OzLady’s Ramblings

So on Friday I proudly posted that we had managed to side-step being adopted by another cat, however I may have spoke too soon.

When I came home in between work and my drum class on Friday evening, there was a little being growing in a flowerpot just outside our door. She had waited all day for us to come home.

I sent a copy of this photo to DH (aren’t cameras AND email on mobile phones a deadly combination), and promptly got a response back saying ‘LET HER IN’.

Again I resisted and said no.

I went off to drum class with the agreement between DH and I that if she was still there when we both arrived home in the evening, then we’d let her in and see how things go. We don’t need another cat - we both still feel the same way - however she would make a darling pet and perhaps we can find a home for her.

Updated: Part 3

I’m a sucker and kittens know it.

Last night I was coming home and a kitten followed me up the stairs to our place. I left it outside and shut the door. Well our eldest cat started up a real ruckus and was meowing like crazy.

So I opened the door to see what he would do, fully expecting him to bolt out to join the little one outside.

He sat and waited.

The little one (turned out to be a she-cat) came in and started sniffing around. I sat on the floor to watch how they would interract together, and she came over and dumped herself in my lap, with legs everywhere.

Well Buster-boy (our youngest cat) was soooo jealous. I have never seen him so upset.

So the little girl was returned outside, where she is now sleeping outside our door.

Cats around our neighbourhood are generally well looked after, and there are a number of older people who feed them (and they hunt any rats), so I’m not too worried about her… but she was such an affectionate little thing that she’d make an ideal pet.

*sigh*

If only my place were bigger.

[I know, I know - more expense and I cannot adopt any more]

Updated: Part 2

This morning I heard the unpleasant news that SS12 (almost 13) wants a Sony Play Station Portable for his birthday. It’s not that I’m upset with him, but I don’t like these games consols - I find it disheartening that a group of people can sit around looking at these little gadgets and not talk to each other. I watched a group of kids in Pizza Hut tonight and they hardly talked - too busy playing PSP Soccer against each other. The silence was kinda eerie.

I then heard how SS12 was going to get his PSP. He has spent the last two years saving a portion of his pocket money ($2 per school day, which covers lunch and bus fare), and had amassed the total of $241. He had asked his Godmother for a contribution to his savings goal ($310) for his birthday instead of a present. This was how all this came to our attention.

DH and he went to check it out today, and SS12 was so excited that he admitted to having butterflies in his stomach. All the right questions were asked and he will get his PSP in time for his birthday.

What I am very, very proud of is the perseverance of my stepson. He is a charming and sincere young man at the best of times, and while I wish he would study more, I cannot say enough about how proud I am of him and his efforts in achieving his goals.

WOMAN’S DIARY

28 July 2007 Saturday

Saw him in the evening and he was acting really strangely.

I’d been shopping in the afternoon with the girls and was a bit late meeting him, thought it might be that.

The bar was really crowded and loud, so I suggested we go somewhere quieter to talk.

He was still very subdued and distracted so I suggested we went somewhere nice to eat.

All through dinner he just didn’t seem himself - he hardly laughed and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to me or to what I was saying, I just knew that something was wrong.

He dropped me back home and I wondered if he was going to come in. He hesitated but followed.

I asked him what was wrong, but he just half shook his head and turned the television on.

After about ten minutes of silence I said that I was going upstairs to bed, I put my arms around him and told him that I loved him deeply. He just gave a sigh and a sad sort of smile.

He didn’t follow me up immediately but came up later and, to my surprise, we made love - but he still seemed distant and a bit cold.

I cried myself to sleep - I think he’s planning to leave me - maybe he’s found someone else.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

MAN’S DIARY

Saturday 28 July

Australia lost the cricket.

Gutted.

Got a root though.

In working an extra job I find that I´m carting my laptop around alot and been waking up with increased pains in the back.

I think my husband has had enough of this, so this weekend Dearest has splurged and purchased one of the Asus Eee PC mini laptops that I´ve been drooling over for the past 6 months.

Fortunately the splurge didn´t cost too much - only $398 Singapore dollars! Cheap as chips and what a useful little machine that will hopefully ease the burden on my back and keep me employed for just that bit longer!

Here´s my new gadget, and I love the Linux OS, the in-built webcam, the OpenOffice, and the price-tag!

‘The contribution I make to a client is basically to be very stupid and very dense; ask simple, fundamental questions; demand that he be thoughtful with the answers; and demand that he makes decisions on what is important. I feel very strongly that a client who leaves my office feeling that he has learned a lot that he didn’t know before is a stupid client; either that, or I haven’t done my job. He should leave the office saying: ‘I know all this—but why haven’t I done anything about it?’

- Peter Drucker (b. 1909), father of modern management thinking

These last few weeks, Dearest and I have been filling in questionaires with a management consultant.

I do consulting - I know that we can offer value to clients, and I seriously believed that we had stumbled upon someone who could approach our business with the same belief that we have. We need help in focusing - and we were on the path to seeking the help that we need.

Or so I believed.

The assessment came back and the Peter Drucker quotation above kicked in - we knew most of it - except our problem is not why we haven’t done anything about it, but rather how can we do something about it, and where can we find the time?

Unfortunately what we ended up with on the second page of the proposal was a lot of MBA-regurgitation from someone who sounded like they had just polished the dust off their MBA and wanted to track the verbage out in front of someone. They wanted to charge us $600 for a meeting (a single meeting), to determine a course of action.

$600!!!

For one meeting!!!

And we should pay this based on two paragraphs ???? (The proposal length was a grand total of 6 paragraphs)

You mad or what???

*end of dummy spit*

I’ve hated my hair most of my life. When it was long it was too thin and dry and ended up flopping down the side of my head like a wet mop. Whenever I layered it, it went all wispy and flyaway, and sometimes I’d look like some weird science experiment (you know the one with the electro-static ball that you put your hand on and your hair stands on end).

I have fine hair and a square jaw, and I’ve struggled with a look for ages, and been terrified of hairdressers as a result (which has probably not helped, as my hair would then get split ends and I’d look shaggier than cousin It’s sister).

This year has been something of a fashion epiphany for me, and I’ve discovered a number of things about hair:

1. Know your face shape
   I have a square jaw and read that I should avoid hair that stops at the jawline or has layers that end around the jaw. Also, avoid a centre parting. Knowing that, I could then go for something that followed this sort of guide.
2. Know your hair
   I wanted to get a perm last year. The flat mop look was driving me crazy, so I wanted some body. But I also didn’t want tight curls (did that when I was 16 and regretted being a 16-year-old-brunette-shirley-temple for 2 years). Fortunately my hairdresser told me I’d be wasting my money and my hair - I have fine hair, but a fair amount of it. A body wave perm would have fallen out in a few weeks and set me back a couple of hundred dollars. The hair equivalent of a car wreck was avoided, and I looked at other options.
3. Look for inspiration
   Google images came in handy here - I Google’d Medium Length Hair..Loads of pictures. Piclens was a great way to look through them all as I could scroll through them without having to wait for pages to load. There are also sites on the web that will match your face to styles, or let you upload photos. I didn’t need to go that far, and didn’t want to fork out money for some of these.
4. Print out the style you want
   The picture here is what I take to the hairdresser. They look at it and are able to imitate it. If you have a good hairdresser they will adjust it to suit you better. If your hairdresser is so-so, then they will use this a guide. I take it every time… just in case my stylist isn’t there, and I need a quick cut.
5. If it doesn’t work, try, try again
   If the style doesn’t work, then try another. The difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is about 4 weeks… and if you’re going through this process it is probably because you’re not happy with your existing cut anyway.
6. Tame that Mane - Trim… regularly
   One of the big things about hair is that it grows. One of the ways to dry out your hair is to use loads of product (sprays, mouses, etc). If your hair grows, the style grows out, and you will be using product (usually expensive product) to try and tame it back into the look that you love! So go back and keep it in shape - every 4-6 weeks works for me.

There are probably other tips, but this is the journey that I’ve made over the past 3 months and I have fabulous hair (for me, anyway).

If you want to talk colour, then check out my opinions on Henna as a colour alternative.

Hi - to all those that read this blog, some of the images in this site may break. I’m dropping box.net in an effort to be more frugal (especially since they ditched their free account).

I’ll get it up an running ASAP.

Text of a letter from a kid from Eromanga to Mum and Dad. (For Those of you not in the know, Eromanga is a smalltown, west of Quilpie in the far south west of Queensland )

I am well. Hope youse are too. Tell me big brothers Doug and Phil that the Army is better than workin’ on the farm - tell them to get in bloody quick smart before the jobs are all gone! I wuz a bit slow in settling down at first, because ya don’t hafta get outta bed until 6am. But I like sleeping in now, cuz all ya gotta do before brekky is make ya bed and shine ya boots and clean ya uniform. No bloody cows to milk, no calves to feed, no feed to stack - nothin’!! Ya haz gotta shower though, but its not so bad, coz there’s lotsa hot water and even a light to see what ya doing!

At brekky ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but there’s no kangaroo steaks or possum stew like wot Mum makes. You don’t get fed again until noon and by that time all the city boys are buggered because we’ve been on a ‘route march’ - geez its only just like walking to the windmill in the back paddock!!

This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil with laughter I keep getting medals for shootin’ - dunno why. The bullseye is as big as a bloody possum’s bum and it don’t move and it’s not firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when our big scrubber bull got into their prize cows before the Ekka last year! All ya gotta do is make yourself comfortable and hit the target - it’s a piece of piss!! You don’t even load your own cartridges, they comes in little boxes, and ya don’t have to steady yourself against the rollbar of the roo shooting truck when you reload!

Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys and I gotta be real careful coz they break easy - it’s not like fighting with Doug and Phil and Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza all at once like we do at home after the muster.

Turns out I’m not a bad boxer either and it looks like I’m the best the platoon’s got, and I’ve only been beaten by this one bloke from the Engineers - he’s 6 foot 5 and 15 stone and three pick handles across the shoulders and as ya know I’m only 5 foot 7 and eight stone wringin’ wet, but I fought him till the other blokes carried me off to the boozer.

I can’t complain about the Army - tell the boys to get in quick before word gets around how bloody good it is.

Your loving daughter,

Sheila

For all those that wonder what it takes to get busted (or probably more to the point - not get busted) for driving under the influence of your mobile phone, then check out the rather detailed article from the Singapore Police Force.

In a nutshell, to commit an offense of “handphone driving”, you need to meet the following conditions:

1. the vehicle is in motion; and
2. the driver is holding on to the handphone with one hand; while his other hand is holding the steering wheel and
3. the driver is communicating with any person with that handphone.

Note that you can be committing other offenses if you are driving recklessly or do not appear to be in charge of the vehicle.

This is current as at the date of this post, and as a driver you are responsible for ensuring that you understand the latest laws on this. I’m not your minder or responsible if you get a fine-lah!!!