VEDA hangover

So as you may know, I spent last month participating in Vlog Every Day in August, hence the almost complete lack of content around these parts. Yes, I spent August making and editing and uploading a video every single day, as well as watching what felt like millions of videos from my fellow VEDA-ians (VEDA-ites??) and commenting and participating in ridiculous conversations on Twitter, and basically? It was exhausting but completely and utterly awesome.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat, and there's actually a group of us on Twitter discussing the possibility of vlogging on a weekly basis. I'll definitely join in on that one provided someone who's not me comes up with topics for us to discuss, because no topics = Kirsti rambling uselessly for a millionty years, and no one wants to watch that!

ANYWAY.

I hereby present to you a list of things I learnt during VEDA:

1. Youtube is an evil bitch. A two minute video will suddenly decide it's going to take three hours to upload. It will randomly decide that you don't need to see all your subscriptions in your subscription feed, meaning that you have to go to each individual channel to check if someone's made a new video. It will one day decide that no, you don't need to watch this particular video and refuse to load it for three hours straight. And it will give you 31 days of consecutive unflattering thumbnail options.
2. Youtube's captchas are the most illegible things on the face of the earth.
3. Some topics will take you five minutes to film. Others will take an hour, and most of your footage will be of you trailing off mid-sentence and then staring out the window for five minutes trying to work out how to get your point across. And sometimes, you'll do the perfect take only to realise that you didn't actually hit record. Sigh.
4. Never underestimate the importance of editing. 
5. If you make a video about the importance of thinking before you vote, don't let your mother see it, because she'll cackle hysterically because she thinks you sound like a newsreader... (HI MUM)
6. VEDA brings all the feels. You will cry at least a dozen times.
7. Blooper Day will take you approximately a hundred years to pull together. Start early.
8. Everyone loves Harry Potter. EVERYONE.
9. The quality of your gear does not dictate the quality of your videos. 
10. This community is made of solid gold awesome.

If you missed out on seeing my videos this month and happen to have a spare hour and a half, the full playlist is here. You're welcome. 

K xx

30 Days of Photography - Day 21

Wow. I'm FINALLY to the point where I have less than ten days left on this challenge. It's only taken me the better part of a year.........

The theme for Day 21 was "faceless self-portrait". Today when I got home from the gym, I decided to take advantage of the 25 degree weather and the sunshine, and eat lunch outside on the grass. Course, the back garden hasn't been mown in about a month because I'm not allowed to use the lawn mower (last time I did, I ran over a concrete phone doohickey and nearly broke the mower...), so it kind of looks like a jungle.

So I figured that I may as well take the opportunity to cross the next day off the list as I sat in the front garden, which wasn't at ALL weird. Aaaand here you go - a faceless self-portrait!

Also, this is the only time you will ever see me wearing leggings. YOU'RE WELCOME.

K xx

30 Days of Photography - Day 20

OH MA GAH, I remembered about this series again! Kidding. I knew it was still here. I've just been really slack/lacking in motivation to take photos...

Anyway, the theme for day 20 was bokeh. Part of the reason why it took me so long to do this was that I was kind of hoping that the City of Melbourne would put up the Christmas lights cu-raaaaaaaaaaaaazy early, allowing for pretty twinkle light bokeh in the background. However, they rudely neglected to cater to my whims, so you don't get any twinkle light bokeh. Hopefully I can rectify that at Christmas time!!

ANYWAY. Instead, you get this:

A sign that spring is finally on the way. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

It may not twinkle, but there's still more than a sufficient amount of bokeh to cross off the theme for day 20!

K xx

Oh, hai

So I realised over the weekend that it had been a while since I talked to you guys properly, and I figured that it was about time I gave you a general update on life and stuff!

So. Um.... Let's see...

• Group projects are sent by the Devil to torment people.
• I had this Facebook chat conversation with my brother, who's currently in America:  

C: Guess who we met in LA?
Me: Who?
C: Josh Duvall!
Me: Who the hell is Josh Duvall?????
Me: Is he some music person that I'm not cool enough to know about?
Me: Wait.
Me: Do you mean Josh DUHAMEL??
C: Yeah, that's the one. Mr. Fergie.
Me: *head desk*

• I fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally got the replacement for my 50mm prime lens today. HURRAH! There was this whole messy complicated thing where the guy at the camera shop said they'd courier it to me, but then someone else at the camera shop told him that I'd picked up the rest of my camera, and so I was obviously going to pick this up too. So they didn't courier it, and my poor lens was stuck sitting around the camera shop for an entire week.
• Uni is going pretty well. It's still kind of hard to tell, because we've only had one assignment back from each class. But I've got three high distinctions and one distinction, so I guess that's a good sign??
• I'm heading to Canberra for the weekend on Friday morning. Yay? It's for Emily's baby shower, and it will be good to catch up with everyone. But considering my entire experience of baby showers is the episode of Gilmore Girls where Rory and Lorelai go to Sherry's baby shower, I'm slightly scared that I'm going to have to shovel ping pong balls into a shoe box with a baby's face on it, or sniff nappies (American translation: diapers) with various smelly substances in them... 
• I'm over at Childhood Trauma today talking about which of The Avengers are hot (and, you know, other stuff about The Avengers) with some of the greatest girls you can find on 20SB: Lor, Nugs, Harley and Shelly. It's pretty hilariously awesome, and you should check it out. 

How are things with you guys? Also, what the hell happens at a baby shower??? Seriously. Help a girl out.

K xx

Things that are awesome

1. I received a (two week early) birthday present from my BFF Kat in the post today. I would take a photo of it for you, but....... Anyway, it's a bag from Mushy Wear and I love it!! It's the perfect size for uni notebooks without looking like a boring book bag.
2. We heard from the insurance company today, and I should have a replacement camera within a week!! I'm super-excited about it. It looks like it's going to be the next model up from my old camera, which comes with more megapixels, higher ISO capability, and full video. It's still an entry level model, but a brand new camera is not to be sneezed at! I'll make sure to take photos of my awesome new bag when the camera turns up :)
3. THE DALEKS ARE COMING BACK IN SERIES 7. And not just the Daleks. ALL the Daleks.
4. Discount Easter eggs at the supermarket.

That last one has nothing to do with anything else. It's just awesome. Wouldn't you agree, David Tennant?

I rather thought you would!

What's been awesome for you recently?
K xx

Well, shit.

So last night was...interesting. I left for ballet class as usual at 5.30pm. My parents were already out. They ended up changing their plans because it was freezing cold in Melbourne yesterday, and came to pick me up from ballet at 8.00pm. Because we were all starving, we went out for dinner at the local Thai restaurant.

This may all seem completely inane and boring, but it's sort of totally relevant, I promise. Anyway, so we got home from the Thai restaurant at about 9.30pm. I unlocked the door from the garage into the house and was met by a gust of cold wind. My immediate thought was "Um, WTF??", which was immediately followed by "Wait, why is the back door open??" When I turned the lights on in the back porch, it became immediately apparent that the back door had been jimmied open, that the lock on the kitchen window had then been broken, and that our house had been burgled. Oh, and they then found the spare keys and went out the front door, leaving the keys in the lock. HOW THOUGHTFUL.

(Incidentally? I just checked Wikipedia for the difference between 'burglary' and 'robbery'. Apparently 'robbery' involves actually taking something from the victim by force, whereas burglary is breaking into a house when the people aren't home. You're welcome for that little dose of education!!)

I have a theory that we were burgled by hipsters. Because they really didn't take very much. They must have been horribly disappointed that they went to as much effort as they did, because to be perfectly honest, we have pretty shitty electronics. Both our TVs are old school CRT models. They didn't take any of the jewellery or Dad's car. And apparently four year old Toshiba laptops aren't worth stealing (THANK GOD. As much as I complain about my laptop being crappy, I'm so relieved it's not gone).

Things that *are* worth stealing?
- My mum's brand new school issue Macbook Air.
- An iPod Touch.
- My SLR.
- My zoom lens.

They left the kit lens sitting on the bench in the kitchen. I'm not sure whether the mould of my teeth scared them off, or if (being hipsters, as per my theory) they went "AHAHAHA, $100 crappy kit lens? No thank you!".

Oh, and they also took $27 in cash. And possibly my old Olympus point-and-shoot camera because I can't find it anywhere. Although I don't know why they'd have taken that. It's six years old, and scratched as hell because I dropped it a bunch of times.

The police came round last night and took a bunch of photos and did some fingerprinting, but not surprisingly, the burglars wore gloves.

So all we can do now is get the back door repaired, and hope the insurance company process things quickly.

Oh, and to the burglar who went through my backpack looking for stuff? I hope you enjoyed all the snotty, cold-germ-ridden tissues that I forgot to empty out after my class on Thursday night!!

K xx
PS. I woke up this morning with a pounding headache courtesy of my dental splint. $700 well spent...

101 in 1001 #14 AND #76

Yes, I've had a HIGHLY productive day today - I crossed two things off my Day Zero list. The first was one I've been wanting to do for aaaaaaaaaaages. I bought this:

Hello, lover. It's a Nikon 50mm f1.8 G series lens, and it's so many kinds of shiny that it's not even funny. Here's what I got in a five minute walk around the front garden to test it out:

Like I said, shiny. (Bonus geek points if you know what that refers to) Oh, shallow depth of field. Where have you been all my life? I can't wait to have a proper play around with it in the US next week OH MY GOD I LEAVE FOR THE US NEXT WEEK ARGH ARGH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!

Ahem. The other thing I accomplished involved less spending of money that I don't have and more sitting on my arse for days at a time. The benefit to unemployment, of course, is that I had more than enough time to do so. After several days of yelling "REDUCTOOOOOOOO!!" at the TV like a lunatic totally normal person, today I FINALLY achieved 100% on Lego Harry Potter (Years 1-4). Hurrah!!

Don't believe me? Here's the proof:

*heaves a sigh of relief* I think I might hold off on Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (which I bought C for his birthday) until after I get home at the end of September........... ;)

How was your Friday? :)

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...

Yes, I said camera HANDBAG

A couple of months ago during gallery install, my (now, sadly, former) work wife, R, told me that one of the guys on the team had started a somewhat bizarre conversation at lunchtime. It apparently went something like this:
Possibly suicidal man: So I've found that there are three types of women in the world.
Hoard of women on the team: *glare* Go on...
Possibly suicidal man: Yeah, three types. The first type? They like shoes. The second type? Handbags. The third? Shoes AND handbags.
Hoard of women on the team: Well, I suppose you can't really fault that logic...

I fall into the first category. It's all about the shoes where I'm concerned. Don't get me wrong, I APPRECIATE nice handbags, but I don't feel compelled to own more than one handbag. Owning more than one handbag seems like a terrible idea to me - it just means that whatever you're looking for is probably in your other bag. And considering I'm a little OCD about making sure I have my keys with me (as Sara - who, incidentally, falls into the handbag category - can attest), having more than one place in which they could be is really not a good idea.

AnyIhaveapoint, when I bought my 55-300mm lens at the start of the year, I quickly realised that it was about  10mm too long to fit in my camera bag. This led me to a predicament - to spend $100 on a massive (and probably hideous) camera bag that's big enough to hold both my lenses at once, or to investigate other possibilities.

I spent a decent chunk of time carrying my camera and my second lens around in my ACTUAL handbag, which (random tangent) looks like this, except more faded:

Source

It's not exactly ideal for carrying camera gear, because the camera just gets to balance on top of my random crap keys, wallet, phone etcetera. But I liked the idea of not looking like you're carrying around a millionty dollars worth of camera gear.

Then, in about March, I stumbled across the Kelly Moore website, and I knew I'd found what I was looking for. Sadly, the colour I wanted was out of stock and wouldn't be back in stock until late April. So I figured I'd order one as a self-birthday present, have it shipped to Melbourne, and hope it arrived in time. Then it changed so that it wouldn't be shipped until late May. I hoped against hope that it would arrive when I was in Melbourne for Little Miss A's birthday at the end of May.

It didn't. Instead, it arrived WHILE I WAS ON THE WAY TO THE AIRPORT. Oh, postal service. Why must you taunt me so? Basically, it was only on Friday when I got back to Melbourne for good that I could finally see what I'd ordered.

Hello, lover. The colour is called 'muted teal', and I adore it. It's got enough space for a camera with a lens attached AND two lenses, along with room for all your other crap standard handbag stuff, meaning you only have to carry one bag. Oh, and it comes with a crossbody strap as well as a shoulder strap.

The inside has proper camera padding, and is purple.

What more do you need?! I can't wait to take it for a decent test run in the US next month :)

K xx

PS. Kelly Moore has no idea who I am, I just think her bags are freaking awesome.
PPS. They're kind of pricey, but you can totally take advantage of the Aussie dollar being through the roof at the moment!! ;)

Small Snapshots: Patriotism

Whee, Small Snapshots time again!! :D

Apparently I completely vagued on the theme for this week, so didn't take any new photos for this week. Whoops. Although considering it's been raining since Sunday, I doubt I would have gotten any decent photos anyway!! 

The theme this week was patriotism - appropriate, given it was Canada Day on July 1st, and Independence Day on July 4th. Considering Australia Day is in January, there's not much of a connection there. BUT July 1st was Dorothea McKellar's birthday, and you can't get much more patriotic than My Country! 

In case you haven't been exposed to it a million times since childhood, Dorothea McKellar wrote a poem called My Country in 1904 when she was in London and homesick. The second stanza has become ridiculously famous in Australia:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain-ranges
Of drought, and flooding rains
I love her far horizons
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me. 

Anyway, I figured I'd dig through the archives for some stuff that could fit with McKellar's work.

I love a sunburnt country - Parliament House, Canberra

A land of sweeping plains - Uluru and Kata Tjuta, Northern Territory

Of ragged mountain ranges - Cradle Mountain, Tasmania

Of drought, and flooding rains - Kings Canyon, Northern Territory

I love her far horizons - Uluru, Northern Territory

I love her jewel-sea - Sullivan Bay, Victoria

Her beauty... - Opera House, Sydney

...and her terror - Freshwater crocodile, Healesville Sanctuary, Victoria

The wide brown land for me - Portland, Victoria

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Movement

Yay, it's time for another edition of Small Snapshots! 

The theme this week is movement. Given that I completely forgot to take pictures at the weekend like I'd intended, I was originally planning on just digging into the archives again. But then Carissa reminded everyone in her post that Small Snapshots is about taking NEW photos. Suitably guilt tripped, I grabbed my camera when I got home from work and took a bunch of shots. They're far from perfect because it was freezing cold outside and I was hungry, but considering I haven't done much night photography before, I think they turned out pretty well! 

(Also? Thank God I remembered to bring my trusty tripod home from work. It gave me the chance to play around with long exposures!)

The clouds moving (ha - see what I did there?!) in front of the full moon:

Here we have an attempt at photographing the traffic going past on my street. I probably could have done a much better job if I'd gone and stood on the street corner rather than in the garden. But I felt enough like a Creepy McCreeperson already without standing on a street corner with my camera and tripod! Sure, it's not exactly the most scenic view. But I kind of like it all the same:

Next up, we have me playing with birthday candles. Cos I'm cool like that...

And finally, just for something different, I feel the need to include the one from the archives that I was originally planning on using. I took this back in April when I went to see the Hockeyroos play Argentina over the road from my apartment:

If you click through to the photo, you can see the water splashing up off the pitch (it's waterbased astro-turf) where the stick's connected with the ball.

Clearly, my night photography needs a lot of work. And for me to not worry so much about being a Creepy McCreeperson!

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Macro

Wow. I'm crazy late with this week's edition of Small Snapshots! 

The theme this week is macro, and I'm the one who suggested it, so the fact that I've been slacking on posting this is pretty bad... Clearly, I didn't think the time of year through very well when I suggested macro. Because I'm a sucker for macro shots of flowers, and winter in Canberra is hardly conducive to the presence of flowers *sigh*

Still, I made the most of what was in the garden, and came up with these:

Who doesn't love a spathiphyllum in their living room?

Some kind of mysterious berry thing in the garden

Rose hips

And now for a confession: I really hate that I can't seem to take decent macro photos with my SLR. You CAN take macro photos to some extent. They're just not as tight as I'd like them to be. I had to use my old crappy Olympus point and shoot for these. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with these - the macro capacity on my Olympus is pretty awesome. I'm just having a whinge about the limitations of my SLR lenses! 

You know what? I just looked back through my archives and last year was able to take a ton of good macro shots with my SLR. 

See?! I'd had my SLR for about 2 weeks when I took this.

Clearly I'm blaming my lenses for something that's entirely my own fault... I think my pending unemployment might be the perfect opportunity for me to kick my arse into gear on this!! 

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Sun Flare

Holy Hell. The gallery opens tomorrow. TOMORROW. The GALLERY opens TOMORROW. The gallery OPENS tomorrow.

TOMORROW.

You have no idea how insane that is. Anyway, with all the stress and all the preview events and the last minute changes and the blah blah blah-bitty blah, I haven't had a change to see the sun, let alone take photos of it. Regardless, it's time for another edition of Small Snapshots!

The theme this week is sun flare. Thankfully, I had this in the archives:

I took this photo of the guard tower at Port Arthur in February last year. The sun flare was completely unintentional - I'd only had my SLR for a couple of weeks and had pretty much no idea what I was doing! - but looking at it now, I really like it!

Next week's theme is macro, and was suggested by yours truly. I have high hopes for actually being able to take some new photos, as next week should be (please God, let it be) a bazillion times less busy than this week!! Plus, I love love LOVE macro shots. So I'm excited to see what everyone comes up with :)

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Letters

Sorry guys - I'm kind of phoning it in this week. 

Considering my whole weekend was taken up with Little Miss A's birthday party and associated family nonsense, I didn't have the time to take my camera on a search for this week's theme: letters. I did briefly have a grand plan to make Little Miss A stand like various letters while I was babysitting her on Saturday night, but then she went to bed at 6.45, which kind of threw a spanner in the works. 

So instead what I have is this:

Once again, I took it at work. It's kind of hard to see, but the top of the museum building has giant Braille on it. Not ENTIRELY what Carissa had in mind, but I didn't want to skip Small Snapshots due to lack of time! Kind of cheating, but still within the topic for this week :)

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Reflection

Yes, it's time for Small Snapshots again! In case you missed it last week, Carissa over at Kissed a Frog has just started a new weekly feature to encourage us to use our cameras more - you should head over to her blog and check out what other people have taken! Actually, you should head over to her blog full stop, because she's awesome.

Anyway, this week's theme was Reflection. I thought about what I might do for most of last week, and decided on an idea at the weekend. I've been carrying my camera around at work for three days now waiting for the opportunity to take this:

The walls of the main hall at work are glass, and they've got some kind of reflective film on the outside. From the deck you get amazing reflections of the sky! I rather like that there's a vapour trail from a plane - it adds a touch of reality to it.

I also wanted to feature a photo from the archive this week:

I took this on a family holiday to Skene's Creek in January 2009. We went for a walk to a nearby waterfall, and along the way I saw this. I like the reflection of the gum trees at the top and bottom, with the reflection of the log in the middle.

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Blue

I've been trying to blog for two days now, but the Blogger template has been playing silly buggers. But that's superfluous information, because it's all fixed now. HURRAHS!!

Ahem. Today I'm playing along with a new feature that Carissa over at Kissed a Frog has just started called Small Snapshots.

The idea is to get our cameras out of the cupboard and actually use them. Considering I seem to mostly use my DSLR for taking photos of baked goods or book covers at the moment, I think it's a wonderful idea!

This week's theme was blue. I didn't get a chance to go outside and take photos because work was crazy and I was sick at the weekend, so I had to search for things I could do in the house. I came up with this:

Have you ever dropped food colouring in a container full of water? It makes the most incredibly patterns!

This week's is open until Sunday, so head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

High tea - how very civilised!

This afternoon, I went to my friend KC's not wedding high tea. By 'not wedding', I mean "We're moving to the UK and getting married there, but you're the people who'd be invited if we were getting married here". It was a gorgeous day in Canberra - one of the few we've had so far this year - so spending it in the park playing croquet and boule, drinking Pimms and eating cupcakes was probably the best thing I could have done with it!

The coolest part though? Instead of having a standard guestbook set up, they'd hung up a big piece of stripy blue and white fabric against a wall. And they had a box of props (silly hats and silly Dame Edna-esque glasses). And they had one of these:

Source

The new Polaroid cameras. So basically, each person (or each couple) who was there stood in front of the stripy screen with one or more props, and had their photo taken. Then you stuck the Polaroid into a scrapbook that they'd bought and wrote a message to go with it. It was really cute, and a different way to do something quite traditional!

Here's the picture of me:

Yes, I should obviously have held the Dame Edna glasses with my right hand, but my entire being protests at doing things right handed!

Who would ever have thought Polaroids would make a comeback?!

K xx

The dregs of 2010

So, 2010 is over. As much as I spent the last month or so of it desperately wanting it to end, it didn't really treat me THAT badly. I spent the year hanging out with my BFF, Sara. I went to Tassie and the Northern Territory. I discovered roller derby and Ashes to Ashes, bought an SLR, and moved house AGAIN. And I baked. A lot... And I spent the last week of 2010 running around like a crazy person catching up with what seemed like half of Melbourne...

Unlike my last housemate, D was around for Christmas, and felt the need to decorate accordingly:

On the subject of Christmas, here's what I got my younger brother:

He's 25, incidentally. It turned out he already had Lego Harry Potter for Wii, so he's changed it for Donkey Kong for Wii - a much more mature choice... ;) Course, Sara and I promptly took over the Wii and played Lego Harry Potter for the better part of six hours every day we were there, so I expect he's taking my being back in Canberra as a positive thing, because it means he can actually access his Wii again...

Oh, and the night before I left for Melbourne, my housemate gave me my Christmas present:

Well, HELLO, Jake Gyllenhaal!! D officially knows me too well... :D

Our flight to Melbourne left at 8.45pm, which meant there was a pretty amazing sunset over the wing of the plane:

Christmas was the usual family nonsense, except with the added disadvantage of my poor puppy being not very well - he had to have a tooth removed on the 23rd, and then turned out to be allergic to the antibiotics he was on, and was generally pretty miserable.

Aaaaaaanyway, the bit after Christmas was FAR more enjoyable. I went to Richmond Hill Cafe for breakfast with my best friend from kindergarten, Char. I highly recommend the cheesy toast. GodDAMN, that stuff was good... I had a mini-Peru reunion with Jamie and Matt, accompanied by cider. Mmmmm, delicious cider...

I caught up with my BFF, Kat, who I've not seen since Thailand over a year ago. There were burritos, Thai food (although I'm pretty sure the pad thai in Phuket didn't feature potatoes or pumpkin...), cider, and large quantities of chocolate, along with a hefty quantity of ugly clothes mocking in the sales. But mostly, there was chocolate. We started out at Koko Black in the Block Arcade:

That's their incredible chocolate mousse on the left, and the summer special blood orange iced chocolate on the right. Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo good...

I, on the other hand, had their summer special strawberry iced chocolate.

It was pretty damned good, although nowhere near as good as last year's special raspberry iced chocolate. That was the bomb... *sigh* And then I *may* have bought a crapload of chocolates to take home. After Koko Black, there was a stop off at Haigh's in Royal Arcade for some chocolate freckles. I'm not a big fan of Haigh's - I'm really not sure why - but their freckles are awesome. Like an Easter egg dipped in hundreds and thousands. Mmmmmmmmmm...
In addition to a great day filled with rather more food than was necessary, Kat presented me with this apron:

 
She made it herself, as evidenced by the tag:

 
In return, being a talentless hack deprived of her baking pans, presented her with both the book and the DVD of Pride and Prejudice - the BBC version, obviously. I would NEVER force anyone to sit through the Keira Knightley/Matthew McFugly version. It's craptacular.
 
But that's beside the point. I also went on a lens buying expedition with Jamie's assistance, and came home several hundred dollars poorer, but carrying this:

 
It's pretty damned awesome, even though I haven't been able to try it out to the best of its ability yet. It's a 55mm - 300mm lens. Which basically means it can go from this:

 
To this without moving an inch:

 
I can't wait to test it out properly... Although I suspect I'm going to need to invest in a tripod before long. Hurrah - another trip to the camera shop!!! :D
 
I also got to catch up with Chelle, which featured chocolate chip muffins, and the better part of a year's worth of gossip. Although we STILL didn't get to do our "we're FINALLY able to consume alcohol at the same time" celebration *sigh*. Chelle - it'll happen eventually. I'll make sure of it... ;)
 
New Year's Eve, being 41 degrees, was spent hiding from the heat, playing Harry Potter and watching (and some degree of mocking - as much as I love it, it is pretty freaking ridiculous...) season 3 of True Blood. A much better alternative to going out in public, as far as I'm concerned!
 
And there we have it. I flew back to the 'berra this afternoon, and I really have to say, I hate it a little bit more every time I do... Course, it wasn't helped by the fact that I had a taxi driver who considered himself too good to help me with my luggage... Now there's just tomorrow to go, and then it's back to work *sigh*
 
Oh well. At least it's a short week, and I can get some baking done at the weekend, and christen both my shiny new apron, and my shiny new camera lens. Awesome sauce...
 
Hope everyone's Christmas and New Year was good!
 
K xx