Ducks and fairies and funny words

It was such a beautiful, mild sunny day when I set foot out of my flat this afternoon I stood on my front steps, and almost flung my arms wide and said "Aaaaaaah!" to the world.

As I walked to the end of my court it hit me again that I am going to get to stay in my flat for another year and I couldn't help grinning like a loony. Then I crunched some very crispy leaves on the footpath and felt very, very happy.

I had a nice sleep in this morning, although I woke up with my handbag on the floor beside the bed, which is not where it usually lives. Sleep walking again...

I saw a funny little flotilla of ducks on the river as I crossed the bridge today. Don't usually see ducks swimming in formation on the river (above).

In the park on the other side of the river I saw a very large specimen of what my brother and I used to call a fairy when we were kids (below). It was nearly as big as the palm of my hand. Did you used to pick them and blow away the fluffy bits and make a wish? I might have done that if there weren't any people around...

When I came back past later in the afternoon, the big fairy was gone! Gone! It was quite a windy day. I hope Mr Wind made a wish.

My wordy

I learned some interesting words playing Free Rice at work yesterday. Two of them fall into that category of words that sound like they should mean the opposite of what they do (like pulchritude).

Sybaritic means luxurious, but it sounds to me like it should mean scabby or infested with lice or something similarly icky.

Fulgurous means dazzling, but I reckon it sounds like it means something like "bearing fungus". "My, what a fulgurous smile you have!" doesn't sound very complimentary, does it?

Other words I learnt -

* to crepitate is to crackle. I ate some pop rocks this week that made my brain crepitate.

* a bleb is a bubble. Blowing blebs just doesn't have the same ring to it. Sounds like a euphemism for farting.

My next book...

For any word lovers - or people who love word lovers - here is a book I read about in the latest Readers Feast Bookstore Book Guide today - Foyle's Philavery by Christopher Foyle. "Philavery is 'an idiosyncratic collection of uncommon and pleasing words'." I must have it. I'm crepitating with anticipation. There is also a follow up called Foyle's Further Philavery, which is quite a tongue twister, isn't it?

Blog drinks

I went to a great new bar in the city last night called Seamstress (new to me, I mean). There was a cute bartender with a sexy accent and a nice breeze coming through open windows. The walls were painted dark and the ceiling draped with Asian-style fabric. A row of colourful Cheong-Sams hung over the bar. I met up with some people from the Ask Sam blog again. There were some new faces and some familiar ones. I particularly enjoyed catching up with Karma again, who is very kind and lovely, not least because she thinks I'm funny! Hello Karma if you're reading! (We have a tendency to keep calling each other by our blog de plumes.)

Speaking of being funny, like most people, I love to have a laugh, but I realised while lying face down on my osteopath's table a few weeks back that I love it even more when I make someone laugh. I was chatting away to him about stuff and he laughed out loud at a couple of things I said. It was thrilling! If only I were funny enough to make a living out of it....

I should stop here. Oh, just one more thing. Mmmmm....chocolate gelati.

Got any funny/peculiar words for me? What will your next book purchase be? Do you like to make people laugh?

Cool

Aaaaah...After three days of hot and at times windy weather which appeared out of the blue, a cool change has just swept through, bringing a refreshing cool breeze and showers. What a relief!

The temperature dropped more than 10 degrees in a matter of minutes after being in the low 30s all day. It was 28 degrees C (82 F) when I left home this morning!

The smell of hot, wet bitumen is wafting in through my open windows. That, for me, is the essence of summer (although it's not quite summer yet). No sign of the thunderstorms that were forecast, but the night is young.

I can see some pleasing specimens of cumulonimbus out the window too.


The decluttering continues

My decluttering drive continued tonight. The local council is conducting its annual free hard rubbish collection tomorrow, so I've carted a bunch of stuff down three flights of stairs in the heat and dumped it on the nature strip. (The pile includes the hideous vase my ex gave me last Christmas!)

I had more stuff to get rid of than I realised and I'm happy to have cleared some space in my spare room, not least because someone might have to move in there.

Good news!

My building sold at auction two weeks ago, and I have been in a state of uncomfortable uncertainty since. But good news! I found out today the new owner wants to sign us all up to new 12-month leases. Hooray! I get to stay in my sunny little inner city haven!

It's such a relief and I'm thrilled to bits. The only thing that could possibly dim my joy is that the rent is going up (amount TBA) and I will probably be forced to rent out the spare room. But at least I have the option of getting a flatmate to share the rent, hey?

I adore living on my own, but the more I think about the prospect of sharing again, the more enthusiastic - or perhaps the less apprehensive - I am about it. There can be positives about sharing - including the potential for making a great new friend - but the benefit that appeals to me most right now is the extra $100+ in my hand each week.

Finding the right person to share with will be the key, but maybe that could be fun too. I want to share with a guy, so I might meet a lot of (hopefully not creepy) men...

The view

The photo above is the view from my lounge room window. When I look out the window from where I'm sitting now, the full moon is staring back at me.

More of 333

I dropped into 333 Collins Street Monday afternoon to admire the gorgeousness of the domed vault. Here's a couple of better shots of it than the one I posted on Sunday, with bonus Christmas tree top.

Juice and goose bumps

I had a delicious apple and passionfruit juice with my breakfast when I got to work this morning. Never have I enjoyed a bottle of juice so much. I had a few too many wines over dinner with a friend last night, you see...very parched.

Doctor Dictionary delights me yet again. Word of the day on Sunday was horripilation which means goose bumps! Makes me want to get chilly just so I can use it.

Only four weeks until my month-long holiday...

50 gleeful posts...and a great day out

This is my 50th Gleeful post. Hurrah! The glee-spotting and recording has been rewarding and fun - it has helped me to see and appreciate my world with fresh eyes and encouraged me to look for bright spots on gloomy days. So yay for that!

Of course, having people read it and take the time to comment makes it extra-special. I especially like it when someone says I put a smile on their face - that is surely one of the best simple pleasures in life - or shares their gleeful experiences with me. So, a heartfelt thank you to all of you. You make me gleeful.

Anyhoo, enough navel gazing.

Sunny Sunday

I've had a great day today. I enjoyed a delicious hot chocolate at a cafe on Spring Street in the city with my friend Anthony before we visited The Impermanent City exhibition at the City Museum in the beautiful Old Treasury building. The exhibition, subtitled "The rise and fall of Melbourne's skyline" features photographs and models of 11 notable buildings that have long been demolished, and their "ghosts" which can still be seen today.

My favourite was the Australian Building (above), which was the tallest building in the country when it was built in the late 1800s, and held the title of Melbourne's tallest building until 1957. Although described as 'the epitome of the architecture of Marvellous Melbourne', it was modernised in the 1940s and knocked down in the early 1980s. Parts of the side walls are still visible on the buildings that flanked it.

In the museum's gift shop, I picked up a copy of Walking Melbourne, a National Trust guide to the CBD's historic and architectural landmarks. I looked up one of my favourite buildings at 333 Collins Street and discovered it was narrowly saved from demolition in the 70s. What the????!

It's a comparatively unassuming building from the outside, but inside the ceiling is a jaw-droppingly stupendous ornate dome (below). The thought that it was slated for demolition almost hurts.

I'm looking forward to wandering the city with the guide (and camera) in hand. I might do that on my month off work at Christmas.

After that, Anthony and I walked to Little Collins Street to check out the remnant brick wall of workers' cottages that were featured in the above exhibition. The cottages were home to the city's poorest inhabitants but were knocked down in the 1890s. The wall fronting the street was spared and now forms the back wall of the garden of the exclusive Melbourne Club (the snooty men-only hang out of business bigwigs and politicians). You can still see on the wall where the windows were bricked in. We lamented that we'll never get into the garden to appreciate the full splendour of the massive elm trees whose lush canopies soar above the high brick perimeter walls.

List writers' delights

Then we visited Metropolis Books, which I'd never been to before. You won't find the latest Dan Brown best seller there - it's a collection of books on art, graphic design, architecture, photography, fashion, popular culture, film, music and the performing arts, plus a nice sprinkling of quirky reads. As an inveterate list writer, I was very tempted to buy Listography Journal - our Life in Lists. It's an illustrated "guided journal" for creating "a unique autobiography entirely in list form". You can compile lists on topics including greatest accomplishments, best friends, favorite food, guiltiest pleasures and greatest acts of kindness. Maybe next payday...

Oooh! I just discovered the author, New Yorker Lisa Nola, has a website at http://www.listography.com/ which enables you to create a database of lists on anything your listaholic heart desires! I can put my ever-expanding list of books to read on there! Cool bananas!

Then we went to JB Hi-Fi so I could buy the Dead Letter Chorus' debut album The August Magnificent. (I got too impatient waiting for it to hit iTunes.) I've only listened to it a couple of times, but it is indeed magnificent. One of the lead singers, Gabrielle Huber, has a gorgeous voice.

And all this under beautiful sunny skies....Aaaaaah.

How was your weekend?

Chatting, rat patting and mannequin love

I patted some rats today. Not what I expected to be doing when I left my house this morning, that's for sure!

I visited a shop that sells clothing and accessories of an alternative bent (goth/metal type stuff - lots of black, buckles and skull motifs). I'd seen a skirt online that I liked but wanted to try it on for size. As soon as I walked in, the shop assistant came over and was on for a chat.

At first I was a little irritated - shut up and let me shop, dammit! - but I ended up happily discussing the rampant consumerism of Christmas, vegetarianism, the death of pets and various other topics quite unlike the normal small talk you get from shopgirls.

Then she mentioned she had her pet rats in the shop today so I asked to see them and I had a pat. Obviously I'm not grossed out by them. It's not like they just crawled out of a pile of roach-infested garbage. (When I was a kid, living on a farm in the middle of a mouse plague, I always felt sorry for the cute little mice when they got killed. Perhaps I am just favourably disposed to rodents?)

I ended up buying a T-shirt (above) which I did really like, but I also felt I couldn't walk out empty handed after standing there talking for 20 minutes! Maybe that's her sly plan...

(PS The Army of Wonderland T-shirt is by Beserk, an Aussie label.)

Big man-nequin

I had a chuckle when I walked past a shop which had a few male mannequins in the window wearing very, very well padded trunks (below). The bit that looks like the mannequin's right leg is actually the bulge! I also like the way the mannequin on Mr Bulgy's left is reaching for a tentative hand hold. Aw...dummy love.

Side note...

I have just learned the word mannequin comes from the Dutch language. It originally meant dwarf but then came to refer to an artist's model. We later adopted the French spelling. The words easel and landscape were also plucked from the Dutch artists. Etymology is so interesting, isn't it?

Compliments, more rain and a pygmy hippo

I got a very nice compliment today. A FABULOUS compliment indeed. Had it been said to my face (rather than via a blog), I would have blushed madly.

A man I met for the first time at dinner last Friday night told me I am stunning (in response to my comment that I was worried I would be invisible to guys now that I have short hair). Stunning! I would have been pleased with pretty!

It made my day. As reader Julian commented recently, a compliment is a wonderful thing - so easy to give and such a simple way to make someone feel good. Got to be genuine of course, but it's usually not that hard to find something nice to say about people you like, is it?


It's raining

I walked home in light rain tonight. I like the sound of the rain drops pattering onto my umbrella. It's still raining now. We so badly need it.


Fun-size hippo

Check out this baby pygmy hippo. I saw it on the news tonight. Awwww...so cute!

Anyone received a nice compliment lately? Or given one? What are some other easy ways to make others feel good?