it's been raining for a long time

Every morning it's dark and rainy, which encourages me to turn off my alarm. I never get out of bed these days.

Also I watch a lot of the Simpsons here b/c we have them on dvd. I remember when we were little my mom and Denise would never let me and Caitlin watch them. Good judgement, guys.

Because Alex and I went to a French restaurant to celebrate our four year (Eep!) anniversary, here's the Simpsons in French. I particularly like Marge's voice.

bris-been?

there was an ad in wellington somewhere to go to brisbane and that was their slogan. pretty witty, eh?
anyway, here are some photos of things i did in brisbane.



half-completed bridge



alex(girl) and me on a boat - the city is based around a river, and not the ocean, like i had imagined. but you can take this water taxi to work!



view of brisbane from boat

‘Does everybody have to die?’ asked Kezia.

‘Everybody!’

‘Me?’ Kezia sounded fearfully incredulous.

‘Some day, my darling.’

‘But grandma.’ Kezia waved her left leg and waggled the toes. They felt sandy. ‘What if I just won’t?’

The old woman sighed again and drew a long thread from the ball.

‘We’re not asked, Kezia.’ She said sadly. ‘It happen to all of us sooner or later.’

Kezia lay still thinking this over. She didn’t want to die. It meant she would have to leave here, leave everywhere, for ever, leave – leave her grandma. She rolled over quickly.

‘Grandma,’ she said in a startled voice.

‘What, my pet!’

‘You’re not to die.’ Kezia was very decided.

‘Ah, Kezia’ – her grandma looked up and smiled and shook her head – ‘don’t let’s talk about it.’

‘But you’re not to. You couldn’t leave me. You couldn’t not be there.’ This was awful. ‘Promise me you won’t ever do it, grandma,’ pleaded Kezia.

The old woman went on knitting.”

-Katherine Mansfield, 1922

this is not a photo of me doing something cool

but this is how i look sometimes

moving

i'm not moving. but today i helped alex (girl) move from her parents' house, a half hour drive out of town to a flat, a fifteen minute walk from my house, which is awesome, but involved driving my car and a moving van a million times and carrying stuff two million times. also that was a really long sentence. we also had a moving out party last night and drank a lot and ate even more. now i'm completely exhausted. although i guess we did carry a lot of furniture.

i forgot how fun it is to drive big cars, like the moving van. you feel invincible. i understand why people want suvs, but really, it's not that great of a feeling.

on the way home i bought a wool sweater from a consignment shop. i do not need any sweaters, but this is a cream wool cardigan with flowers stitched around the neck and down the front, and accents on the sleeve and back of the neck, and it's completely lined and vintage.

i dropped some clothes off to sell at the same store a little while ago. i hope they make me money!

"magically deceptive"

I read 'magically deceptive' in terms of material culture studies in yet another book I'm reading for my thesis, I think that's really a great term. So Lucky-Charmian.

This past month I've been working on my thesis a lot and not doing much else.

Although, I just realized that I haven't written about Brisbane since I've been there. Alex (girl) and I had a really good time in Australia. As it always is in Queensland (the sunshine state!), it was hot and beautiful and the grass scratched my toes. We saw some weird lizards and birds and other Australian wildlife at the lake (yes, a lake) on campus at UQ. The conference itself was pretty good- just a postgrad conference, so nothing flashy. Just a lot of idiots like me talking about things that don't matter. But it was really nice. Eventually Alex will give me pictures off of her camera (I forgot mine.) and I'll post them up.

In other news, it's spring here (finally!) and I've been over-using parentheses in this post, so I'm going to go for a run.