The Snook and I just watched the Veronica Mars finale. EEEEEEE! That’s all I can do, make high-pitched noises. EEEEEEE!Beaver’s reveal as the killer was shocking, but not that shocking. We’d pretty much guessed him to be the third molestee. I was hoping that Veronica’s long expository story about how he did it was a red herring though, and that we’d get the TRULY SHOCKING explanation afterwards. But DAMN, I’ll settle for LOGAN TO THE RESCUE and then the planes blowing up and the SUICIDES and the AARON GETS HIS COMEUPPANCE and the HUGGING and the BACON and the KEITH NOT BEING DEAD AND THEN, HOORAY, THE SMOOCHING AT LAST!… *sigh*

And then the Snook had to go and ruin it all by saying: “I bet Kendall has Logan’s baby next season.” GAHHHHHH.

I was talking to the fabulous Miss Fee tonight after our television appearance (more on that soon), when she happened to mention offhand that she told her friend Jay about the Star Wars quilt and he thought it sounded really cool. “Wait a sec,” I said, knowing that Miss Fee circulates high in the echelons of Australian celebrity– “Jay Laga’aia??” “That’s him!” she said. “CAPTAIN TYPHO???” The very same. Padme Amidala’s Head of Security is now aware of the quilt my Mom made and thinks it sounds cool. HOW INSANE IS THAT?

Tonight was my first ceramics class over at the Creative Arts Centre. I really didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never seen anyone do wheel-throwing in real life, and all I knew was that it was hard to do. Now I know that it’s hard, but it’s not that hard. I think my biggest problem was that I was afraid to really push the clay around. Instead I kept trying to shape it with my little fingers, and therefore making my first bowl took me AGES. Then I watched the instructor sit down and knock one out in about ninety seconds flat. Damn. So I tried to get a little more fearless, and ended up with a couple useless lumps of goo (a lot of which you see spattered on my pant legs and shoes here; my upper half was just as bad). In the end I managed one decent bowl (which we’re going to “turn” next week) and one semi-okay sorta-straight-sided column thing.

You know what drives me up the wall though? The way stuff like this always turns me into Hermione Granger. I wanted to do the class to try something new and maybe pick up a fun hobby. No stress, right? But as soon as our wheels fired up I was immediately mentally comparing everything I did with everything everybody else did. I have to try to be the top of the class. I was irrationally jealous of one lucky guy who just seems to have an innate knack for this stuff. Why?? You’d think at nearly thirty years of age I could do a group activity where I didn’t compete with everyone else. Sadly, you’d be wrong. And no matter how much I tell myself that it’s okay to be mediocre, that I don’t have to be good at everything, that the world will not end if my very first pot isn’t perfect… I still do it. Every damn time. Tell me you guys are like this too, right? (I mean, I know Kel is…)

I’m back on track! What a difference a week makes. Last week I was tired and depressed; this week I’m 1.2kg lighter and a hundred times more optimistic. That brings me back down to 78.5kg, erasing two-thirds of what I gained over the Easter/Garberick holiday. Sweet. And I actually did it without much exercise! I’m still trying to rest the hamstring as much as possible before this Sunday’s run, so I’ve really only had a couple short jogs and that long walk last weekend. Really, it was just watching my food and religiously tracking my Points. I also have to constantly remind myself that it’s OKAY to be a little bit hungry. I don’t have to stuff myself every time I eat. Now I only have 3.5kg left to go!

And on a related note, my size 14 pants have been feeling a little loose. I wasn’t sure if it was due to weight loss though, or them just naturally loosening up from being worn. So I went into Esprit the other night to try on some new ones. Every size 14 I tried on was pretty roomy! I even tried on some 12s and, while I did get them zipped and buttoned, they were a little too, uh, bootylicious for my liking. But I have a feeling that 12 is where I’m eventually going to end up. That’s an unexpected bonus!

Holy crap! When the Snook and I left to go to work this morning, we were surprised to see fire trucks blocking Mountain Street at Broadway. We couldn’t figure out why they were there… until we suddenly realized that St. Barney’s Church was GONE. It had a massive fire last night. As the Snook quipped, “It looks like the publican finally won.”

Great article and interview with my favorite Chicago improv-artist (and Buckeye) Tara D. And she worked in a Boone’s Farm reference! If you are in Chicago, you must go see one of her shows.

Yay, Helga’s getting married! I’m very happy for her. I remember meeting her that first week of freshman year and not being quite sure what to make of this stern sounding German girl from Ohio. It only took a week or two to realize that she was actually wickedly funny and had no problem playing the straight man in our schemes. I remember one night we had her read us this list someone had e-mailed me of “Ways to Torment Your Roommate” (back in the days when people actually read e-mail forwards) and it took hours and by the end Liz and I were just crying with laughter. One of my best college memories… Congrats, Helga! (Link courtesy of Nora.)

Neat! Check out this London Poverty Map from 1898-1899. It turns out that the area I lived in as a student was seriously posh. Hammersmith, the area I lived in with the Snook, looks more like well-to-do farmland. I’d look up the area where the Snook first lived in London – because if it was that ghetto in 1999, it had to have been the ghetto a hundred years earlier – but that site is slow and I’m going to bed.

It’s a man, baby! Dude, Megan Gale is normally super-beautiful, but she totally looks like a tranvestite in this Logie photo. Her hands are gi-normous! And she has an Adam’s apple! No wonder she’s flipping off the photographer.

I was interviewing another American chick at the shop the other day and I asked her if she was a “dualie” (meaning dual citizen) yet. “No, not yet,” she said. “I’ve still got another year of residence to go. What about you?” And I suddenly realized that, yeah, I’m probably eligible for Australian citizenship. So I came home and double-checked my passport. Yep, I’m a permanent resident who’s been here for more than four years. I surfed on over to the Australian Citizenship website to check out the details. “Whaddaya know… I can apply online!” So I did. Fifteen minutes and one-hundred-and-twenty bucks later, Kris is going to be an Australian! Okay, so I still have to go to an interview and show them that I can speak English and I know the principles of mateship and the Australian way of life (it’s all about lamb, right?), but it’s pretty much a done deal. In a month or two, I’ll get to attend a ceremony (ooh, please let Clover be there!) and say the magic words and get a tree or something and yadda yadda yadda, I’ll be ‘Strine. (Don’t worry; I’ve already been to one so I know what to do.) You are, of course, all invited to participate in this momentous occasion. And then, you guessed it, we will be throwing the mother of all winter barbies, the Web-Goddess Becomes a Right Aussie Sheila Party. Details will follow once we know the date.