Owner: NotBean.com URL:http://www.notbean.com/blog/ Join Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 06:29:01 -0500 Rating:1 Site Description: Personal blog of a desert-dwelling, anime-loving philosophy student. Lots of stories about my travels, personal reflections and more. Gallery with all my photos too. Site statistics:Click here
All I Want To Do Is Listen To Music 2006-10-23 04:24:46 Dreamer aspect just can't get enough coverage today. So much going on in my head and my heart. It's a cloud watching day.
Seems like some things need thinking through, and I can't deny them attention when they're crying out for it.
Ever notice how when thoughts need space and you clear paths for them they just go crashing over everything else and settle out in vast, still floodwaters in your mind?
I should be writing an essay about Marius and Cicero and Cato but I think I'll just keep listening, then go and swim laps until I'm too tired to think about anything at all.
Or, you know, whatever appeals to me when I get there ;)
Smiles are always the sweetest surprise. (I know you'll all forgive me for being obscure) Read more:Music
, Listen
Alive... Just Barely 2006-10-21 15:38:38 I'm breathing, a little bit on the erratic side, but inhale, exhale just the same.
There were babies. Little babies. They lied to me. I have never even held a baby before, never changed a nappy, never had to make them stop crying for mum. I had NO IDEA what the hell to do.
Still, coped somehow. Got lots of hugs and I love yous and thank yous at the end of the night, so mums and kids were happy, even if I felt like the wreck of the Hesperus.
Never again. Oh no. There's just no mama in mama Bean. I adore them, I'd do anything for them, but I'm just not... well I like to give them back. And 10!!! I have no words for that. Especially when they've all been dumped on you at extremely short notice.
Oh yeah, 10 + 1 if you count the baby joey that needed feeding every 30 minutes.
I think I'll sleep really well tonight. Read more:Alive
, Barely
I Need Surgery 2006-10-21 02:47:05 To remove the part of my brain that compelled me to say "Yes" upon being asked whether I could babysit 10 (possibly more) kids tonight for 6 hours. The part that even managed a smile and an "I don't mind at all". 10 kids, ages 2 - 9 years. Oh Lord help me. I may not come out of this alive.
I can just imagine that the committee were all sitting around when someone asked "Who is going to babysit all the kids while the rest of the grown ups have fun?" and then everyone scratched their heads and said "It will have to be someone *really* crazy and gullible" at which point they all simultaneously yelled "AMBER!"
I have come to the conclusion that I need a holiday (since surgery probably isn't a realistic option). I haven't spent more than 3 nights out of this town in over a year now and this has convinced me that it is beginning to compromise my basic functioning. Read more:Surgery
Idiots Make Me Mad 2006-10-20 22:30:35 At 4am this morning, some loser from the pub (I don't know which one, they all sound the same when they are drunk) started hammering on my bedroom door trying to tell me I left my drink on the table so he was bringing it down to me... Naturally I told him to f*** off. Just now, when I got up to go make some breakfast, I realised he'd then pulled the external bolt on my door, effectively locking me in my own room. I had to climb out my window.
I really need a break from this town. Read more:Idiots
Muttaburra Breast Cancer Research Fundraiser 2006-10-20 16:54:56 Bad photos, strong drinks and much fun all round ;)
Debbie & Vic
Emmy, Me and Fern
Fern and Emmy
Jo, Me and Fiona
Liam
Little Pete
Me and Roger
Nicole, Simon + George
Outside the pub
Robbie and Jo
Robbie, Jo2 and Roger
Read more:Breast
, Cancer
, Research
, Fundraiser
Ye Olde Pub Dinner 2006-10-19 13:20:25 Just some pics :)
Jo at the pub:
Me at the pub:
Read more:Dinner
Life Is Like A Kindergarten (Only Better) 2006-10-19 01:42:47 In case you're wondering what emergencies have been keeping me from your blogs, I've been all wrapped up with feats of heroism like swimming the length of the pool with four primary schoolers hanging off me and making whirlpools and creating giggles with my wet dog hair shake complete with sound effects and getting kid-shaped tan marks and a lot of cuddles.
Terrible, I know. No idea how I'm getting through the days ;) If I'm not careful this smile will make my jaw drop off.
Summer is ramping up and it's bliss. My Melbourne Cup dress is hanging up waiting for its debut. My house is suddenly littered with towels and bikinis and sandals. Music is sweeter and the sun is doing its best to fry us all. All the critters are coming out of the woodwork, baby birds are learning to fly, frogs and crickets are singing in the evenings, bats winging through balmy nights. Geckos and dragonflies and ladybirds and butterflies grace the rocks and the leaves.
It's a beautiful thing to be alive. Read more:Kindergarten
A perfect day 2006-10-17 08:46:10 Any moment now, it's going to rain on this parched land.
Missing you all. Back soon.
Absentee Love 2006-10-14 23:24:07 It's been a very, very busy weekend and it's not over yet. Despite being pretty low on free time, I wanted to post something for you today because it marks three months of blogging for me. As at this moment, there's been over 53,000 page loads on this site and more than 1000 comments. This is my 156th post.
I can't even begin to tell you how much I've grown from the experience, though that may sound silly. If I'd met just one of you it would have been more than worth the effort that has gone into it but I feel like I'm positively surrounded by the wonderful friends I've met since I began keeping this blog.
When I started, I had no idea that it would come to mean so much to me, this little connection of mine with all of you.
I have to run to work now, but here is a photo for you of some of "my kids". The ones I drag around the pool on my back every day, the ones whose lives I'm supposed to protect while they are in my care. This was taken at golf last night, so apologies for
Whisper Conundrum 2006-10-13 02:28:49 I'm thinking about going to see the dreaded doctor. I've been exceedingly lucky with my health all my life and I firmly believe that this has a lot to do with the fact that I've never known there was anything wrong with me. Now though, things are getting a wee bit disturbing.
I've been hearing voices. Well, not voices exactly. A whisper.
Brains are funny things. I know that when I'm very tired I often think I see things out of the corner of my eye. If I've been stressed I get a more frequent sense of deja-vu. They are just tiny glitches, misconnections, neurons firing a little more randomly than usual.
I have been very tired lately. I've had a big change of schedule, I'm busier, and I'm getting all the regular symptoms of burnout. I forget what I'm doing while I'm doing it. I make silly mistakes. That's what made the whisper so easy to dismiss the first few times it happened. I just had a bit of a giggle about the way it frightened me. I was on the edge of sleep the fir Read more:Whisper
, Conundrum
I don't like the dentist! 2006-10-12 03:03:29 There is a traveling dentist
in town this week. He has a mobile surgery outside the clinic.
This dentist fancies himself a fit kind of guy and every morning this week he has been down at the pool doing laps from 6am - 7am.
So today when the dentist has finished his laps he's standing around in his speedos flexing and posing (ok, maybe it was stretching, but oh so close to flexing and posing) and it looks so ridiculous I have to make some effort to stifle my giggles. Ok, so he's a very attractive man, but there isn't a man in the universe who can pull that off without making me want to laugh just a little.
He then walks over and looks me up and down in a rather rude kind of way and asks me, in the most derisive tone imaginable "So, what do you do with the rest of your day? Paid housewife are you?" with a bit of a sneer.
I'm a bit taken aback by his rudeness so I grit my teeth and reply as pleasantly as possible "No, I'm a student".
To that he snorts and his voice is dripping
Promised Visuals 2006-10-11 10:19:13 So maybe I'm not getting better but I'm not getting worse either, and that's encouraging. I've been carting around my awful camera as promised and have the following not-great-but-still-photos photos to share with you.
The nothing to the North of me, taken across the road from my house.
The nothing to the West of me, taken across the road from my house.
Photos of my street, the main road in my bustling town.
A Peewee.
Galahs.
The blurry mummy roo I mentioned the other day with her joeys, she's eating the town hall lawn.
The potty calf next door.
A very lame sunrise picture.
Some pics of me at work.
Read more:Visuals
The more I have to do, the less I get done. 2006-10-10 12:03:35 That's a proven fact. Right now I have so much to do I'm getting nothing done at all.
For this reason, today I gave up on getting things done and decided to get organised instead.
Between work, visitors and cooking dinner for dad I got all my paperwork and cables and books sorted out.
I gave up one of my uni subjects today because I found out I'm going to be working full-time, 7 days a week, until the end of the semester at the very earliest. It's a shame because I *love* Chinese history and the subject was fascinating, but I will retake it next year.
I tried to make a bunch of phone calls I have been intending to make forever, but I couldn't get a dial tone AGAIN. I feel a serious Telstra vendetta coming on.
Tonight, I wrote a little script that subscribed me (where available) to the RSS feed of every single person who has ever left a comment on this blog. Until now I have been manually checking my blogroll every day. There are a lot of problems with that system apart from
I Have A Thing For Sleek Beasties 2006-10-09 09:14:30 It's true. I am not really much of a sports person, but I make an exception where sleek beasties are involved. What that means is that I love horse racing and martial arts, both of which allow me to indulge in a sleek beastie spectacle.
I love horses. I *really* love horses. This is a horsey town too and because Muttaburra does not have its own show, our local public holiday and the biggest event on the calendar is Melbourne Cup Day, my favourite day of the year.
On Melbourne Cup Day, almost everyone loves horses. Someone from this tiny town makes the trek 550km to the nearest coastal town and brings back a seafood buffet, my favourite food for my favourite day and the only day of the year I can enjoy it out here. The population of the town trebles because everyone comes in from the properties and the celebration is huge.
I've always loathed gambling but I make an exception on this one day, as part of my special ritual "Sending of Luck", which is the closest thing I have to a spir Read more:Thing
, Sleek
Yet Another Klutz Incident 2006-10-09 08:30:04 This afternoon when I got to work for my second shift, I realised that because I am an idiot, I had left the only existing key inside the fence in the morning. That's fairly typical, I'd lose my head if it wasn't screwed on.
I resolved to retrieve it the only way I could, by scaling an 8ft cyclone fence with 3 rows of 45 degree barbed wire on top. I made it up the fence fairly easily and wiggled under the wire, then, feeling rather proud of myself, I decided to swing and drop down the other side...
and landed directly on a classic Aussie icon, the Frillneck Lizard.
The little guy scuttled away so I assume I didn't do any critical damage but for the last couple of hours I have been worried sick that he is off somewhere dying from some terrible injury inflicted on him by the giant heffalump full of pasta lunch that fell on top of him while he was sunbaking.
Wherever you are, little frillneck, I am deeply sorry.
P.S. Whoever guesses my favourite day from the previous post (no hi Read more:Incident
Guess 2006-10-09 03:48:11 Bean's favourite day of the year is coming up early next month.
Guess
what it is?!
Oh I have so many plans and they involve you, my adorable munchkins.
Relics From The Past 2006-10-09 00:09:30 Don't laugh. I did warn you that I can't operate a camera to save myself, and I still haven't managed to get the stupid (STUPID) video camera to work.
Anyway, a girl has to start somewhere, so I decided to take pictures of things that tell a story, instead of trying to take pretty pictures, which isn't gonna happen.
This battered bag, which my mum calls "The $10 Kmart For Kids Bag", with spilled ink on the inside and river mud on the outside, perfectly captures the dichotomy (ok, maybe chaos) of my life.
It has carried shotgun shells, sea shells, firewire cables and jumper leads, surgical scalpels and hair pins, perfume samples and matchbooks.
It has been carted through bush, beach and desert, offices, hotels and art museums.
It's Gaultier, purchased in Tokyo. It was my third black handbag purchase of that month. The matching wallet and pocketbook and pinstriped slip have long since vanished.
Somehow, I don't know how, this bag has kept up with me for a couple of years
Promises, promises 2006-10-08 04:38:15 Please note: Some SCUMBAG is sending SPAM from email addresses that do not exist on my domain. I have nothing to do with it and I hope they are justly rewarded for their asshole antics.
Ok, my blog is even boring me these days, I can only imagine what it's doing to you poor sods.
The next few days I am going to be carting around my camera and video camera until I learn how to use the damn things.
Next time I post it will hopefully be accompanied by some visuals which might give everyone some insight on why I ditched my life of programming, shopping and bar hopping to escape to the edge of nowhere.
Coming soon kids!
For My Mum 2006-10-07 14:03:12 It's hard to know where to begin. It's not your birthday or mother's day but sometimes I just want to tell everyone how amazing you are, about the never-faltering love and support you've shown me, not just when I was a child but all through my adult life as well.
I want you to know that I know, that I remember.
When I had nightmares you rubbed my back until I fell asleep again and eased all the fear away.
I owe you my love of books. You always read to me. When you picked books for me they were always special.
You were never afraid to answer my questions, you made me feel like I could ask you anything. You showed me how to appreciate little things.
You've been behind me every step of the way. Even when you didn't agree with my choices I could count on you.
You worked so hard, jobs that you hated, to keep a roof over our heads and good food in our bellies and you did it for so long. We never wanted for anything. You still managed to keep our home clean and beautiful and make
Close Encounters 2006-10-24 00:02:52 I've had a lot of close encounters of the animal kind recently. Yesterday as I left for work I jumped off my verandah to find myself standing right beside two emu chicks and directly in front of mummy/daddy (I can't remember which cares for the chicks) emu, taller than me by a good way, staring straight over my head at my dog, who then began barking (thanks for warning me AFTER the fact, Lamby). I think I kind of flew back up onto the verandah and went out the back door, giving that cranky-looking monster of a bird a wide berth. I was kicking myself for not grabbing my camera.
I haven't forgotten that I promised more photos of kangaroos either. In the morning there were 4 big reds in the picnic area at work looking for all the world like they were having a bbq but the damn camera took one super blurry photo after another. (I've established that isn't my fault, so far noone who has tried has been able to get a clear shot with that camera). I wished there was a cliff handy for me Read more:Close
, Encounters
Blast From The Past 2006-10-24 11:00:30 While I was cleaning on the weekend I found (in an old suitcase) my ancient pc-cam. I dug out a 5-pin usb and checked to see if any old photos were still on there. Would you believe it, there were 218 of them - At 352 x 288 pixels, hehe. Mostly they are of my beloved Calgary and all my friends there. I also found this:
Yup, that's me with red hair, a few days back in Calgary after my Mexico adventures. I'm wearing a shirt that has a lot in common with a handkerchief and a rainbow coloured wollen scarf around my neck.
That says SO much about me. Read more:Blast
Fortes Fortuna Adjuvat 2006-10-25 00:05:59 If you like this bit of Bean philosophy, please vote for me in the Philosophy Blog War
Trajan denarius depicts Fortuna
with rudder and cornucopia - Image from http://www.bufferstock.org/fortuna.htm
Despite my skepticism for all things theological, there have been many times in my life when I've come close to believing that the ravishing lady on this coin, the goddess Fortuna, is keeping a friendly eye out for me. My mum prefers to think of me as a cat, because I have 9 lives and always land on my feet.
Superstition aside, the Latin phrase "Fortes Fortuna Adjuvat" (Fortune favours the bold/brave) holds great meaning for me. It's very easy to see the simple wisdom behind it, great change has always been forged in risk.
It's not "fortune favours the rash". There have been more than a few occassions, even my mum will admit, in which I've been impulsively stupid and fallen flat on my face. Likewise, the philosophy is not for everyone. I'm sure there are many contented people who
My emu came back! 2006-10-25 02:10:21 Took these 5 minutes ago. 3 days in a row makes him my emu. He loves my lawn.
Don't forget to check out my Phi Blog War post below!
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