Many thanks to Mary-Helen for stopping by in the shop today to say “hello.” Some days a friendly face really makes a big difference!

Ack. I forgot that Roald Dahl‘s birthday was on Monday! If any of you Sydneysiders are interested, Amy has put together a Dahl exhibit at the Mosman Public Library using a lot of my Dahl materials. (Memo to Self: Get down there and take a picture…)

For, uh, no special reason or anything (*cough cough*), I’ve been doing some research on knitting cables without a cable needle. I guess I’ll give that a shot tomorrow. Can’t go any slower than I am now, huh?

Good: Schlubby Vince Vaughan in a flannel shirt. Hummina!
Bad: Snookums (jokingly) making me do ten squats before I could have some gelato, thus causing me to strain my hip because I’m disgustingly weak.

Can I just say that our “TiFaux” has officially changed my life? Now when I watch TV, I have a whole backlog of shows that I actually want to watch! Time-shifting is the bomb. This allows me to watch a lot more TV in less time, which gives me additional good feelings because I feel, like, efficient. Recent TV thoughts:

• Days of Our Lives – Oh my, could I have picked a better week to re-start watching Days? The Australian version has always been about four years behind the US one, which is convenient since that’s about when I stopped watching. Yet for some reason Channel 9 has decided to fast-forward through, like, 1200 episodes to catch us up to the US timeline. Thus yesterday we had Drake Hogestyn (with some nameless Aussie tart) hosting a special where they filled us in on all the storylines we’ll be missing. It was awesome. Kate married Roman? Austin jilted Sami? John and Marlena and Bo and Hope and Jack and Jen got married again? (Talk about 80’s redux.) Sheesh. At the end they filled us in on the whole “Salem Stalker” storyline that’s been going on for the past year, as well as revealing – dun, dun, dunnn – who the killer is. Shocking! I love it. I’m sad that they killed off some nice characters, but really, Maggie Horton hasn’t done anything but annoy me since Mike left. But hey, what’s up with the new Mickey? And who’s this “Bonnie” that he’s hanging out with? Isn’t she “Adrienne”, who used to play Patch’s sister back in the 80’s? Good grief, I can’t believe I knew that.
• The O.C. – This show is so great. The Snook and I actually high-fived during the big “Luke’s gay dad” reveal. How can they be cramming all the best teen drama cliches into the first year of episodes? Where the hell can they go next? We actually get two episodes this week, which makes me hope that Channel 10 is burning through them in time to get us relatively caught up with the US for the second season. (Secret confession: I prefer Anna to Summer, but I have a sinking feeling that Seth’s going to end up with the hoochie-mama. Smart girls always lose out.)
• Australian Idol – I haven’t really been paying much attention to the show this year but I happened to catch the live show last Sunday. Holy crap, everyone on it is really good! At least last year there were a couple definitively “evil” people to root against (like Cosima and Shannon). This year they’re all really nice and talented! I was actually worried going into last night’s verdict show. My favorite is Marty (for his bald head and geeky song choice) but there aren’t many that I think deserve to leave. Thank God it was Dan. I would have preferred Hayley – who seems a little Cosima-like in her ambition and cool demeanor – but Dan sunk himself when he dared to sing Creed. What was he thinking? Ideally, next to go will be Hayley and then Daniel (the opera minger with chimpanzee hair). Everyone else is too good!

Now I’m off to indulge in yet some more low-brow entertainment. The Snook and I are going to see Dodgeball and we plan to laugh ourselves silly! (Don’t tell the intelligentsia, but we find people getting whacked in the nuts pretty funny.)

Huh. So this is what everybody in Chippendale is going to look like in ten years. Neat.

Oh, Spike. *sob* I feel like Drusilla when she realized how lame you were for liking Buffy.

Kevin pointed me to this excellent review of the new Star Wars original trilogy DVD box set. I especially liked the shots showing exactly what George has changed from the original. Greedo still shoots first (but only barely), Jabba looks better in the new scenes, Ian McDiarmid has been inserted as the emperor, and (yuck) Hayden Christensen appears as Anakin’s ghost. It’s going on the wish list…

Hahaha… Andrew has captured a classic picture of our little family on CouchCam. Nice one, mate!

What a beautiful bright spring day! I headed into the city (after the Snook’s and my customary Sunday brunch of pancakes, bacon, and The Amazing Race) to meet up with the Sydney Stitch and Bitch girls. Eventually there were four of us in all: me, Miss Helen, Katherine, and Belle (who is between blogs at the moment). We chatted about knitting and Australian Idol and Spiderbait and everything else under the sun. Our fabulous knitting skills also seemed to draw a lot of attention from the wandering tourists. (I think next time we should put out a hat for change. Performance knitting!) We also had a couple run-ins with ibis, which scare the crap out of me. I’d trade them for squirrels in a heartbeat!

Miss Helen being menaced by an ibis…

Katherine working on a lovely Zhivago sweater sleeve…

Belle working on a scarf, possibly…

Another evil ibis tried to eat our cookies!

Me!