NOT MUCH GOING ON

I've just found out that 2008 has been designated "The Year of the Frog". Caroline from Beelzebublog is thanked for the photo. (tried 3 times to put the link in and my brain is fried)

Next week is National Vegetarian Week.

And to go with that news is the fact that fruit, vegetables and bread prices are going to go through the roof because of the drought.

The African Jumping Spider is an equal opportunity mater. Both sexes can pick a mate, pick it on looks and size and have a post-coital feast. Virgin females have a tendency to go for a beefy male but females who've been round the block once or twice, pick smaller males. Much better to eat before being eaten. Don't you love the way females adapt?

To celebrate not pauperizing myself by buying cat food, I indulged with a fashion magazine. I'm getting old because my definition of fashion is not theirs. Picking it by the bold 'look what we've got inside' headings was a big mistake but since it was wrapped up I didn't have much choice.
I wanted it for the shoes and handbags for the next season. It didn't live up to the hype.

I don't mind high-heeled boots, not a real favourite as I much prefer cuban heels, but never in a million years will I ever look at high-heeled booties. The other emerging trend is for "dominatrix" shoes. High, very high, chunky, bloke-stomping heels, platform soles and extremely ugly uppers. I think fashion designers hate women.

Was Costello teasing us with the election date?

BAD MOON RISING

I've got a mouth ulcer. I hate mouth ulcers. I can't eat chocolate with an ulcer.

I've got a sinus headache. It's making half my nose bleed. Stupid north wind.

I woke up this morning with spots before my eyes. Took a while to figure out the spots were moving but my eyes weren't. A Daddylonglegs walking down my arm (I can't see without my glasses). I wonder how many legs he broke when he hit the floor?

I'm still recovering from having a shower about 10.30 last night. I like a shower at night, soothes the muscles and my spine. But not if the pilot light on the hot water heater got blown out by the wind sometime during the day. I'm standing there like an idiot with a toothbrush in my mouth and soap everywhere just waiting for the hot and nothing. I can truly say I froze my tits off and every other bit I had to sluice down with freezing water.

Bless Eric the mower man who not only replaces rubbery things on toilet pipes but can crawl on the ground and light pilot lights.

AT LAST SHE'S HERE

TO SAMANTHA AND KELLY PILGRIM-BYRNE
A BEAUTIFUL AND PERFECT DAUGHTER

CHARLOTTE KATHLEEN
7 POUNDS 10 OUNCES
51 CENTIMETRES LONG

QUICK OFF THE MARK

Usually when the council says a date, the rubbish is picked up about three weeks later but the truck was out bright and early this morning.
I'd found a few more bits and pieces but didn't make it and I wasn't going to yell out "hold the truck!" for a couple of place mates and tin trays.
I threw those in the recycle bin when a 'bing' went off in my memory. Something in the last jewellery book about beading trays. I went into shock. I'd almost thrown out something useful so it was headfirst into the bin and retrieve the trays. Mock velvet glued down and fraystop around the edges and I had two brilliant beading trays.
I didn't have any use for the two very big black spiders I found, in the laundry and in the pantry but not the white tail variety and I don't think I'll bother finding out what species. They were large. I put each one on a separate branch of the apple tree and watched the panic when they realised they were in the open. They're probably homing spiders and I'll find them back where they started.
I didn't throw out the expensive cat litter which he refused to use or the 12 cat dishes I found in the pantry or the spare carry basket. The minute I do, someone will dump a stray cat in my front gate.
I almost threw out the little round plastic outdoor table but anchored down with a four scoria rocks over the mouldering tree stump, a basin on top and the doves had a tolerable birdbath.
Sister took a walk around the Mirvac slum during her shift break last night. She couldn't believe the quality of their junk. Lounge suites, good chairs and a couple of pairs of skis. I never thought to have a rummage through there.
Next year, there's always next year.

IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT

It was the dead of night until the gutter crawler dropped the stainless steel turkey roaster he was nicking from my pile of rubbish.
Perhaps I should have put a note on the huge stainless steel preserving pan to warn people that it was used for ten years of lace dyeing but it's steel so I suppose they won't poison themselves.
The spray arm from the old dishwasher went the first day.
And I don't think the broken ladder had time to hit the ground before it disappeared.

There's satisfaction in going out in the morning and noticing the pile has been reduced to a few items.

Tomorrow I'll put out all the little things children love to take home to mother.
Then I'll celebrate my junk-free zone.

SEYMOUR ISLAND

Seymour Island is right up against the Antarctic Peninsula which used to be connected to South America. It's remarkable for the deposits known as the K/T boundary which marked the 2nd greatest mass extinction in the world due to the impact of the Chixulub Meteorite. This marked the end of the Cretaceous Period and while it's debated, is generally thought to have also meant the extinction of the dinosaurs. The dark horizontal line in the cliffs below is the boundary. The Swedish explorer, Otto Nordenskjold, came here in 1901-02 and found fossils from the Late Cretaceous Period (65 million years ago), the Palaeocene (65-56 million years ago) and the Eocene Epoch (56-34 million years ago).

The Palaeocene fossils on Seymour are mostly plant fossils from a forest dominated by the Antarctic Beech. It still grows in Australia, New Zealand, South America and New Caledonia. 55 millions years ago when these trees were alive, the forest stretched from Brisbane to Buenos Aires in a continuous corridor.

By the Eocene Epoch, the island was back under the sea. The fossils found from this time are the oldest known whale and penguin remains. In fact Seymour Island has the fossils of numerous species of penguin dating from 45 million to 34 million years ago. The waters had warmed and changes in the fauna can be tracked over 8 million years. Fragile invertebrates flourished in the colder periods but as the temperature rose so did the hard-toothed fish and goodbye invertebrates.

The first of the Antarctic dinosaurs was found in the mid 1980s on James Ross Island. Then a variety of Cretaceous-aged plant-eating dinosaurs on James Ross and Vega Islands. In 2005, the remains of a meat-eating theropod dinosaur were recovered followed by fossil mammals and the world's oldest duck. In 1992 on Vega, a partial skeleton of a bird, approx 66-68 million years old, was found which belonged to the modern group of ducks, geese, and swans.

On the Antarctic continent itself, several dinosaur fossils have been recovered. These are major finds because of their age, the early Jurassic Period, around 190 million years ago. Fossil deposits of this age aren't easily found anywhere in the world. The latest find in the Trans Antarctic Mountains in 2005 was a large sauropod or long-necked dinosaur.

GRACKLE

That's a grackle in the photo.

Gorgeous irridescent black feathers. According to Wiki, the Quiscalus Grackles are even better than parrots for imitating human speech.

I don't care about that, I like the word grackle. That's what birds do, they mill about grabbing seed in the back yard and they grackle.

It sounds like the bird equivalent of gossip, they grackle. Ever heard Rex Hunt at a football match, he grackles. Politicians grackle. It's a beaut word, should be heard more.

ETHICS

"Those conditions are so horrendous that the only moral and ethical thing to do is to leave."

Psychologist Laurie Wagner on the decision by the American Psychological Association not to ban its members from aiding interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. Instead, the group approved a resolution reaffirming its opposition to torture.


So this from the country that puts itself out as the leader of the free world.

CRYSTALWORKS

Everyone who wanders by here knows I love gems and crystals but they don't have to be set in jewellery to be appreciated. The photo below shows natural Selenite crystal on Bronze. The crystal weighs 120 pounds and the sculpture is called 'IBEX'.

Lawrence Stoller is an internationally recognized award winning artist who has pioneered the art of sculpting spectacular megagems, including several of the largest gemstone sculptures in existence. He lives with his wife Sunnie in Bend, Oregon where he also works and teaches.

His collaborative work 'BAHIA' stands as the cornerstone of the museum collection at the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad, California.

Lawrence Stoller and Glenn Lehere sculpted Rutilated quartz and placed it in a gold plated steel frame by Pepe Ozan.

The overall height is five feet and the crystal weighs 450 pounds.

In 2003, Stoller completed a commission for American Express, creating the centrepiece of the 9/11 Eleven Tears Memorial, located across the street from Ground Zero. I think this is one of the most beautiful memorials ever created. It was designed by Ken Smith and is a sculpted eleven sided quartz hendecohedron held in a stainless steel frame and cable. The crystal weight is 600 pounds.

This close detail shows the wording on the floor directly below the crystal.

These are Stoller's own words from his Crystalworks website.

The Crystals will be my books,

Reading into them to discover life

beyond the margins.

Journeying from primal Earth,

past ancient civilizations,

From the timeless technologies,

to the inside of matter,

Through the gates of knowledge,

and into the terrains of Wonder.

My attempts to translate these

experiences into words

Are but record keepers

Of the magnificient remains of Frozen Light.

THE VERY THING

A few posts back I made a remark about "a boot kick away from agony". Don't you just love it when you find the very thing that would make that remark even better.
The shoes are by Rodarte. I don't know who belongs to the ugly toes.

BIG BIG GIRL

I am allowed to make remarks about big girls, being built like the proverbial concrete crapper myself.

So walking behind big girl at Westfield watching her tatoos fight across the broad acreage of her naked shoulders had me making remarks in my mind.

Why does anyone wear a white shoestring top with a floaty bottom that covers the big bottom and mixes it with navy blue shoestring bra straps? The top was nice, black pants okay.

For the want of a sleeve on each shoulder, she looked just okay. A bit of posture and a smidgeon of material, she would have been striking.

Her face was lovely and animated. She was obviously quite at home in her body, enough to go with the current fashion and show it all. What I wanted to do was polish the rough diamond and make a gem.

I thought about this after I'd posted and I want to make it clear that I'm not patronising this girl but I felt if she hadn't been dressed in the Britney/Paris/Lohen uniform then she'd have been a walkover in any contest with the skinny models thrown at young girls these days.

Nope, it still hasn't come out right so I'll leave it to you to know what I mean.

MURPHY'S LAW NO. 308

This is what happens when you max out the credit card making sure the cat has a good send-off.
The vet sends a very expensive condolence card.
The kitchen light decides to fritz itself.
And my feet get wet.

The last was a bit of a worry since I was sitting on the throne at the time.
I mean I'm not a bloke and my aim is usually pretty spot on.
So where were the lapping waves coming from?

Oh just look at that!
Who'd have thought a little flangy rubber thing holding two pipes together could disintegrate faster than Costello's dreams of leadership.

Fortunately lawn mowing man also doubles as handyman so he's putting in a new one tomorrow.
Not worrying about the kitchen, the dirt looks so romantic in candlelight.

IMPECCABLE TIMING, TASTE.COM

Twas the night before payday and all through the fridge there was bugger all. Cold Tofu, one apple, some cheese and a PepsiMax.

Eggplant, tomato and parsley salad with mint yoghurt dressing.

Spiced orange roast chicken

Pasta Primavera

Triple Chocolate Cheesecake

And to top it all off, The Cook and The Chef is about to start.

NOT SO INTELLIGENT DESIGN

After reading this article in New Scientist I'd have to say any intelligent design involved in humans was done by a alien mutant with an insane sense of humour who is now sitting in the middle of a galaxy far, far away and laughing his two of his three heads off.

Birds have better lungs. Our DNA makes mistakes all the time. Or genes don't last the distance. Our eyes are wired back to front so if we wanted great eyesight we'd have had to have been born a hawk.

The female Pelvis: Walking upright has made giving birth more dangerous for women than for any other primate.

Linear Chromosomes: The ends of linear chromosomes erode as cells divide, something that cannot happen with circular chromosomes.

External Testicles: In harm's way. I don't know about this. What's wrong with them being just a boot kick away from agony?

Vagina and Urethra near anus: Leaves women prone to genital and urinary infections. Going with the pelvis, I'd say the IDer was prone to misogyny.

Wisdom Teeth: Many of us have jaws that are too small for these third molars.

Mutant GLO gene: Like most primates, humans cannot make vitamin C, rendering us vulnerable to scurvy unless we get plenty in our diet.

The Appendix: No known function but if it gets infected it can kill you. Mine tried to kill me.

Windpipe next to the Gullet: Means choking is not uncommon. Even I have trouble swallowing, talking and breathing at the same time although I've tried.

Ulnar Nerve: Runs behind the elbow, where it is unprotected (think funny bone), instead of in front of it. There's nothing funny about getting whacked in the funny bone with a tree branch. I can testify to this.

Vulnerable Brain Cells: A few minutes of oxygen deprivation causes permanent brain damage in humans, yet an epaulette shark can survive for over an hour without oxygen. I reckon even the shark would have trouble surviving question time in Parliament.

Parasitic DNA: Our genome is littered with "jumping genes" that can cause genetic diseases.

Odontoid Process: This extension of the last neck vertebra can easily fracture and damage the brainstem.

Feet: After coming down from the trees, we ended up walking on the "wrists" of our lower limbs, leadin to all sorts of structural weaknesses. This one did tickle the funny bone.

The Y Chromosome: It is gathering mutations because it can't swap DNA with the X chromosome. In other words, men are on the way out and THE WOMEN WILL RULE, ahem.

Vulnerable Hearts: A little heart damage triggers a disastrous cascade of events that causes further damage. Like Dr. Who, we should have had a back-up pump.

And my all time favourite besides the kickable testicles,

Hairy Bottoms: Who needs them.

See what I mean about an insane sense of humour.

Any intelligent designer would have designed us with a self-destruct button if we even had one small thought of war or killing our own kind.

WISTERIA

I've left the car in the photo to give some idea of how far up the tree the wisteria has grown. Just after I took this we copped a monster of a storm and every blossom disappeared.

HOUSE PRICES EQUALS CRAZY

"Her nextdoor" came in this morning to check if my phone was working. She's on Optus so they were down.

I told her about the cat. She told me not to get another one as I'd had so many. Hers is on it's last warning about scratching the furniture or it's off to the big litter box in the sky. How sensitive she is.
My furniture is shredded and I'm leaving it like that.

Anyway, about the house prices.

The house on the corner went on the weekend for $460,000. I have a photo of it somewhere because it has the most fantastic Wisteria display in Spring but $460,000 for wisteria!
According to "Her nextdoor" our house prices around here have jumped $60,000 in the last 12 months. Sometimes I think she tells me this so I'll sell up and move.

This house is only small, 13.2 squares with a carport added on but I made the decision (expensive) to extend the tiled roof over it so it doesn't look added on. The land is fairly large compared to the McMansion blocks in the Mirvac slums nearby. The builder made a mistake and forgot to tell his workers that we were having a concrete slab poured. They'd already put down four courses of bricks for a wooden floor so that is the depth of my concrete slab not the usual six inches. I could build three stories on this and nothing would move.

The point of all this is that this small house with a now big price, was home to two adults, two kids, (son & nephew) 9 cats and three dogs. So why aren't builders building more?

MY OLD MATE

My dear old mate, 21 years old, died in my arms today. I thought I might get him through the weekend and get him to the Vet on Monday. A weekend to eat his gourmet food and maybe hack up a furball on the newly cleaned carpet. I only noticed the swelling on his jaw two days ago and I'm sure it wasn't there or not big enough to feel a month ago. He loved having his chin scratched so I would have noticed. He cried that funny yodelling cat sound when he tried to eat his breakfast so I rang the Vet at 8 o'clock. Rang the taxi and asked for a cat loving driver and got one. Thank you, lovely man, for the careful driving. The cat never made another sound, not in the car or in the surgery. But I can hear him now and twice I've gotten up to fill his food dish before I remembered he wouldn't be eating anymore.

He waited a long time to be top cat and had it for nearly two years. He survived a dog mangling, dragging himself home with his useless leg. That was three years ago when he spent 4 months on a feather cushion in front of the fire until he was himself again. Survived all his teeth out last June and survived the brain seizure that had him flying around the lounge floor uncontrollably until he stopped, went to sleep, woke up and headed straight for his food dish.

He was a motley boney headed old twit who loved to butt my shin to get attention. I've put everything away except his collection of tennis balls. I never did find out how he brought them in from the yard. He was the last living reminder of a crappy marriage. I'm going to miss him more than I miss the marriage.

HABITS

"When a male grizzly rubs a pine tree with his backside, it's not to satisfy an itch but to ward off competition while he looks for a female, according to research to be unveiled next week.
By leaving his scent on a 'rub tree', a male bear may be trying to avoid a tooth-and-claw fight with another male on the prowl, says ecologist Dr Owen Nevin from the UK's University of Cumbria.
When bears clash, it can lead to debilitating injuries, even death, so bark-rubbing is a safer alternative to a showdown."

Feel free to use the comments section to speculate about why blokes rub their balls.

FRIENDS AND RELATIVES

I'm sure I've blogged this saying before.

"Friends are God's apology for relatives!"

After dealing with Aunt Patty and Aunt Selma this week, God better come up with a bigger apology.

Aunt Selma called me an absolute disgrace of a daughter and told me to get off her phone. She hasn't bothered to see her twin for two years.

Aunt Patty said I should do more for my mother. She hasn't seen her sister for 6 months.

My mother after listening to the Bouvier sisters said I should be grateful that she's alive to look after.

Since I have been delegated to write the eulogy for the whenever funeral I will have my revenge and those two will not be named. Not one mention of the loving sisters, nothing. In fact if I had my way there wouldn't be a funeral at all. If you can't turn up when someone's alive, don't turn up when they're dead.

Now God, about that other apology, Tattslotto tomorrow night wouldn't be a bad start.

GREEN DIAMOND

There's been talk of a discovery of a very large chunk of green diamond. While the colour is uncommon there have been a few found. Some like the caterpillar's eyes above are small, but in the photo below, this is one of the very large ones.

This is the Famous Dresden Green Diamond. It gets its name from the Capitol of Saxony where its been on display for over 200 years. The Gemmological Institute of America examined the stone in 1988. The quality diamond was found to be a rare type 11a and the clarity grade determined by the GIA was VS1 (first grading is flawless, then VVS1 and VVS2) and could be internally flawless, that is, extremely, extremely slight inclusions.

The symmetry of the cut and polish is very good for a diamond cut prior to 1741.

It's an almond shaped stone of apple green colour with a weight of 40.70 carats and set in an elaborate shoulder knot. It has a natural green body colour, not a green skin or scattered green patches.

It's believed to be of Indian origin and was purchased by Frederick Augustus 11 of Saxony at the Leipzig Fair in 1743.

Noice but for really noice, check out the pear shaped Millennium Star below which took three years to be cut with lasers.

This is the world's only internally and externally flawless 203-carat pear shaped diamond. It belongs to the De Beers Millennium diamond collection which includes eleven equally rare blue diamonds totalling 118 carats. Now that's flashy.

THE DARK SIDE

I do have a dark and evil side.

It arrives at the same moment that I reach the rise of the T section of my road and the busy main road.

The lights take forever to change.

So when I'm walking past all those cars waiting, waiting, waiting, the drivers begin willing me to push the button for the lights.

Well I won't do it. You're all sitting on your backsides in your swishy cars while I'm trudging up the hill on my tin knees so you can all sit there until your wheels fall off.

Unless the first car is turning left. I'll push the button then because they have to wait until I cross and I cross very very slowly on my tin knees.

Bwahahahahhahahahha!

THE MIDDLE CHILD MEME

1. You have to post these rules before you give the facts.



2. You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don't have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.



3. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don't forget to leave a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

(yeah, right, like I want to get ostracised by the entire blogosphere)



J is for jewellery. I love looking at it, designing it, making it and owning it.



E is for energy, very low on it. If I could walk sitting down I would.



N is for never being petite in my entire life.



N is for never being envious of anyone's petite figure but there's a few intelligent minds I would have liked to call mine.



I is for indecision, my downfall. The ice-cream usually melts before I choose between chocolate and raspberry.



F is for being frightened by a Scottish Pipe Band when I was three and eating a sardine sandwich at the time. The two are so entwined in my mind that I can't smell a fish sanger without hearing a Highland reel.



E is being ever ready to see the ridiculous side of life. I mean you have to be like that to survive our beloved PM in those tracksuits or that Akubra hat.



R is for believing in re-incarnation. I can't see the point in having a life of experience and learning to have it disappear, never to be useful to anyone. I've never been Cleopatra though, just one of the lower ranks, poor and miserable. It's about time I was a princess, petite and rich but with brains. One must specify or one might come back as Paris Hilton.



And this is my middle name which I use for my first name because my first name is horrendous and government departments insist on using it but it will never pass my lips.



This meme is free to anyone who is desperate for blog fodder.