Weety Layout

Finally got around to making a layout about DS's weedeater obsession.

Baby update

I'm 15 weeks & 3 days now. The belly pic was taken at 14 weeks. I look a bit silly because DH was taking the picture with his new camera and fooling around with settings, so I wasn't sure he was pressing the button!

Getting bigger but still not really big enough for maternity clothes. Which creates a problem in one sense, because my pool of work-clothes-that-fit is decreasing. I also know that I will get so sick of my maternity clothes that I don't want to make the move too soon. They are winter clothes though, and since it is mid-winter I am so tempted.

Baby was doing well at last week's midwife appointment. We heard the heartbeat as soon as the doppler went on which is always reassuring. The problem with an anterior placenta (at the front of the uterus) is that I can't often feel the baby moving at this early stage. I have felt it.. it's like bubbles popping in my lower tummy. So hearing a heartbeat is comforting. I'm measuring on track, my blood pressure is great, and my iron count was "the best I've seen this week" according to my midwife!

I am putting on weight too which I know has to happen but it's hard to see the scales creep up when I was trying to lose it before I conceived. Oh well.

We've been thinking about what we need to get for this new one. Katmandhu was having a sale the other week so we got their baby back pack for half price. I'm pretty stoked about this because our old one (which was given to us) is really too old now. The straps are losing their padding, and furthermore, it is not as adjustable as I would like. For example, it is quite long in the torso which works fine for DH who has a long back, but not for me. The load bearing when I'm wearing it is not optimal. But YAY! the new one is adjustable and has a whole lot more bells and whistles. So... if you're looking for a baby pack, check out Katmandhu.

We hope to get a new baby buggy too (possibly a Mountain Buggy) but think we'll look on TradeMe for it. Also a changing table. Last time I used the top of the chest of drawers and it was good until DS got too long. I like having the height when changing naps- I find the bed is too low.
Ideally, we need another room in our house. But that isn't going to happen.

Odd side effect of reading blogs

I'm not sure what it says about blogs and their affect on people when I start dreaming about the people whose blogs I read.

Last night I dreamt about Cathy Zielske.

I dreamt she came to NZ. Well, she is coming in August to CC2006 which, to my everlasting regret, I cannot afford to attend. But in my dream she came to my house! I seem to spend ages showing her my layouts. She seemed quite positive about them.

Anything is possible in your dreams...

I am the proud owner

Of a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 camera! A birthday present from DH - who is the proud owner of a Canon Eos 5D as of this weekend. I knew he was planning on getting me one sometime. I thought later this year. But, the deal was going down at a local vendor so opportunities had to be grasped.

Lots of great things about my little Lumix. I do like the ability to have it on auto for photography virgins like myself; DH can switch it to manual and take photos in RAW if he wants, though he's too busy fondling his new baby (heh heh). It's dinky but has enought weight to feel significant. You can have a bunch of different ratios and it does a widescreen option too.

I just wish the manual was written for the user, not for the manufacturer. ;-) I shall figure it out with a little help from my friends.

The dugong song

I'm a reference librarian at heart even though my current job doesn't allow me to do much in this area anymore. I especially love random facts that are mostly useless to anybody but spark my imagination. I'm sure I drive my colleagues nuts with these.

Such as... I once found out that NZ Customs don't have a tariff on bringing in a dugong into the country. Sure - you'd have a bit of an effort to get it past the MAF people. Not to mention trying to wrestle the tank off the luggage conveyor belt. But at least you wouldn't have to pay any customs dues.

I like dugongs. Like geckos, they fascinate me. A hangover from my BSc days I would say. So discovering this little tidbit excited me :-) My sister kindly obliged me with a song to celebrate the occasion with apologies to the original writers. (The Crystals wasn't it?)

I saw it on a Monday, bought it instantly
A dugong gong gong, a dugong gong
Somebody told me it was tariff-free
A dugong gong gong, a dugong gong
Bought it instantly
It was tariff-free
Aaaaand then I shipped it home
A dugong gong gong, a dugong gong!

Knew what it was doing when it caught my eye
A dugong gong gong, a dugong gong
It looked so quiet, but my-oh-my!
A dugong gong gong, a dugong gong
Yes, it caught my eye
Yes, my-oh-my!
Aaaaand then I shipped it home
A dugong gong gong, a dugong gong!

Picked it up at seven and it looked so fine
A dugong gong gong, a dugong gong
At last I’ve got a dugong that I can call mine
A dugong gong gong, a dugong gong
Yes, it looked so fine
Yes, I call it mine
Aaaaand then I took it home
A dugong gong gong, a dugong gong!

P.S, Plus extra verse to explain about the name:

I found a name to suit him, so I call him Bob
A dugong gong gong, a dugong gong
I have a sneaky feeling he's a lazy slob
A dugong gong gong, a dungong gong
Yes, I call him Bob
He's a lazy slob
Aaaaand then I took him home
A dugong gong gong,a dugong gong!

(c) 2005

Glammed up

You've got to love the ability of photoshop to make yourself look good! ;-)

DH has been playing with portraits and did one of me. He's removed the bags/wrinkles from under my eyes, smoothed out my skin, removed zits.....

Before












After (heh heh, if only this was really what I looked like!)


















Moral: This is why you should never believe those photos of models in fancy magazines. ;-)

Number 2 Baby

I'm "outing" myself and announcing that number 2 is on the way. Here it is at 13 weeks. :-)

Which wife are you?

Here's one of those cheesy personality quizzes you get sent now and again.

I found it via Rosina Lippi's blog - she writes as Sara Donati (the Wilderness series) as well. I enjoy her books. She's just brought out a new one called Tied to the tracks.

It is surprisingly accurate for me ! LOL!





Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?


this quiz was made by Lori Fury


Actually I don't press flowers... but I used to make pot pourri. Still do now and again. ;)

Heart-melting words

My baby has learnt to say it at last!

"My loves you Mummy." [usually accompanied by a hug]

Excuse me while I swoon with love...

It makes up for the times when he's less than good:

• Throwing toilet rolls in the toilet bowl
• Smearing arnica cream all over himself and everything else
• Undoing the zip on the beanbag so all the beans come out
• Having meltdowns in the supermarket

Speaking of supermarkets - I was in the local Kaitaone yesterday and trying to locate some gruyere cheese (ended up having to get an expensive Swiss one because their selection there is hopeless - I like to buy local NZ ones) when I see DS crawling along the floor beside the freezer. What on earth! You see - he has this "thing" about fans. And the freezers all have fan vents in their bases. So he was crawling along looking at each one and confirming to himself that they were working.

Does this mean I have a future ventilation engineer?

I am enjoying...

this book: The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater ( available at Amazon of course).

My sister got it as a gift and I have borrowed it for a little while. I know I'm kind of obsessed when it comes to food, but this is the type of book you could read like a novel. But then, I read cookbooks like novels too so I'm probably not the best person to make that statement!

I find his writing evocative. It is annoying that the seasons are all turned around for us in the southern hemisphere, but I've managed. There are a number of recipes I want to try and I'm pleased to see he uses lamb quite a bit . I do wish we had access to a Farmers Market near me that was open at a time I could go. The ones I know about are a bit of a drive away, and not on days that I'm able to visit.

It's that time of year. The rain is constant. The lawn is a swamp and all we need are some flax and pukekos and we'd have our own wetland out there. We wake up in the dark, and it doesn't get light until about 7.30am. Well okay - that's probably not so bad really. Imagine living closer to the pole - brrrrrr! Reading Nigel and the winter weather inspired me to make a spicy beef and carrot stew last night with apple & boysenberry crumble to follow. Comfort food. I made the stew using a recipe from Cuisine magazine and it was supposed to be for a pie filling, but I felt like having it with potatoes so I modified it slightly! Just as well our power was on unlike the rest of the city. Shocking really.

Spicy Beef & Carrot Stew
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Stewing beef (about 700g), chopped into large chunks
2 carrots, peeled, halved and sliced
1 tsp each of paprika, ground cumin and ground coriander
2 cups beef stock
2 T cornflour

Saute the onions in olive oil, and once the raw smell disappears, add the garlic. Stir a few times and then add the beef. Brown the beef (or at least stir it around so there is no red left). Add the spices and stir to cook them as well as coat the beef. Add the carrots, stir, and then the beef stock. Bring to boil then turn down to a low simmer. Cook, stirring now and again until the meat is soft. Mine took about 1 hr. Thicken with the cornflour and 1/4 cup water, and stir so the cornflour cooks.

Serve with mashed taters or rice. I also served it with cabbage lightly sauted with a few fennel seeds.

As for tonight - I've got some Boerwoers out of the freezer. I got them from a butcher down the way, so I hope they are "real" ones. They looked like it in the shop. Not sure what I'll do with them yet. Maybe Nigel will have a suggestion.

Temptation...

Made these Peanut Brownies in my new oven. I love the fan forced feature - it means I can cook 2 trays of biscuits without having to swap them over halfway so they cook evenly.

More list challenges

Alison S is at it again... setting list challenges!

List 1: List What's Wrong With Men.
Let me count the ways... LOL! No - seriously I love my man tho' he does know how to push my buttons at times [cough... that sounds rude].

1. Why can't they take hints? Why do I have to spell out things like what I want for my birthday. Sometimes it's nice to be surprised by.. I don't know.. flowers or summat.
2. Their awareness of housework that needs to be done is at a different level! [giggle]
3. One thing women do better is network and support each other. Men seem to find this difficult which is a real shame because they need to support each other to be men. The feminisation of our society bothers me at times (especially in our school system), and I think men need to be given permission to be male, to be different to women. To be a man is a glorious thing and nothing to be ashamed of - just like it is a glorious thing to be a women. We will always be different, better at some things than the other and why should that be a problem? Vive la difference! Can you tell I'm the mother of a son? ;)

List 2: List all the Ways the Government Lies to You.
hmmm. Don't know if I can think of anything for this one. It's more like they make grandiose statements which sound grand but the reality is far more in the range of mediocre. For e.g. they make a big deal about working families getting a childcare subsidy which is great... but there is a cap on the maximum you're eligible for, so essentially it works out (for me) to be about 2 weeks free childcare for the whole year. I realise they have to cap it, but it almost isn't worth me applying KWIM?

As for wiping interest off student loans... that made me so mad having spent all but 3 years of my working life paying off my @#$% student loan. Seems unfair that I essentially took a paycut for 7 years. Oh well... whinge whinge. I suppose I did get some parental leave payment out of my taxes during that time.

Enough of that.

All boy...

The other day Stihl had a brochure in the paper. I showed it to DS since he likes looking at mowers and weedeaters - he calls the latter "weetys". He spent hours looking at the brochure - talking about the different attachments displayed there. "Look! Weety!"

He was quiet for so long I went looking and discovered him in my bed reading the "weety book". So cute!

Couple of layouts

Did these the other day. Nothing spectacular.

First one was at Cathedral Cove, Coromandel. Second was from a visit to Butterfly Creek Farm.

What's wrong with women?

Alison S has posted a "list challenge" over on her blog. It sounds interesting so I'm going to join in. She randomly chose "What's wrong with women?" as the first topic. She says

(when I first opened the book I though NO WAY! but then I thought 'Why not?" - a bit of self analysis doesn't go astray occassionally

Soooooooo...... here goes.

1. Our downfall is chocolate. I just ate a whole packet of Malteasers by myself - how bad is that!!!!? I'm sure women have a chocolate centre in their brain that requires regular dosing.
2. We sometimes talk and analyse things too much. Some things just are the way they are because they are okay?
3. We can be horrible catty creatures at times both with each other and towards guys.
4. What is it about gossip and women... why are we so attracted to gossip? and related to that
5. Women's magazines - they make me gag.
6. Self-image and acceptance thereof. So easily affected by the beauty industry, media, social expectations etc
7. Body hair (see 6 above).
8. We just assume people know what we want and then get all snotty about the fact that others are not mind readers. Need to be more proactive or clear about expressing our needs and desires.
9. Some of our good qualities can turn against us at times. I'm thinking of situations where our natural tendency to nurture/empathise can actually be detrimental. Rather than getting out of relationships that are poisonous we tend to try and make excuses and think that love and care will "change" another. Sometimes it doesn't!

Hmmm very deep for Tuesday afternoon... think I need more chocolate! LOL!

The shock of the new

I'm so happy - I'm getting a new oven. It's so sad that something so mundane makes me excited! LOL!

It's a Fisher & Paykel "Oregano" one which has a double oven and a ceramic top.
That well known retailer Novell Lemming is letting us have it on their "3 year interest free" deal.

Goodbye rusting old Shacklock from the '70's! RIP in the kitchen in the sky.

The lovely delivery people will bring me the new one on Thursday, and take the old one away. I shall have to have a celebratory dinner... what should I make??? We got a pizza stone on the weekend too, and had nice homemade pizza. I had some trouble getting it onto the stone - I need one of those wooden paddle things. My dough stuck to the tray I used so I couldn't slide it off onto the stone. Needed to use more flour I think.

DH is teasing me he will expect 3 course gourmet dinners from now on.

Simplicity vs complexity

StevenB on the ACRLog has an interesting thought that pricked my interest in the light of our focus groups that we're going to run. He's been to a commencement ceremony and heard a speaker:

Among the points of advice he gave to the graduates he included “Do not be scornful of complexity.” We challenge our students too infrequently in their undergraduate education for fear that we will alienate them. I like that the president reminded the students that anything worthwhile they’ll achieve in their lives is going to take hard work and devotion - and certainly some complexity will be encountered. While academic librarians should endeavor to avoid making using their libraries unnecessarily complicated or complex, what more can they do to challenge students and prepare them for the complexities of life after college.

This is interesting. On one hand, I have had librarians arguing that our web pages should be as simple as Google. On the other, we have a University President encouraging folks to step up to the challenge of complexity. I wonder what our students will say.

Say Yes to Users

Hee hee - I've been wanting to use that title for a while. It sounds so ... evangelical.

Becoming more user-centred has been a meme on the biblioblogosphere for a while. As of next week we're going to be running some Focus groups which (I hope) will help us become more user-centred in terms of our web pages.

At the beginning of the year our marketing team created us a new "front page". We then created a bunch of pages "below" it. The layout and structure of the pages were the subject of intense scrutiny and discussion by the folks here. You can imagine the frank discussion that went on when you get a bunch of passionate librarians all with their own opinions about What Our Students Want!

Now, 5 months later, we are actually going to ask our students what they want.

I'm supposed to be running most of these focus groups which will begin next week. I'm a little nervous about it since it's the first time I've done this and all the literature I've read says (in tones of doom), that the focus group moderator should be experienced. Well, thats all very well if you've got the budget to hire someone. We don't, so they get me. Ha!

It will be interesting to say the least. If we get any students from our recruitment. So far we have the grand sum of 3.

I think I need chocolate.

Where oh where has my creativity gone?

If you've seen it, please send it back home.

Going to a crop tonight with my girly friends and I have no idea what I'm going to do. I hate not having a vague plan when I go to these things because I take too much stuff and waste time when I don't. I haven't touched my scrapping stuff for weeks. I even piked out of making Mother's Day cards and got DS to do it.

Even the smocking has taken a break. The garment I'm working on is using some old material I've had for ages and it smells musty. I should have washed it before I used it. Now (for reasons which will be revealed later tho' I'm sure some of you will guess) the smell is making me feel ill and I can't bring myself to touch it.

Need some energy....

Visited Sabato on the weekend (bad for the wallet) and picked up some yummy Almond Criossants to cook. Had one this morning and can I say YUM! Love that buttery, yeasty flavour and the flaky lightness of the pastry. MMMM... need more.

Conversations with a 2.8 year old

You know you've got kids when frank discussions of bodily functions become everyday topics of conversations.

In the car going home the other day:

DS: Yukky booger in my nose. Get it my finger.
Me (thinking ): How about I get you a tissue?
DS: No!
Me (handing a tissue over the back): Here, try this.
[...long silence...]
Me: Did you get it?
DS: Stuck!
Me (cringing): Stuck on your finger?
DS: No! Stuck my nose!
Me: ummm...ok.
DS (triumphantly): Got it!