I feel a niggling sense of guilt over my lack of posting these days. It’s just so hard when I’m not sitting in front of a computer all day long. As much as it pains me to say it… The Internet is not a priority anymore. *gasp* I know, I know. Actually, I have a whole list of things that are more important right now:

• Finishing my sister’s wedding gift. (Seriously, you guys. It’ll never be done in time.)
• Dealing with drama at work.
• Playing with the cat.
• Not going to the gym.
• Watching Neighbours and The O.C.
• Planning our trip to the States in November.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I haven’t forgotten about you. I plan to return to my posting days of yore soon, I promise.

Uh-oh Brigita… Somebody’s calling out your boyfriend Sting as the most hated man in rock. Them’s fightin’ words! (For the record, I think Fred Durst should be a lot higher on that list.)

Who’s a damn pincushion? I am. I got stuck with needles three times today! First I had to go to a “haematology” specialist in yet another (probably) vain attempt to find out what’s behind my raised ferritin levels. The real danger is hemachromatosis, but the doctor thinks it’s unlikely I have it since I don’t have a corresponding raised saturation of iron. He wanted to rule it out though, so he scheduled a bunch of tests. They had to take seven vials of blood! I had to get a bunch filled from one arm, then come back fifteen minutes later to do the other! (And that butcher of a nurse took, like, four tries to hit veins on both arms.) Then in the afternoon I headed off for my first round of allergy desensitisation therapy. The doctor injected me (on the back of the arm this time) with a tiny amount of the stuff I’m allergic to. Then I had to sit in the waiting room for half an hour to make sure I didn’t go into anaphylactic shock. Fun. As I SMSed to the Snook afterwards, “He didn’t have to inject steroids into my heart, so I guess that was a success.” Now I just have to do that, oh, every week for the next three years. Would’ve been cheaper to just buy stock in Zyrtec, I guess.

I’m absolutely ecstatic to report that at long last, we have partial TiVo-isation of our household. The Snook has managed to get MythTV up and running with a downloaded Australian program guide. We don’t have enough processing power at the moment to play and record at the same time but the mere scheduling of recordings is enough to satisfy me for the present. Within five minutes we had it set up to record every episode of The O.C., Dead Ringers, and Iron Chef. The first actual program we recorded? This one. (It wasn’t porn! It was a fascinating medical documentary, I swear!)

You know what scares cats? Hail. Man, we’ve had, like, four storms pass through in the past 24 hours. I’ve never experienced thunderstorms in cool weather before.

Go the Swannies!
I attended my first Aussie Rules Football match tonight! Snookums and I headed out with our friend Smithers to Telstra Olympic Stadium to watch the Sydney Swans demolish the West Coast Eagles. I know very little about Aussie Rules, but thankfully it doesn’t seem to have as many crazy obscure infractions as rugby. Basically it’s just a bunch of really tall fit guys in short shorts jumping and kicking and running for two hours. That’s a sport I can get behind! (Plus I already knew the Swannies’ fight song, so I figured what the heck. It’s the closest I’ll get to a Notre Dame game this year.) We drank beer and ate hot dogs and tried to start the wave and cheered on Bazza and the lads… and later we huddled in the concourse trying to keep warm as the freezing cold rain poured down. Unfortunately my camera batteries died so I couldn’t get any pictures of our bedraggled selves until I got home. It was pretty fun though… Next week we take on St. Kilda! Go the Swannies!

JK Rowling has offered up a peek at two sentences from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Any guesses who they’re talking about? My wild guess is that it’s one of Harry’s grandfathers (probably the wizarding one, as I doubt it’d be Marge’s Dad).

That was a hell of a comment spam attack, huh? Assholes. Snookums and I are working on a prevention system. (Every IP address was a different open proxy.) I’m still cleaning up the aftermath. The “recent comments” list will look funny for a little while.

Tales of the Weird
I stepped out of the break room after lunch today to be confronted by the weirdest little man: he had a ratty, pointy face; he was sporting a massive comb-over; and he was wearing an extremely fluffy white angora sweater. As my eyes adjusted to the cloud of fuzziness that was his torso, I realized with amazement that it was a woman’s angora sweater. It had puffy shoulders and everything! It was like meeting a 60-year-old Ed Wood. He started mumbling to me about angora so I took him over to the case where we keep the balls. (They’re expensive so we keep ’em under glass.) He started telling me about his beloved sweater and how he bought it for five dollars at an op shop, and how it’s his fondest wish to have another knit just like it. I went to get Losh, the other manager. “Losh,” I said. “I have a complete loony over there who wants to get a 100% angora sweater knit and I don’t know what to quote him.” So she came over to deal with him. After much hemming and hawing, she quoted him a price of $700. That’s $500 for the wool and another $200 for the knitting. Seven hundred dollars for a sweater, of which we’d need 50% upfront. Undeterred, he picked out a pattern and Losh set about measuring him. Afterwards he disappeared to “go get the money.” “He’ll never come back,” I said. “He probably just wanted some attention.” Lo and behold, an hour later he was back with the deposit. I couldn’t believe it. I deal with some characters, I tell you…

Holy crap! Craigslist Sydney has finally launched! Not much there yet but hopefully it’ll grow. I was surprised to see a link about US voter registration on the home page, but the explanation was delightful: “We’re including a link to this page on our non US sites just to show that we’re working hard to restore democracy to the US.” Brilliant.