I Gotta Skip in the Front Yard, or I Did HAve Until This Morning!

Ack Pvvft Pfvt!  I am busy channeling Bill the Cat.

It was Dad's 80th birthday yesterday.  We had his 'partay' at my house, so my smoking rellies could indulge in peace and the toddlers/kids could play and not drive paying patrons up the wall.

Big problem was that I needed to declutter the house.  We are drowning in shit.

I got a fright the other night when I walked past Foxtel and saw previews for an American reality show called 'Hoarders'.  I was horrified.  Dear God these poor people.  It's a horrible condition and I was equally horrified to see that some of these people had kids in these houses.  You couldn't see the floor, walls, in some cases you couldn't even see the ceilings.  These have been instances of pets actually dying in these houses, either by getting squished or trapped.

For a long time, my house has been gadually filling up with clutter.  A lot of it craft related, but a lot of it just general detritus of life.  Kid's things, paperwork, broken or obsolete electronics it has just grown over the years.

The shed of holding was not much help as it looked like the hoarders house, only with plastic crates instead of loose crap.  There was room to carefully back the lawn mower in and put it away again.

Horrible.

Dear God!  Was this where I was headed?

Plus the looming party.

I thought first things first, I will go and clean out the shed.  Every box was sorted into three piles:  Keeping, giving to charity and a 'trash and treasure' pile (which I will sell at a later  date).  This was going OK until I found a box that had managed to accumulate condensation for oh, about two years... 

THere was no way I was putting that in a garbag and into my car.  No.Way.

So I ordered a skip.

Upshot was that I now have made a whole third of the shed clear.  Even more will go when I get to do a trash and treasure day.  I was a bit crapped off with the three day hire though, as I didn't get the skip until 3.30pm Friday, and they came and picked it up first thing this morning, and it was nowhere near full.

I rang and left a message on their answering machine, thanking them for getting it to me Friday, but reminding them that it would be good customer service to actually give people an estimated pick up time, as I had a crapload of stuff I still could have chucked...  Ah well, can't have everything.

I still have along way to go, and Sparta the Wonder Cat is seriously freaked by the whole re-arranging thing going on.  Siamese cats are Aspergergic to the max.  Or maybe it's just Sparta. Hard to say.  But, I am on my way to turn the house around.

I think we will all be better for it in the long run.

I think we will all reap the benefits of a clean house, as it I firmly believe that your house reflects your state of mental health...

Sadly it wasn't that great a holiday for the kids, but they got a few new computer games and apart from going out to the lake and harrassing ducks, and other ways in which I dragged them out into the fresh air - they declared the holidays to be most excellent and not long enough.


My beloved brother and SIL came down for the birthday party and came over to play today.  They got my KNK going again (I thought the control panel was fucked, but it turned out it had only oxidised from lack of use.  A quick rub with a jewellry cleaning cloth and the copper was all sniney again and it now runs better than it ever did.

I have amused myself by making some of Jennie Bean's sliceforms.  Noice, very unique.

I'm off to bed.  Back to work tomorrow.

Weeee! Photoshop is Nothing but Fun

Well, nothing but fun at home.  When I am busting my chops at work trying to do something in CS5.5 that I KNOW how to do in CS3, maybe not so much fun.

The Darlinge has shown me a few very basic restoration things, and I am well on my way to scanning in the first round of the iBook photos.

I am feeling very frustrated at being able to play on the top o' the line version (despite being a Windoze version) at work, and then having to fire up the virtual Windoze on Machismo to run CS3.

But as the Darlinge rightfully points out, I do have a tendency to cargo cult, and whine and obsess about things I should just bloody well get over.

So, I am going to persevere with CS3 on Machismo.  I will also do a minimum of twenty hours training on lynda.com before I even so much as look at an ad for Photoshop Elements 10, let alone THE CS5.5

Also, I shouldn't need the 'better' version until I start coming across things that I actually can't do.

There, I've admitted it.  As I don't have a 'readership' - so what.  But admitting a problem is halfway to fixing it.  Broadcasting your intentions publicly is also a good way of committing to action.

I've posted a few pics on FB and they have been well received by my friends and by my family in particular.  This journey will be fun.  I have only scanned, straightened, cropped and adjusted the light levels on this one.  Oh, and spent half an hour with the bandaid tool taking out teeny tiny spots. It still has a long way to go, but I am reasonably happy.  The original is one of the two and a half by three and a half jobbies.

Nanna and Grandad's Wedding 1933 (first rough restoration)

But I am going to have to ask my cousins and Aunts and Uncles if they have copies of pictures, as my Mum and Dad got ditzed out of so much, let alone the family pictures.  I refuse to think that there are only two pictures of my Nanna and Grandad's wedding for example.  No, my parents let everyone else in the family walk all over them.  I hate that.  Well, now's my chance to try and rectify the mistakes of the past.  But in a healing way, hopefully, not in a let's start another family feud way 8-).

Also with the duplication technology, people don't have to even borrow the originals any more.  I think that was a bit of a sticking point with the non-sharing behaviour...

Toodle Pip!

Why is there a DropDown Menu on the Title bar of a New Post?

And other such mysteries.  Never written a post using Star Wars Vol 4, Star Trek V or Dr Who.

Seriously Blogger, you're freaking me out.

Although way back in the day when I used TypePad to host my now dead blog, I whined about the interface in the body of my blog and got a response from someone at TypePad the very next day.  That threw me.  Jeez people!

Work continues to drive me crazy.  Bills and money continue to drive me crazy.

BUT I have been gifted with a whole raft of e-books from a very generous friend.  Yay?  Yay for me, not Yay for the housework of my immediate family...

I was also pleasantly distracted with the new shiny Apple toy iBook.  I am gonna have such fun with this one!  I don't even have to cargo cult, as it's FREE!!!!!!

I will be blogging about my iBook adventure.  I really want to see if I can make a go of this family project.

Mind you, the downfall is that I am the only Mac child in my family of dedicated PC users.  This could be a showstopper, but I will persevere.

Not much happening on the creative work front, as by the time I walk through the door (usually at 7.00pm) I am too buggered from the fuckery of work that I can only sit and craft in my head.  Physically cannot summon the energy to do it.

It gets worse though.  I was going to take the back end of the January holidays off to be with the kids at home, and was asked to please, Please, PLEASE work half days as they don't have anyone to cover for me.  This is also in addition to me having well over 90 hours of flex that I haven't ever 'claimed'.

Fuck.

I said yes of course.  Sucker that I am. But now I can't have a real 'holiday' until Easter.

Fuck.


I had wanted to continue on with teaching the kids to quilt.  I wanted to take them roller skating in Civic, go to the National Gallery, National Museum.  Things that the kids and I actually LIKE doing!

I'm still going to try and do some of this, but I still have all the usual haircuts, uniform, school shoes, stationery/textbooks crap to squeeze in.  In the afternoons.

Not happy Jan.

Oh dear this has turned into an epic whinge.

Tomorrow will be better.  The Darlinge is at Tidbinbilla which is a bit sad for us, as it's nice when he's home.  But, I'm going to soak some fabric in BubbleJetSet and iron it to freezer paper, ready to print out all of those groovy pics I was working on last week.  These are going to be made into small practice quilty thangs (TM).

I can but try.

But if perchance I am discovered sitting at the table, coffee going cold, looking with glazed eyes into the space just right to the tele and drool running out of the corner of my mouth... Relax.  I'm mentally crafting.  Really I am.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to the world at large.

May North Korea come to its senses, the USA come to realise they have a pretty damn good President and stop  hamstringing him and may Julia grow some and stop self immolating.

May I stop procrastinating about everything and get out there and get with it.

May The Darlinge and I lose a crapload (metric of course) of weight.

May I help my kids reach their full potential and every single day know how loved they are (that goes for The Darlinge as well)

I'm sitting here listening to the distant thud of fireworks, with Lady Gaga's Edge of Glory playing loudly on Machismo.

What  great way to bring in 2012.

Right.

Off to bed then.

Hello World

Here it is.

The obligatory 'Hello World' blog post.

Just to see what I am doing.  I wanted to use Wordpress, but The Darlinge said I should use Blogger.  So here I am trying out the Blogger software.

I am slightly hamstrung by Machismo's Apple keyboard.  Very bizarre to try and type on, but very schmick.  I just have to get used to it.  But I probably will get the one that has the numerical pad, as really hate operating without that.  Kinda what you get used to when you do data entry and web work at your place of work.

Oh, and Machismo?  My little iMac.  I say little as opposed to the Darlinge's HUGE iMac in his room.  His weapon of mass computing.

Anyway, that's enough of the blather.  Not that anyone's reading.  Don't really care, as I am only creating a blog as somewhere to empty my head.  Cheaper than therapy really.  Although that's what I used to say about my quilting...

Oh yes.  One more obligatory first post on a  new blog.  I faithfully promise I will blog every single day...   ...   ...   BOOOOWAHAHAHAHHAHA!

Not.