a tour of chez-bhg

Whilst tidying up so that I can do the floors, I realised you could do a tour of my house, and my life, through shoes. All of these photos were taken in the last 10 minutes – i.e. these shoes were already here, I didn't put them down for the purpose of this post.

Please also note the first sentence. I am about to clean my floors. This is as bad as it gets. Also note, it's molting season for my three cats....

So, welcome inside. If you've been out riding, please leave your shoes at the door. The cleats can damage the floorboards


Just inside is where you leave the shoes you put on when you go to take the bins out, or breakup late night cat fights.
To your right, you'll find the lounge room. A place to relax and take your shoes off after a long day at work, or a walk up the hill.



These purple shoes are the ones I wear in the garden, and around the house. They're so comfortable, but unfortunately too dirty for proper company. The pair underneath are also very comfy and together they form a nice group of dangerous Australian aquatic life, cros and sharks.


I was going to wear these ones out to breakfast today, but couldn't find the other, so this poor lonely shoe was abandoned on the couch.


Before we continue to the tour, maybe you need to use the facilities? Of course here's the answer to age old dilemma of when you get home late at night and you can't work out what you want to do more - pee or take your shoes off.


From here we move to the bedroom - always a hiding place for many an abandoned pair of shoes. I got this pair on a trip to Rome about six years ago - so they're my Roman Sandals


This one was lost behind one of my speakers. Very old and shabby but very comfortable.

These are hand embroidered, but so old, they're covered with dust and have a loose piece of bubble wrap sitting on top of them.


Finally, we make our way into the kitchen for a cuppa. Take your shoes off, make yourself at home.

And these are the ones I had on when I was taking the photos. They are now sitting on the floor of the study as I type this. Which as turned out quite nicely as the typing has formed a distraction from cleaning the floors, which means that I can leave the shoes there a little longer.

All together - fourteen pairs.

life is pretty good

I went to a gig last night. Years ago that would be have a standard Saturday night out, these days – it's extraordinary.

Good mate Princess and I went to see the Charlatans, who have been in my life almost as long as I've been an adult, with their stonking track The Only One I Know* coming out the year I turned 18 (go on, do the maths). When I lived in the UK my flat mate, Geordie, and all round party girl Debs and I had it bad for Mr Tim Burgess, and I was kinda wishing I was able to be with her to see them play. All in all it's probably a good thing Debs didn't make the trip from her cosy house in Tyne-on-Wear. The band looked old. The band looked bored. And not long after so did I. And Princess too. I leaned over and said 'I'm happy to go back to the Worlds End for a pint if you'd rather'. She rathered. She also said it looked like Mr Burgess had taken a particularly strong trip in about 1991 and had never come down from it. Too bad it didn't get them bouncing off the walls. I didn't get to hear Only One I Know, but I was sure it would be an encore and I just couldn't be bothered waiting around that long.

So we did go back to the Worlds End, where we'd eaten before the show (tip: Saturday night is $15 parmie and pint night, and very nice it was too). These days I'm nearly 40 and Princess has two kids under the age of three, so late Saturday nights at the boozer are not a common event for us. This venue used to be a semi-regular haunt for us when we were young and on the streets, and the clientele has certainly changed, but that's probably for a future post on the death of feminism....

This evening, and conversations with some of more-academically minded friends have made something apparent to me. In my early twenties my successful, academically minded friends were nose-down-bum-up, hard at study and focused on where they were going. I on the other hand, was hanging around at gigs and drinking waaaay to much beer with musos, roadies and groupies. Hence me slogging at a Masters degree in my 40s, while many of my friends had PhDs under the belts in their mid twenties.

Would I change it? Hell no. As Princess said, quite out the blue - we've done some good stuff in our lives, haven't we. This was sort of phrased in a "we're old and boring now, but..." kind of way. But it was 9.30 and we were both tipsy on our fifth beer and ready for home, so I knew what she meant. Princess and I have travelled Australia and the world together, been in at least three share houses together, laughed, cried, and held each other's hair while we were throwing up. We can also fight like no other friends can.

She's right tho, between us we have:

• gone to school in France
• lived in a small village in rural China
• built an orphanage in Kenya (not single handed though!)
  
• shared a lift with Nick Cave
• lived through hepatitis and malaria (one a piece)
• danced in precariously high heals to Robbie Williams with the cutest boy on the floor
• done tray after tray of shots in those horrible sticky, plastic shooter glasses
• ridden cycles and vespas to exciting locales
• woken up with the rhythm section of the support act asleep on our lounge floor
• picked up the lead singer of strange country-ska acts
  
• done countless all night sessions of Donkey Kong Country
• got some of the best tattoos in town, from the best tattoo artists in town
• eaten BBQ'd chicken hearts on the silk route
  
• SCUBA dived, parachuted and paraglided
• ended up homeless on the streets of Athens
• bargained for carpets whilst drinking endless cups of tea in Varanasi

to name just a few.

And last night we got caught up in a friendly street tussle with the Hilltop Hoods.

Yep, it's been a good life.


* it should be noted that this stonking dance floor favourite is now being used to flog chocolate.

exciting things are happening

What's been happening? I already told you - exciting things. There have been some non-exciting things too. I'm not going to the IAA conference in Tasmania next month (no leave, no cash). In fact the no cash thing is pretty much the most unexciting thing in my life, making the very act of eating a financial decision - can I afford to eat that? The answer, usually, is probably not.

But why so cash-strapped BHG? Glad you asked. It has to do with - exciting things!

Exciting Thing Number One
And expensive thing number one. Flights booked.

After boring everyone with my plans to spend my fortieth in Greece next year, I've put my money where my boring is and booked. Actually I booked for three. The other two will come back to me, but not for a while, so Exciting Thing Number One has made me very very poor. But excited

Of course, I have also booked rooms and bought guide books, so the guide orgy has begun. Bus schedules, hotel prices, museum opening hours, I can quote you the lot!

Exciting Thing Number Two
Ethics granted.

Mercy lordy, this has been a hard and bloody slog. Hundreds of pages of forms, and other forms, and extra questions and comments called for. I understand that ethics are important, but it's like a job application - the same questions asked a thousand times in a different format. My university also also famous for, amongst other things, producing the most god-awful, unusable, badly formatted forms known to god. This particular one is a the pinnacle of bad design unfortunately.

But, it's over now and the permission seeking stage has begun!

Exciting Thing Number Three
It's a little bit sunny. I don't like really sunny, but this is OK. I still need a jacket on inside, but the laundry's dry, the cats and warm and snuggly and ready to have their tummies kissed, and outdoor eating is upon us.

So, I feel it's time to mark Exciting Thing Number One with a Greek lunch. Which means a couple of hours away from the methodology chapter to write out the invites. Like I said, exciting things.

Exciting Thing Number Four
My mummy comes home next weekend.


Over and out.

I dream of themes

It is well documented that I am lazy. Bone lazy. Actually, that's not technically true. More, that I like to do what I like to do. mmmmm.... what do I like to do?:

• sleep
• eat dumplings
• scour youtube.com for old Blur videos
• write

And write this sort of stuff, truth be known. Not writing theses, trying to make a lot out of not very much at all. And recently it's turned me into a bit of a social networker (in an attempt to write what I want and not what I should. There's this blog. And a couple of others. And facebook. And more recently Twitter. I've bagged twitter very much for a very long time, but now it turns out I quite like it. I have no followers except for Dr Space Junk - so go and find me and follow me now. oooooooo.... how I long for approval.

And all of this tweeting, and blogging and stuff has drawn my attention to one thing - I'm not writing the stuff I like to write and writing the thesis is actually distracting me for the stuff I really like to do, and that's Interpretation.

And how did I get on this roller-coaster of unemployability** I hear you ask... well, here's the story.

One day, dunno about four years ago, I was at my desk as a state government employed events manager. It was OK, the events weren't big and I got to hob-knob it with those in the art world from time-to-time. But in government you have to do PD (professional development) with clockwork like precision. And one eventually runs out of things in which to develop oneself. So I googled 'events professional development', and up popped a little university run events course. Not that I though that much about it, it was just another tick in a bureaucratic box for me, so I rang to enquire.

Now, I ended up talking not to the events guy (now known as Brown Steve), instead I got JJ. JJ could sell ice to the penguins. I rang up to enquire about 3 days of PD, and by the end of the call I was enrolled in a Masters degree. No - really. She's that good. I tell this story sometimes as part of my introduction during workshops and people think I'm making it up. But part of this degree was another 3-day workshop on Interpretation, which I had never heard about and if you'd asked me I would have thought it was something about languages.

Hooked. Instantly hooked.

I was like someone had turned a light on inside me, and I saw the world in a whole new way.

And so I am here, writing the thesis, and really wishing I was writing interpretation. And recently I've been tweeting about interp, and reading interp blogs, and posting things about interp (like the dollar bill post below) and just dying to write something creative.

aaaagggghhhhhh.

And this is another little tit-bit that I got from IBD (and which you can also see on the Kulula airlines website).


As IBD point out, this is hardly the height of sophistication, but by-golly-by-jim, it caught my eye and made me giggle (and now I'm writing about it, so it must have worked). Maybe it's the references to Dead Poet's Society – which is actually a reference to Walt Whitman – or maybe it's because I have always had an affinity to airlines because of my beloved Uncle John.

Speaking of Uncle John, I get to see him in Greece next year. For my fortieth birthday party. For which I am on the verge of booking flights.

I'm sure there's a theme in there somewhere, dying to get out.

** like degrees in Classics and Archaeology in the 1990s didn't make me unemployable enough!!

more bang for your buck

A recent post on Interpretation By Design talks about a contest recently held (it closed yesterday) to redesign American paper money. The contest itself was run by designers, not by the US Government, so the winner is not actually going to end up on currency.

Both IBD and the Dollar ReDe$ing Project tackle an interesting problem, faced by interpreters all the time - how to make something complex, with multiple layers into something easily understood by all (although comments on the contest's page are slightly less than enthusiastic). What I think it's about is asking Americans who they think they are? Currency is intensely important for this, when the Romans conquered a new land one of the first things they did was mint new coins, in local denominations but with the Emperor's face on it. This is an amazing piece of propaganda, most of us handle currency everyday in a very matter of fact manner. Once we're comfortable and familiar with our notes and coins we become comfortable and familiar with their images. And all of a sudden half of our grain is going to Rome as tax and we don't think that's so strange. This was one of my big beefs with the Euro - taking away countries' sense of identities and cultural, historical and ethnic differences. Bad thing. The again, many would say the same thing about the EU in general, and its endless regulations, particularly cheese producers.

I can't see how changing the pictures can help the economy, as claimed by the organisers, but it's an interesting exercise how a nation sees its-self, well at least how a nation's designers see themselves. This is one of my favourites. Brings a whole new meaning to 'I Love Lucy'.

not something you see every day

Traffic chaos spreads after mayonnaise spill

picnic

Today in an attempt to execute further avoidance techniques towards my thesis writing I went for a short ride to chez-Dr Space Junk, who had kindly invited me down for a picnic.


A lovely afternoon was spent in the park, eating very unhealthy food and half a bottle of wine. It was deeeeelicious tho. At least the bike ride may have burned off maybe the dip. Or the macaroons. Not both. And certainly not the roast chicken...

but anyhoo, DSJ was talking about how, on a recent trip to Brisbane to visit fellow archaeologist and sewing whiz Wallis, she had joined Twitter.

I've got a million blogs. And a facebook account I hardly ever use. But now, so that I could see how it works, I too have a twitter account. Mercy, when will it end.

But I've almot finished the lit review, and it's not nearly as crap as it could be