Country Town

I love living in a country town. Especially on the day of the Christmas Parade. (i.e, today.) Partly for the floats full of schoolchildren, partly for the numerous Caledonian/Pipe bands, partly for the spectators. Because spectators are fun. Tiny children in their tiny folding camp chairs, waiting for Father Christmas. Underwhelmed and unimpressed babies and teenagers who seem to have discovered "scene" about three years after city folk, and are probably still calling it "emo." Parents on tartan picnic rugs, fags dangling. Also, friends in clown costumes and sparkly vests, and my brothers playing mini-boings and a glove-a-phone in the Funky Junk Band.

I had to drop out of a sims2 competition for the first time today, which makes me bad a bit. Because a commitment, no matter how trivial, is still a commitment, yes? But, obviously RL comes first. And I wasn't going to submit rubbish. And my comp was just too slow to get anything like enough of it done in time. So meh. Oh well.

Am slowly readjusting to there being people around me, all the time, which is probably a life skill.

Look! It's Alleliua!

I'm not using the internet at home at the moment in an attempt for my grandparents to have internet of a decent speed 'til the end of the month. And can I remember to blog at uni? Well, how many posts have I posted this week? That'd be no, I can't remember.


I won a sims2 competition! Go me! I had completely convinced myself I was going to place last.
(That's my avi as proof.) This is my fave pic from the entry, except the one in the top right of this page. And let me tell you, I'm proud. It took some photoshoppin', especially her waist and feet. (Hopefully you can't see it, though.)So. This week I went and ate Dad's Famous Lentil Patties at the cousins', and hid out in Stu's room while he and Trent played... umm... forgot name of 'puter game, and I started reading Lian Hearn's The Harsh Cry of the Heron, but I left it there on purpose because I've got maths games to be a-making.
Also
I desperately want to see Once which is out in cinemas today - I've had some music from it on my MP3 player for months which I really like - but I'm too poor. So I'll have to wait a whole week and pray it doesn't disappear.

What I have been Doing

I know I'm bad. Two days in a row with no post. Sorry.

Wednesday: Uni (lecture and making tesselations in Illustrator,) Dinner (which involved losing at pool to Stu, drawing a lady on their fridge with whiteboard marker, being chased around the house giggling by Kirra, and watching the Annoying Devil,) sleep.

Thursday: Shopping (black shirts, the Sims 2 Fashion stuff - yay Gametraders!) Uni (Boringest. Tute. Ever,) My Sims Game Dying (lost all saved games and *sob* my carefully constructed collection of downloads,) sleep.

Friday: Going to Uni (and getting there and then being cancelled on and coming home again,) Studying for Uni (mainly maths,) Kid Thing at Church (they were feral,) Sims 2 (I miss my custom eyebrows,) Blogging, sleep (or so I presume.)

Cute little alien sim.

a note and a picture

Note to self: do not ever listen to Mika whilst shopping.

Because dancing in the supermarket is well daggy.

My favourite new Sims picture:

May who is not a vampire

Today I did some studying and made a new sim named May.
I was aiming to make a vampire, but that didn't work out.

Today's Questionable Content made me laugh.

Brain, come back... please...

Aargh. I've been a space case all day today.
I studied for four hours this morning, but only actually studied for about two. The rest of the time I was looking up Regina Spektor lyrics and thinking about making a Rose Walker sim. (My conclusions: I really, really want the Soviet Kitsch album, and will have to learn to recolour sim hair.)
Then this afternoon I missed the bus stop for uni. It's a really obvious bus stop that I've never ever missed. I wasn't even on the wrong bus.
When I actually got to uni, and got into my tute, I had a minor panic attack because everyone was already in groups for our group assessment task, and I didn't have a group. Except I did. I signed up in the first week.
Aargh.

Church etc.

This is a little post to say that today I went to 'my other' church and saw everyone and that was fun. The pastor's on leave, so the session clerk gave a message about our God-given duty to support our pastor. Cute.

Everyone likes my haircut. (Squee.)

I've lost my place in Orthodoxy for the third time, and always takes me forever to find it again. Sigh. One would think that I would learn.

Also for the first time ever I entered a Sims 2 contest at one of the forums. My sister sighs as I sink to new depths of obsession. Here's one of the pics from my entry. I give you Mindy. (The comp was alien-themed.)

Overcast and Nightmaring

Well, it stopped raining, but the sun isn't shining either, so kind of the worst of both worlds, especially since the entirety of my wardrobe has been sitting on the clothesline since Tuesday morning (we don't have a dryer.) If it's still wet Saturday, I'll ring my aunt and see if I can borrow her dryer for the morning.

Nothing much happening my-ways, just assignmenting and Simming and reading-Harry-Pottering. My toddler twin sims grew up last night, and they make for very cute kiddies. The boy looks rather effeminate. I want to take piccies if I get enough of the behavior management assignment done first. I've got time to kill till nine-thirty tonight - stupid Channel Seven putting Heroes on before Lost rassum frassum.

I've had bad dreams about being stuck in Tullamarine Airport twice this week. Dreams about running from one end of the place to the other, sorting out baggage and flights and broken suitcases and delays - like all the worst airport experiences I've ever had put together. I'm not sure why. Usually if something is freaking me out, I lose sleep over it, rather than nightmaring. Also not sure why the whole thing is troubling me in the first place - I'm not expecting to have any difficulties, and even if I do in my experience the airplane people are pretty nice about fixing them up - either it's because I did actually end up missing my transfer and losing my luggage last time, or because I'm flying Rex the second leg of my journey this time, after I've had a year or two to get comfortable with O'Connor.
Sometimes I hate how the littlest things can throw me for a loop.

Two Things

I'm linking to this because it makes me angry. I love free sims2 custom content (just ask my family - they hate how much bandwidth I consume...) and for someone to take someone else's free custom content, butcher it, and charge money for it while passing it off as your own is disgusting. I may not be an avenging penguin, but I'm grumpy. And that's all I'm going to say about it.

So, it's Sunday, and Scots Presbyterian Church in Melbourne was on the telly this morning on that hymn-singing show that's like an Aussie Songs of Praise, I forget what it's called. Which is cool, because I'm a Pressy, and I used to live in Melbourne, and I've been to that church, and I spotted someone I knew in the choir. Plus, as I said to my sister, I'm a pipe organ junkie. And it's nice to see the congregation singing as well as the choir. Here's a link.

Something for Tuesday

Aargh. Computers. I sit here writing this in trepidation, praying the uni wireless network doesn't freeze up my laptop -- again-- as I already lost this post once, and would rather not lose it again.
Today I'm obsessed with worrying about science. Our presentation is on at 2 and thankfully everything is done, but I wouldn't let a thing like that stop me from fretting. And at the same time I'm painfully aware that, for a Christian, I do a LOT of worrying and complaining. Yuk.
I'm also obsessed with a Sims 2 hack. It's the one by Squinge that allows sims to wear custom maternity clothes.
I got it here: http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=7238 You have to join the site, but it's free.
It's heaps of fun, so my two newest sims, Katina and Danae, are both pregnant fashion plates at the moment. (This being an adult version of the Katina from a few posts ago BTW.) I only have screenshots of Danae; Katina may follow.

Sorry. It just hasn't been a very interesting day.

Meaningful, Trivial, and Hyperventilating

In the spirit of this blog which is fast becoming apparent, today I bring you lots of pictures again. And the obsessions are:

Meaningful: Nehemiah. Isn't it shiny? I suspect it's because it's written in the first person, and because it's not a book of the Bible I've concentrated on a lot before. I found it much more dynamic than Esther, which I've read a few times. Very cool. Take a look. (And Ezra too.)

Trivial: My luvverly new Sim I made, Katina. She's a teen, and the only sim I've made in weeks that I'm happy with. I love her nose; it has character : )

here she is without makeup, and with makeup.

here she is, looking glam.

here she is, two different casual looks.

And, hyperventilating: my new book! (Mmm, hardback-a-licious...)

Basically, even I'm not touching it until I can get it covered: The slipcover is almost immaculate, which is a minor miracle in a book with a white cover. And now, the story of why I'm hyperventilating:

In Australia, sometimes we get bad editions of good books. Sometimes we don't, like the Ladies of Grace Adeiu, and sometimes we do, like Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, which only came out in a (rather expensive) paperback, without the cool transparent slipcover and the broken butterfly wings. With Good Omens, so far as I can tell, until recently everyone had to put up with a paperback. And then the new edition came out, with sexy variant covers that have the same ISBN. Which basically means that, if you order the book over the net or through a bookshop, it's lucky dip as to which cover you get. Borders Books here had the black cover; I wanted the white one. Plus, their copies were a bit dilapidated and yuk.

Luckily, I got a helpful staff member who pointed me to Pulp Fiction in Brisbane, who happened to have a copy with the white slipcover sitting on the shelf. So I bought it. It cost a bit more, but it's worth it to have the book with the cover I want, in decent condition. *squee* : )

Turns out I'm a lucky duck. Of the roughly 12 copies Pulp Fiction ordered in, only 2 were the white cover.

(Edited to add: So now I can give my held-together-with-contact-and-love paperback copy to my cousins, who I lent it to and then had to steal it back from.)