New dress...sort of

A bumper sticker  I saw in my street (thong = flip flop in Australia) 

I wore a dress today that I haven't worn in about two years because I got too chubby to fit into it. But now I'm not so chubby, it fits me well - probably better than when I first bought it. This pleases me.  

I have a lot of clothes in my wardrobe bought over the past year or two that I haven't been able to fit into for a while and I'm excited by getting to wear them again. It will be like going shopping without spending money. 

I had a long day today and didn't leave the office until 7.15, BUT NOW IT'S MY WEEKEND! Hooray!  I have a busy day of appointments tomorrow, but no plans for the rest of it, apart from getting my hair done. Oh, and mothers' day with Luke's family on Sunday.

At last: what I did on my holidays

I've lost enthusiasm for writing a lengthy post about my week in Sydney, but there's a few gleeful things I want to show you, so here's a bunch of photos.

The entrance to Tooronga Zoo

 

 One of the meerkats, pretending he's people

There didn't appear to be any otters in the otter enclosure,
 but there was a duck

It was rather perplexed by the glass. It was paddling like mad but going nowhere. It's pretty funny when you can see below the water as well as above. More zoo photos here 

 

 Matthew Flinders' sea-faring moggie, Trim, beside the State Library of 

New South Wales, near a statue of his owner 

The reading room of the library's Mitchell Wing is a light and pleasant space, but it doesn't come close to the grandeur of  Melbourne's La Trobe Reading Room

 The facade of the Mitchell Wing is not unlike the exterior of the 

State Library of Victoria

This carved inscription on the wall in the foyer of the Mitchell Wing was my favourite bit of my (short) library visit 

I like this sign at the Botanic Gardens, which are lovely

I didn't smell the roses but I took lots of photos of the water lilies

 Lotus pods

Lotus buds

A very tall eucalyptus tree in the gardens

 Iconic Bondi Beach - the Bondi to Coogee coastal walk was my favourite part of my time in Sydney

My first glimpse of Waverley Cemetery. See here and here 

for more photos of the cemetery and the coastal walk

 This SIGN made me CHUCKLE

 Coogee beach, the end of the 6km walk. 

Does anyone else primary schooled in Australia in the 1980s remember the ABC singing books and the song about "chish 'n fips 'n riko cholls, somato tauce 'n raussage solls"? 

 After a few days of stunning harbourside scenery I needed a bit of inner urban grunge. I spotted this on someone's front fence in inner city Newtown.  The cards were just little plain squares with 'To' at the top and 'From' handwritten at the bottom, but still...

A few doors down, I saw this sign

And this 

 And this, I presume, is Florian. Home safe, albeit legless 
and rather pale after his ordeal

While I was in Sydney, there was a report on the news about the corpse plant in the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne blooming for the first time in seven years. The bloom, which is said to smell like rotting flesh, only lasts for a few days, so you can imagine my irritation that it had the audacity to flower while I was interstate. Such impertinence! 

I visited the gardens on the day I got home not expecting to see anything (or smell anything). This is the sight that greeted me (click on the links above for comparison, if you don't know what it looks like in full bloom):

Teehee. Rather flaccid. Coincidentally, I just learnt from Wikipedia that the plant's scientific name, Amorphophallus titan,  means 'large, misshapen phallus". 

Nevertheless, it's still an interesting plant, and some if its neighbours in the tropical hothouse were interesting and unusual too, like this white bat plant. 

Back to normal programming: smilewhale, FMLR, crafty

I got up early again today - 7.00am! That's an hour earlier than on a work day. OK, I admit it was only because the yappy dog over the back was yappy, but I got SO much done. I have been a creative machine.  

To start, Doodle of the Day:

Yappy Dog woke me from a dream where I was having a philosophical discussion about the protection of a rare whale/dinosaur creature I had found, so I etch-a-sketched a whale (because I'm not good enough to draw a whalosaurus). I used my happy whale to cheer up a friend on Twitter who is blue. She said he's much better than failwhale, thus I have dubbed him smilewhale.  (Can you tell that I'm loving my $15 Etch-A-Sketch?)

 After that taxing artistic endeavour, I basecoated a canvas in preparation for creating my old family photo collage. There was something very satisfying about painting the white canvas black - watching the patches of white disapper, seeing how much paint I could can squeeze out of my foam brush thing. I even like the smell of the paint.

Then I hung a pair of little mirrors I bought from Lincraft (and cardboard).

I used some of my bits and bobs from Clegs to make a button brooch. It was like all of those buttons were made to fit together. Took me five minutes to make it and I'm happy with the result.  

(Middle button is shiny silver)

I also made something else, which was quite time consuming and required me to go up the street to buy a thimble and dredge up long-lost sewing skills, but I can't show you the thing for reasons I also can't reveal. Secret squirrel. I'm quite pleased with my protoype though.

And then I wrote my Gleeful special edition 39 Secrets of Adulthood and Stuff, which I'm rather pleased with.

Oh, I've also created an ace new Twitter hashtag to counterbalance a common one that gets my goat: #FML (f**k my life), mostly used for complaining about minor irritations such as breaking nails, lunch time meetings and running out of milk. I propose this: FMLR - F**k, my life rocks. Please use it, Twitter people.

I've made up some new words lately too - substituterus (an alternative to the creepy 'gestational carrier') and flabbygasting, which is how you feel when you first notice you have tuckshop lady arms (not that I do).

When I was up the street to get my thimble, I spotted a new old sign. I've walked past it hundreds of times and never noticed it. It is very faded though.

Hint: It says ENTRANCE

I heard from Luke, who's arrived in England. Yay.

Baby, signs, rude word

I visited my friend Paul's newborn baby Eliza Grace today. She's lovely. So tiny (although average sized). I had a little cuddle and she didn't cry too much (she did fart though. I made sure to point out that it was bub, not me). I may or may not be a wee bit clucky...

I saw some old signs on shopfronts in North Melbourne as I went by on the tram to Paul's. I wanted to yell, "STOP THE TRAM!" but instead I got off on the way home and took photos.

Advertise in The Age and Herald down the centre

Wertheim something...

And this church: 

I went to Lincraft today for more supplies for my projects and I couldn't resist making a naughty word with the 3D cardboard letters. A four-letter word. Something tells me I'm not the first peurile shopper to do this since the U, C and K were already in place; I just had to move the F. I wonder how often the staff have to undo the shenanigans of people like me? I put all the letters back into their proper place after taking a photo of the rude word though.

 Doodle of the day

Bubbles, rhubarb pills, bagels and beautiful trees

Well, that was a fun weekend *dusts off hands* I've been over at the Botanic Gardens again blowing bubbles with my choc-chip-cookie scented bubble mix. This time it was at twilight and the softer light seemed to really make the bubbles shine with irridescent colour. So preeeeety...but fleeting. I always want to take photos of them, but they pop before you get a chance...or the friend you're with runs about popping them like a gleeful child.

My friend also got me to spin round and round while looking straight up into the air (to "test my balance". Pffft.) Of course I very quickly got dizzy, lost my balance and fell over on the grass...in duck poo. Lovely. But it was funny.

I cooked lamb fillets again. So tender and tasty. Yummy scrummy in my tummy.

Today was pretty much spent in search of bagels. I discovered there is now a Glick's bakery near South Melbourne market so we set off on foot in the sunshine to get some. On the way we passed this awesome building on Cecil Street with much of its original sign writing still visible. Look at it! I was in old sign heaven! This is probably my favourite example of old signage so far.

Top hat cough? WTH? Oh! Stop that cough...

with Dr Scott's Balsam Horehound

Marchalls Rhubarb Pills - for the liver

Use J King self-raising flour

When we got to Glick's it was closed, dammit, but we were determined to have bagels so we decided to walk to the Elsternwick bakery instead. It was rather a long way, but it was a nice day, the path was quite shady and it meant going past a bookstore on Clarendon Street that I'd seen last Sunday selling a copy of Australia's Remarkable Trees, marked down from $65 to $20! It was closed then, but not today! That book is mine. It's a beautifully photographed guide to the country's biggest, oldest and most unusual trees.

Eventually we arrived at Glick's, hungry, thirsty and footsore (me, anyway),  and ate five bagels between us. Hey, we'd really worked up an appetite with all that walking. I had a look in my book to see if my favourite tree, the Golden Elm on the corner of Punt Road and Alexandra Avenue, was among Australia's remarkable trees, and it is! Yay! We visited it on the way home.

There's also another tree, an Algerian Oak, in the Royal Botanic Gardens in the book too. I'll have to go and find it. 

Here's my post-bagel straw moustache. Just because.  

Tidy, blue, pale, pretty

Photo taken on my new phone with a vintagey look. Wish my eyes were really that green.

Oh, those are my new specs. Forgot to post a pic before.

I had my eyebrows professionally seen to this afternoon for the first time. They didn't need to be shaped because nature kindly did a fine job of shaping them for me, so the brow girl only tidied them up. It really makes a difference. I can't stop looking at them.

I also got my hair cut and coloured - not quite as short as usual and a little more blue in my blue/black (hey, hold those blue rinse jokes!)

The two women who work in the salon are both from Asian countries (one from Indonesia, not sure about the other). They love my pale skin. It's a pleasant change from being surrounded by women with fake tans who probably look at me and think I could do with a bit of colour.

I walked to a polling booth to vote in the State election this morning. My neighbourhood is staid and lacking cultural diversity, but  damn it's pretty.

(I stayed in this place for a couple of weeks when it was a grungy boarding house.

Now it seems to be a big posh residence.)

And I spotted an old sign. Anyone know what it says? It backs onto Park Street, South Yarra. There's also a P, so it's ....PLES. Do you think it could be Maples, like the old piano store on Swan Street, Richmond? Perhaps this was their factory?

Watch out, Post Bill

I'm glad they've finally decided to ease up on Bill Posters. This is in Caledonian Lane in the city.

You got that?!

Walking through the Target Arcade in the city last night, my friend Anthony spotted this funny sign tacked to the front of a take-away food outlet called Health Conscious.

I love its many layers of amusement. Firstly, the y at the end of 'health'. What have they got against healthy unconscious people, huh? And do they actually refuse to serve people who are conscious but not healthy? How can you confidently spot someone who isn't health conscious? Have they established a standard of health consciousness one has to meet before being served? Perhaps a questionnaire to be completed before you get your lunch? Do you need to tell your server your BMI?

The use of capital letters on ONLY suggests they are quite cross with junk-food loving slobs and determined to turn them away. Were they exasperated by a steady stream of befuddled people asking for Mars Bars wrapped in bacon and fried in lard with a straight whisky and ciggie at 9.00am? Is this their equivalent of a 'No hawkers' or 'No change given for parking meters' sign that's stuck up in the hope of repelling time wasting nuisances? Like people with a hankering for hot chips?

And what if someone looks like they love junk food but has just decided to turn over a new lettuce leaf? Should they be spurned in their attempts to eat better? I think not! Lunch nazis!

I am tempted to go there on Monday and see if I can find any item of food available that I deem a little bit nutritionally dodgy, perhaps something that's not low enough in fat and salt. No, wait! I am going to go and ask for a Mars Bar wrapped in bacon and deep-fried in lard, a whisky and a ciggie, just to watch smoke come out their nostrils as they gesticulate wildy at the sign. Yes indeedy.