What's going on?

Not much. Or if it is I have nothing to say about it and haven't been taking pictures. Oh, up in Maitland on Saturday Mum and I went to my favourite picture framing place and chose frames for my 10 year bike cross stitch. So much cheaper than Sydney. Visit Cunningham's in Raymond Terrace next time you need framing. Benita is fantastic, she has a really good eye. And I bought a bunch of ready-made frames for $2 each! So that's something.

Elastics.

I have a new set of elastics as well as robot wires this week. The robot wires have been painful to get used to. But the elastics are ridiculous. From back lower molars to lower canines to upper canines, in a triangle shape. I can hardly open my mouth, and when I do, there are elastics right at the front. I think this is to pull my lower teeth forward so that my teeth meet at the front. I've never had teeth that meet at the front, not that I cared. I heard somewhere that teeth that meet at the front evolved away when we got cutlery and stopped chewing meat off the bone, and most people have a slight overbite now.


http://www.orthonj.com/patient_forms/Elastics_Instructions.pdf

"For the average person, it takes 6-10 hours of pressure for the bone moving cells to start allowing the teeth to move. If you stop wearing them for even an hour or so, it takes another 6-10 hours for the teeth to start moving again. So anything less than full time wear is doing nothing to make the teeth move."

One of those up and down weeks.

I was really enjoying my life for a while there. Winter was mild, I was enjoying walking to work, had lots of energy, everything was running smoothly. This week has been colder, tireder, and sorer in the teeth. I broke an ATM and lost my only card inside it, which is an inconvenience of forced frugality for 7-10 days. I got my robot wires yesterday and I can feel significant discomfort even through ibuprofen, eating ANYTHING is a torture today. However, I have still enjoyed Bible study, a free ticket to a Discover Chopin concert, midweek dessert night with Bec, and I'm looking forward to a weekend in Maitland with George. Next jelssievision episode makes me happy too. It's even better than the first one. Here are 3 unflattering stills. lol.

Finally: I love legwarmers.

Start with soup.

I'm pretty proud of this. I had leftover pumpkin soup in the fridge, but also wanted to eat red meat because I need iron. But how to eat both? That's just weird. I found some frozen naan bread and was inspired. Cooked steak, cut it up, heated soup in microwave, added curry powder and steak chunks, and voila. Beef and pumpkin curry, with naan to dip. It was actually delicious.

Disenchantment.

I found this article very interesting.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/06/why-the-west-loves-sci-fi-and-fantasy-a-cultural-explanation/276816/

Long weekend long post.

On Saturday I had a sleep in, did jillian, baked brownies, and spent the afternoon drawing. I drew 3 pictures for a silent auction at year 13 trivia fundraiser, and I had 3 things already done to donate as well. 4 sold which was great, and I gave the remaining two to some of the winners so I didn't have to take them home. It was awesome to turn skill into money for a good cause. The ones I did on Saturday were all ink line drawings. One was Emily from the rag doll book, which looked pretty cool and I wish I had a picture of it. One was gumleaves, it didn't sell, and one was a line of swallows. A nice design, but so simple it only took about 6 minutes. It was really tiny, you had to go up close to it to see it wasn't just a blobby line.

I bid on 2 things and won them: a dinner voucher at a Barzura at Coogee and a box of Nutrimetics stuff which was apparently good value. Mmmm fancy hand cream and stuff. Unfortunately I squirted handcream onto my phone and now the listening part is blocked so I can't hear people talking to me.

I joked with people before hand that I was going to build a trivia superteam. And then I did. The secret with trivia is a diverse team. So we had nerds in different fields and different ages. I guessed arty things like the Fibonacci sequence, and the IKEA logo, other people covered the Simpsons quotes and the geography and the maths. And we won. The funniest thing was that during dessert I tried to keep people focused and sharp by asking random questions and one of the questions I asked was who is the host of Americas next top model, cos I was watching it before I went, and then that was a question in the next round! Go team Geneve! Raaaar!

Sunday I think I watched Cranford and walked to the shops in a tshirt to get sun vitamins on my arms and then did some unplanned sales shopping and stuff and then hid it in my bag and went to church.

On Monday a little party of us did a day-trip to Cabramatta. 3 of us went on the train (we had a train announcer who entered into the spirit of the day and made station announcements in an articulate and playful way, kind of like they do on Virgin planes), had a massive lunch, and shuffled through crowds in tiny arcades. A 4th joined us, and we did some highly profitable shopping in the many cheap shops. I bought a mop. It started raining so B and I bought cheap umbrellas, 2 for $6. We went to a cafe to rest and had interesting asian drinks. Mine was avocado and coconut. I wanted banana and coconut but I was told that avocado is nice with coconut. We bought some street food to take home.

E and me dropped in on JK cos she was sick, so we ate even more food. I was so full all day. The public holiday 370 timetable was useless so I had to go home via Central, and walking around the streets I noticed a man in some kind of orange jumpsuit behind me. I couldn't get a good look but I tried to remember his description if he mugged me. When we got to traffic lights I had a sneaky glance and it was a young man in a kangaroo suit. He was wondering why I was carrying a mop around the streets at night. That's not weird.

I was too lazy to wash my hair last night. I last washed it on Saturday. So it's on day 4!!! It does look dirty but I was very cunning. I put my hair in a high pony before bed last night, slept in it, and this morning the pillow had slightly fluffed up my hair so it looks less dirty. I tucked in a few loose bits, voila! Day 4! And my hair-washing cycle is back on track.

Today I received a shirt in the mail. I ordered it last week after about 2 weeks angsting. And I'm going to put the breaks on clothes shopping again. Until at least Summer. And now we are all caught up on my life.

TV land.

Thursday night is pretty good.

The Mindy Project: A dumb show that's on way too late, but I quite like it. Mindy is an OBGYN who wants to live in a rom com. Last night she was on a date with a goofy cute academic, on valentine's day, on the empire state building, and she convinced him that he was in love with his best friend—not her. Silly and I enjoy it.

Little Paris Kitchen: a cooking show. On SBS on Thursday night. French food by Rachel Koo, a cute designy Eurasian with an English accent. Her Paris kitchen is possibly smaller than mine, I like that she doesn't have a kitchenaid and everything. And it's pretty. And she talks French. And she used to be a graphic designer so there is stuff like the title screens between each recipe are written and illustrated by her.

Last night wasn't a TV night. I went to a fancy dinner. The meat was sooo tender. There is a lot of difference in chewyness and flavour between the cheap meat I buy and cook just to force my iron up, and whatever that was. I shared my tip about bread roll consumption (tear it up with your fingers, don't make a sandwich out of it), and learned the correct way for men and women to place their hands in their laps when they are not eating. Men, interlock the fingers, women, place right hand over left as though lightly cupping a fly. I love learning that stuff. It makes interesting small talk.

Vivid 2013 doctor who.

I gave blood last week and my iron was low, the exact minimum allowed. Which is good because I still got to give blood, but I think it explains the nausea I've had, esp in the afternoon, esp on the bus. Google said it was either pregnancy or iron deficiency or something else, so I was guessing the iron thing and trying to eat more beef and take a multi vitamin, and the blood test seems to have confirmed it. So now I'm eating beef every day. It's so annoying to chew.

I went to the Doctor Who night at Vivid. Here are photos. The Doctor Who display was only on that one night, and it was raining. And it's only on once an hour and lasts 5 minutes. Plus a 5 minute countdown. Stingy. Why not every night once an hour? or every 15 minutes on the Saturday? So much effort and so cold and wet.

The lighting was very pretty though, as usual. In fact, water makes everything more reflective and pretty, and umbrellas add pleasing silhouettes. I'm glad I saw the Doctor Who thing anyway, and there was some cute costumes: saw a tardis ball gown, a Matt smith, a Tom baker, and a Dalek. It seems Matt Smith is retiring from being the Doctor, which is sad. I hope they get another unknown.

On Sunday I was way tired. Didn't even brush my hair. Went to the shops and then church.

Finally, you may have missed the video Bec made of Elsie and I having brunch. It's on http://jelssie.blogspot.com.au/. I really want to do it again soon.