Tallboy makeover.

Saturday and Sunday were beautiful days. In the morning I walked to Bunnings, bought sandpaper, and then around the middle of the day I spent 2.5 hours or so sanding. The first day was discouraging, because I thought a sander would just scrape the lacquer off in 2 goes, like icing off a cake. I had to buy coarser sandpaper on Sunday and also one specifically for removing paint, and then I had more success. But still, it was really slow going. Sanding is slow, that is its nature.

Here is the before, the shiny orange honey colour:

This is the result I got on Saturday with medium coarse sandpaper. The sander had a bag so it contained a lot of the dust, but I did it in the bathroom to contain the dust as much as possible. Unfortunately it amplified the noise. Sorry, neighbours. Anyway, this was discouraging because all my work only got half of it off.

This is the finished result on Sunday with coarse sandpaper. I'm much happier.

I'd say there is still at least 10% remaining I could take off, but I hope this is good enough.
This is the sort of brown I wish it to be when I stain it.

Before I did this work, I had to remove all the stuff in the drawers and put it into green bags. Actually seeing the bottom of the drawers was an interesting experience. This is a shot of the sock drawer after I took out the socks, stockings, ribbons and bangles. Quite interesting treasures. A 1964 australian penny, a blue rock, a leather papoose baby necklace, chopsticks, my first watch. The undies drawer was even more interesting and a lot deeper, there were old greeting cards and my red P licence and about 4 lost prescriptions and a bird whistle and a ponytail of hair and some tiny photo frames and more.

I'm looking forward to eventually putting back the things that should be in the drawers, i.e. clothes, and then have fun sorting/throwing out the rest.

Friday round-up.

For a very annoying reason I have cancelled my debit card. I travel very light, purse-wise. I keep things simple. I only had one money card. It bought things online, it got money out of ATMs. I had memorised the number so I could use it without physically looking at it! And as I was cancelling it over the phone and heard the words "7 to 10 days" until the new card comes, I realised I would have to live on cash until then, and wondered how much cash I have. The answer is $58. That's good, I can buy food without borrowing from my flatmate. I have 3 travel 10s already, which although not redeemable for cash mean I don't need to buy one this week. I can hopefully afford the stuff I want from the hardware shop for my DIY weekend. I probably better not buy a magical strudel, but I can still go and have a look. I wonder if I should get a credit card.

I have the longest cold ever. Day 10. Being sick is gross. And depressing. Everything about the middle of winter and being sick and everything is depressing, I'm so tired of myself.

Hamish and Andy's Euro Gap Year was on again last night, I have to say this series is really funny. A lot more natural and witty and Hamishy than the US series, which was full of bad sound quality and awkward interviews etc. It took me ages last night to even notice that there was a live audience, because it felt more like they were only talking to me. And the stunts last night were particularly good. And I like puns. Gap Byear, lol. I really lold.

lol had become a big thing in the office this week. All of a sudden we think it's funny. It's my default response to everything now. I wasn't even listening to someone properly and I replied "ha ha, lol, lol."

Pining over pine.

"Get rid of it, Jess. Pine has no place in this loft. It's the wood of poor people and outhouses," — Schmidt, New Girl.

I have to say Schmidt has good lines. He is sort of a cross between Barney from HIMYM and Sheldon from BBT. Half sex-obsessed yuppy half OCD grandpa.

I am planning a bit of home repairing this weekend. I was going to wait until the curtain brackets fall right out of the wall, but now I feel like I need well supported curtains in my life. Also, I'm pretty sure that if I walk to Bunnings and then walk a bit further to Clovelly I will find a magical strudel shop. I anticipate that fixing curtain brackets in a concrete wall will be really frustrating, but magical strudel will more than offset that.

And while I'm at it, I would really like to sand back my chest of drawers and re-stain them so that they look nicer and more matchy. They are 20 years old and are neither nice nor matchy, the lacquer having been sun-tanned into a vibrant shiny orange. However, while it was ok to paint in the lounge room, I don't think that sanding is an indoor activity. Possibly I could do this out the back driveway on a nice day. Someone might own a sander I can borrow. This will involve a lot of planning. Maybe I could just get rid of it, and have fewer clothes or better storage in my wardrobe. Buying a new one is out of the question, new ones are very very expensive and also will make all my other furniture look old and daggy. So, I'm pondering the limits of my DIY capabilities.

Well now! I have found someone with a sander to lend me! And it has a bag to collect dust, so possibly I could do this in the bathroom. Or potentially having a DIY furniture restoration party with A on the weekend, if we can find a vehicle to transport our "vintage pieces" to the garage of the house she is sitting. Otherwise, the bathroom sounds like a goer.

Supernova, super congested.

I went to Supernova (pop culture expo) to help Karen with the Kinds of Blue table in artists ally. It was my first Supernova and it was quite an experience. Thousands of people, and thousands of people in costume. George came in her Princess Fiona get up and lots of people were impressed and took photos of her. It's quite nice being in a place where total strangers in silly clothes are happy to pose for photos for each other. It was a genuinely fun and friendly day.

I still had a cold, though. My nose was quite handicapping. I used a dozen hankies and a lot of tissues and serviettes and a packet of soothers and a lot of hand sanitiser also. When I got home at night, my head was so tired I couldn't tolerate being in the living room with the lights on and the tv noise, I had to sit in my room in the dark with the door shut and a cup of tea. I've never felt like that before. I would have gone to bed at 8 o'clock if I hadn't been waiting for the washing machine to wash all my hankies for another day of nose-blowing.

Photo Recap: Oxford streets.

The area of East Oxford reminded me of parts of Goulburn: cold with small working-class buildings of a certain age, frozen gardens, but very narrow streets. I seem not to have taken any photos which is a shame.

We walked into the central area along the road the next morning. Oxford has a lot of bicycles. So mane. This is the main commute route for students, so look at all the bikes.

Then everywhere you go there are bikes leaning against fences or parked in giant racks. This is part of the Bodleian I think.

The outside of a college on Broad Street.

There must have been thousands of them. This is Broad street, containing some bike racks, an Oxfam shop where I bought a cardigan, the Bodleian Library at the other end, and that light patch of road near the cafe chairs is where Latimer and Ridley were burned.

Which looks like this.

I loved the streets of Oxford, they were very interesting to walk around. I'm a big fan of a thing called the Small Streets or Walkable Streets movement, and places which were built before cars are wonderful for walking. There are streets that are charming:

Bustling shopping streets:

And streets that were strangely deserted. You walk up some tiny lane and find a whole cobbled street being hardly used at all. Wedding photo paradise.

Braces update.

Some of you ask, so here is the state of my mouth.

It's looking good. I had a new elastic put in today, to pull on the inside of my teeth. It's already popped out of place twice, but hopefully the good work will continue apace. In the last 2 months there has been noticeable shrinkage of the gap, with a small gap opening up BEHIND the slow-moving tooth as further evidence. So I'm making up end dates for myself now. Maybe the end of the year, maybe by my 29th birthday. Depressing to think about so much of my twenties in braces. But apparently my smile is wider, and ultimately I'll learn to eat on both sides of my mouth evenly and have no more jaw pain. 10 years of one-sided eating! Wow, both-sided eating will be good. Jaw been sore this week, so I'm focused on the good reasons now, not the length of time taken to get there.

Photo Recap: To Oxford!

When we first got there it was late afternoon and our B&B was in East Oxford, so we just headed out and walked along the river, right up to the head. It was lovely. And there are big fancy boat sheds on it for the rowing clubs, and we saw people training, rowing up and down while their coach rode a bike along the side of the river and shouted at them. Rather exciting, actual Oxford rowing! But I didn't have my camera that day so I missed the rowing for you. Here is some boat sheds at a fork in the river.

Here is a big boat up at the head. Most of the houseboats were very small though. Like caravans but longer.

The river was so tranquil. I suppose the water level is very constant compared to Australia.

Punts, of course! I missed taking a photo of boys climbing over them and going punting because Oxford was the one place I didn't like looking like a tourist. I don't know what it was about Oxford, but I would have preferred to be there visiting friends or something, because I felt sort of like an invader. It's because Oxford isn't really a tourist place I guess, it's a functioning educational and cultural place. I think it would be a better place to be if there was a reason to be there, ie, study. More on that later.

But Oxford was a beautiful place just to walk around the streets and river. Plenty of photos to come!

Upfashioning jeans.

I have 3 pairs of jeans, which is too many. They are all blue, so it's not even like one is a black pair for fancy things. I have tried really hard to get a dark grey or black pair, only to take them home and realise they are exactly the same blue. I recently bought a $20 pair of skinny ones, to wear under boots, and since then my wide ones seem almost useless. So my favourite pair, which has the waistband at the right hight and extra long legs seemed ripe for some alteration. I had nothing to lose since they already have a mended knee from the scooter accident. So I put them on and folded the flares in and pinned them with safety pins. I don't have a mirror but I think they looked ok. I just sewed straight down from about the knee. Tried them on and wore them for a while before I cut off the excess flare, because you can undo sewing but not cutting. Ta da, old fashioned jeans are now new! And no money spent. I've deecided to not buy any clothes until the end of the year.

Photo Recap: things we chanced upon in London.

So this is a collection of things randomly seen, which I didn't plan to see, but I would have if I had thought about it.

This is a building with a sign that says Gracechurch Street. I was regularly overjoyed to see a common street sign in a place written about by Jane Austen. I would quote lines from Pride and Prejudice at my brother whenever we found one: "Her other uncle is in trade, and lives in Cheapside!" 

This is a bin and a lamp post with the logo Seven Dials on it. That's one of my fav Agatha Christie books, but in fact this has nothing to do with the book. It is however a very charming area in Covent Garden, an intersection with 7 spokes off it. This is where we saw the musical Matilda. Covent Garden was the coolest place, I think. Trendy shops, walkable streets, just not enough cheap food. Sydney is so much better for cheap restaurants, as far as I could tell.

This is a pretty area of Hyde Park. Most of Hyde Park is just huge flat grass, rather barren, the sort of place you take dogs to run around, not what I was imagining, which would have been an English formal garden or something like this with flowers.

This is outside Hyde Park, in front of Wellington's house, I forget the name, and near Wellington's arch, and some horses paraded by. We followed them to Buckingham Palace. It was so strange.

This is the palace, through the fence, with a marching band. It was mainly luck that we got there at the right time.

This is it, the guard is being changed right there! It took forever so some people had actually got bored and left by the time they did this bit.

On another day, at the tower of London, I had my photo taken with the Duke of Monmouth. We chatted about stuff. He got his head cut off later on. Interesting fact, he arrived in England at Lyme Regis, where we went later, and has a beach and things named after him.

Inside the White Tower, I was delighted to find a garderobe, which is a toilet. It drops into the moat/lawn. The only disappointment was that it didn't have coathangers in it like I read about in Discworld.

We chanced upon M&Ms world, which was really tacky and a lot bigger than you would think a shop that sold M&Ms would be.

We didn't go inside Sherlock Holmes's house, because there were long queues and after all he isn't a real person who lived there, it's just the house number that is literally significant. It's above the door. Notice the policeman in a proper helmet. They all wore those! Amazing.

Trafalgar Square Olympic clock, on 100 days. Nice round number!

The thing this recap is missing is the tardis at Earls Court station. Cannot find that photo anywhere. But imagine me, with suitcases, pretending to travel in the tardis.

Photo recap: Lovely London.

London stone is a lot paler than I expected, Sydney has warm sandstone whereas London is mostly grey/white stone. Westminster is a bit golden, but Buckingham Palace, Whitehall, and Trafalgar areas are so pale. So the colour scheme of london is quite striking against the pale streets: the bright red buses and phone boxes, the black cabs, black iron fences, green grass. This is St Pauls cathedral, with beautiful buses brightening up the photo. I think every photo in London is improved by a bus.

 Another example, Westminster from the London Eye. No bus, bus. Makes a difference, I think.

Two things I like about a lot of their street design is that they weren't afraid of repetition in architecture, and they appreciate the beauty of the curve. Anything built with curves is a pain compared to just building straight lines, but there was a craze for it in the olden days, and I love it. This is Kensington, then Piccadilly, then some other nice street with lovely red buses.

Speaking of curves, apparently the same man designed the bridge and the phone boxes. So they have the same arch, you can see, under the bridge and on the roof of the phone box.

Finally, things look nice in the rain. This is one of my favourite photos, even though nothing famous is happening. I just like the effect of reflections in composition.

Photo recap: Victoria and Albert Museum

I'm going to backtrack and share holiday photos every so often. This is a selection from the V&A in London.

There are several very large galleries filled with plaster casts of masterpieces "from the continent" at full scale, originally cast and brought over and constructed so that people could see fancy things without travelling overseas. This room was closed, but from the balcony I took this photo because look, David.

This is an actual regency muslin dress, as per Jane Austen. It's very simple, but very fine and detailed.

This is a close up of a tapestry portrait of Wellington, I think.

This is one of those dresses that sticks out sideways. It's not round, it's just sideways. I didn't think they were real. The embroidery was beautiful though.

This is some ikea furniture. Except that it's not, it's high class design, original modernist masterpieces.

There was a lot of nice arty statuary.

So there you go, the Victoria and Albert Museum, free, and full of lovely things.

Jumping back on the treadmill.

I have not done any exercise all week. I have been poised, building up to it, biding my time until I leap on. Once I'm on I can stay on, I think. Tonight or tomorrow night will be the moment, time and laundry basket and hair dirtiness are all lining up nicely, and then my routine will be able to keep going. I do Jillian on a night when my hair is dirty, so that means 3 times a week usually—it's a good system. I find dirty hair very motivational. I always want to make the most of it before I wash it, so that's when I want to get sweaty or go swimming.

Anyway, after 5 weeks I'm expecting to get rather stiff. Sort of looking forward to that feeling!

What I did on my first day back.

Realised that it is cold. It is 4 layer weather outside in the morning.
Realised work is hard, and a working day is longer than a day when you sleep in.
Unfriended 100 people on Facebook.
Used my last teabag.
Reunited with James Valentine on the ABC.

Relaxing.

Not much to blog about since other than driving to a local game park and seeing wild giraffe a bit closer, we've settled into a normal sort of holiday routine. Eating, food shopping, little jobs, playing board games, reading, and watching a movie at night. Last night the men started watching Band of Brothers while the ladies took to bed with a laptop and Larkrise to Candleford and some English chocolate. Yesterday the fellow who lives downstairs was hit by a train at a level crossing, which is somewhat of a feat apparently since there are only 3 trains a day in Windhoek. The car spun a little and is a write of probably, but everyone was ok. So that was a little bit of interesting gossip. The book I am reading is quite enjoyable, it is based on Oscar Wilde solving crime. Perfect holiday reading. Tonight we are going out to have Chinese with the family and an american couple who are about to go back to the US as their farewell and our introduction to African Chinese food.

Lots of firsts.

Stayed in my first luxury resort, 3 hours north of Windhoek. Saw African animals for the first time, on the game drives. We were unlucky in the lion department, saw nothing, but saw elephants and got charged by one as well. Got nice and close to a cheetah, and also got a good look at giraffes, white rhino, warthogs, the tops of hippo heads, wild dogs, squirrels, lots of birds. In the car on the way back, lunch wasn't sitting too well. When we got home, I was feeling definitely seedy. When I started to feel like throwing up I realised I was having the true traveller experience. I haven't thrown up since I was 9 years old. I thought I was immune to everything! I won't go I to details about it. I only threw up once during the night, and mostly I just feel achy like a flu. So this morning I'm hoping that panadol and sipping on water and Gatorade is all that happens. I'm not the only one with the bug, but happily this is a house with plural bathrooms. Tomorrow I will hopefully teach some people how to use InDesign.