'Bout This Blogger tag

You've probably noticed that I've not been around much in the past two months. Between NaNoWriMo last month and Vlogmas this month, my desire to write blog posts has pretty much disappeared recently. Which is unfortunate. I promise, someday soon I'll sort my shit out and start blogging regularly again!!

In the meantime, the lovely Cait recently switched her blog name from Notebook Sisters to Paper Fury, and she's throwing a little party to celebrate. Said party included this tag, which seemed like a pretty damned good idea to me. So. Yeah. Words and stuff.

‘BOUT THIS BLOGGER

1. Why did you start blogging?
This one I've actually answered at various times in the past, but whatever. I started blogging because I was living in Canberra and spent large chunks of my time telling the same stories to half a dozen people by phone and email. And it just seemed easier to put everything in one place and direct people to that rather than telling the same stories over and over! In short: I am lazy and hate the phone.

2. What’s the story behind your blog's name?
I was living in Canberra, and Melbourne was on my mind a lot. Hence the Melbourne on my mind part. I thought about changing it when I moved back to Melbourne in 2011, but I couldn't think of anything better, and it seemed weird to change my user name. A Quick Succession of Busy Nothings? That's courtesy of Jane Austen in Mansfield Park. It seemed appropriate, and I love Jane Austen, so...yeah.

3. How many designs have you been through since you started blogging? (Pictures! We demand pictures!)
Oh God, I have no idea. Three, I think? Four, maybe?? I used generic Blogger templates for a long time. I think one of them involved lemons?!?! And then I switched to a free template that I found online, which was blue and sort of paisley patterned, I think?! I swear, I have the worst memory about this stuff, and I totally should have taken screencaps before I changed anything. My current design is courtesy of Kim, and I still love it.

4. Have you ever switched blog platforms? What made you move? If you haven’t ever changed…why?
Nope. I've used Wordpress and Blogger, and as far as I can see it, unless you want to do a ton of customisation (which I don't), there aren't really any huge differences between the two. Plus, switching means importing nearly a thousand posts and over six thousand comments. And yeah, see also that whole me being lazy thing. Maybe I'll change my mind in the future, but at this point in time, I'm comfortable with Blogger.

5. How long does it take you to write a post? What’s your postly process like?
It depends on the post. Top Ten Tuesday posts usually take about 15 minutes, but I make the lists ahead of time by hand, and then just need to type them up and explain my choices. Travel posts usually take more like an hour, because half the time I've forgotten what happened and have to dig into the depths of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram to refresh my memory! Reviews take anywhere between 15 minutes and an hour, depending on the book. And recipe posts take foreeeeeeever because they require uploading a crapton of photos.

My post writing process? That basically goes like this:
1. Pick topic.
2. Vomit words onto screen.
3. Get distracted by Tumblr/Goodreads.
4. Forget about post.
5. Remember three hours later, and finish writing.
6. Skim read for typos.
7. Hit publish.

Yeah. It's not exactly ideal, and I should probably edit more than I do, but pffff. Effort.

6. Have you ever been super nervous about a post? Why?! What was it?
I've been nervous about a few posts over the past five years. This post featuring a ton of rebuttal about an anti-YA article was one. This one about my hate for between-the-numbers novellas was another. I was pretty nervous about this post following the great J.K. Rowling said she regretting Romione debacle. I was terrified of posting this vlog about how fandom can impact on your love of a book/TV show/movie, mostly because it may have been the result of some stuff that went down on Snark Squad. Oh, this one about why I prefer Elementary to Sherlock. But the one that I was most nervous about was this post about feminism.

7. Do you have a blogging schedule?
Hahahahaha, nope. I've tried a couple of times and failed dismally.

8. Do you tell people In-Real-Life about your blog? Their reactions?
Yep. I mean, I started my blog for people in real life, so it only makes sense than I tell them about it! I'm not convinced any of them but my mum read it though...

9. Top ten blogs you read/comment on the most! Go! Go!
I'm totally terrible at commenting. I used to be great at it, and then I started reading posts on my phone and saving the ones I wanted to comment on, and then TOTALLY FORGETTING ABOUT THEM FOR THE NEXT SIX MONTHS.

That said, here are ten of my favourites reads that I try to be better than usual at commenting on (not including Snark Squad because it feels like cheating, even though it's the blog I comment on most):
1. Paper Fury || 2. The Democracy Diva || 3. Sweeney Says || 4. My Name Is Marines || 5. Love Woke Me Up This Morning || 6. Lazy Happy Bored Happy Sad || 7. This Is Not Your Blog || 8. The Engineer's Other Life || 9. Disquietus Reads || 10. Wilfair

10. If you could change/improve things about your blog, what would they be?
I'd blog in a more balanced way - more recipes and ridiculous life stories and TV stuff, rather than the book blog I've increasingly ended up writing this year. And I'd be better at replying to comments. I'm terrible at replying to comments...

So there you have it! If you want to join in the fun, Cait's got a linky up on her blog. And a giveaway that's open for another couple of weeks!

K xx

A most unfortunate curse

So Kat mentioned in the comments of my last post something that I'd completely forgotten about - that Bethells Beach wasn't quite as close to deserted as we would have liked, in that there was a man quite a distance down the beach wandering around on his own who proved, upon closer (but not too close) examination to be rather elderly and completely naked.

And this, in turn, reminded me of another incident - New Year's Eve two years ago. In case you weren't around in those days and/or are too lazy to click on that link, I'll recap. I went to Fairhaven with my brother and a bunch of his mates. We decided that we'd wander down to the beach for actual midnight, and watch the fireworks display from Lorne across the water.

Somehow, we ended up with a crapton of glowsticks and sparklers, and so were playing around with those as 2012 commenced. Shortly thereafter, an incredibly drunk and incredibly naked New Zealander staggered up out of the surf. Someone informed this random dude that he should be carrying a glowstick so that we knew where he was, and didn't have to see his junk. Upon which he grabbed a glowstick from someone, shoved it between his butt cheeks, and ran off down the beach.

He then bent down to pick up his clothes, causing the glowstick to fall out from between his butt cheeks. So he kindly picked it up and threw it back to us. You've never seen a group of people scatter so quickly as when the butt germs glowstick fell towards us.

ANYWAY. Apparently that incident served as a precedent, and now I'm cursed to see naked New Zealanders every time I go to the beach. Because I'm about 99% sure I didn't go to the beach at all in between those two random-naked-New-Zealander events. And there was a small naked child running around during the five minutes Kim and I spent at the beach while I was in Wellington.

At least now I have a good excuse not to go to the beach?? "Oh, I can't, sorry. I'm cursed, you see. If I go with you, a naked New Zealander will appear and everything will get slightly weird..."

Are you randomly cursed in any way?

K xx

Comfort zones and being outside them

So part of the reason why I started doing my 101 in 1001 list all those years ago was to try and force myself out of my comfort zone a little bit. And given that a decent chunk of the stuff left on the list requires money (given that I wrote it before I decided to go back to university and all...), and I currently don't really have any on account of having been a student for the past year and a half, I've hit something of a brick wall in regards to crossing things off the list. And as a result, my comfort zone has gotten increasingly more comfortable of late.

So when I saw Sweeney tweeting yesterday about something I've seen her participate in a bunch of times before, I figured that maybe - even though the idea kind of freaks me out a little bit - I should join in and get out of my comfort zone again.

That's right, kids. I'm going to attempt VEDA! (Vlog Every Day in August, for those of you not down with the acronym lingo)

It's definitely going to get me out of my comfort zone, because while I've made quite a few vlogs this year, I tend to spend days agonising over the filming and the editing and only recording when I'm in the middle of a very good hair day. With VEDA, I won't have that luxury. But with any luck, I'll get better at making shorter videos, and getting them edited and up online quickly!

So for the month of August, there will (barring any complications) be a new video up on my Youtube channel every day. As a result, I'll probably be posting here a bit less often, given that I'll be making a video every day, as well as posting on Snark Squad four times a week. But don't worry - I'm not going anywhere, and if you want to witness all the awkward, you can always subscribe on Youtube.

Hell, if you really want to, join in the fun yourself - you can sign up for VEDA here!

So here's to a month of getting out of my comfort zone, and of Youtube delivering me all the awful thumbnail options it possibly can. And hopefully a few little autocaption gems like this one:

K xx

Meme time!

I've seen this one around the bloggy traps for a while now, but given that it's a tagging people thing, I haven't gotten to participate until now. And it's all thanks to Amy over at Life's Journey with a Smile for tagging EVERYONE when she did it the other day. Thanks Amy!

So, here's the deal - answer the questions, and post a photo of your handwritten answers so that everyone can see what your handwriting looks like! Kind of random, but fun all the same. Here are the questions:

Questions:
1. What's your name/blogger name?
2. What's your blog's URL?
3. Write "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
4. Favorite quote?
5. Favorite song?
6. Favorite band/singers?
7. Anything else...?
8. Tag 3-5 other peeps (and no, I did not write the 'peeps' part. The original said that!)

And here's my answers:

 
I actually wrote this on Wednesday, and meant to post it then, but I started watching Fringe and got distracted by Joshua Jackson the plot. So the story at number 7 is a couple of days out of date, but it's still nasty...
 
So there you have it - my first meme, and a sneak peek at my handwriting :) Feel free to play along even if you haven't been tagged!
 
K xx

PS. I just read in a trashy magazines that my future husband, Jake Gyllenhaal, is dating Jennifer Aniston AGAIN. Oh, Jake. When WILL you learn? (Also, get your arse to Canberra already...) ;)

A food biography

Last week, The Age featured this article. It's an interesting concept, coming up with the ten dishes that trace your history. So I figured that however humiliating, I'd give it a go. So here, in no particular order, we have my food biography:

1. Kraft macaroni and cheese. More commonly known in our house as Kraft Dinner, this was a childhood staple in Canada. I'm still not sure how often we had it, or if we had it at home or just at friends' houses, but Kraft Dinner still screams childhood to me. At some point in the three and a half years that we lived in Toronto, it became the done thing to add some kind of condiment to your mac and cheese. With us, it was always ketchup, but I seem to recall some of my friends putting barbeque sauce on theirs...

2. Birthday cake. Mum always came up trumps with our birthday cakes. They were always from the old school Australian Women's Weekly book, and they were pretty epic. Whether it was my fourth birthday:

Or my sixth birthday:

Or Cam's eighth birthday:

It was always great fun watching the plain boring butter cake turn into something full of sugar and food colouring, and entirely delicious.
3. Cream cheese and apple sandwiches. This was my staple lunch through most of high school. I can't stand lunch meat, which somewhat limits the options in terms of sandwiches. Mum tried cheese and lettuce sandwiches, but I wouldn't have a bar of it. I love cream cheese, so she tried it with carrot and capsicum before finally hitting on the ultimate sandwich - cream cheese and sliced apple.
4. Chilli con carne. I used to hate Mum's chilli with a fiery passion. Mostly because I couldn't stand rice (probably because I couldn't cook it to save myself. Still can't, really - one of the best days of my life was the day we got a rice cooker!), but partly because I thought it was boring. Until the day Mum got sick of my whinging and dumped some cheese and sour cream on top. It was a complete revelation - they transformed something that always seemed to be a mixture of rice and kidney beans into a creamy Mexican delight. It's still a staple on my cooking schedule.
5. No beef and Yorkshire pudding. I think I mentioned back at Easter that we used to have roast beef and Yorkshire pudding without the beef. From memory, this started as part of the whole mad cow thing when we were living in England. But mostly, it goes back to the time when Dad was commuting from Melbourne to India for work, and Mum was in need of comfort food. I've never really been a fan of roast meat, so I always loved it when we had no beef and Yorkshire pud. Not least because we'd always have the leftover Yorkshire pud drenched in maple syrup for dessert...
6. Chocolate fudge cake. The first cake I ever mastered all on my own. I'd been baking off and on for years - the first cake I ever made was for Mum's birthday when I was six, but it was an 'add water and stir' packet mix, and the box was foil lined to use as a baking tin - but chocolate fudge cake (sadly, not my usual one, which I discovered in Mum's handwritten recipe book) from the kids' cookbook was the first cake that I made - and decorated - consistently by myself.
7. Pasta and random veggies. A Friday night staple when Cam had choir early and the rest of us were eating later. When Cam and I cooked for ourselves, it was always spaghetti with peas, sweet corn, and grated carrot. But when Mum and Dad were home, it was penne with cherry tomatoes, capsicum, and spinach for me, and with mushrooms, bacon and olives added in for Mum and Dad. Something to please everyone without the need for multiple saucepans!
8. Risotto. I came across a basic risotto recipe in the Australian Women's Weekly's Italian Cooking Class cookbook one day when I was about 15, and decided it was worth a try. It was a slightly disturbing recipe that required the use of yellow food colouring (well, technically it called for saffron. But they'd clearly used fake saffron in the recipe, because it was fluorescent yellow...), but it was pretty much the first time I'd actually enjoyed a dish that was served with rice. And it's been a staple ever since!
9. Birdseed. Not nearly as disturbing as it sounds. This was my absolute favourite thing of all the vile crap we got served at boarding school in England. Okay, technically it wasn't boarding school. We were day pupils. But that doesn't sound nearly as hardcore as saying "I went to boarding school in England". Anyway, birdseed was what we got for dessert at the end of term. It was basically all the leftover breakfast cereal dumped into baking sheets and coated in chocolate. So sort of like a flat chocolate crackle. And bizarrely delicious. Maybe it just seemed a million times better given the complete bollocks we got the rest of the time (semolina and jam? *gags repeatedly*), but it was memorable!!
10. Yo-yos. I loved my Gran's yo-yos. They were tooth-achingly sweet, and all I can say for sure is that they contained custard powder, because they had little blobs of orange in the biscuit, but as a kid they were one of my favourite things. Frequently living on the other side of the world from her made them even more special. Sadly, I think the recipe is lost forever, as I'm pretty sure she made it from memory, and none of us thought to get it from Gran before dementia did its horrible business. Sigh. One of these days, I'll dig out a yo-yo recipe and see if I can end up with a result even vaguely resembling Gran's. And maybe go through all of Mum's recipe books to see if there's a handwritten copy of Gran's recipe somewhere. But for the moment, I'll just pine for them............
What are the foods that made or changed your life?
K xx

Welcome

So... Hi. For anyone who doesn't already know (which I seriously suspect will be no one, but that's completely not the point), I'm Kirsti. I'm a Melbourne girl, born and (partly) raised, but for the past year and a bit I've been living in Canberra, Australia's backwater/capital city. I've been thinking about doing this blogging thing for a while for reasons that will be explained shortly, but it's only within the past couple of weeks that I've thought about it seriously. A couple of months ago, I discovered the joy of Cake Wrecks. Honestly, what's not to love about the hilarity that is to be found therein?? Anyway, through Cake Wrecks, I recently discovered the wonderful world of The Pioneer Woman, which is officially my new favourite thing in the world (Well, besides Twilight snark, but that's a whole different kettle of fish...). If you've got a spare hour or five hundred, check it out. It's disturbingly addictive. And then tonight I went to see Julie & Julia at the movies with a couple of friends, and suddenly creating a blog seemed like the most logical thing in the world. Although I doubt I'll be working my way through 500-odd French recipes any time soon...

Having said all that, I do have another reason for creating this blog besides rambling on in a narcissistic fashion. And that is this: I have a bunch of friends and family in Melbourne (and elsewhere!) that I used to see or talk to or hang out with every day, or every week, or every month. And now that I'm in Canberra, it means I only see these people every three or four months, and that officially sucks. Because it means that these people that I used to see/talk to/whatever with great regularity are now out of the loop on the random day-to-day stuff that happens in my life. In some cases, there are extenuating circumstances, like jobs with crazy hours or recent additions to the family. In others? Well, life just gets busy... So my reason is this - I want to give these people - family and friends, all of whom I miss - a chance to stay in the loop in a non-SMSing, two line emailing, "Blah blah likes your Facebook status" kind of a way. Speaking of which, why is there still no "does not like" button?? It bugs me...

Oh, and just to get it out of the way, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to write about, how often I'm going to write, or what I'm doing. Hell, at the moment I seem to spend my entire life not knowing what I'm doing... But more on that later. And apologies to Jane Austen for stealing a line from Mansfield Park as my title. But 99% of the time, that's all life is, so it seemed entirely appropriate! So welcome to my random rambling ravings - I hope they don't encourage you all to avoid me next time I'm home... ;)

K xx