How to Get on Taylor Swift’s Christmas List – Christmas, Music News, Real People Stories, Taylor Swift : People.com – This got shared on Notre Dame’s alumni Twitter account since the 3rd grade teacher mentioned is a fellow Domer. Isn’t that sweet? TAYLOR SWIFT IS AWESOME AND I DON’T CARE IF YOU DISAGREE.

Woodworking Squares You Need to Know | Welcome to the Craftsy Blog! – Someday I’m going to learn woodworking. In the meantime, I like learning about the tools people use for their hobbies. I recommend you read this in Nick Offerman’s voice too for extra Ron Swanson-ness.

Day 5 wasn’t great. When I woke up, I felt really dizzy like I had vertigo or I was drunk. I think it was due to low blood sugar, or possibly the fact that I went from eating a lot of crap to very, very healthy all at once. I’ve started snacking a bit more, and that seems to have helped.

Breakfast: Black coffee, roasted almonds, dried mango
Lunch: Leftover steak, asparagus, and green beans
Snack: More almonds
Dinner: Cracklin’ Chicken, tomato and basil salad, and steamed carrots

Brunch: Leftover salad nicoise, black coffee
Dinner: Steak with roasted asparagus and green beans

This blog is now 14 years old. FOURTEEN! (I’m sure some of you don’t even realise we had the Internet in 2001, but we did.) Things were a little different back when it launched:

• different domain name – web-goddess.co.uk (since I was living in London)
• different layout – which you can actually still see!
• different backend system – Blogger until I got sick of its outages and wrote my own replacement three months later
• no social network integration – because they didn’t exist

For many years, I marked this day with an epic post where I listed a bunch of interesting stats like how many posts there were, who the most prominent commenters were, etc. Two years ago I stopped, mostly because the dwindling numbers were getting depressing. Yeah, the personal blog is pretty much dead. I think Kevin and John are the only friends from my original blogroll still going. Comments are few and far between. Still, I like the continuity of having this archive of my life for the past fourteen years. It’s the longest I’ve ever done anything, and the longer it goes, the harder it gets to stop. (Hence all the social media stuff I added this year in an effort to keep the narrative of online-me intact.)

I still feel the need for some sort of summation for 2014 though, more as a prompt for reflection rather than anything else:

• Job stuff: massive promotion in February; won Commercial Viability award at Hackathon 6 in March with Sam; nominated for Outstanding New Talent in July; won Design Award at Hackathon 7 in September with Kunaal; celebrated 9Jumpin’s first birthday in November; donned a Rudolph nose for Mi9 Tech’s Christmas video
• Health: lost 10.9kg (24lbs), mostly through not eating (so yeah, not particularly healthy); knees are still buggered though so I haven’t been running or cycling 🙁
• Sewing projects: Hawaiian shirt for the Snook; Laurel dress; Moneta Dress; another Moneta Dress; rescued a blouse
• Knitting projects: strip for Lyn’s birthday blanket; Tsumugi Who scarf for me; AND THAT’S IT. (Knitting mojo = depleted.)
• Travel: trip to Brisbane in January; trip to USA including the Grand Canyon in April/May; trip to USA for my granddad’s funeral in June; knitting weekend in Abernethy in June; weekend in Mudgee in October; trip to Tasmania in November; trip to Eungai for Christmas
• Speaking engagements and professional stuff: “Presenting Your Hack” at February Girl Geek Dinner; assisted at SheHacks Sydney in March; “Granny Was a Hacker” at April Web Directions “What Do You Know” event; video demo for Brightcove PLAY conference in June; organised Mi9 GGD event in July; “M-Dot Sites: Not as Sucky as You Think” at September Web Directions “What Do You Know Smackdown” event; attended Toastmasters in November (and won a ribbon!); assisted with WebBlast organisation in December (including Mi9 sponsorship)
• Charitable stuff: helped raise $515 for Red Cross in Big Cake Bake in September; personally raised $925 for ovarian cancer research through Frocktober
• Dressing up: Boba Frock; Tina Belcher; Melbourne Cup (Josh and I won Best Couple!); Ledgerman from Cones of Dunshire for Google’s “Game” themed Christmas party; Princess Leia for Mi9’s “When I Grow Up” themed Christmas party

Last night as I was getting our dinner ready, the Snook said, “Do you wanna see the space station? It’s flying over in 4 minutes!” He had been reading this Reddit thread about how it was going to be visible over Sydney. So we ran out into the backyard, argued for a few minutes about the accuracy of our competing mobile phone compasses, and then he said, “THERE IT IS!” It was incredibly bright, far brighter than anything else in the sky (even in the middle of the city) and moving very quickly. We took turns peering at it through binoculars, but it was actually quite difficult to keep it in view given its speed (and all you could see was a bright dot anyway). I snapped a quick ISS selfie. In less than 5 minutes, it was gone! It was such a cool thing to see, a tiny bright dot that’s actually a space station bigger than a soccer field with six people in it, hurtling around the Earth. We are living in the future.

Today I learned that the ISS’s orbit means it flies over a lot, but not necessarily always in the same place. If you live in Sydney, here’s a schedule of when it will be overhead. If you live elsewhere, you can sign up for alerts from NASA, or install an iOS app that gives you notifications.

More space stuff: our Astronaut Training Experience at Kennedy Space Center; our trip to Canberra and the Deep Space Communication Complex; visiting the Space Shuttle two years ago in California.

Aldi grocery store: best in America, related to Trader Joe’s. – I did not know that. We just finally got a local Aldi at the Broadway Shopping Center. I’m still tentative on it though. I like my grocery shopping to be methodically planned, but when we go to Aldi we just end up impulse buying.

I had an appointment to get my hair coloured and cut yesterday, so the Snook joined me in Newtown for brunch and shopping. We walked most of King Street trying to find a place with something healthy and ended up at Barmuda.

Brunch: Potato stack with scrambled eggs, rocket, and tomato salsa; pineapple and mint frappe
Dinner: Salad nicoise (with canned tuna instead of steaks)

I suspect my potato stack and eggs may have involved some small amount of dairy (butter or cream), but not a huge amount. Psychologically, the bigger issue is probably the frappe. It was a hot day and I was really craving something cold and sweet, so I gave in to the “healthy” option. But it’s pretty much SWYPO. Breaking through ingrained habits is hard!

Pretty much the same as yesterday…

Brunch: Three scrambled eggs with chorizo, tomato, and spinach, cooked in ghee; black coffee
Snack: Couple handfuls of almonds
Dinner: Leftovers! Hangover curing pork belly (no sauce); boiled Kipfler potatoes with olive oil and lemon juice; steamed carrots with ghee

Tutorial: How to add tucks to the Violet blouse  |  Coletterie – I honestly didn’t realise tucks and pintucks were so easy. Bookmarking, as I’d like to use this on something soon.