It's my 32nd Birthday. I took the day off work, slept in, ate bacon & eggs & tomato & toast, drank lots of tea, had a massage & spa, visited my best friend where I saw her daughter (finally!) walking (yay!) and ate chocolate cake and brownie (yum!) and read same daughter some stories, went to dinner with my Mum & brother, and now I'm having a cuddle with my cat. I also stressed about the study grant I put in last night, because the project has turned out bigger than Ben Hur, and I'm afraid that it will be too big for me to do justice to if (and when) I move to full time work. It seems to get bigger every time I think about it, and is now kind of looking like a Masters thesis. Goddess help me. However, it's my birthday so I'm not going to stress about that anymore, at least until tomorrow. When I will continue to blog. Thanks to all who were involved in #blogeverydayofjune, I've loved it and I will continue my online journey with you all, if you'll have me. @nomesd aka SkinniBitch
I know, I know, I'm a bad little #blogeverydayofjune-er coz I went away to Canberra for three days and failed to blog. BUT I'll have you know I did try to blog on my iPhone but I couldn't successfully upload photos so what was the point, ya know?
So here's what you missed.
I packed WAY too much for a three night stay. I thought I'd freeze my extremeties off because Canberra is so cold compared to mild ol' Brisbane, but I forgot that a) I've spent the last two winters in Melbourne b) the two winters before that were spent in London c) I lived in north-western Ontario for a year where the temperature + windchill factor gives you a temperature around -70degrees C. I was FINE.
I drank way too much on Friday night with my lovely friend Dot - so much so that I forgot to take any photos. Sorry!
I made the bride super pretty on Saturday with hair and makeup that one of the guest's thought was professional - so I have something to fall back on if this librarianing thing doesn't work out - but didn't get any photos taken of me coz I was quite cold in my sleeveless dress and quite hungover.
The Catholic Blessing Ceremony was quite nice, mercifully short (not a big fan of the bloke on the clouds, me), and they reaffirmed the vows they took three weeks or so ago in the UK in front of Australian family and friends. Here's a picture of the stunning couple in the not-so-stunning carpark of the Southern Cross Club Carpark.
Aw! So handsome!
So after the reception where the 800 or so kids in attendance played in the gauze curtains, the blokes went off to watch Australia suck in the World Cup, and the bride and I caught up, which was lovely.
I ate way too much on Sunday starting with breakfast with Dot and friends and then catching up with an old family friend at Koko Black - Brisbane doesn't have one so it was good to revisit the hot chocolate, like an old friend :-)
Then it was a library geeks/tweeps meetup back at Debacle where I got to meet @brucebits from the NLA and NGAC, and @KatieTT IRL, which was AWESOME. Also caught up with @SonjaBarfoed and a couple of great @ALIANational staff, Robyn & Janetta. A super night!
I library nerded it up on Monday at the NLA, with @brucebits showing me some ephemera collections, Dot showing me around manuscripts, and I met someone in Reference who has an awesome job going. I was tempted for a while but have decided to stay in Brisbane - I only just got home, after all! Then @aldellit took me to the airport and gave me entrance into the Qantas lounge - awesome times! Oh, and I had my first IRL @TurnbullMalcolm sighting. I saw @KevinRuddPM a couple of years ago, when I still had hope :-/
Then I got home and got the awesome news that @katejf and I got our abstract accepted for #ALIAIOC!!! So now we get to write a paper on the use of social networking for professional development. You can bet your bottom library dollar that #blogeverydayofjune will be in there!
Thanks to @flexnib over at Ruminations, I've decided to do the reading meme. As she says "this may help those of us who’ve crazily agreed to blog every day of June... given that it’s about reading, I don’t think it’ll be difficult for librarians to do."
Do you snack while reading? Not really, no. At the moment I don't really snack at all, but thinking back to when I ate everything in sight, it was more of a TV activity, less of a reading activity.
What is your favourite drink while reading? Probably water. I drink a lot of water. Sometimes a cup of strong white tea.
Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? It doesn't horrify me, but no I don't mark them. I'm too lazy.
How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat? This is going to shock so many librarians, but I used to dog-ear. Since becoming a librarian and realising that I'm surrounded by Book Nazis, I try more and more to bookmark, and never dog-ear a borrowed book, but I don't have that "books must be pristine" gene. Who cares? They're objects to be USED, people! Unless it's a first edition and you need gloves to touch it, use it how you want!
Fiction, non-fiction or both? Fiction fiction fiction. Non-fiction bores me to tears, I'm the worst librarian in the world, I know, but I HATE IT.
Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere? I have to read to the end of a chapter, or at least to the end of a paragraph/logical place. Although as I start to read more suspenseful novels the end of a chapter just eggs you on more, so for the sake of sleep I have tried to stop somewhere more boring.
Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you? Occasionally. The Twilight books definitely got a bit of a work out. They were so. fucking. annoying! But I couldn't stop reading them! AAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!
If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?Nope. I tend to try and figure it out from context, and I used to then "mean to" look it up but really forget about it and never do it. Now with the iPhone I probably look more up on the spot.
What are you currently reading? I am currently avoiding reading because I am having a great deal of trouble getting through In the Kitchen and I am seriously considering ditching it. I am so bored by it I couldn't even read that whole review I just found. Yep, time to ditch it, which I rarely do, I hate not finishing books (that should be another question of this meme!) I also should be reading 90 packets of instant noodles because I'm meant to be reviewing it for inCite. But every time I ask for a book to review I get my second choice, and I end up shirty and not really wanting to read it. Though I just saw a book review that said it's really good so I might try and read it today. The last book I read and really enjoyed was The City & The City and it blew my mind. I've gotten obsessed with the author and paid my 80cents three times to reserve his other books and am desperately wanting to read them.
What is the last book you bought? Since having to ditch so many books in London I rarely buy books any more, I've become a proud library user, so I can't even remember.
Do you have a favourite time/place to read? I usually read in bed before sleep (except for the last couple of weeks as I've been avoiding it) but my favourite time would be on a lazy Sunday. Hey, it's Sunday!
Do you prefer series books or stand-alones? I love series if I like the characters. Loved the Millennium Trilogy, I used to read a lot of fantasy (sort of feel like I've outgrown a lot of it in the last ten years though) and I used to love it how Marian Keyes used a family to write stories around. But I like stand-alones too.
Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Thanks to virtual librarian for gifting it to me all those years ago! I still haven't seen the movie because I can't stand the idea of Eric Bana destroying the lovely gentle American librarian Henry with his ocker accent.
How do you organize your books (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)? I have very few books these days, and they're currently in boxes. It used to be by author surname.
Barbara’s additional question: background noise or silence? Silence generally. I'm really aural so I have trouble concentrating if there's music on in the background - it tends to take over my head.
I've been all aTwitter about my new diet regime over the last week, which is the Tony Ferguson meal-replacement diet. I went from eating pretty much whatever I wanted - which was a fair amount of pizza, donuts, chocolate and hot chips - to a shake (with fibre) for breakfast, a salad with meat for lunch, and a salad (after a couple of false starts with soup - which I confirmed that I DESPISE) for dinner with a shake for dessert. Add in a couple of serves of fruit and maybe some nuts during the day, some diet jelly if I am really jonesing out, and you have a very different diet to the one I had a week ago. Which is possibly why I lost 2.5kgs in a week. Yay for me!
I've had a pretty wacky relationship with my size and food over the last 7 or so years - pretty much since I started needing medication for a chronic health issue. I've had two separate periods where medication has stacked - and I mean 15-20kg stacked - on the weight in a very short amount of time (try 6 weeks last year) which has resulted in a much more yo-yo-ing body shape than I ever had before. I used to be pretty slender, not really skinny, or at least I didn't think so - but then I was young, what the fuck did I know! I thought I was fat in year 12 and I now realise I was borderline underweight, at a size 8-10.
Generally I used to sit around about a size 12 - sometimes skinnier, sometimes a bit bigger. I threw away my size 8s as a "never gonna happen" when I was about 22.
When I was 24, the first time I put on 20kg I was a skinny size 12, almost a 10, and I ballooned up to a 16 in about 3 months. I lost 10kg of it easily when I came off meds a year or so later, and then I lost the other 10kg on Weight Watchers and became a Lifetime Member. And I gotta tell ya, I looked Hott. Paris Hilton style, back to the skinny 10-12. But then I took off for the UK, got the obligatory Heathrow Injection of about 5-7kg, and was back to being about normal - around a size 12-14.
I scooted back to Australia and moved from my native sunny Brisbane to the more naturally stodgy (food wise anyways) Melbourne, and put on a few more kilos, probably partly due to the Italian food (pasta! yum!) and partly because I found my two years there relatively hard. (Food is my friend!) Near the end of my time there I was put on another medication that made me balloon out and I zoomed from a 14 up to an 18 in six weeks - thanks for that, Doc!
I'm now back in sunny BrisVegas, a lot happier and healthier, and ready to tackle the challenge of losing the 25kgs that has accumulated since my svelte days. I will post photos as evidentiary proof as I go along, both to motivate myself and because words get boring.
Oh, and as I'm a librarian (but this blog will not really be focussed on libraries) I'll be participating in the 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge.
It's my 32nd Birthday.
