Rainy Rainer

This weekend has been a mix of weather. Yesterday it was so hot I overheated and felt sick and had to buy new sandals to cool my feet down on the way back home from Manly beach.

Which by the way is a nice beach, but very busy. The best part was taking the ferry and watching all the sailing boats in the harbour. I think I will have to make friend with someone who is a salty sailor kind of person so I can go on one of them, they are so beautiful and it did seem like so much fun.

Today it's been raining crazy rain. The type of rain that looks like someone is throwing buckets of water on the window. So I've spent the day finishing up some jewellery that has been on the to do list.

I finished two necklaces and then I realised I've not made anything for me in a couple of months so I made some earnings...

Now I'm gonna send some emails and see if I can get a hold of my sister cause I need to ask some questions on how to asses that one is making the right decisions event ought it's really scary and it might fail into a piling heap of crap...

Perceptions

On Wednesday it was fantastic weather and I was home quite early from work so A and I went for a walk after dinner. We sat down at a pub just off Crown street and had a beer to watch the people and the sunset, or as much sunset that you can see in Surrey Hills. As I was sitting there waiting for A to return from the bar a really attractive surfery looking couple drove past in really old crappy car and I felt -“Ohhhh that is what I want, I want to have an old beat up banger to drive around in an look cool and surfery and hot”

As I was sitting there thinking about how cool and surfery I would look I realised. No Maria you won’t look cool and surfery in your beat up car, you will look like a soon to be old woman sitting in a shitty beat up car.

I realised that I’ve missed one of lifes opportunities to look like cool surfery dude kind of person. So that kind of depressed me. Then I realised that the cool surfery couple probably dreamed about a nice car with air conditioning and fully working breaks with a good safety rating. The kind of card I would buy if I bought a car. So that made me feel better and adult and like the kind of person that has a few extra spare portions of homemade vegetarian lasagne in the freezer for the days you can’t be bothered to cook and you don’t like eating take away food.

Just like the kind of person that I am.

Pretty as a painting

I went to a gem show a few weeks ago. I met a lovely lady called Janet. She cuts and sells boulder opals. Boulder Opals are opals that still have some of the Iron stone matrix attached in them. Sometimes that makes them extra beautifull, alsmost like paintings and sometimes it makes them look like pikey market crap, it all depends on how they have been cut.

Janet is great boulder opal cutter as you can see in the above picture. I bought these ones solely based on the fact that they look a lot like a painting I got from my grandfather. My grandfather used to paint when he was alive. A lot. When my sister and I would visit we would sometimes get some paintings. The stone to the left in the picture looks a lot like a little tiny one that I have (somewhere in my dads flat I think, I hope) of two men in a fishing boat. The colours are the same, the composition is the same obvisouly the gem is very different. But still the same.

These stones are not that big, maybe 1.5 square centimeter. Maybe 2. I don't know what to with them, I only bought them as the reminded me of the paintings.

Library Finds

Last weekend I went to the library to get a stack of books. I love the library as it allows me to indulge not only in books I should read but also in proper trash that I want to read.

In my new stack of trash and also the books one should read I found an extra suprise. The person who borrowed the book last time have used a photo of her or himself as a bookmark. The person only seem to have gone half way throught the book, it's understandable it's not that good a book.

There are two people in the photo, a blond girl and a latin lover looking man. They look very happy to be sitting so close. It's a close up so I think that the girl has taken the photo herself by holding the camera up like so.

I'm intrigued by this photo. I know from the datestamp at the back that it was processed in april 2007 at 5.15 in the afternoon. Now I wonder why the photo has been used as a bookmark. Did the love go sour and that is all it was good for or did they like each other so much she wanted to have him with her in her book on the buss. I think the carrier of the book would have been a her as the book is proper chick-lit buss reading trash.

Anyway, it's nice to know that somewhere close to where I live there is a blond girl who is (or were in the sour love scenario) happy with her latin man who have equally bad taste in books as I do.

I now know

Why the wear the caps when they are swimming in the Olympics. It’s because they make your head buoyant. You float better; this morning I was swimming so fast that I tipped over. I can ‘t use my legs and my right arm is stronger than my left arm when I get tired the left arm can’t keep up and I tip over. It’s quite humorous to see. I look like seal playing in the water.

This is however not the effect I am striving for; I’m working more towards a Michael Phelps/Dana Torres powerful boat look. Actually I am improving. Now If I am swimming my best best swimming technique the fastest I can possibly manage I can almost keep up over 25 meters with A:s casual frolic warm up swim.


However the caps do not keep your hair dry or water out of your ears; which is why I was using it in the first place. So now my blonde hair has a green tinge and my ears are clucking like a half filled cups.

Happy B’day

It’s now 6.30 in the morning in Sweden and I’m waiting for it to be a reasonable hour before I call my mum and sing Happy B’day to her. This is one of the many things that one must consider and pre-plan when you live in different time zones.
And phone calls are one of the hardest things to fit in when you live 9 hours apart. This means that I mainly talk to my family on Sunday nights. Which is great and sad at the same time. Just the time when I am at my most tired and most Sunday night moody I talk to them. I’m never as happy then as I might be on a Friday morning. So I guess they get a skewed view on how I like my life. It is unfair to this country and to this experience. Things in life are always harder and moodier on a Sunday night then on any other night of the week.

I think Skype is probably a life saver for long distance family calls. As it is free it means that you don’t have to rush through what you were going to say and there is time to show the new things you bought at IKEA. (Oven gloves, very nice ones as
I accidently put fire to the old ones. I’m not kidding. We have a gas hob and all our pots have metal handles and I was taking a pot of the stove and didn’t realise my oven glove was on fire until the fire alarm went. One problem with having a very high pain threshold is that you don’t really feel when your hands are on fire)

Other things that needs to be pre-planned is birthday cards. I’ve never been good at sending cards or I have never been good at sending cards on time.

However in London I would always blame it on the Royal Mail. Here however the Australia post is a very efficient postal company so the fact that things are never delivered on time is that I most likely post the card on the birthday or a couple of days later.

So happy Birthday Mum, the reason your card is late is that I didn’t post it until today. I’m very sorry about that. I will get better.

Better and stronger than ever before

TV

I've not been watching a lot of telly on time here, or I watch a lot of TV. But I tend to record it and then watch it later so that I don't have to watch the add.

But tonight I'm watching a cooking show in real time, Rick Stein is travelling around sicilly and is cooking, and I'm getting really hungry and start to dream about my friends S cooking. She cooks wonderfull Sicillian food and the best pasta I have ever had anywhere...I really love Sicilly. I think it's probably one of my favourite places to go on an eating holiday, even the bread tastes beautifull.

So What i've decided is to try to find some good pasta dishes and work hard on finding a place that sells good parmesan cheese. I've not found any good parmesan yet. I think I will have to try a cheese delicatessen or something. One would assume one would be able to find really good parmesan cheese in Sydney as there are so many Italian imigrants here. Maybe out at five dock...

I shall have to google it I think..

Friday night, dance, I like the way you move..

As you know A works very strange hours as. He works from 4 pm at in the afternoon to 5.30 in the morning Australian time. He works from home which is great as otherwise I would never get to see him, but this also means that during the week he is not able to do much at night. No mid week movie dates or going out for dinner or hanging out with people.

During the week this is a problem as one very rarely actually goes on mid week movie dates or dinner or hangs out with people, the only day that it is a bit sad is Fridays. Friday nights are not his night to go out. Which is unfair as everyone should be allowed out on Fridays. What is the point of Fridays if you can’t go out and do something fun and exciting?

I feel sad for him as if he was going to go out for a drink after work he would have to find someone who is up for it at 6 am and the people still out at 6 am are not normally in a state that makes them good entertainment and it would really screw up our swimming at 8 am on Saturdays.

Everyone who has watched “Almanackan” knows that sitting in a boat in water after having had a few drinks means you will wear very strange stripy clothing and fall over in the water and totally forget how to swim. So no drinking for him at 6 am, I don’t think they allow boats in our local pool you see and he is a very good swimmer however he is quite partial to stripy clothing.

Issues

I have issues with chewing gum. I do not like the smell or taste of chewing gum. I do not like the way people look when they chew it. If you want to work that hard to look like a cow chewing their cud why not just buy a cow hide and walk on all fours. Well it’s either cow or surly teenager. None of those looks really work for you if one has passed 17.

The biggest issue however is the smell. Why can’t they make chewing gum that doesn’t smell like an off brand of toothpaste? And people chew it to make their breath less stinky, why not floss every night and keep a tooth brush at work..


That is my very important issue for the day...

A friend of mine asked me to describe her ....

How do you describe someone that you love and miss without sounding cheesy and stupid? How do explain in a few sentences how much a person means to you and how much happiness they have brought to your life. How they saved you from being a needy girlfriend watching too much basketball from the sideline and instead took you to the movies, I mean I did have to stalk her in the beginning to make her do that but still.

It’s hard. It’s hard to say why someone is so special. With family it’s easier, She is my sister I love her. That is easy. As with the word sister come a direct connection whether you like or not. Actually if it is a sister you can not like her for a bit and still Love her. I think that is how my older sister and I spent our teenage years. In-between fist fighting. I Like and Love all my sisters. They are such fab role models for how to live your life authenticly.

But friends it’s harder. How do you tell them they are fantastic when you are not drunk by the bar drooling “ I love you, you are my best friend hick”.....We are not Americans, hence the Love word comes harder. It’s also hard to describe why person is so fantastic. It’s like when people have asked me why I love A and all I’ve come up with is “he accepts that I’m like I am and he makes me calm”. It does not sound like much of an explanation of love or caring or give any indication how much he has meant to my life.

I think I will try to get better at the explanations why I like people. I know I like to hear why people like me. I’m sure I’m not the only one. So everyone, expect really soppy birthday cards in the coming year.

Long weekend - bad weather

We have had a long weekend here with bad weather. Weather that allows you to be inside and faff about. Which I have. I have been quite productive actually as you can see above

They are 4 pendants and one pair of earings. None of them are finished, they are still in the works. They need to be polished and the stones and pearls need to be set. No rings. I have not made a ring in a while. I love making rings. Maybe I should make some more rings.

Other than that we haven't done that much this weekend, we have been for dinner and had people for dinner. We have played some serious rounds of pit (a card game) that turned very competitive. Some people drew blood.

I have also been looking for a real stone setting course and I found one but it's on the other side of Sydney and I can't drive and it's during the week. So I don't really know how to fit it in. But i'm gonna see how I can do it, cause I really miss my jewellery course in London.

I just tried calling my brother who has a birtday today, but no answer. I will try again later. But if I can get a hold of him. Happy B'day BG :-)

Also I forgot to mention my readers in Pensylvania..Hello..Nice to hear from you, hope to see you. Lots of Love

Hair

More hair..here is a picture I took all myself of myself and my new hair. It's very short and very blonde...


Goooooooooo Roxette...

Come on join the joyride....be the joyride

International Excitement for me

I was checking my web stats. I don’t often do that; maybe once a month I go and check to see what is happening and how many visits I’ve had during the month.

The most fun part for me is to look at the geographic location where the visitors come from, there are few areas which have higher visitors number which is to be expected as I know my family in Sweden and Australia reads my blog. But the more unexpected once that I see is so much fun for me. There are people who have come to my blog from places I’ve never been. I have never been to Jaipur in India or Poznan in Poland or Massachusett in the States so it’s really funny that that they have made it here.

So Hello Poznan, Jaipur, Hong Kong, Singapore and Massachusett. Great to see you, I hope you come back.

And Hello Sweden, UK, US and Australia I love you all very much.

Thing that never change no matter where you go

It is a long weekend here in Sydney. This Monday we have the day off.
The past week the weather has been fantastic. Yesterday it was hot, 32 degrees and sunny. This weekend and Monday it is going to be 20 degrees and rain.
Sun during the workweek and rain during the weekends, some things never change.

Hair

Hair is very important. I think hair is probably more important factor to how I feel about me then a lot of other things, good hair and no red marks on my face and I'm happy.

I have been to the hairdresser, the hairdressers here ply you with masses of wine and take forever doing things. That means that by the time they get around to cutting you hair you are already half drunk and would accept any cut they where willing to give you. My cut is now very very much shorter then I thought of planned when I went there, and the hair is much blonder. But I like it. And I also liked the very funny ginger man with the crazy hairy dogs that cut it.I think sometimes the experience is probably as important as the result.


Now I have very short very blond hair. Hair very similar to that that my sister used to have until she dyed it dark the other day. We also both have tight brigth red short jackets. Very suspicious.