Addicted to scrabble

Scrabulous is such a fabulous application. I began playing it on Facebook, and then realised it has its own website, and you could play it by email! So much fun - I can now play long distance games of Scrabble with my crossword-addict mother, who used to kick my arse at real Scrabble. I'm curious to see whether the ground is more level now I'm older. (Although the online version is easier than the real version, because you can put in random words you're not sure actually exist, and the game checks for you.)

I read Schozzfest's entry about her make-up routine (complete with accompanying pictorial transformations) with interest, particularly: "Notice in particular that my eyes are not open any wider in the second shot, but I look far more alert. This is known as curling your eyelashes. If you, like me, have heavy-lidded lashless snake eyes, please commence doing this immediately ." Well, with such commanding words, how could I resist? I am now the proud owner of a $10 eyelash curler, which does look like a medieval instrument of torture. It's still in its packaging, so I don't yet have evidence that it will transform me effectively into a wide eyed ingenue. I'm sure it'll be fun clamping my eyelashes in an effort to find out.

A white dress

I've been trying to decide what I should do with my wedding dress, which is hanging up in the study still un-dry-cleaned. I know I should have had it cleaned before now, but I've been trying to decide whether to fork out the money to have it put in a box with a window to protect it, or have it dyed and slightly altered (which would mostly consist of having the skirt deflated) into an evening dress that I can wear again.

While first I was hovering around keeping it as is, because it is such a lovely dress, I've now shuffled over to having it altered. If I keep it as is, I'll never wear it again - I can't think of an occasion where I would. And I'm not hoping to pass it on to my imaginary future daughter. So the only reasonable alternative is to have it made into an evening dress I can wear to other people's (very formal) weddings and other ball-like occasions.

It was suggested to me that I could have it shortened and not dyed, as that might be rather expensive, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone in a white evening dress. And it's certainly not a colour that would survive long with me wearing it. I have owned one white t-shirt for about three months, and it's already stained. I cannot keep food/ink/random stuff off my clothes. No, it would have to be dyed.

I wonder if the beading would be dyed also, or whether it would stay white against the newly coloured fabric. If that were the case, I couldn't have it dyed red - the white beading would look ridiculous. Perhaps a blue, or a purple. Even if having it dyed is expensive - it's an expensive dress anyway, and I'd rather it cost a little more and be a wearable expensive dress than an expensive dress that I take out and look at occasionally.

Too profane

An email of mine just triggered the "profanity filter" at Smoking Lawyer's new firm. Ha. And it was a quote from my boss too, and not my own personal profanity, which is depressing.

The lovely little system we have for charging our printing to a file requires that you input a "remark" for the item you're printing if you charge it to "Personal". I don't know what they expect you to put there to describe your fucking personal printing. "STD test results", perhaps?

I think it's a product of the program they use and not actually their decision, but it irritates the crap out of me anyway. I rattle my hand randomly across the keyboard for the "remark", resulting hopefully in list of printing somewhere in the bowels of the server with remarks like "lhaseg" and "aejh". I'm secretly hoping that someone thinks it's a mysterious code and asks me about it, so that I can inform them I'm rebelling.

(How crap am I at being a rebel? Honestly. "Hi! I'm rebelling! Hope it isn't inconveniencing you or anything!")

In other news, I got a raise, and am now finally making more money than my husband. (My husband. Ha! Still an amusing concept.) Not much more money, granted - and not as much money as Smoking Lawyer, damn her and her fancy new firm. Actually, due to my University debt he's probably still getting more money in the bank, but I don't think I'll remind him of that just yet. I want to revel more in my status as master breadwinner.

Subtlety is not my strong point

I'm wondering whether the high-heeled brogues/lace-up booties that I've seen in magazines are going to be a very short-lived fashion trend. I really love the look, but I think you have to have a certain vintage style going in order to pull the shoe off. I have a feeling if I bought a pair I'd wear them a few times and then they'd languish at the back of the wardrobe because they didn't go with anything. Things I Have Learnt in My Life - if you love it but it doesn't go with anything else in your wardrobe (or your style in general), don't buy it.

Also, just when I decided that pointy-toed shoes really suit me, after years of avoiding the trend, round toes come back into fashion. The world is conspiring against me, I tell you.

Why the sudden interest in what's in or out of fashion? I'm not quite sure. I've been working on something I've been calling my "new corporate image" (to myself. Well, and to those who've said, "Hey, you look nice today," I've responded, "Thanks! It's my new corporate image!" Which on reflection sounds quite odd and I think I should stop saying that. Aaaah, subtlety, that ever elusive concept.) That set of brackets was so long that I've forgotten my point. Ah yes - well, the new corporate image (let's call it my NCI) has involved exotic things like heels and lipstick and coats and scarves and wearing my hair out instead of in a ponytail every single day. It's been rather fun, although it has had a side effect of making me buy things (come on, you can't expect me to create an NCI without indulging in some consumerism) like shoes, scarves and hair-curling spray. Yesterday I bought a pale green handbag, and tried on a pair of the enormous round sunglasses that every woman in the Western world has been wearing for the past two years. I have previously steadily avoided them because I think they look silly - in conjunction with the NCI though, I found myself thinking that they actually looked kind of cool. I quickly left the shopping centre before I succumbed, and thankfully, today is overcast (hence, no squinty-eyed regrets).

(As a side effect of the NCI, I have popped some fashion blogs in my RSS feeds, which may account for my sudden interest in whether a pair of shoes are going to be "out" in the next few months.)

Because I never waste time

The contract on our new house became certain today - it's still subject to inspections and so on, but all going well we should be moving next month. I ordered all the searches today because I was so excited. I'm doing our conveyancing, because there's no point in being a lawyer if you can't do your own conveyancing. I used to really hate conveyancing when I had to do it as an articled clerk, because it's so dull, and I was so awful at settlement calculations. However, doing my own is much more fun. Plus, I can get someone who does conveyancing all the time to check my calculations - it's nice not being at the bottom of the hierarchy anymore.


I have become ridiculously addicted to Facebook, a social networking site I like way better than the cringeworthy horror that is MySpace. Hmm, what shall I do, I think, in between tasks. Update my status on Facebook! Update the books I'm reading on Facebook! It's like no-effort blogging, and it reminds me to catch up with friends I haven't seen for a while, so I can delude myself that it actually serves a useful purpose rather than being a frivolous timewaster.

Cough cough cough

I went to work for an astonishing hour and a half today before being sent home. I hadn't recovered as well as I thought I had from my weekend of feverish coughing, and my co-workers patently didn't want me to spread the infection around, so they firmly encouraged me to leave. Not that I needed much encouragement - getting dressed and getting to work had been unexpectedly tiring, and I was looking forward to getting home and lying down. Despite the fact that I've spent the last three days lying down. I am bored of lying down.

In between bouts of coughing I managed to fit in signing a contract for a house last night, which was terribly exciting. It's still subject to various conditions at the moment, but hopefully, all going well, by the beginning of October we'll be moving into our own little bushland paradise. Which I can't wait to do. If I wasn't feeling so rotten, I'd be packing up books into boxes right this minute.

Tired now. Going to watch a movie on the couch and probably fall asleep.

Books read in June and July

Man, getting married put my book recording completely out of whack. And I'm too exhausted by the size of this list, and how long ago I read some of these books, to do proper summaries of them. So I'm breaking the formula and doing a few descriptive words by each one. (I wrote this before I started writing little descriptions, and obviously I couldn't stick to my self-imposed limit).

The Rottweiler by Ruth Rendell - psychological thriller, usual Ruth Rendell style, enjoyed it.

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold - excellent fantasy, loved it.

Sorcery Rising by Jude Fisher - hmm, ok - I was disturbed by a character whose only purpose was to inspire sexual desire in men, without pleasure herself. It was a little creepy.

The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris - I mostly enjoyed it, but it was much more fantastical than its prequel, Chocolat, and sometimes to its detriment (although it did make me long for some really bright shoes).

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon - an interesting novel about a (very) high functioning autistic man (and I'm not actually sure how accurate that depiction is) and what happens when the company he works for offers him a cure. I really enjoyed it, but I get the feeling it's not really a very true picture of autism.

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar - depressing but well-written novel about class differences in Bombay, played out by a wealthy woman and her vastly poorer servant.

Odalisque by Fiona McIntosh - some parts of this Ottoman-inspired fantasy were good, some parts were rather awful. The number of times a particular character, whom everyone believes is mad, reveals himself to another character began to get on my nerves - there's only so many times you can read different versions of, "Actually, I'm sane!" I'm not sure how the entire population of the city doesn't know his "secret" by then. Also, his faked bouts of madness, mostly consisting of childlike chanting, are supremely annoying. It's not good that those are the things that stuck in my head about this book - I'm not sure whether I'd read more of the series.

The Painted Drum by Lousie Erdrich - an excellent novel. I really love Louise Erdrich's books - her imagery and lyricism are just gorgeous.

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (audio book) - this is one of my favourite books, and it was fun to listen to it in audio. Unfortunately, the footnotes just didn't work in an audio format - they needed to be refitted into the text somehow, because they're so long it was very confusing when the reader would go back to where he was in the main story. Also, he began the book by pronouncing Crowley as crow-ley (to rhyme with lowly) and ended it pronouncing it as crau-ley (to rhym with frau-ley, or frowny). Distracting.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey - bleh - I was looking for something to complement David Allen's Getting Things Done, but I found this too old-fashioned and high-minded, almost. I was after something practical.

Whispers in the Sand by Barbara Erskine - this was a book I bought in a newsagent on honeymoon, having run out of reading material. I used to love Barbara Erskine's books as a teenager - these very dramatic, mildly gothic sagas. All their women protagonists spent most of the story being tremendously unhappy (with bouts of happiness, usually when they're having an affair with their illicit lover) and generally find happiness in the end. This is an Egyptian saga, complete with ghosts, two irritating men (one of whom our heroine falls in love with) and many dramatic disasters. It was quite good lazy honeymoon reading.

The Burning Times by Jeanne Kalogridis - another newsagent acquisition, this is a rather silly fantasy novel about the Inquisition, with awful overuse of capitalisation (the Gift, the Sight, Evil) which is sometimes unintentionally funny.

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett - a re-read, bought in a secondhand bookshop in Launceston (did I spend my entire honeymoon buying books? Yes, I did). Probably one of my favourite Discworld novels, but then Vimes is one of my favourite characters, and this novel is very much all about Vimes.

A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay - secondhand bookshop in Launceston again, and another re-read. I think I've re-read every single one of Kay's books this year, and this one is particularly overrought. Lovely to read, but I found myself thinking that the Court of Love culture we're supposed to be empathising with was one I found a little silly - I adored it the first time I read it though.

Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller - the Doctor bought this to read on the plane when coming over for the wedding, and left it with me. I really enjoyed it, and its very unreliable narrator, and want to give the movie a try. I left it with my mother, who found it too creepy (the teacher/student relationship), and stopped reading.

Towelhead by Alicia Erian - another book from the Doctor (I guess she reads a lot during plane trips - she also passed on The Lovely Bones to me, but I'd already read it), which was good, but I found all the sexual abuse a bit tough to read. I also passed that one on to Mum, which in retrospect might have been a mistake, given that she didn't like Notes on a Scandal.

Laurie and Claire by Kathleen Rowntree - another book picked up in Launceston (I was so delighted to be somewhere with a bookstore, I went a little crazy, not considering the weight of my suitcase). I thought from the blurb that the author sounded a little similar to Joanna Trollope or Mary Wesley, both whom I enjoy, and I was right to an extent. She's a little darker than Trollope or Wesley, with a little more bite. I really enjoyed this, and will definitely be picking up some more of Rowntree's work.

The Seduction of Water by Carol Goodman - read frantically when I return from holiday because it was getting expensively overdue at the library. I really enjoyed it - a very lovely murder mystery, with a gorgeous interwoven theme of the Selkie myth.

Dark Angels by Karleen Koen - I loved this historical novel, set in England and occasionally France in 1670 in the court of King Charles II. Great fun, lots of intrigue, and a heroine whom I really liked, despite her being thoroughly self-centred.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling - I enjoyed reading this at the same time so many other people were. Sure, there were some flaws with it, like the pacing, but I enjoyed it, and thought it was a great end to the series. I wonder whether there'll be a further publishing wave of YA fantasy in the wake of the end of Harry Potter. And I'll be interested to see what JK Rowling does next (apart from rolling around on her giant piles of cash and cacking hysterically).

OK, I'm exhausted now. Remind me never to let books build up for two months again.

Bits & pieces

1. I adore Big Love, that not-so-new series on SBS about a polygamous family in Utah. All the lead actors are excellent, and I just love the weird family dynamics, all these dissatisfied people in one marriage. Fabulous stuff. I couldn't restrain myself and read ahead online to see where the second season is going in the US. I can't wait until it comes out on DVD here, so that I don't have to watch it with ads on SBS - when on earth did they start doing that? Plus, Sunday night at 8.30pm is a bad time for early-to-bed me.

2. I have new stripy fishnet-style stockings which look very funky. Unfortunately I keep snagging them on things (like the heel of my shoe - got to learn to keep my feet on the ground when sitting at my desk) and I have a feeling they're not going to last all that long without developing holes.

3. Our bank manager is pissing me off already, and we haven't even gone beyond the cuddly-wuddly pre-approval stage yet. When people tell me with smug reassurance that email is the best way to get them and they always respond in 24 hours, it really irritates me when a week later they haven't answered a very simple email which contained one question. (Although I did get an almost immediate response to my "please answer this question I asked on Monday" email, which I suppose is positive.)

4. I lunched with Smoking Lawyer yesterday, who advised me sternly, in between bites of her potato wedges, that real estate agents are out to screw you over, so you've got to make sure you screw them over first. She disapproves of my lackadaisical attitude towards this whole property negotiating business.

5. While I am drafting this in Gmail, the "sponsored links" over on the side read cheerily, "More about... Polygamy; High Heel Shoes; Fashion Shoes; Women's Tights". I have avoided clicking on them, although I'm rather curious about where the "More About Polygamy" link would take me.