This has been one of those times…

A week or two back I wandered into this shop http://www.pulpcreativepaper.com.au/ for a wee sticky (sticky beak=peek)  because it’s utterly gorgeous and has lots of pretty things, and frankly, because some days you just need some pretty.

The store always makes me think of Kerrianne who also loves pretty paper (send me your address – not sure I’ve still got the correct one – I’d love to send you a card!) and it’s a really lovely place to go and get a little bit creatively inspired.  Which, as you’ll see below, is what happened.

I got a bit captivated by these Drop Dead Cute Postcards and bought them without really any plan to use them but on the way home decided, that realistically, having postcards in the house is useless. They really do have to be posted to be called post cards.

So, I sent out the word via the twitters and the facebook inviting people to send me their address if they wanted to receive one of these arty cards and all 30 cards were snapped up within 48 hours

Also, because I’m a bit nerdy and love information, I plotted where the cards were going, on a map – See?

View The Post Card Plot in a larger map

Sigh. I heart geography.

Anyway

As I was writing the cards people offered to send me cards in return and because as much as I love making people smile with their cards, I love smiling because of receiving them! And so… some of the recipients are sending me cards as well, and here is the first – I’m blogging it, and linking it to the map so that those who played along can get the same smiles as me to see the cards other people have sent.

Sleepy Bay - Freycinet National Park - Tasmania

This is one of the things I love about the internet. It’s all about connection and that’s the stuff for which us humans have been designed. One of the things I love about the stuff you can do on the web, is actually making that connection visible.

So here you go… a page of visible, and beautiful connections, brought to you by the power of pretty paper and the collective intelligence/skillz of Australia Post and its worldwide counterparts.

Enjoy!

It’s Friday.

A client paid today. Not THE main client with the biggest outstanding bill (it’s been a bit tough out here on that issue lately… to the point I’ve been looking for real jobs…eek). At least it’s one that means I won’t have to go into overdraft to pay the rent. Blessing? Check!

My friend Mirre had a big girl, grown up, exhibition, in a real life, professional gallery, (and Akira Ishogawa was there!) I was proud on any number of levels. She’s amazing, her work is beautiful, thought provoking and healing. And she’s getting the recognition she deserves.

Two of my favourite people on the planet are about to release a book. I’m building their website. It’s going to impact a lot of creative people for good. Seriously. You’ve met him on my site before, he’s Crabman, one of the single most influential people in my world in the last 10 years. Below is the book preview video, watch it, it’s gorgeous. I’ll let you know when the site’s up.

Living With A Creative Mind from Jeff Crabtree on Vimeo.

The weather has been gorgeous. Gorgeous.

I will be home tonight. For the first time in 10 days. Home, and can cook something. I need recipe ideas… your time starts…

NOW

Video of Awesome – Gumball Wars – I came across this via Kuriositas a wonderful collection of web curiosities! I love the personality that’s visible in the gumball machines. All created digitially in Maya. So clever, and cute (and, let’s face it, retro… what’s not to love!)

Image of Awesome – Colorful Cosmos I just love the colours and the stunning clarity of this macro shot – a beautiful dandelion, wet with dew. Kind of puts me in mind of the Dr Seuss story about the Whos in Whoville (Horton hears a Who)

Surf’s Up – The Hobbit Blog – As if it wasn’t enough that I’ve got one ‘Nerd Friendly’ entry in this list, here’s another… Oh my… how good is it to keep up to date with what’s happening on the Hobbit set… I was late to any kind of appreciation of the LOTR movies, there’s no way I’m going to be late to this one…

Post of Note – Short Illustrated History of the Nerd – What every nerd adjacent person should know, just in case they get asked… “Muuum… where did I come from?!”

Reading – Gone Tomorrow (Jack Reacher #13). I have been devouring Lee Child’s ‘Jack Reacher’ novels since I came across them, either by solid real life books, audio books or the Kindle… whatever I can lay my hands on. Yes, by the time you get to number 7 or 8, particularly if you read them one after the other, they’re a little formulaic… but OMG… Jack Reacher is the thinking (and seeing) woman’s hero… *swoons*

Listening – The Sowers Group – Cheza (Dance) – [Links to iTunes]. My former singing teacher suggested via facebook that we get a posse together to go hear these guys, and given my propensity to devour any music that sounds remotely African, I leapt at the chance. I was, in no way, disappointed. Yes, they’re a God fearing/promoting band which I’m sure is a little unusual for the Basement – but the music was fantastic, whichever way you hear it, and regardless of your position on ‘faith based’ music they were utterly wonderful and left you wanting more, and wishing you weren’t white and inhibited on the dance floor!

I could blog about the cat… but then I’m firmly cemented as that crazy cat lady and I’m less than keen to be so branded.

So while I haven’t blogged, I’ve been in New Zealand for 10 days, and I have a few more to go and so I shall give you a list of things that I love about this small meek country, my homeland, just to serve it up as a reminder for you that this blog exists, and as a reminder for me that I do appreciate New Zealand enormously, not only for what it has been to me but for the great place that it is.

1. The climate, while cooler than Sydney, is a lot more universally bearable than extremes of heat often experienced in Australia… let’s face it, it’s easier to get warmer than it is to cool off…
2. Quite frenkly, I love the Kiwi eccent… I realise that mine has mellowed over the yees, and the fect that uh strong Kiwi eccent sounds almost unusual to my ears, it is a but lovely ectually!
3. I love driving around Auckland and the Waikato and finding that, while a lot has changed over years, more hasn’t!
4. I love corner dairies with spearmint leaves that aren’t covered in sugar.
5. I love that my family are all within striking distance.
6. I love that I’ve a bunch of friends I can catch up with at a moment’s notice and who it feels like it’s only been moments since last we caught up.
7. I love that it’s civilised enough that I can work from here – even though the office is 2 hours behind me!!
8. I love that NZ knows how to do good coffee. As well as, and sometimes better than, Sydney
9. I love that most cafes will serve ginger crunch, even though I won’t eat it.
10. I love that I still know my way around even though inspite of the above, I actually feel more like a stranger than a local most of the time.

There are more things, but I’m blogging from a cafe at lunchtime and I suspect I’m about to get turfed out for taking up too much space…

So today, given that I have a few days left of my stay in Melbourne, I took the opportunity to go visit the touring Tutankhamun Exhibition that’s based here for a while.

Here’s what you’ll see if you go.

Here’s what you won’t see…

Now, it helped that I’d had prior warning that some of the bigger pieces I’d have read about as a child weren’t on display, and it helped also that I’d been warned that some of the stuff was small! I’d also googled and noted that the burial hood, surely the most recognizable treasure from the tomb wasn’t Down Under with this other collection.

You also have to get your head around the fact that there are SO many people going along to see it… the sessions for viewing are carefully controlled to keep numbers flowing through, and if you want to see it after hours, it costs you more than the daylight visits. Additionally, there are a LOT of people visiting the exhibition… so if you’re not a fan of big crowds you’ll have to weigh up whether your desire to see the exhibition is greater than the fact that there is a fair bit of waiting to go past the pieces, and for that matter, waiting to get into the room to see anything!

BUT

Seriously, try and get your head around the fact that these pieces are older than Jesus… and ask yourself if you want to miss seeing them… because what you see are amazing artefacts you might never see again.

Oh, and if you really want to see King Tut’s burial mask? You’ll have to start saving now for a trip to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

She did, and well, dilligent, even.

I’ve never met anyone whose self esteem had taken such a hammering.  She may not have seen it in herself but she was one of the most courageous people I’ve known.  You have to be to beat down anorexia.  It’s part of her her history, and one she was encouraged to tell – as others often do, in church, to wow the crowds at the goodness of God. So she delivered, when asked to, a testimony of how her faith had made her well, and while she wasn’t exactly articulate, the pictures more than made up for the faltering words even though they were terrifying, so close to death, but thankfully, so long ago.

She worked a few cubicles away from me, and she worked in accounts. Ridiculous hours, fielding the disgruntled calls from creditors, calling in debts from the debtors.

She always said she was fine if she was asked, she turned down offers of help… not that I’d be any good at helping out with accounts… but at least I’d have been company.

She came to my house for tea, I thought she may have become my friend.

But then… she broke.

She walked into the boss’ office and quit, then walked out of the building, the church and out of my life, turning her back even on her closest friends, obviously wounded and protecting herself from further harm by withdrawing completely.

Church is supposed to be a place of solace.

It wasn’t for her.

I send the occasional text, assuming, perhaps wrongly, that her number is the same, that maybe my messages don’t just go out into the ether, maybe one day she’ll reply.

I ask after her in circles that go beyond our former workplace, just in case someone’s seen her, heard from her. They rarely have.

I’ve since left that workplace, that church too.  I’d like for her to know.  I’d still like to be her friend.

I wonder where she is.

I wonder if she’s ok.

I know, I’m as surprised as you are.  Me. Running. I who had never made the connection in my head that people who do it actually like it.  It isn’t just a means to a ‘smaller’ end.

So, I went with the thought, and as is often the case, tweeted it.

and again… when the urge struck a 2nd time…

I had a whole HOST of reasons in my head why I shouldn’t/couldn’t do it… things like

1. You’re too heavy, think of the damage to your knees
2. It will hurt.
3. You won’t like it.
4. You do enough exercise anyway.
5. You’ll look like an idiot.

So it would appear to me that this business of expending more energy has put me in a state of having more energy to burn, to the point I actually can talk my way through the bullshit above – and so, after a day welded to a chair at the office looking at a screen, coming home and just laxing out on the sofa doesn’t sit well [see what I did there??].

This running thing is part of a change in my routine in that I now exercise on the way home from work, or as soon as I get home from work. Until now, I had got out of the house and exercised before the day really started.  Turning that on its head has been surprisingly great. I’m even working out harder at the gym that I do in my half awake state – and I’m spending less money getting coffee on the way home from the gym.

Now I just have to make peace with the fact that at my gym visit on the way home from the office on Wednesday will actually incorporate Zumba with my Curves workout.

The gods laughter at my expense is now complete.

Haven’t had the Camera out much lately but these were taken back in the Summer and haven’t been posted here previously (I don’t think…).

Today is my birthday. Yay!

As is customary on such occasions a whole raft of messages pop up on facebook… and the occasional tweet will spellout such greetings… as

“are birthday wishes in order or do I have my facts wrong?” or this one

Actually – the cool thing about this latest tweet from @aidaofnubia is that it links to a personally crafted greeting card that is signed by a bunch of my twitter mates!!  Seriously, you gotta go have a look just for the design awesomeness – it’s so ME!! And if you’ve a mind to, go ahead and sign it… because when it’s finished and no longer my birthday either here in Oz nor in America where they’ll celebrate long after I’m done with it, the card will be printed and will have pride of place in my office!!!

So… yeah… GO SIGN IT

you know, if you want to…

here… sign it here