Solitude Standing

• Mood: happy
• Music: “Brimful of Asha” - Fatboy Slim

Today was my pay day (very much a cause for celebration, and yes, completely blog-worthy!), so because my old digital camera has been playing up lately, I headed to Harvey Norman (a computer/electronics/furniture superstore at my local mall) to get a new one. After a bit of umming and ahhing, I got a Samsung S750, which was on sale for only $97. Bargain, yay! It’s a fairly standard point-and-shoot camera, which is exactly what I wanted, and the specs are an upgrade from my old one, so I’m really really happy with it. It also came in red! I couldn’t find a picture of the red one online, but I found the same camera in black on the Samsung website, and this is what it looks like:

As well as my new digicam and a few bits and pieces for it (namely a new memory card and some lithium batteries), I also bought a math training game for my NDS (I know it sounds dorky, but my basic math skills really seriously need improving), a triple pack of Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 and it’s two expansion packs (PC game), some books, and a few other odds and ends. One of the books I bought is called “Please explain” by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, who’s a “celebrity scientist” here in Australia. Aside from some TV appearances, he writes these books that explain the science behind questions like “does celery really make you lighter?”, “do you have to be dying to have a near-death experience?”, “did a NASA computer really prove a miracle in the bible happened?” and tons more weird stuff like that. I used to watch his segment on one of those ABC shows several years ago and it was really interesting, so I’m hoping the books will be too.

Later this evening, after my mum came home from some dinner for a retiring professor, we went into the casino and had a bit of a muck around there. I ended up losing about $30, but I guess that isn’t too bad - it could have been a lot worse if I hadn’t made a mini comeback not long before we went home. The airconditioning in the casino is always the pits though, not so much that it’s really cold or anything, but it always makes my eyes sting after a while, much more so than the aircon at home or at the mall or anywhere else for that matter. I got home just over an hour ago and I spent the first 20 minutes or so after getting in trying to tend to my sore watery eyes, ugh. My mum keeps telling me to get eye drops, but I can never seem to use them properly - every time I try to squeeze the stuff in, I get all tense and end up with the drops falling on my closed eyelid. =/ Man, I am just such a wimp.

So I’m still trying to think of what to do to rejuvenate this site a little. I’m probably going to take down my craptastic icons soon (since I personally hate most of them and I doubt many people use them, if anyone), so if you want to save and use any of them, now is the time to do so. An inkling of an idea I’ve had though is to perhaps start a little section of Nintendo DS game reviews. I have a crapload of different games for my DS, so if I can be bothered playing through some of the games I haven’t yet finished or at least completed a substantial amount of, I might write up some short reviews and put them up here. I’m also considering a section on beauty tips/product recommendations/etc like what I used to have in the beauty section of my old zine, but I’m undecided on that too. In fact, there’s a ton of stuff I could bring back from the old Treasure zine, but I don’t know what bits anyone would be interested in, and if the stuff was any good to begin with. For those of you who didn’t know me during my brief run with the Treasure web zine (which is probably the majority of you), I had articles on beauty, fashion, health, relationships, and school/work, as well as quizzes, recipes (though I have both those things on here already), puzzles/games and other odds and ends like that. Any thoughts/suggestions, people?

Quote of the day:
“Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how it remains so popular?”

Anyway, I’m going to go to sleep now…it’s well after 2am and I’m super tired. *yawn* Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other. *snore*

• Mood: sleepy
• Music: “I can see it in your eyes” - Men at work

Right now I’m soooo tired, it’s just not funny. I went to bed reasonably early last night, but for some reason I was dead to the world until just after one o’clock this afternoon. Apparently my brother tried to wake me up twice, once to ask me to make him lunch and then again to ask if I wanted to go to the video store, but I just mumbled incoherently and went straight back to sleep (if I ever woke up even slightly in the first place, which I kinda doubt). Even now at 3:30pm I’m still dead tired and just want to go back to bed. In fact, the only thing that made me get up a couple of hours ago was because a parcel arrived for me and Sean literally threw it at me while I was in bed (don’t worry, it was very light, lol). What was in the parcel, you ask? It was a pack of 100 NDS games (yep, 100 of them) that I ordered online a week or two ago and had been waiting impatiently for ever since placing the order. So far I’ve just played a few of them briefly (Mario Party, Sega Casino, Big Brain Academy & Zoo Keeper), but I anticipate that once I’m a bit more awake I’ll be going through them all obsessively. Right now my brother has borrowed my NDS to play the Pokemon ones (Diamond and Pearl I think?), which is kinda cute because he hasn’t really played Pokemon games since before he started high school (and he’s now 19). He’s regressing, haha.

I’ve been having some really weird dreams lately, though I some of them I can only remember snippets of. Last night (or it could have been during the day this morning, given now late I woke up, lol) I remembered the whole thing though, and I dreamed that I was going on a school trip with my old high school. We were going to some weird beach where there were artificial ski slopes, but I forgot my passport though, so the teachers who were supervising said I needed to collect 13ml of blood to prove who I was. They gave me a syringe to collect the blood with, but for some really weird reason I was sticking it into the keys of a computer keyboard and extracting my blood from them! I could only get 12mls of blood out of the keyboard though, so then I had to stick it into my arm and I ended up with 15ml instead, but apparently that was ok. Then when we got to the hotel I was sharing a room with a bunch of girls I had been friends with in high school, and they were all annoyed with me for not sleeping at night and making a noise while they were trying to (not at all unlike my real school ski trip, where my room mates had the exact same complaint). We also had to play this skill tester game (like those machines where you win the toys and stuff) to win some new clothes, and I got the grand prize, which was a yellow polka dot blouse that tied up at the front as a midriff. I often have weird dreams, but I reckon this one takes the cake. O_o

Quote of the day:
“Learn from your parents’ mistakes - use birth control.”

So that’s it for now, I might go and get my NDS back off Sean and try out some more of my new games. Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other!

My lovely commentors: Simply Precious & Julie. <3

• Mood: manic
• Music: “Visions of Johanna” - Bob Dylan

Believe it or not I am. Still alive, that is. It’s been a very long time since I last bothered with this site, but I’m thinking I should probably do something with it again - blog a bit more, at the very least. I might as well fill you all in on the enthralling events of my life since my last entry back in May, but not much has really happened, so it shouldn’t take long.

Uni stuff
First of all, I got through my first semester of a business degree in one piece, and am now halfway through my mid-year vacation. Classes start again in two weeks, and next semester my focus will be business informatics. I’ve decided I’d like to declare accounting as my major, but unfortunately you can’t do that with a general business degree, you have to switch to a bachelor of commerce. So at the end of the year, I’ll most likely be applying to the academic board to switch degrees. It shouldn’t really be much of an issue, especially since the commerce and business degrees have a lot of overlapping classes in the early stages, so I’ll get credit for at least one of the classes I took last semester. I quite enjoyed the past semeser though, especially since I got some good grades. My triumph (hehe, let me call it that!) was that I got the top result for my management final, beating over 600 other students, so I was really happy about that. I did quite well in accounting too, got a distinction overall, which wasn’t bad considering I never did the career development assignment at all. So while uni last semester ended quite successfully, I’m totally enjoying being on a break from it all…no more 8am classes on Mondays, yay!

Other offline stuff
Not a whole lot has been happening around here for the past month or so, so I’m kinda at a loss as to what to report. My best friend since 9th grade left for a year-long stint in Europe a couple of weeks ago, so I’m a little bummed out about that, but hopefully she’ll still e-mail when she gets some internet access and maybe send me some photos of her travels. And Arabian Moon (my racehorse) started training again last month after being out shin-sore for ages, he’s been having a few barrier trials lately and might even have his first real race in a few months, so I’m looking forward to that. Hmm…what else? Oh yeah, my aunt (and my favourite little cuz Jonty) finally left for Sydney last month, so I’m missing them too (especially Jonty, even though he drove me nuts - whose NDS can I leech games off now?). It seems like everyone’s leaving me actually, except for the people who I want to leave me alone (namely my asswipe of a brother).

Online stuff
With my absence from blogging there was also a big absence from the internet in general, I’ve really only started coming online again obsessively in about the past week or so. I’ve caught up with a few things on Facebook, but the biggest thing to take up my time of late is Vertigo MB, which is seriously the bestest nicest coolest forum in the world. It’s only pretty small, but we’re all very friendly and accepting, so if you want a nice cosy hang-out to chat about random stuff and play a few game-type things, go there now and join! I’ve been posting like a madwoman, day and night, I can’t stop! I’ve very rapidly become addicted. O_o

I’ve also decided to add a little extra to my posts from now on, by way of a quote of the day. I’ll give you fair warning that my collection of humourous quotes (and even my humourous science quotes, a personal favourite category) totally outweights my collection of serious ones, so don’t expect the wise words of Ghandi or Mother Teresa, at least not often.

Quote of the day
“If you want to criticize someone, first walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.”

That’s all I have to say for now. I might blog again tomorrow if I feel like it - not that there’ll probably be much to say, but I can always think of something to fill a few paragraphs (and hopefully something a bit more interesting than tonight’s dull as hell entry). Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other.

• Mood: frustrated
• Music: “Foxy lady” - Jimi Hendrix

Honest to God, I am so sick of my management assignment right now, I feel like screaming. I spent about 4 hours this morning looking for the journal articles I need, only to find that most of them require paid subscriptions to various academic databases that I’m obviously not willing to pay for. So I’m not a very happy camper right now. I’ve only got 4 days before it’s due and I haven’t even finished the research part! Gah. I also have my career development assignment due next Thursday, but that’s a pretty small assignment so hopefully I can knock it over on Wednesday once my management paper’s handed in. I’m so angry with myself about all this because I’ve had weeks to be doing all this stuff, but I keep procrastinating and getting distracted and now there’s less than a week left before the due dates and I’m running around like a headless chook trying to get everything done. Bad Aly, bad!

So virtually all of today’s been spent chasing up journal articles for my assignment, but luckily I got to take a break for a few hours this evening when my dad took me out to dinner. We went to the bistro at Easts, and I got a yummy steak and salad sandwich…mmm. I didn’t even eat the mountain of fries they served with it, so I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself about that since I usually love fries. I’m trying to be good, I really am! Lol. Then after dinner we had a couple of drinks (actually, I wasn’t drinking, I just had water and a coke) and before Dad dropped me home we called into Westfield Carindale (a nearby mall) so that my dad could buy -get this- underwear. *groan* There’s something incredibly embarrassing about watching your 53-year-old father pick out undies, so I just wandered around the store and pretended to be invisible, hehe. I actually ended up getting a pair of running shorts there (and yes, it was a menswear store we were at!) because I needed something to work out in and I don’t like women’s running shorts because they’re too short in the legs - seriously, I tried some on a while ago and the damn things barely covered my butt! And if you can picture my fat white legs, then that’s major ewwwness. Lol. Then my dad decided he needed a new toothbrush (wow, what exciting shopping trips I have with my dad!), so we went into the pharmacy to get one, but they’d sold out of the cheap ones and my dad’s too much of a tightwad to buy the $5.79 flexi brushes, so we had to go all the way to Big W (aka Aussie WalMart) to get a less expensive regular brush. Hehe. My feet are still covered in blisters from yesterday too, so I wasn’t too happy about having to wander all over the place just so my dad could save $2 or so on a toothbrush. =/

Now I’ve just finished entering all our Avon orders into the online order form, so I’m just chilling out in bed now (propped up on a pillow with my laptop, hehe) while I wait for my mum to finish making her fruit cakes. Yes, that’s right, my mum, who avoids cooking like a plague, is BAKING. Normally I’d be extremely worried about her in this strange state, but she’s told me that she wanted to have a home-made morning tea for her and her boyfriend tomorrow, so it’s starting to make a bit more sense. My mum can be a bit weird when she’s in a relationship, and considering how besotted she is with her current beau, I’m not as surprised as I was at first. Too bad I’m on a diet and can’t eat the leftovers.

Anyway, that’s all for now folks. Must get an early night tonight so I can get up early again in the morning and do some more work on my blasted assignment! Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other.

My lovely commentors: Simply Precious. <3

• Mood: hungry
• Music: “Bad reputation” - Joan Jett

I’ve been on my diet for only one day and already I’m craving chocolate. What I wouldn’t give for a nice box of Guylian chocolate seashells right now! Lol. I think part of it’s my brain going into panic mode at the thought of having to eat healthy food, that now I’m craving junk more than I did before I started my diet (which was oh…YESTERDAY!). I’ve been good today though, eating healthy food and doing a bit of exercise. I’ve decided to keep a journal of what I eat each day, just to monitor my progress. Today’s entry:

Breakfast: Diced rockmelon, tub of low-fat yoghurt & 2 cups of black coffee (and yes, I do have sugar in my coffee still, but I cut it back today by half a teaspoon…I’ll get there eventually!).

Lunch: Egg & lettuce sandwich on grain bread, and a small fruit juice.

Dinner: Caesar salad & 2 glasses of Aqua Pura fruit splash water.

After-dinner snack: Handful of raw pistachio nuts & another cup of black coffee.

So aside from the sugary coffee, I think I’m doing ok. I also had 9 glasses of regular water (ie. not the bottled or fruit splash stuff), and I haven’t even touched the last of my vodka mudshakes. Go me.

Besides starting my diet today, I haven’t done anything much productive except a bit of shopping. I went out to Garden City (our local mall) around lunch time and picked up a few things for my mum for mother’s day (not saying what they are in case she’s reading this, hehe) since I don’t get paid again until May 14th and mother’s day is on the 11th. I also got a really cute pair of flannel PJs - they’re pink with owls all over them, and they were only $15! What a bargain. I’m wearing them now because it’s been getting cold at night lately, and they’re so snuggly and nice. <3 Unfortunately I made the mistake of wearing a new pair of shoes today while I went shopping, and after about 2 or 3 hours of shopping I had huge horrible blisters all over my heels and the sides of my feet. Ouch! It was so bad that I could barely walk and had to buy a pair of thongs (flip-flops that is, not thong panties!) to put on until I got home to soak my feet. I ended up carrying my stupid shoes around in a shopping bag and I’m sure I looked like a total loser in a pair of purple thongs that were not only cheap and tacky (well I wasn’t going to spend much money on them considering I hardly ever wear those sort of shoes and I only needed them for an hour or so until I got home) but didn’t even match my outfit. Gah. I think I need to start wearing my shoes in around the house before I go out shopping in them for 3-4 hours.

So…that brings me to the end of this post. Exciting stuff, huh? Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other!