Hey! It's not your birthday, it's mine.

Yep, I actually heard myself saying this to The Headstrong One on our walk just now as she was trying to pull me in the wrong direction.

Excellent news: The watch I lost last week on Willows oval was handed in at the sports centre. I had been meaning to check but thought it was such a long shot that I held very little hope. But, once again it turns out I'm a pretty lucky person.

Something so worthless serves a purpose

This picture is from Jamison a few weeks ago. The brown brick building in the background is the Coles supermarket where I worked for the best part of ten years, starting when it was still called Coles New World, and we still wore light blue zip-up-the-front dresses like nurses or cleaners. So dorky and yet I have to admit I sort of liked it, too. I don't know why.

Part of the shopping centre has now been torn down for, I assume, a long-needed refurbishment.

Coles_fence, originally uploaded by Olma.

I often used to spend my lunch and tea breaks in the part that is no longer there. That's where the takeaway was, where if I had my break early enough I could get hot chips. Or if not, I would eat some strange combination of things from the supermarket: like a little tub of custard with sweet fruit in syrup that came packed with a little spoon, or a bread roll and packet of salt and vinegar chips, and sit reading a book until I had to go back in.

There's a restless feeling knocking at my door today

I don't know quite where my head is at these days. In the past two weeks I have lost my beloved sunglasses (expensive, but old and scratched too) and my watch (a cheap but good brand that I replace every 6 years or so, probably had it nearly that long).

When I'm at work, my mind is often anywhere but. A lot of the time it is on my knitting and other creative pursuits. But at the same time, I've been reading a road safety book, borrowed from work, at home. And puzzling over how to do a few things differently at work. That's one of many books that have bookmarks in them at the moment. I usually try to mostly read only one at a time, though of course there will always be several (especially non-fiction) that I've started and then left for a while. But lately it's been worse and I have to keep stopping myself from starting to read something new every day. There are too many things I'm interested in and too much material just lying around this house. And more coming in all the time. Not that I actually spend that much time reading, as I have rediscovered Buffy DVDs. Nor writing, despite a bunch of ideas I'd like to follow up.

I've been wondering if all this is just a little phase or if I need to do some longer term planning and goal setting. (Eeeeew). I might just chalk it up to the approaching birthday. 31. There has been a bit of reassessing over the past year, but nothing toooooo serious.

Even at soccer I've been finding that I'm not quite with it. I keep seeing what I should have done, after the fact. I was getting worried, both about the team not really pulling together and trusting each other, and also that I might not be able to carry my weight. This morning I started by subbing about half a game for the lower division. I slightly rolled my ankle and came straight off. It seemed all right to run on but felt a bit stiff and I worried, cause that's what I do, about developing one of those persistent small injuries. I've been pretty lucky up to now with very few injuries and full recovery.

But when my game started everything slipped into place, I forgot all about my ankle, and I had a great game, physically AND mentally.

I hope this means good things for the other parts of my life, that I can start feeling more like my head is in the game.

Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dream

This should have been the title of the previous post, I suppose. I was in a hurry, and then more than a week went by. And as you can see, it's really Autumn. That's the same tree exactly one week later. Most of the leaves are probably now in my front yard awaiting clearance. They might be awaitin' a while.

 

Colours today

It's been a beautiful day today, warm and sunny.

This morning just as the dogs and I got back from our walk I looked up and the red leaves on the neighbour's tree were just POPPING out against the blue sky.

I've definitely photographed this effect better in the past; still love it though.

That wasn't so hard

But you seem pretty young to be searching for that kind of fun

There were lots of kids of all ages to be seen at Womadelaide.

The small fry went ballistic when these dinosaurs came round. Don't you just love that kid in the red shirt to the left of this picture?



They seemed a little less whelmed by this little one.



I kept taking photos of these boys until they finally noticed and I had to cease and desist. Couldn't get over how *cool* they are. They look young to be so stylish. I would love to know if this is their usual weekend look or something special cooked up for the festival.



And this boy, well, he's just doesn't want to grow up. Good luck to him.

Babe, it must be art

Attending Womadelaide last year for the first time was the best thing I did all year. The weekend itself was a combination of fun, relaxing, exciting and inspiring. But maybe more importantly, the ongoing effect was that I felt like my ears had been opened in some new directions. I discovered some artists and types of music that I hadn't explored before, and these lead me to others, on a multidirectional path that I'm still following. Sometimes it leads me back to things I already knew about. I love finding where things link up like that.

I wrote a really long piece about it, mentioning most of the music acts I saw, the art, the food, the baby hippies, all of it. I worked on that post for days, recording all this stuff that I was so excited about so that I could share my excitement with my friends. When I finally put it up, the only feedback was "it's so long". "Yeah I haven't finished reading it yet". Except for my parents, who provided some small vindication, marvelling at the range of music I enjoyed and wrote about.

So I learned to try to be more short and snappy. Or dole it out in smaller bits.

Once we got in to Botanic Park on the Friday night I sought out some important locations and marked them on the map.


I think it was while we were listening to Joe Camilleri and Nicky Bomba that these guys came stalking through the crowd. According to the program "Les Goulus ensnare their audience with their loopy rituals and 'close-up theatre' technique".

They picked out a woman and slowly stalked up to her, pulling funny faces and making the surrounding people laugh. And, of course, thank their choice of deity that they weren't picked for 'audience participation'. Eventually all three got quite close to the woman, and started sniffing around her face and neck. To the everyone's shock (but also, it has to be admitted, great amusement), one of them also LICKED her cheek! Sadly I didn't manage to get a photo of that moment. It wasn't a one-off either, we saw them pick out someone else on their way through the audience.

Both of these women took it quite well. But I had to wonder, how do performers with this kind of material manage to choose the people who won't tell them to bugger off? These guys apparently didn't worry too much, if they did start to pick up the wrong vibe they simply turned and walked away, flicking up their little skirts to flash their bums on the way out. (Another missed photo opp)