The end of an era

When I first started blogging back in 2009, I did so with the intention that only my family and real life friends would be reading it. I figured blogging was an easy way to avoid having the exact same "So, how's Canberra?" conversation five times a week.

As is usually the way, writing a blog leads to reading dozens and dozens of other blogs. Somewhere along the way, I stumbled across Rachael King's blog. And that led to a whole group of other blogs. And they all had one thing on common: they were all members of a website called 20Something Bloggers.

So, after some further investigation and a small case of "oh God, what am I doing??", I signed up. And it changed my life forever. The forums were equal parts hilarious, feelsy and ridiculous. The chat was...usually pretty dead at times I was able to hang out in there, but it was still hilarious and over the top and brilliant.

When 20SB announced that they were holding a summit in Chicago about two weeks before I was planning on going to the US in 2011, I made the rather rash and spontaneous decision to change my plans and go. To a city where I knew no one. To attend a summit with a bunch of people I'd never met before. I didn't even know if anyone I knew was actually going to go, but I took the chance anyway.

And sure, it was nerve wracking. And sure, I basically spent half of the cocktail party sitting in a corner in terror. But it was so, so worth it.

So many of my best friends came out of the 20SB community. People that I talk to every day. People that I collaborate with every day. People whose faces I get to see on a daily basis every August. People who understand. People who are there when I need someone to talk to. People who send me ridiculous emails and text messages and tweets. People in countries all over the world who I can't live without.

Tomorrow, the 20SB community is closing down. And though I haven't been active there since I turned 30, I'll miss it enormously. So here's to us, 20SBers. Life may not have always been easy, but we've had each other's backs the whole way. And I'm grateful for each and every one of you.

Except that girl who cheated me out of a chicken trophy. I hope she stands on a Lego*.

K xx


*What? No, I'm not even remotely bitter about something that happened three years ago........

Technical difficulties

Contrary to appearances, I *am* still alive. (Although only just. My arrival in Orlando coincided with the arrival of the world's most arse about cold. It started with a cough and is ending with the sniffles. GO FIGURE) It just turns out that while the hotel we booked in Florida does have free wifi as promised, said wifi is only available in the lobby. And forcing yourself downstairs to write a blog post in a room full of strangers when all you want to do is sit in bed in your PJs is really freaking hard.

Anyway. I'm having a blast, hanging out with my BFF Sara, as well as my bloggy BFFs Lor, Alice and Emily. Today, we went here:

It's okay to be jealous. I would be if I hadn't just been there.

Mostly, I wanted to tell you guys that I'm still alive, and also to say an absolutely enormous thank you to the fantastic community over at 20SB for handing me not one, but TWO Bootleg Awards - Blogger I'd Most Like to Get a Drink With, and Best Female Overall. It's a huge honour, and I'm aiming to have drinks with as many of you as possible. Except I'll probably have lemonade because I have an increasing tendency to have one alcoholic drink and then feel the need to go to sleep on the table.

This need was extra strong last night at dinner. Turns out you probably shouldn't have a margarita shortly after taking cold and flu tablets AND cough syrup. Whoops??

Love you guys like whoa, and will update you properly when I can,

K xx

Ask me anything

I'm going to go ahead and apologise in advance for what happens in the second half of this video.........

So yeah. Ask me pretty much anything!! And send me your questions by noon Australian Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, October 2nd. That's 3am October 2nd Greenwich Mean Time, or 10pm Eastern time on October 1st for the US. (Sorry if you live in a state that does Central, Mountain or Pacific time - that's too many time zones for my brain to calculate right now!!)

Please help me make my 500th post vaguely interesting. Pretty please????????????

K xx

PS. Thanks to the gang over at 20SB for suggesting a bunch of different ideas when I had absolutely no clue what to do for my 500th post. I'm sorry to disappoint you all by the fact that I won't be creating a Doctor Who episode in which I play all the characters...

20SB Blog Swap: Childhood Summer Vacation

Hey guys! I've got something a bit different for you today. 20SB are doing one of their regular blog swaps, and considering it's the middle of winter here, I figured that it was an EXCELLENT time to write about summer vacations from back in the good old days! 

I was lucky enough to be paired with Teacher Girl, whose blog I've been following for ages! She's got a great story for you guys about her favourite childhood vacation. Meanwhile, I'm over at her blog talking about Roald Dahl audiobooks and how watching the cricket led to child labour. You should check it out! Hell, y'all should check out her blog full stop, because it's great.

Teacher Girl is a 20-something anonymous life style blogger who writes at www.teachergirlblogs.com. There, she deals with everything from being a high school English teacher and freelance photographer, to dating and the uncertainty of life in her 20′s. She is sarcastic, funny, passionate, and kind-hearted. In her free time she loves writing, taking pictures, dancing, eating, sleeping, and traveling. Oh, and she might be a tad obsessed with her cat.

I can remember the last few days of school leading up to summer as a child. We would all complain about how hot the weather had gotten and what our plans were for the vacation. I was always instantly jealous when my friends spoke about their plans to travel and go to places far away. My family was poor, and we pretty much always stayed around home.

The summer I was twelve though, my mom sent me to New York, my birthplace (we left when I was seven), alone. I will always remember this summer for many reasons. It was the first time I felt “grown-up.” I flew on the plane alone, I made plans to stay with various friends’ families for a series of days, and I was completely responsible for myself.

For the first part of that summer I stayed with my mom’s best friend (and my former pre-school teacher) in the heart of the city. It was amazing because she went to work all day and I had her Manhattan apartment to myself. I explored the neighborhood of the Upper East Side and spent a ridiculous amount of time people watching from her window. After a few days, I was off to my friend Samara’s house, a penthouse apartment that took up the entire floor of an amazing building overlooking central park. Her rich mother kept us occupied with bagels and the computer game version of “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego,” which we played on Samara’s bright orange Macintosh desktop computer.

After Samara’s, I spent the last part of my time there with my childhood best friend Mia on Long Island. We went exploring each day, and it was in those wooded areas on the island, on an old abandoned mattress, that I smoked my first cigarette ever. I also watched MTV for the first time (my mother didn’t allow it) and fell in love with Rap and R&B music, “Mo Money, Mo Problems” becoming our summer anthem. Her mother took us to Manhattan, and we explored and went shopping. I purchased my first pair of non-kid size jeans, a size zero pair of light washed Levi’s, and some of my very first CDs. In the summer afternoons we played in her backyard, running through the sprinklers and catching fireflies in mason jars. I had never been happier in my life.

On my finals days in New York, I had one last endeavor planned: I was going to see my real father. I don’t remember how I got in touch with him, but I somehow made plans for him to pick me up from Mia’s house. In the car, I didn’t know what to say to this man that I hadn’t seen in 10 years, and so I made small talk, showing him my report card with straight A’s in the hope that he’d be impressed and proud. I asked him if he knew when my birthday was, convinced he must not have known since I’d never received a card or a gift, but he did know and that hurt more. He took me to his apartment and I met his then girlfriend (now wife and mother of their two kids) and I marveled at his big TV and nice car (we were broke and he never paid his child support because he always claimed poverty in court).

He took me to his brother’s house, my uncle, and I met him and some of my cousins. Then he took me to a movie, “Men in Black,” and we didn’t talk because you don’t talk in movies. It was then I realized that this man didn’t want to talk to me, because who takes their daughter they haven’t seen in 10 years to the movies. When the film was over, he gave me $20 and left me at the mall since Mia was meeting me there. I would only ever see him one more time after that moment and he never bothered to keep in touch.

A few days later I went home, forever changed by those summer experiences. I wore my jeans on the first day of seventh grade, and I felt powerful. I hoped in my heart that I would go back one day to live, perhaps for college, in the city that had changed me in so many ways.

Although it has been fourteen years since that summer and I have never lived in New York again (by the time I went to college it didn’t make sense for a lot of reasons for me to go there), I am still a frequenter of the city. My family and many friends still reside there, and every time I visit I am enchanted. I am home.

Thanks, Teacher Girl! I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did. I'm hoping 20SB does another swap soon, because I can't wait to read all the different stories that have come out of this one.

And for now, I'm off to see if I can find a version of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" online, because I loved the crap out of that game, and had completely forgotten about its existence until now I read TG's post!! 

K xx

On internet friendships

(I was originally planning on writing this for my 400th post, which is coming up very soon. But I'm feeling extra schmaltzy this evening, so you get it now instead!) 

When you're a blogger, there are certain things that you get used to. It becomes perfectly normal to share stories of public humiliation or total heartbreak on the internet. You become adept at becoming insta-friends with a person you've known for months/years online but never met before RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND. Mentioning blogs and Twitter in everyday conversation becomes second nature. And you sigh when people tell you that you can't possibly form real friendships with people on the internet. Because those people aren't real, and they could be ANYBODY, and how could you possibly know them?

I call bullshit. Yes, it's true that online friendships aren't the same. You can't turn up at the house of an internet friend with booze and chocolate when they're having a crappy day or going through a break up. You can't attend birthdays, weddings, or baby showers. You can't go to the movies with them, because (at least in my experience) they live on the other side of the world.

But this doesn't mean that you can't have real friendships with them. I've had people say to me that my internet friends can't possibly know me as well as my "real" friends. To them I say this: You're exactly right. In some cases, they know me better. And so I want to say thank you to them.

To Kat, who was willing to sign up to spend a week in Thailand with me and meet me for the first time at the airport. And who was willing to visit a millionty museums with me in the US. Where's our next trip going to be to??

To Lor and Sweeney. An hour hanging out at the 20SB cocktail party in Chicago, and we were being force fed chunks of ice cream sandwich by a bouncer, and being asked "What time do the panties come off?" by a crazy man on the street. You can't get much more real than that. We'll always have mac and bonfire!

To Deidre, who knew me well enough after an hour-long lunch to suggest ongoing Dessert Days, and who agrees with me that Bill Pullman's hair deserves equal credit in his movies.

To Gina, who shares my love of books and movies, and always has the time to have a conversation on Twitter or Facebook or via email, even though she's raising three kids and doing a Masters.

To Alice, who just plain *gets it*. All of it.

To Kim, who turned my "something fun and kind of bluey-greeny. Hey, that reminds me of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey and now my brain's in a David Tennant place, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, DOCTOR WHO IS AWESOME!!!!!" instructions into the amazingly perfect design you see on my little corner of the interwebs. And who knows me well enough to know when I'll get on with her friends like a house on fire, as happened when I met up with Caro this afternoon. 

To Pink Gingham Girl, who shares my love of Pacey Witter Dawson's Creek.

To Lauren, who was willing to take me on my word that I wasn't an axe murderer, and drive from New York to Boston with me.

To Emmy, with whom I can squee about Broadway musicals, and who was willing to jump on the Doctor Who train so that she'd know what the Hell the rest of us were talking about. 

To Tim, for having the world's most amazing stories and for being America's Greatest Ambassador.

And to my BFF, Nikki, without whom I would have no one to rant to about the dramas of grad school, public transport, and Spooks. 

I'm enormously grateful to have each and every one of you in my life. I love you guys like whoa. <3

</schmaltz>
K xx

Thank you. Also, I vlogged.

This morning, I woke up to a bunch of tweet saying "Congratulations!!". Being slightly brain addled at stupid o'clock in the morning (okay, FINE. It was 9am. I'm unemployed!), it took me a while to work out that I've been voted 20SB's featured blogger of the month! There's a possibility that I Kermit flailed with excitement while still in bed.

So to honour the occasion, I vlogged. You're welcome.

And I'd very much like to thank Youtube for selecting the most flattering screenshot of all time. *sigh* (Oh, and contrary to appearances, I'm not actually a vampire. I just get sunburnt and then go back to being the palest person on the planet.)

Here's the accent vlog details:

Say this:

Aunt, route, wash, oil, theater, iron, salmon, caramel, fire, water, sure, data, ruin, crayon, toilet, New Orleans, pecan, both, again, probably, spitting image, Alabama, lawyer, coupon, mayonnaise, syrup, pajamas, caught

Answer these:

What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?

What is the bug that curls into a ball when you touch it?

What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?

What do you call gym shoes?

What do you say to address a group of people?

What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?

What do you call your grandparents?

What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?

What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?

What is the thing you use to change the TV channel?

Oh, and I also wanted to tell you guys that I thought of a category I left out of my crazy-people-at-the-gym list last week. (I said it in my first attempt at the vlog, and then completely forgot to mention it subsequently. Oh well....) Anyway, the category I left out was this:

The Woman Who Refuses to Bring a Handbag
I witnessed this the other day. She had her keys, her phone, her gym membership card, and I have no idea what else SHOVED DOWN THE FRONT OF HER BRA. Quite how she exercised while being stabbed in the boob by her keys I will never know.

So thank you again to everyone who voted for me, and I hope you enjoyed my awkward talking-with-my-hands vlogging. I love you guys a butt load.

K xx
PS. Thanks to everyone on Twitter for persuading me to actually post this vlog <3

Wow!!

Well. Today has been kind of an interesting day filled with unexpected stuff. I got up this morning to find out that the 20SB Bootleg award finalists have been released. This is always a fun time of year, because I love giving some recognition to my favourite fellow 20SBers! But this time? I want to say an ENORMOUS thank you, because I'm nominated for "Blogger I'd most like to get a drink with"!! It's such a huge honour to be nominated, especially when I'm up against such amazing people as Sweeney and Miss Sassy Pants. So thank you to anyone who nominated me. And eternal love and never ending hugs to anyone who votes for me!! (If you're a member of 20SB and you want to vote for me (<3), you can do so here)

Then this afternoon, Ness and I went to the movies. We had lunch beforehand, and while walking through the food court, a 12 year old boy watched me walk past, then turned to his friend and said "Oh my God, I think that was Kim Kardashian!"

WHAT. THE. FUCK?

In what universe do I look like Kim Kardashian?!

Exhibit A:

Me

Exhibit B:

Kim Kardashian. Also, source

Yeah... I got nothing. Well, besides the fact that we both have spectacular racks... (Also? I actually Google Image'd Kim Kardashian for these purposes. THE THINGS I DO FOR YOU GUYS.)

Has anyone else been compared to someone they don't bear even the slightest resemblance to?!

K xx

101 in 1001 #77

I have a confession to make: I actually crossed this off the list a few days before I went to the US in August. I just completely forgot to write about it!

Anyway, task 77 was to get business cards for my blog. And I did:

What do you think? Not too shabby, for five minutes worth of design, huh? Aaaaaaaand of course now that I've had 500 business cards made (although I distributed a small chunk of them at the 20SB Summit in Chicago!), I've gone and bought my own URL.

OF COURSE. Awesome planning, past me! *sigh*

Oh well. They weren't very expensive, so if I feel the need to replace them in the future, it won't be the end of the world!

What do you guys think?

K xx

Awesome sauce: A 20SB Summit recap

Yeah, yeah, I'm an epic slacker. The 20SB Summit was a full week ago and I'm only just getting around to writing about it... #timelinessfail

It's hard to believe, as I sit here melting into a puddle in Denver, that it was a whole week ago that I was sitting in Chicago furiously scribbling notes, listening to truly inspiring people, making new friends, and generally revelling in the knowledge that I'm not the only 20-something in the world who has NO idea what they're doing (*is relieved*).

I, like many others, was somewhat hesitant in the beginning. I had fears that it was going to be more of what I heard at Blogopolis only a couple of weeks before I left - entire days of how to work with brands, how to monetise your blog, the importance of SEO. I don't think I've ever been so glad to be wrong.

The two keynote speeches (by Scott Belsky and Jenny Blake) were fabulous, and applicable to life across the board, not just to blogging. And I know the whole room could relate when Jenny Blake talked about how between you and a big goal is "the fire pit of failure and death". (I wish to God I had a picture of her slide for you. But the downside of buying a $10 phone is that it doesn't have a built in camera, which makes taking pictures of things like Powerpoint slides rather more complicated!)

The sessions I attended focused on growing a community, integrating photography, collaboration, organising offline events from online communities, and establishing boundaries. As with Blogopolis, there was one speaker that was a stand out for me. At Blogopolis, it was Darren Rowse - Problogger himself. At the 20SB Summit, it was Ben Boudreau. His session "Oh no, I've said too much" was hilarious, while being informative at the same time. I only wish I hadn't been too much of a chicken to introduce myself afterwards. We *totally* could have bonded over having weird accents and coming from countries that have Queen Elizabeth on the money... *sigh*

The true sign of success for the first ever 20SB Summit? When our fearless leader DShan made his closing remarks, said "That's a wrap", and NO ONE MOVED. No one wanted it to be over.

I learnt so much from the Summit. To tell people your ideas so that you're accountable on following through. To be yourself. To engage with your community offline as well as on. To be vulnerable and push yourself outside your comfort zone in what you write. That participation matters. To think about what it is in a situation that caught your attention, and photograph THAT. And, most importantly, that bloggers are pretty much the most awesome people of EVER.

So thank you to all the sponsors for making it possible. To all the speakers for delivering content that hit the nail on the head. And thank you to DShan and the 20SB team for organising a truly amazing weekend. If it weren't so damned expensive to fly over here, I'd sign up for next year's summit in a heartbeat.

K xx

Ferris Bueller, you're my hero

I don't know about you guys, but when I think of Chicago, there are a couple of things that immediately spring to mind:
1. While You Were Sleeping.
2. The Blues Brothers.
3. Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Given that, I had high hopes for adventures while I was here. And Chicago, you delivered in fine form. Okay, so I didn't exactly ride a parade float down Dearborn Street, but it's been pretty damned memorable. Thursday was filled with jetlag, shopping and spontaneous computer purchasing. On Friday, I had every intention of going to the Art Institute. I decided I was going to walk around the lake to get there. And by the time I pulled out the map to check which street I needed, I was a couple of blocks past it. So I figured I'd go to the Field Museum. Only then I got to the museum campus and went "Oooooh, aquarium!!". So I wound up going there instead #decisionmakinggenius

The aquarium was pretty fun though. There were poison dart frogs and everything.

See?

Friday night was when things really got interesting. Because it was the pre-20SB Summit cocktail party at the Crimson Lounge of the Sax Hotel. So I got tarted dressed up and walked over there (which was when the pavement ate the heel of my shoe). I was anticipating all kinds of awkward standing around, seeing as I'm not the type to go and introduce myself to people. But it was all avoided thanks to Helena, who saw me standing there like the introvert I am and rescued me from myself. (Thanks lovely!!)

The party itself was fun - there were Viking hats and free booze and photo booths and all manner of good things. But the bestest part of all was that I FIIIIIIIIIIIIINALLY got to meet Lor and Sweeney and Penny. #OMGSOEXCITING An entire packet of Tim Tams *may* have been consumed.

The real story, though, started after the party. Penny and I were staaaaaarving, so we wandered around looking for food. Then the following conversation happened:
Sweeney: What time is it?
Lor: I think about 9.30?
Random possibly homeless dude walking down the street: Actually, it's almost 10.00, ladies!
All of us: Um, thanks.
Random possibly homeless dude walking down the street: So, what time do the panties come off?
Me: *snorts*
Lor and Sweeney: *horror*
Penny: How about NEVER O'CLOCK!!
Bouncer guy standing nearby: Did he REALLY just say that?!?!

Shortly thereafter, hysterical laughter set in. It was only made worse by the bouncer at the bar we tried to go to insisting that he wouldn't let us in until he'd fed us each a piece of the Mrs. Field's icecream sandwich cookie thing he was eating. There's a SMALL possibility that we threw Sweeney to the wolves and insisted that he feed her the piece of cookie sandwich thing and just hand pieces of it to the rest of us. I like to think of it as America delivering her with all the batshit craziness it possibly could before she leaves for Paris this week. So Sweeney, we were purely doing our part to make the weekend as memorable as possible! ;)

Sadly, my flight to Denver is about to board, so the rest of the weekend's insanity will have to wait until another time. Still, I think Ferris Bueller would be proud. Don't you?

K xx

Chicago, part 1 of a millionty

Holy shitballs, you guys. I have SO many stories to tell you, and absolutely no idea where to start... While I was at dinner earlier, I actually made a list of all the stuff that's happened since I arrived that I want to blog about, and it's two pages long. So I'm going to go with bullet pointing some of it purely to avoid writing the longest posts in history.

• Chicago is kind of anti-escalators. I caught the train into the city from O'Hare and lugging my suitcase up a  bazillion stairs was not fun.
• Deep dish pizza takes a really freaking long time to cook. Especially when you haven't slept in 26 hours and go out in search of dinner at 8.45pm.
• Despite seeming like the healthy option at the time, broccoli has no place in/on a pizza...
• I lasted a whopping 24 hours connecting to Wifi on my phone before going to Best Buy and spending $250 on a shiny new Netbook. On the plus side, it will make blogging a lot easier! 
• Despite saying that you're only in the country for six weeks and that you'll be travelling, the serving wench person will still try to upsell you to a $900 state of the art laptop. Urm. NO...
• When you buy a prepaid mobile phone that costs $10, you get what you pay for.
• American TV seems to show nothing but Law & Order: SVU. I swear, all I've seen in the past 5 days is that, adverts and baseball.
• The collective noun for a group of jellyfish is a smack. Random, right?!
• Chicago apparently has really wide pavement cracks and hates my shoes. On my way to the pre-20SB Summit party on Friday night, the heel of one shoe got stuck in a pavement crack. When I got home hours later, I found that the end of my heel had actually been PULLED OFF. So somewhere, in the depths of central Chicago, is the end of my heel...
• I can't for the life of me master the art of walking on the right.
• I'm pretty sure that the only reason I haven't been hit by a car is because I've been ensuring someone else enters the pedestrian crossing first just in case I've looked the wrong way and someone is running the light...
• I kind of suck at map reading.

And I believe that covers things up to the pre-20SB Summit party, which was where things REALLY got interesting. So I think that's a story for another post.

How's things with you guys?

K xx

Two weeks to go!

So I feel like death warmed up right now. Some time between yesterday afternoon and this morning, I developed a delightful cold. I tried very hard to find you a clip of this, but was unsuccessful so you'll just have to read the quote instead. It pretty much sums up my life at the moment:

"I'm fine, my nose was just overflowing with awesome and I had to get some of it out."
Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother (season 2, episode 11. And thanks to Lauren for putting that quote as her Facebook status and reminding me of its existence!!)

Anythesecoldandflutabletsaren'tworking, it took me a while to realise that it's two weeks today until I head off to the US. OH. MY. GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD. That is so insanely soon!

How could I not use an excited Jake Gyllenhaal GIF?? 

Okay, so I'm pretty much all organised in terms of booking stuff. I've got all my flights sorted. All my hotels are organised. I have a new dress for Megan's wedding (two, in fact!). I'm filling in my visa waiver form thingy and writing this at the same time, because even though my head is filled with snot, I'm awesome at multitasking. (Incidentally, I *really* want to know if anyone ever answers "Yes" to the question about whether you've ever been involved in espionage, terrorist activities or genocide...)

But I hadn't really realised that it was so SOON, you know? So now I'm all crazy excited and thinking of all the stuff I still have to do before I go, like get my hair cut so I don't look *quite* so much like a crazy person with two inches worth of split ends. And buy a 50mm prime lens because I just got my bond back from the real estate agent and I feel rich it'll definitely come in handy while travelling. And buy 500 packets of Tim Tams because I promised them to everyone and now have to deliver. And actually, you know, PACK.

Obviously, I'm not even remotely excited by the prospect of a 15 hour plane flight and a millionty six hour layover in LAX (the world's most boring airport) before I can board my flight to Chicago. But once the torment of the flight and the subsequent jetlag is over, it's going to be FUCKING AWESOME. I get to hang out with old friends, like Megan and Lyndsy and Annie, who all live in the US and I never get to see them. I get to travel with my BFFs, Kat and Sara (and I'm nearly EXPLODING with excitement about that part of it!). And I get to actually *meet* so many amazing bloggy/Twittery friends, like Lor and Lauren and Nicole and a ton of other people that I can't remember right now.

Okay, so the trip won't be QUITE as awesome as it would be if I could (guilt trip alert!) also meet up with Nikki and Bi, but you can't win 'em all (I love you guys - #pleasecometoMelbourneASAPkthxbai)! I'll make up for it by going to a shit ton of museums (that's the new collective noun. I've just decreed it), and going to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, and going to see a show on Broadway, and shopping because the Australian dollar is actually worth MORE than the US dollar for the first time since I was born* and things that cost like $5 in the US cost $25 here and blah blah blahbitty blah, I'm so stuffy, give me a scone. (Sorry. I have seven seasons worth of Buffy quotes in my brain and sometimes they just break out...)

Basically? I'm doing a happy dance around the house. Or at least I would be if I wasn't having periodic fits of hacking up a lung... Now if you'll excuse me, I gave my dog a bath earlier and now he's giving me an "I will cut you" face, so I think I should probably hide for my own safety... o.O

K xx
*I'm pretty sure that's accurate but am too lazy to check, so don't quote me on it...

101 in 1001 #28

Kirsti is a bad blogger... Kirsti has been slacking off in rather spectacular fashion since moving back to Melbourne. But after yesterday, I'm going to try my absolute best to do better. Because yesterday, I attended Nuffnang Blogopolis 2011 at Federation Square.

It was a great day - 300 bloggers in one room is pretty inspiring. There was a lot of information about working with brands that I found more than a little terrifying (somehow, I don't think anyone will ever pay me $500 for a blog post about their product!), and I now strongly suspect that there's a large cross over between people who are "Yay, Apple products!!" and "Yay, Wordpress!". But there was also a lot of great stuff about photography and content and the state of the Australian blogosphere.

The stand out for me was, by far, the presentation by Darren Rowse of Problogger. For starters, he mentioned that he's a total introvert and so always goes to events like Blogopolis with five questions in mind to ask people as ice breakers. Needless to say, sometime in the next two weeks, I'm going to be coming up with five questions to get me out of my little introvert sit-in-the-corner box at the 20SB Summit in Chicago (squeeeeeeee!!!).

There was a ton of tweeting. To the point where I was following the Twitter feed more than I was following what the speakers were saying (whoops...). But it was kind of understandable because a lot of the tweets were HILARIOUS. And I got to meet/hear some amazing Aussie bloggers, like Carly (FINALLY!! We'll have to meet up properly soon), Eden (who's a key note speaker at BlogHer next week - WOW!), Andrea and Susan.

Spending as much time as I do on 20SB means that a lot of my bloggy friends are based in the US. So I'm really glad I went to Blogopolis because it's reintroduced me to the Australian blogosphere. And I'm pretty excited about that.

Plus, it crosses "Go to a blog conference" off my 101 in 1001 list - score! :)

Have you guys been to any blog conferences or meet ups? Also, who's going to 20SB? Because it's going to be AWESOME!!

K xx

I-I-I so excited!

(Yes, I just paraphrased Rebecca Black. Deal with it.) You know how for the past however long I've been wibbling on about my trip to the US? Yeah, today I actually did something about it.

I've been looking at flights on and off for a while now, but haven't actually followed through on booking. Until today. Because today I realised that I had a ton of frequent flyer points sitting around gathering dust. So I figured I'd check how many points it would take to fly to the US. Well, I didn't have enough for a return flight, but I did have enough for one way. Course, having enough points doesn't mean that there's a seat available. By some miracle, there WAS a frequent flyer seat available on the day I wanted! So I started looking into flights home again.

Apparently it was my day for bargains, because I found a flight from LA to Melbourne for $800. Sure, I have to fly via Auckland, but for that amount of money, I'll take it! So I've wound up with a return flight to LA for $1100 ($300 worth of taxes on the frequent flyer points flight). Which is almost $1000 less than what I was anticipating having to pay. SCORE!!!!!!!!

Anyway, I still have a ton of stuff to book (like my internal flights, for instance!), but this is a massive step in the right direction.

Hurry the hell up, August. I'm WAY too excited to wait much longer! If you've missed it, here's where I'm going:

Chicago, for the 20SB summit:

Source

Denver, for Megan's wedding:

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Washington DC with Kat:

New York, with Kat:

Boston, also with Kat:

Source

There isn't enough squeeing in the world to demonstrate my levels of excitement. I have so much geeky fun planned - museums aplenty, a shit-ton of awesome things to photograph, and eating pizza on Beacon Street. (If you get that last reference, you get a million bonus points)

To my American lovelies - anyone know a good website to use for booking domestic flights? Do any of them search the discount airlines???

Also, I'm bringing you all Tim Tams. You're welcome... ;)
K xx

30 Days of Books - Day 14

Oh my God, y'all. Is it just me or is this the LONGEST FREAKING WEEK IN HISTORY????? *sigh* Anyway, in addition to today being stupidly, insanely long, I also made a decision. I'm going to the 20SB Summit in Chicago. It's in late August, and I'm meeting Kat for ten days of Washington, New York and Boston shenanigans in early September, before heading to Megan's wedding in Colorado later in the month.

I was planning on spending a week or so in Colorado hanging out with Megan before meeting Kat, so it's really not that much more effort to fly over a little earlier and hang out with some 20SBers! *is excited but mildly terrified all at the same time*

What was my point again? Oh, right. Books.

Day 14 - Your favourite book by your favourite author

MINI-RADCLIFFE!!!!

David Copperfield. Sure, it's a bazillion pages long (okay, 879 pages), and the protagonist is kind of clueless (hello, he's friends with Steerforth, who's a manipulative creep!), but the supporting characters are ridiculously memorable - Uriah Heep, Betsey Trotwood or Mr Micawber, anyone? The idea of a child that young being sent out to work (at a paste factory, no less!) is completely foreign to us now, but what's worse is that it's semi-autobiographical. Wowsers. it being Dickens, we know that all the evil types will get their comeuppances, while the hero will end up wildly successful and happy. Oh, also? A bunch of the characters become wildly successful in Australia. Hells yeah they did!

Plus, the BBC adaptation from 1999 is AWESOME. How can you go wrong with a Dickens adaptation that features Harry Potter, Professor McGonagall, Madame Hooch, Dolores Umbridge, Gandalf and the Vicar of Dibley? EXACTLY.

K xx

Day 01 - The best book you read last year

Day 02 - A book you've read more than 3 times

Day 03 - Your favourite series

Day 04 - Your favourite book of your favourite series

Day 05 - A book that makes you happy

Day 06 - A book that makes you sad

Day 07 - Most underrated book

Day 08 - Most overrated book

Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving

Day 10 - Favourite classic book

Day 11 - A book you hated

Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't any more

Day 13 - Your favourite writer

Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer

Day 15 - Favourite male character

Day 16 - Favourite female character

Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book

Day 18 - A book that disappointed you

Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie

Day 20 - Favourite romance book

Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood

Day 22 - Favourite book you own

Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't

Day 24 - A book you wish more people would've read

Day 25 - A character you can relate to the most

Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something

Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending

Day 28 - Favourite title

Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked

Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

Things I'm grateful for

For some reason, I'm feeling spectacularly reflective this evening. So, without further ado, here we have a short list of things I'm grateful for:

• That the weather is cool enough this week to have soup for dinner.
• That, despite all the crap going on at work, I have managers who support me and are willing to help me work through all the options
• That the redback spider my housemate D noticed yesterday is OUTSIDE the house, not inside
• Reaper. It makes me laugh
• My parents. They may drive me completely batshit crazy on a regular basis, but I know that they'll support me whatever I do. And the fact that if I ring my Dad and say "Can you collect 20L of Yarra water for us?", he'll say "Sure! How do I get it to Canberra?" rather than "Will I get danger money?" like a normal person.
• Kat. Not only for our mutual misery society, but for our (in the very early stage of planning) forthcoming trip to the US - woop woop!!!!
• Two Guys and a Girl. Ryan Reynolds and Nathan Fillion in one show? Hells yes.
• Chocolate. Nothing more need be said.
• The Registration, Conservation and Mount Making teams. For the most part, Curatorial don't understand my epic nerdiness. But the others? The number of conversations we've had about Firefly, Dr. Horrible, Buffy, True Blood, and Star Wars are rather astonishing.
• 20SB. It's nice to know that there are other people out there who are equally neurotic/nerdy/obsessed with baking!
• The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board for coming up with this. My arteries are hardening already. Yum!

Well, I think that probably does it for now. Your regular snark/sarcasm/complaining shall recommence shortly ;)

K xx

Travel adventures - The Inca Trail

Today, I'm participating in the 20SB blogger carnival, which involves posting about your best travel adventure. I don't know quite know how they define adventure, so who knows if my story about trying to change a flat tyre on the side of the interstate in Tennessee and having to be helped out by a random and slightly scary trucker (my mum started singing Duelling Banjos when I told her...) counts as adventure or just the prelude to a horror movie...

So I'm going with the Inca Trail in 2008. It was the hardest three days of my entire life (well, apart from the whole traumatic saga of the next day with Nessa winding up in hospital, but that was a different kind of hard), but boy, was the destination worth the work.

In hindsight, I was pretty freaking unprepared. Sure, I'd been working out three days a week for a year, but I was pretty half-arsed about it (secretly, I was hoping that I could persuade Ness to take the train to Machu Picchu rather than doing the Inca Trail...). Riding an exercise bike for half an hour three times a week doesn't really help with the Inca Trail. And yes, I did a three day hike a couple of months before. But hiking in Australia was never going to be anything like hiking in Peru, even if we did do it with 20kg packs... I sucked pretty badly at the test hike near Mt Feathertop. And that was at around 2,000m closer to sea level.


Well, hello Mt. Feathertop. Compared to the Andes, you're a speck on the radar...

Day 1 started out well. It was reasonably flat, and we had some spectacular views. And I got to take photos of ruins - what more could an archaeology nerd want?! Then we reached the test hill. If you don't reach the top of it in 20 minutes, they deem you not fit enough and force you to turn back. I made it well within the 20 minutes (I think...), but it took me a disturbing amount of time to get my breath back. Which I covered up by taking photos of the ruins you could see from the top... After lunch, the trail started heading slightly uphill, and I started to fall further and further behind. By the end of the day, I was about half an hour behind the rest of our group. (With the exception of the couple we referred to as The Watermelons - Mrs. Watermelon remains the most annoying person I have ever met, and put herself and her husband at risk by refusing to turn back, despite being strongly suggested to do so throughout the afternoon. The Watermelons finally staggered into camp about an hour after I did)


The view from the top of the Test Hill

Day 2 started with me being completely terrified. Day 2 is the day where you literally climb mountains. The trail progressively got steeper and steeper. And Nessa and I (although to this day, I suspect she could have gone on without me) fell further and further behind. Our tour leader actually sent one of the guides back to make sure we didn't collapse/give up/die. He, bless his heart, claimed it was so he could practice his English. But it was pretty damned obvious that he was there to push the fat girl up the big hill. When I rounded a corner and saw that Dead Woman's Pass (the highest point on the Trail) was still at least half an hour's stagger up some of the steepest track to date, I sat down and cried. At which point Nessa came back and told me to pull myself together, because if I cried, she'd cry. And then we'd both be screwed.

I have to walk to WHERE?????????

I still don't know how, but I made it to the top. It took me a mere six hours.

Me and Nessa at Dead Woman's Pass - 2,000m above the highest point in Australia. Don't I look completely thrilled to learn that I have two hours to go until I can collapse in a heap?!

Most of our group made it in four. And then there was the hour and a half trek DOWN the other side to camp. During which I couldn't even stop to enjoy the view because my legs were shaking so badly. On the plus side, I did better than Mrs. Watermelon, who had to have porters sent back to her with food and water. She was finally carried into camp as we were all eating dinner several hours later...

Day 3? Less sucky. It featured another climb, but it was only a short one - the rest was downhill. And it features most of the actual Incan part of the trek, so it was pretty awesome from an archaeological perspective. AND we got to see Mrs. Watermelon, the bane of our collective existence, being carried on a stretcher by the porters (who thought the whole thing was hysterical) because she literally couldn't walk any more. Oh, plus? I saw a rock on Day 3 that looked like someone flipping the finger. It pretty much made my whole day.


The awesome 'screw you all' rock



The original Inca Trail

Night 3 featured saying goodbye to our porters, who were heading back to Aguas Callientes first thing in the morning rather than heading to Machu Picchu with us. Every time one of the girls in our group said we were unmarried, we got a huge cheer. Nothing quite like that for a confidence boost when you haven't showered in 3 days and nearly get stuck using a squat toilet because your quads seize up! :S

Day 4 started early. I mean EARLY... The plan is to make it to the Sun Gate in time for dawn to see the sun rise over Machu Picchu. Shame it started raining when we got there... After a very skiddy trip from the Sun Gate to Machu Picchu, the rain had settled in. But it cleared after an hour or so, and that made all the pain, all the tears, all the embarrassment of staggering into camp two hours after everyone else worth it. I even managed to climb one of the mountains overlooking Machu Picchu to get an aerial view over the whole city.

My favourite photo from my whole nine weeks away - WE MADE IT!

Worth every freaking second of pain...

The Inca Trail remains the most painful and torturous thing I've ever done. But it was worth every single second...

K xx