minus credits there and I did iron a table cloth but that belongs to last year's carbon credits because that's how long it's been in the bottom of the basket.

I could run this country's carbon credit market without raising a sweat. What do we need John Howard for again?

NEW HOME PAGE

This cloud is called the Morning Glory. It comes to Burketown in Northern Queensland every September and October. It stretches up to 600 miles and moves at speeds of up to 35mph.

Glider pilots love it and call flying in it as cloud surfing.

The Cloud Appreciation Society is now my new home page.

Optusnet has decided to merge with my hotmail and ninemsn to give me a whole new outlook with a new piece of windows rubbish that I probably won't understand. They let me personalise the page, mauve, nice but with the optusnet yellow all through it, it's not exactly peaceful. But to get to this homepage, I have to load the optusnet/ninemsn garbage and sign in, all of which takes forever. I'll keep the hotmail, they send me recipes.

The only good part on the page is the weather but from now on I'll put my head out of the window to see if it's raining as I click on my cloud page.

MY DDDAY

I have a little rant about my mother every now and then otherwise I'd be creeping out in the moonlight strangling small nocturnal animals.

This was my day.

Unscramble the usual scrambled morning phone call.

Fall in shower after shoving can of food into whining cat.

Walk slowly (bum and leg hurting) the 3kms to nut house.

Have fight with sister after telling her not to lose my book. Advice I feel is justified to someone who's thrown out TWO telephones.

She's brought the vacuum cleaner back with the news that it's not sucking up. Sprinkle carpet powder to check theory.

Spend fruitless half hour looking for phillips head screwdriver (nail file doesn't work).

Look in laundry for screwdriver and find water leaking into the washing machine. Turn off taps and power point.

Go through mental map of when I cleaned the sewing room (well....doesn't everyone keep screwdrivers in their sewing room) and bingo! Plastic box, 2nd shelf, near the window.

Undo cleaner which is harder than it sounds because I can't sit on the floor. It needs a new belt.
Can it wait until Thursday, no, cleaning lady comes on Wednesday.

Call cab, grab ATM card, check fridge before she can get in with "Can you......."

Get new belt, spot cleaner for carpet, pay phone bill, trek to opposite end of Westfield to Bi-Lo.
Too many good specials to leave so buy another green bag.

Bypass custard tarts because I left mother getting a jam sandwich for lunch.

Buy a fresh rolled apricot and macadamia chicken roast because she couldn't remember how to cook the frozen one.

Joy, two taxis at the rank. First one is the driver who brought me here so he gets a tip for remembering where to take me home.

Mother trundles into kitchen to make the jam sandwich I left her making an hour ago.

Check pills after hysterical phone call late Friday night.

Ring Chemist. Pill boy is new and mother confused him. He was to hand her the new docette, she was to hand him the outdated one. A simple operation that ended with her keeping the old one and him taking back the new one. I understand his confusion.

New docette will arrive tonight so I have to stay and check it.

Halfway through unscrewing vacuum, I am called to the kitchen to crawl in the pantry and retrieve the frypan lid. I finally get it out with the broom which is how she got it so far in there in the first place so she tells me.

Mother says she's tired and goes to sleep.....again.

Back to vacuum, trying to remember knack in getting new belt on. Swears, a lot. Right, put it around the roller first then take roller and belt to the steel thingy. Put roller back in its slots while pinning machine to the carpet with both feet. Screw the whole lot back together......again.

Sprinkle carpet with powder to check sucking up is working.

Carpet powder is missing, retrieve from mother's walker, sprinkle and sucking up is fine.

Feed cat - hers.

Feed mother.

Ring cab which arrives at the same time as Brick Outhouse. Take cab in preference to folding into a VW.

Feed whining cat - mine.

Feed me. I have been gone eight hours.

DOGS, WHALES 'N CRAP

Whales are big and notoriously difficult to study in depth. With the Atlantic Right Whale population down to 350, researchers are trying to determine what is happening with their reproduction. In 1999 there were only four new calves in the population and only one in 2000 rising to 19 in 2006 but still not enough to ensure their survival. The causes of low birthrate can be anything from pollution by hormone disruptors, detergents or antifouling agents and one way they could be tested was by collecting whale faeces. From faeces researchers could determine sex, genotypes and hormone levels but find whale crap in an ocean isn't easy.

Cue the dogs.

When the state of Washington banned hound hunting, the dogs were retrained to look for endangered species, ie. look for faeces then track them, but it was found that air sniffing dogs trained for explosives and narcotics were better. Detector dogs now help conserve animals from the Rocky Mountains to Brazil. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration provided a grant to see if the sniffer dogs could work at sea specifically in collecting whale crap.
It worked beautifully, the dogs sniffing out one load an hour compared to humans collecting one or two per day.

Fargo is a star, a 6 year old Rottweiler with an impressive resume. He was trained as a drug sniffer specialising in cocaine before moving to wildlife research. He has looked for bears, sniffed out illegal elephant tusks and spent time in the Mojave looking for desert tortoises. He then transferred to sea work with the whale researchers near the Bay of Fundy on the Canadian coast. His only problem was sea sickness. He wore an orange life vest and stood on the bow of the ship ready to catch a scent at anything up to a nautical mile. Humans have to get closer to smell the heady aroma of oil, crushed crustaceans and the sourness of whale.

Cue the Crap.

The colour of the booty changes with the seasons and the prey. In Spring, it's bright red from the diet of fat-rich copepods. An Orca's crap, if you want to know, is more snotty green brown and just as aromatic. The sample is divided and posted to various laboratories for testing of marine biotoxins, protozoan parasites, hormone levels, DNA which can be matched to individual whales and fat levels for nutritional value. One of the tests showed paralytic shellfish poisoning, caused by eating shellfish contaminated with toxic algae. Dolmic acid from diatoms can cause seizures and coma and hundreds of Sea Lions have died in the Pacific from this. Then there are the protozoan parasites, Giardia and Cryptosporidium which the whales could be picking up from human and animal waste dumped in the oceans near large cities along the coast. Orcas, for instance, have the highest PCB levels ever recorded in any mammal.

While the whale research goes on, Fargo has move back to the Mojave Desert to locate bats.

Next time you see a 2 year old peeing in the shallows, don't sweat it, there are bigger things out there.

PHASE NO. 57

That's what it feels like.

Vicious old harriden has given way to nice daffy old lady.

Daffy old lady with a five minute short term memory who rings at 8.15 at night to find out what time it is, morning or night because she's been asleep.

We have the pills fixed, almost. She takes half in the morning, half at night with no in-betweens to confuse her.

I'm not sure how much pain she would be in without the morphine but she is noticing pain under the shoulder and down the left arm. She can't hold a pen or write with her left hand, that hurts.

The morning phone calls are more like they used to be. I can hold a conversation with her even if it's the same one I had the day before. She is laughing again, something that's been missing for a while.

She's still like a CD with a scratch and her brain jumps a track, my mind reading skills are improving. When she says 'you know' I usually do.

But it's hard to wind down. I'm still expecting the tongue lashing every time the phone rings. Sis assures me that this won't happen again. The more she forgets, the happier she becomes. Unfortunately I'm not forgetting, not until this mood goes on for another week or so.

She hasn't forgotten to be pissed off about Aunt Selma, that could go on forever.

"THE EARTH WILL PAY FOR THIS"

I just loved this. It brought back memories of having to bath four cats. It was during my 'no dangerous chemicals for cats and kids stage' when I decided to use herbs to rid the animals of fleas, er, just the cats not the kids.

First catch all the cats and cage them. Boil up the herbs, rosemary was one that I remember and let them cool but not cold. Then pick out the cat most likely to rip your arms to shreds and that's the first in the tub. If we left that one to last, fear was magnified to terminator strength and we had no hope of avoiding lethal injuries.

It was one to hold and one to wash and both to scream abuse when the claws got moving. Then it was a big fluffy towell, usually mine and the cat was handed to one of the kids to dry it off while the next victim went in the bath. After they were all washed, I used the hair dryer to finish off the fur. I wasn't stupid, I made the kids hold the cats for this. The combing out of dead fleas was supposed to be next but the herbs weren't up to killing off the industrial strength vermin this lot used to pick up.

It wasn't long before the spot on the back of the neck lotion came on the market and I didn't care how much it cost (it was plenty). We flea bombed the house, the cats, the dogs and the kids. Flea free at last, then the kids brought home lice.

ELLESMERE ISLAND

The first image above is of the Ayles Ice Shelf, Ellesmere Island, Canada in 2005 before the break-up of the ice shelf. The image directly below is the ice shelf as a new ice island 66.4km2.
The ice shelves in Antarctica and Greenland are fed by glaciers but the Ayles Shelf was made of compacted thickened sea ice approximately 4,500 years old.*

According to Dr. Luke Copland from the University of Ottawa's Laboratory for Cryospheric Research, almost 90 per cent of the Ellesmere Island Ice Shelves have calved and floated away since 1900. There is now insufficient new ice formation to replace what's been lost.
The calving of the shelf only took an hour and was captured in images by the MODIS satellite. As with the "Loose Tooth" in Antarctica, there were low frequency seismic recordings during the break-away.

It's believed a combination of unusually warm air temperatures, long term regional warming, high offshore and alongshore winds (opening up ice free water), record low sea ice conditions and the loss of a semi permanent landfast sea ice fringe all contributed to the event. Dr. Copland thinks that blaming human-caused global warming is premature but doesn't rule it out.

As at January 2007, the Ayles Ice Island is frozen in the sea ice of north eastern Ellesmere Island. If it breaks free in the Arctic Summer and reaches the Beaufort Sea, its size could cause problems for shipping and oil platforms.

*An ice island is floating ice which has broken away from an Arctic Ice Shelf. An iceberg is a piece of ice which has broken away from a glacier.

Ellesmere Island rang a bell when I was looking at the ice shelf images so I took to rummaging around in the foot high stack of papers on my desk and found this. It's a satellite image of the Borup Fiord Pass with its huge glaciers. The yellow dot marks a sulfur spring seeping up through the ice.

In June 2006, Stephen Grasby of the Geologic Survey of Canada led a team to observe these sulfur springs to compare them with possible sites on Jupiter's moon Europa. These sulfur rich springs are teeming with microbes and while it's not the same as Europa, it's close enough to provide a testing site for remote sensing and exploration techniques in the same way the Antarctic dry valleys provided testing conditions for Mars. (the report can be found at The Planetary Society's weblog)

See, I'm not all pretty boys and donuts and anybody in Melbourne tonight will know why I'm posting about Arctic and ice shelves.

ANOTHER BEAUTY

Wrong, it's not another bloke, it's a frog. It's been preserved in amber ala Jurassic Park (that ala should have an accent on the a and I'm surprised blogger hasn't done it for me, slackers).

The tree frog appears to belong to the genus Craugastor and is only one centimeter long.

The amber could be as old as 25 million years since it was recovered from earthern deposits dating back to the Oligocene Epoch. According to researchers, they would love to try to extract DNA from the frog but the specimen is too valuable.

HELIX

This is the eye of the Helix Nebula. The image is from the Spitzer Space Telescope and is about 700 light years from Earth. NASA Scientists think the red haze around the dead star is from the dust of colliding comets, the cosmic survivors of a sunlike star that became a white dwarf.
Helix is a good name but I would have called it Godzilla's Eye.

I'LL HAVE MY COFFEE HOT

A fellow blogger is in raptures over her new coffee espresso machine not unlike this one. Very shiny but a lot of work for a cup of coffee in the morning.

I prefer mine served on a balconey by a willing slave. The coffee can be luke-warm but he's not.

In his other hand he's holding the croissants. Perhaps he should have put more clothes on, he could take a chill in the morning air, perhaps not.

WHEN I WAS YOUNG

In my last post I mentioned that my copy of "The Sea Around Us" was falling apart. The view above of the Ninety Mile Beach in Gippsland, Victoria is the reason. My sister and I used to take the train to my cousins and we would all go to this beach.

We would spend all day walking along the beach, to the beach, home from the beach. We hardly ever saw anyone. On one side of the sand dunes, it would be so scorching hot, we'd be jumping from grass hummock to hummock. On the sea side, the wind would be blowing a gale. It's the only place in the world where you can get 3rd degree sunburn and frostbite at the same time.

We never swam here. You could see the rips from the top of the dunes so we would spend the morning digging the biggest hole in the wet sand then dig a channel for the sea to flood into our private pool. We almost drowned our youngest cousin by putting him in a hole and watching the tide come in. A couple of Nuns out for an evening stroll made us take him out. I make no apologies, the kid was one of the worst whingers ever born and it was a consensus decision by all concerned. Thanks to the do-gooders we spent the next week dragging his stroller up and down sand dunes.

It was the perfect place to sit and watch the waves roll in. I used to try and pick which were local and which had rolled in from New Zealand. We used to listen to the weather report every night and pray for storms. Cornish wreakers had nothing on us when we heard the wind come up and the surf get louder. The pickings weren't much but our imaginations were. An old boot had us looking for the body. Dead sea creatures were subjected to rudimentary necropsies. The biggest storm we ever experienced left the shoreline littered with all sorts of gemstones which I learned later had probably been dredged up from the off-shore oil and gas explorations.

Only kids would know why we would take an hour to drag home a piece of driftwood to sit on when the holiday shack had plenty of chairs. Sometimes my aunt would turn up with lunch but mostly she stayed away and left us alone. I suppose she thought we'd all stay together and be safe but we would get bored and wander off to do something that interested one and not the others. That was one problem with the beach, you could walk for miles forgetting that the wind was at your back until you turned for home.

I haven't been back, too much development and too many people now. I'd never get away with singing off-key into the wind.

ANOTHER WOMAN OF SCIENCE

Rachel Carson was an American zoologist and marine biologist. In 1936 she became only the second woman to be hired by the, then, U.S. Bureau of Fisheries for a full time professional position, as a junior aquatic biologist.

She was 29 years old and caring for an aging mother, the next year her older sister died and she became responsible for her two nieces.

She became Chief Editor of Publications with the re-named Fish and Wildlife Service in 1949. As well as her work for this agency, she was writing for herself and "The Sea around Us" was published. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 86 weeks (I still have my falling apart soft cover later edition). It won the 1952 National Book Award and was made into a documentary film that won an oscar.

She then began writing full time and at the death of one of her nieces, took responsibility for the 5 year old orphan son as well as continuing to care for her 90 year old mother. She moved to the countryside and began to research pesticides especially DDT which led to her writing her most famous book, "Silent Spring". She used the book to highlight wildlife mortality with the over-use of pesticides like dieldrin, toxaphene and heptachlor also linking these to human cancers.

The book was published in 1962 to a predictable outcry. She had threats of lawsuits and was derided as an hysterical woman who would see the earth returned to the dark ages. The chemical industries, (Monsanto, Velsicol, American Cyanamid) the Agriculture Department and some media went on the attack. This was despite her repeatedly saying she was not calling for a complete ban or withdrawal of helpful pesticides, just a more responsible attitude to use and an awareness of the impact of earth ecosystems.

Halfway through the writing of the book she was diagnosed with breast cancer and she died in 1964 at age 56. She didn't live to see the banning of DDT in the U.S. in 1972.

The Rachel Carson Prize was founded in Stavanger, Norway in 1991 and is awarded to women who have made a contribution in the field of environmental sciences.

Criticism of her work never stopped as developing countries battled infectious diseases nearly eradicated by DDT. But it was the indiscriminate spraying that she disagreed with. Research now shows how quickly pests become resistant. In 2006 research done on the larvae of anopheles gambiae shows they can survive outside puddles sprayed with insecticide, in the moist or wet mud several metres from the sprayed area.

In 2002 Ronald Bailey reviewed "Silent Spring" and concluded that the classic had not aged well. You can read it at http://www.reason.com/news/show/34823.html He does a nice hatchet job but I think he misses the point that science doesn't stand still and this was an amazing book for the age. It pointed the way down a road that has many side streets and it doesn't diminish her work in any way.

One of those attacking chemical companies is still making headlines, Monsanto is pushing genetically modified crops and making the pesticides to spray them.

VE HAF WAYS

Blogger certainly does, like locking me out of creating posts until I signed up for Beta.

If I have lost one full stop or comma, I'm coming after them.

It had better be idiot proof.

"labels for this post" That's easy mine come under froth, bubble and utter crap.

Not changing the layout, black doesn't show the dirt.

Okay, tits crossed and let's post.

PRETTY

This is the Island of Sark in the English Channel. It's three and a half miles long and one and a half miles wide. The map's boring.

This is much better. The Island of Sark joined to Little Sark. Property ownership is based on a feudal system whereby the Island is leased from the Crown by the Siegneur - King of Sark - and is divided into forty portions, one of which is the Seigneurie - King's Palace.

It has no cars. There are no roads, just dirt tracks and short cuts across fields for the transport which is horse, bicycle, tractor or public transport, which is horse and cart.

There is a prison which can hold two people and you can still be hanged for stealing cattle. There are local gemstones including amethysts which can be found on the beaches.

If you visit Little Sark, there are the remains of the copper and silver mines, called The Pot. The Gouliet Caves are massive and extremely beautiful but it's not advised that you wander off as people have disappeared in the network of caves.

LOST:MY MARBLES

I had to go out and shop for my Mummy today. I've filled the freezer with food and written it on paper and pinned it to the freezer door.

Yesterday she told the Brick Outhouse that the reason there was no food was that $50 worth of meat was stolen from her supermarket delivery truck on Thursday.

He rang me, frothing at the mouth that someone would do that to an old lady.

I almost made it through Sunday without my blood pressure dangerously near stroke level.

On Thursday, the store misplaced two pork butterfly steaks worth $9.58 for which I will get a credit next time I place an order.

Today I had to call the doctor to see if we could put her tablets into morning and evening lots instead of through the day. He's away on 5 weeks leave so I talk to substitute doctor and it sounds a lot like talking to my Mother. There is a letter in her file about breast cancer and it has her name on it but it's not her hence the confusion.

More confusion when I try to change all the medication with the chemist tomorrow. I also found out that the capsules she told me were for cholesterol are actually mild anti-depressants. I'm going through every tablet and capsule she takes and finding out what each one is for.

Memo to family.....do not listen to Mother.

On a much happier note. The Muriels are pregnant after three and a half years of trying. Let's hope it won't take as long for them to be able to have a marriage ceremony with all the trappings.

Take that Howard and up yours Ruddock.

THIS AIN'T RAMSEY STREET

Well if it was some fictitious street in some fictitious neighbourhood then I would have Henry on one side and someone equally as delicious on the other.

Instead I have been blessed with a controlling nag on one side and a pain in the arse on the other.

Controlling nag comes in this afternoon wanting to know if I've heard a duck quacking at night. It's keeping her awake so naturally she's hunting it down. Quickly hiding my trusty duck hunter quacker maker, I tell her no. Deprived of a witness to this nocturnal Daffy, she decides to have a go at my tree on the fence line.

Given it is not the most beautiful of trees but it was free and it's a battler in summer and winter, I don't mind it. I mean anything that grows in this garden without food and water is a survivor and should be given a medal not insults about its ragged shaggy mangy branches. I like its leaves that look like a deranged Rasta after a particularly good smoke.

I think this was the real reason for the visit. She's re-doing her garden, Yuccas and cactus and my monster is peering over her fence. I've already cut down two trees on the fence to please her although I wouldn't have if I hadn't wanted to and cut down the pine tree to please the arsehole on the other side so this one's staying.

My Feng Shui book says I should put up mirrors to deflect negative energies away from the house. If I deflected her negative energy I'd have enough mirrors up to guide the space shuttle back to earth. Whining bitch has been this way ever since I first met her. I've watched every woman in the street fight with her but never bothered myself. I learnt long ago that punching marshmallows gets you nowhere.

I allow her to remain superior in her own mind, anything that small should be cared for. Besides she's older than me and in nature's way should die first. I'm sorry the cat's too old to climb the fence and piss on her Yuccas.

JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE FRONT

This is brilliant, a aerial view of Uluru. I've never thought of how it would look from the air and it's very different from the cute guy I clicked to upload. It has been that kind of weekend staggering over into Monday.

I've had to put up with a visit from the Blight which meant tidying up everything just to prove I don't need another him to look after me. He still managed to give the place a once over as thought he still owned it. Now I can officially call him a little twit. He's shrunk or should that be diminished. He was wearing shoes, I wasn't but I still found myself looking at his forehead and I've never been as tall as him. It must be the weight of all that money sitting on his shoulders. he's going to be a little old man, hahahahaha, what a hoot, all that money and he's never going to be anything other than a fat wizened up little twit (you can be both).

A visit to Mummy was the icing on the cake. As usual I stopped at the bakery for coffee and yes, I had a donut but I didn't have two. I'm improving. What I did have was a sneeze so grabbed the tissue from inside the bra, usual place since it will never fall to the ground. Also pulled out a cockroach. Now it wasn't inside the bra when I put it on, I'm not that dopey so it must have been in the kleenex box. I tell you somewhere in space is an orbiting 'roach. It's 2kms to the bakery so it's been warming itself on my ample boob for 2kms and I never felt a twitch. All clothes will be inspected from now on.

At least there is one bright spot on the horizon. I'm meeting up with a Brownie tomorrow and much hilarity will be heard from Surrey Hills. We both talk so much we'll probably have to use one of those timers that chess players have, to get equal mouth time.

A VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION

This is a ridiculous time of the night/morning to be posting but the Smirnoff Black hasn't had the desired effect and I'm not passed out cold.

I just remembered the sliding door was still open to the world of weird sex stalkers and marauding possums so I went to close it. Really to put the security system in place which happens to be a bloody big iron bar that leaves exactly 5 inches of open space for the cat to wander in and out.

I put my foot in the laundry basket, in the dark. Well doesn't everyone leave a laundry basket in the lounge room? Yes, I did hurt my foot, thanks for asking and I hurt it standing on the packet of pegs in the bottom.

It's been three years since I last bought a packet of pegs and they're good pegs and they cost a lot and I've just remembered I've left dresses hanging on the line. They'll be okay unless the wind picks up then it's 'Hello Oz' or 'My Life Before The Mast' as the Hills takes off.

Now PEGS, the very important question. Does one leave pegs on the line or does one take pegs off the line and put them in a dinky little basket? Personally I believe in tough love and leave the blighters (sorry been watching spitfires on ABC) to the weather. My friend takes them off and pops them into a custom made calico bag with 'PEGS' on the outside in cute fabric.
She probably has pegs inherited from her Grandmother, she takes that much care with them.

The only problem with the 'leave them where they peg' is that I have a line full of dead 'uns. It's a bit like a country fence strung with dead crows. Some skeletons have been there since before plastic ones were invented. I like the continuity of history.

I'm also too lazy to get them off the line.

ELEPHANT IN THE FAMILY

I'm trying to ignore the elephant in the family. NOT my weight although I'm ignoring that as well and that stupid biggest loser is starting again. Hate it with a passion I usually reserve for pavlova with cream and crushed raspberries. Now the elephant which is my Mother and who I have been trying not to post anything about. The elephant which is driving me crazy (which or who? which one, Dodgy?)

She shut the cat between the screen door and the front door. The cat's fat, the space isn't. The Brick Outhouse was not amused when he got home. The cat didn't leave his side all night. In fact she slept on his socks so the only thing that was injured was her sense of smell.

She rang me this morning to ask if she could put her shoes in the dishwasher to clean them. I have become an accomplished mindreader in the last year and told her she couldn't put them in the washing machine either. Can't keep a good elephant down, she washed them in the sink and hung them out to dry on the balustrade. If you ever get the chance to buy shares in Homeped Shoes, grab it. A tank could roll on those shoes, let alone my Mother. Along with cockroaches and John Howard, add Homeypeds to the nuclear war survivors.

She was surprised to find out today was February 1. Her calendar is defective, it hasn't finished January yet.

She's lost her TV guide again so she's going to ring me at 6 every night until she gets a new one on Sunday.

She is not deaf so there's no need to raise my voice to screaming pitch every time she rings.