The Things You Learn

Interesting things I learned from this month's Aussie Cosmo:

• tampons are luxury taxed in Aussie.
• apparently the whole tshirt under your strappy dress is back. I wish it would have ended with the cancellation of Blossom.
• Hilary Duff is pretty cool despite the fact that she keeps saying she grew up and lost her baby fat instead of like dieting and exercising. Last I checked, puberty made me grow boobs and hips. Apparently I was experiencing reverse puberty.
• Greg Behrendt has a new book out (his last was He's Just Not that Into You) and so I want it.
• Long distance relationship will apparently work if you've got these two things in mind: if you think it'll work, that helps a lot and you need to constantly reassure each other. Ew. I vote no.
• According to this guide on how to read palms, I will be lucky, rich by the time I'm 50, do manual labour as a job, have two husbands, no children and will never travel overseas. Hm.
• drinking energy drinks while drinking alcohol makes you think you're more sober than you are.
• Jason Swartzman (Rushmore, I Heart Huckabees, Shopgirl, etc) was the drummer for Phantom Planet and composed the OC theme song.
• Vince Vaughn is an "embarrassing crush". (Here's my diatribe on that: I think he's great. He seems like a normal person who's just good at existence. Most Hollywood types are like a different breed with their designer duds, stylist, PR consultant, fake hair colour, body parts, etc. He's just a normal guy who happens to rule. You could hang out with him and you'd love it. So am I going to think he's an embarrassment because he's a little tall and a little chubby? No. Because I think he's gorgeous.)
• A woman went skydiving and her chute messed up. She hit the ground, full force, stomach first and lived. While in the hospital she found out she was newly pregnant. The baby lived too.

Don't you wish you kept up to date on your Australian Cosmo?!

Not So Secret Garden

It's the second nice day in a row which means I have been frantically doing laundry. Stupid lack of dryer. Regardless, it means I have spent some blissful time outside in my tiny backyard. And I mean tiny. But part of what makes it so tiny is that there are more flowers than grass back there. I never really paid much attention other than noticing that these mammoth rose bushes were starting to tear at my towels on the line, but yesterday I noticed that there were actually roses on these bushy, thorny beasts. Then I stopped, took a look around and realised there were gorgeous flowers all around me. So, with the sudden realisation that I had the luck to inherit these gardens, I started clipping bunches of flowers to collect for a vase on my table. How classy am I? :) But it's cool that I now have something to focus my nesting energy on. I've already clipped back the rose bushes (growing up with my parents has me remembering vague bits of rose wisdom. Also knowledge: we built an addition onto our house squarely on top of some rose bushes; sad, but necessary. Months later, they just grew out from under the addition. I don't really think me trimming some unwieldy branches is going to kill these guys.). I need to buy proper shears or something, however, because my kidnergarten safety scissors may have clipped their last.

A garden makes me feel adult, a trend I am willing to continue for the time being.

Book Review

In the personal update portion, my voice finally came back. Although, in spite of me being proud of it, my dad heard the message I left on his voicemail and said, "Your voice sounds ragged." Sigh. We're getting there. But it's time again for the book reviews that I keep promising I'll never do again. But I've been reading and some stuff has been good, so here goes.

Alright, I tried amazon.com and they'd never heard of my first book, and amazon.co.uk has heard of it, but has no picture. So it's Paradise by Tina Shaw. The reason it's lesser known is because it's by a Kiwi author. I tread on a few feet by saying this next bit, but it's still true: I don't like a lot of Kiwi books because the ones I've read have been a lot of "you'll never understand how it is to grow up in South Auckland; I mean, am I right?" Well, I wouldn't know. Because I didn't grow up in South Auckland. My point is that you usually have to be a Kiwi to get all the inside jokes, social more references, etc. But this book addresses those without alienating the reader. And I dug it anyway because it deals with the concepts of "paradise" and traveling, etc. So I highly recommend it and it's a good Kiwi author. Secondly, I read the book The Third Brother by Nick McDonell.



This is his second novel, the first of which Twelve, I read while flying back to the States for Christmas. I will always think of Gate 58 in LAX when I think of this book. He is really young to be such a great author (he wrote the first book at 17), but has that gritty Manhattan rich kid vibe that reminds me of Cruel Intentions, but better. I liked this book as well. It is rare that I get two books out of a random selection that are really good, but these were and I always feel the need to pass it along.

And see? I've been a good girl recuperating from illness, bedridden and bookladen.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Well, it's your American birthday today! Enjoy your rum cake, and know that I did a celebratory dance for you on your NZ birthday, too.

Silence is Golden

Well, my voice has still not recovered. This is a ridiculous amount of time to not have your voice. Perhaps I shouldn't have been yelling at soccer after all. I have been forbidden to speak unnecessarily at work though. I am to nod in understanding or point for directions if I encounter someone in the building that needs help. I am not to pick up the phone if it is from an outside line. It sucks. :)

But, it was this or miss several days of work even when I felt fine (aside from messed up sinuses and sore throat). So I will sit in silence, a novel concept for all who know me in the slightest, and soak up the free tea, coffee and water.

I might dig this being quiet thing after all.

The War Is On

I killed the big spider living in my bedroom. He broke the rules and landed on my bed in the middle of the night. After a half hour of indecision, I smushed and flushed him. The war is on.

It started because one of my friends crashed at my place this weekend and got bitten. That was also against the rules. So I killed the big one out of vengeance and now another one was spotted in my room and I killed it too. I am done living with them.

Fumigation may be on its way shortly. Take that, spiders.