Midlife Crisis

Wow, so here we are again.  I'm going to skip the apology for not writing for ages, we all know how that goes, so I'll just go straight to the fun stuff that's been happening over the... shoot, a month since the last post?  Mother of pearl, that's pretty slack even by my standards.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I haven't been totally slack.  I have at least made an attempt at blogging, I had this great one on these cupcakes I made for St. Patrick's Day (Guinness and chocolate, nothing, nothing can go wrong with that combination, I'm telling you, the recipe is one of Nige's, I'd thoroughly recommend it.  Especially if you can go all out and put cream cheese frosting on them - holy wow, is all I have to say about that). And I've made hot cross buns and cakes and pies and stuff... but I haven't taken any photos of any of it, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Library school is going... kind of well.  I submitted my first assignment on Friday, it probably could have used a bit more work, but we'll see how it goes.  The first one is always a bit of an experiment, plus it's been ages since I've done any academic writing.  It's one of those things that you get into the mode of (just like academic reading, I thought I'd given that shit up forever, but it appears not).  Speaking of libraries, when going through my feed reader this morning, Louder than War had this little post on this really great initiative called Get it Loud in Libraries, which is... kind of amazing.  I don't get why everyone seems to have this mental image of librarians as being stuffy... at least ten of us are cool!  Heh.  Unfortunately it's an inititive which is based in Lancaster, England, but it wouldn't take much to do a local version, I'm sure of it.  Now, if only I knew some public librarians...

Oh yeah, and one of my short stories got a place in the AUT Short Story Competition.  Admittedly, it's a highly commended placing, but that's not too bad.  In fact, not bad at all, since that's only the second one that I've ever submitted.  So... quite proud of myself there.  But I really need to get going on the writing, I'm hoping I haven't lost my mojo too much (the fact that my inherant laziness can't help but come into the equation probably isn't helping either).  If you want to read it, the story is here, it's called One Night.  Oh, and it's in the 21 and over section.

It was Record Store Day yesterday too, so I hope you all went out and bought lots of lovely aural treasure from your local store.  Real Groovy and Slow Boat were both mobbed yesterday here, which was kind of beautiful to see; a little bittersweet in the case of Real Groovy, since that store is closing down (amongst much speculation as to what might actually be happening - are they closing down for good, or moving to smaller premises?  Mysterious).  As you can see from the 'official seal' (*snicker*) below, Ozzy Osbourne was the spokesman this year.

I can't help but think a version of this could be a go-er for my 'official correspondence'.

And, in about two weeks I'll be 29.  How the hell did that happen?  I have to keep kind of quiet about it, since I scoffed at the Lad when he was starting to go through this, but I have to admit to feeling a tad... elderly.  Not in a totally bad way, but still, a bit... it sounds stupid, doesn't it?  But I guess that's why there's a name for it, because lots of people go through this kind of 'what am I doing with my life?' kind of gicky feeling.  Whatever.  I'm just going to keep doing my thing, and to heck with the second guessing.  The Lad is turning 30 in a month, so I've got a few things in the pipeline for that (which of course, I can't say anything about, suffice to say that I'm frickin' amped about it!  I wanted to make this birthday so rad for him that he'll forget the attendant 'woe is me, I'm thuuuurrrrty...').   So, of course, I'll have to get back to you on how that goes, but I'm practicing my fondant rolling as we speak.

My Cat's Name is Maceo

There's been quite a lot happening in this neck of the woods lately.  Firstly, school has started for the year, which means that not only am I studying (only part time, but that's quite enough when one is working full time as well, thank you very much), but also it's the busy season at work since all the students are back, I've been baking for Christchurch (more on that later), and we got a new cat!

The cat part first.  The Lad has been mad keen to get another cat, but I've been reticent for a few reasons.  Firstly, our old cat, Saffron-Yoda, never liked me very much (probably because I named her Saffron-Yoda, but also probably because I read a theory that girl cats prefer the company of boys, and boy cats prefer the company of girls... something to do with the pheromones, I guess).  Secondly, I'm actually allergic to cats - they make my nose run and my asthma go haywire.  I usually develope a tolerance to them after a while, but it takes the old body a while to get used to all that fluff in the air.  But anyway, so the Lad emailed me with this picture of a kitten who needed a home, and was all 'Can we? Huh? Can we?' and I caved.  This little blighter is so freakin' cute, I would challenge even the most cat-hatery individual to not have their icy heart melt just a little.  Here he is:

He's a little man, in a cat's body.

Maceo is, of course, named after the Jane's Addiction song, My Cat's Name is Maceo, which is off an album called Kettle Whistle.  The version of the song that appears on the album actually has the guy that Perry Farrell's cat was named after guesting on the saxophone, which is pretty awesome-slash-weird.  All that comes from Wikipedia, by the way, so take it with a grain of salt.  Oh, and good luck finding that song on youtube, by the way - it's been removed from a couple of vids by the youtube staff because of copyright infringement, so I spent like, fifteen minutes watching videos of other peoples cats in the hope of finding a video that actually had the song.  Guess you'll just have to find it yourselves.

Anyway, in other news, Monday was the big bake-sale thing for Christchurch.  I baked up some dinosaur shaped gingerbread (the only stipulation that they had was that the baking had to be something that was going to travel well - no cupcakes, in other words).  They came out really good, though I was worried about them for a second, as the dough was really crumbly.  But like I said, they came out fine.  Wellington has been having a few wee earthquakes of our own lately, which has been freaking everyone right out, though it's pretty usual for us.  Still, impecable timing.  Anyway, I did lemon icing in rough bone shapes on the dinos, which was really nice, actually kind of refreshing.  So I hope that whoever got them in Christchurch got a wee giggle out of them when they opened them up!

The leg bone's connected to the... back bone?

Library school is going well so far, I've got my second class tomorrow, and so far so good.  It's not going completely over my head, and one paper was a good way to start off.  Not too much work, just enough to keep things interesting.

Beautiful Thing

It's just a beautiful, crazy old world we live in, isn't it?  Yes, don't worry, I haven't gone completely off my rocker, I know it's dangerous, ugly and uncertain too, but it's times like these that you can't help looking around at your fellow humans and thinking, "You know, you guys are alright".

Perhaps I'm just writing this in a flood of good feeling - I finally heard from my friend in Christchurch that she and her husband (and even their cat!) are all okay.  Ma had already contacted me about the family I have living down there, and so everyone is present and accounted for.  I only have an email address for this particular friend, and of course, with the power situation, email and stuff like that is mostly out of the question.  But I was holding out hope that today would be the day I'd hear from her, and lo-and-behold, there was an email in the old inbox when I got up this morning to do this post.

There are still lots of people in Christchurch who are not alright though, so here are some things that Wellingtonians (and people who live elsewhere) can do:

Bake on Sunday: You heard right!  There's going to be a massive bakesale on Monday the 28th of February in Civic Square in Wellington.  I don't know who organised it, but The Great Sunday Bake Off is a freakin' awesome idea.  They've had so much interest that any extra goodies that can't be transported to Christchurch by their team will be sold from 10 - 2pm.  Follow the earlier link for more details. 

Donate to the Red Cross: Easy as, you can text a donation, slap it on the credit card, whatever the amount.  There is lots of information on their website, so follow that link for more of it. 

Drink Coffee, Eat Cake:  Seems a bit of a weird option, right?  But the glorious Caffe L'affare in College Street (opposite Moore Wilson in the central city) is donating all their proceeds on Sunday the 27th (which is tomorrow) to helping out the people of Christchurch.

Of course, there are a few... well, dickheads is really too kind a word for them, but you know where I'm going with that, who are trying to make a buck out of this horrible event.  Please, please, when you're making an online donation or whatever: make sure that whatever you're donating too is for real.  There have been reports of scams which say that they're charities wanting to help out the people of Christchurch, when really, they're just wads of dog poo wanting to help themselves.  So please be careful about that.

Moving on from that bring down, there are still lots of other ways to help.  TradeMe (for overseas readers, it's like a mini-version of eBay, which is often a pain for New Zealanders to use because of the shipping) has masses of ways you can help, things like volunteering labour, if you have a spare room that you can have someone stay with you, volunteering transport.  There are also links to resources like Civil Defence, the Red Cross, the People Finder and the Salvation Army. 

Phew! So three posts in one week!  My typing fingers are near worn out... hope that where-ever you are, that you're safe and happy and enjoying life.  Because that is the most beautiful thing.