Mary-Helen quite rightly takes Stella Minahan to task for her shoddy and – in my humble opinion – offensive research. Minahan is the person mentioned in all the Australian papers this week as the “researcher” looking into knitting, the Internet, and “stitchnbitch” communities. What I didn’t realize was that Minahan has specifically restricted her survey to women under 40. Huh? My first SnB experience was the Newtown SSK group, who – while definitely not all over 40 – were pretty much all a fair number of years older than I was. Even at our Tapestry Craft SnB we get a good mix of older and younger ladies. How silly of Minahan to exclude them from her work when they would definitely add a different perspective!

If anyone is interested, the direct telephone number for the ANZ branch at Centrepoint in Sydney is (02) 9232 6322. I am posting this because I am annoyed that the only phone number they publish is the general freephone number and I had to wade through fifteen menus before getting to a human that could transfer me. So I’m posting it online out of spite. I’m takin’ ’em down!

I AM THE BAROMETER OF THE NATION. Every time I get mad enough to vote on Big Brother, that person invariably gets booted. Or maybe web-goddess has more influence than I thought? At any rate, the Shearer is gone and I’m loving it. Lefty Tim for President!

Good Food Show 2005
Good grief. What a day. The Snook and I were excited to see that the Food & Wine Show had moved to Darling Harbour this year, as that’s pretty much within walking distance of our place. (It used to be in Homebush and the long train trip was a source of hesitation.) We made it down there about 3:00 today and figured three hours were more than enough to get through. We were wrong. We found ourselves amongst huge crowds, shuffling down long aisles full of bogans treating the show as an all-you-can-drink buffet. Once you got past that, though, it was pretty good! We ran into Steph and Eva fairly early and waved a greeting as we were swept past. Our first major purchase was a tagine from Spice Bazaar (that’s the red conical ceramic dish). The booth owners were really nice and we got a packet of Moroccan spice to go with it. The Snook’s already planning a recipe for tomorrow! We also bought some nice olive oil and verjus (which we tried for the first time). I also ate my very first pickled onion, which wasn’t that bad! What else…? Oh, we picked up some gyoza molds for two bucks, and I grabbed some free Atkins stuff (which finally seems to be breaking into the market here). I pretty much blew my Points for the day, grazing on everything from cheese, laksa, Jelly Bellies, more cheese, dips, olive oils, mustards, and jerkies. Oh, and more cheese. We also picked up some tasting glasses and began sampling the wines on offer. YUM. The only misstep was a truly wretched Rioja, but other than that everything was really good. We came across the booth for the Wine Society and ended up chatting with the nice attendant for a good fifteen minutes. By the time we staggered off, we’d signed up and been given our complimentary Riedel glasses. Time was running short so we hurried off to the beer area… where the Snook promptly discovered the Australian Beer Club. We joined that one too. We never even made it down the last aisle before they kicked us out! What a day…

It has a kangaroo on it.
I just sent my postcard off to Emma today, so I thought I’d share what I wrote to remind any of you that haven’t done it yet to get cracking!

Hi Emma! My name is Kristy and my Dad is your neighbour Ron Howard. I grew up in Indiana like you but now I live in Sydney, Australia, which is pretty far away! My Dad told me about your leg so I decided to get my friends all around the world to send you postcards too. I hope you get lots! Australia is a nice place to live but I sure do miss those Indiana summers. (Sweet corn is my favorite!) I hope you have a good 4th of July and your cast comes off soon. Hopefully I’ll get to meet you the next time I visit my Dad! Your friend, Kristy

Observations: I use a lot of exclamation points when addressing children. I also noticed as I was writing that I’ve mentally adopted the British/Australian spelling of “neighbour” but “favorite” remains American. Odd, that.

Whoa. Lismore’s been officially declared a disaster zone. I hope Major‘s family are okay…

What type of Disney fan are you? Much like Moire, I’m a member of the Disney elite. (I’m not though. It’s just that I really liked “The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast”, and “Mulan”, and that knowledge got me past several of the questions.)

Holy crap. Apparently the Snook and I had a stowaway on our last visit home to Indiana! A ‘roo in South Bend? That’s nuts. (Link courtesy of Brigita.)

How to Fold a Fitted Sheet – a photoset on Flickr. I have to say, that’s a much better way than the way the Snook and I do it. Oh, and the inclusion of the cat in those pictures is perfect. I laughed out loud. (Link courtesy of not martha.)

Tuesday night I officially transferred to the Glebe Weight Watchers group, who I’ve visited a couple times before and who impressed me with their energy and friendliness. They did not disappoint! When Megan the leader mentioned that I was joining them permanently, everyone was like, “Great! Welcome aboard!” and I heard one person actually say, “Oh good, I was hoping you would…” How nice is that? I was yet again dreading the weigh-in though, as I’d felt really sluggish and fat all day long. To my eternal surprise, I’d lost another half a kilogram (a little more than a pound)! I will not give the virus credit this week though; I’m 99.5% over it and I’ve been making an effort to get back into the program properly. I tracked my Points and even walked to work a couple days, so this is the first one is ages that I felt like I really earned. (It also puts me firmly on the other side of the “10% loss” line, so I don’t feel like last week was such a fudge.) My body seems to be settling in to the pound-a-week rate, and I’ll be happy if I stay there for the rest of the time. I should reach my next big mental milestone in a week or two: the lowest I weighed while on the Atkins plan. (I’m actually probably already past it, given the difference between the WW fancy scales and my crappy ones at home, but I still have that number in my head and I going past it will be HUGE.) Oh, and I went to yoga for the first time in, like, six weeks last night. It felt great at the time, but I’m hurting today. Hillary the teacher was like, “Wow, Kris, you didn’t seem to lose any flexibility with the time off!” And I was like, “That’s because I lost ten kilos. My belly doesn’t get in the way so much now!”