Blu Ray Tuesday #16

First up, a warning.  This is my most favourite of classic literature.  The way the rest of the world feels about ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and Mr Darcy is the way I feel about ‘Jane Eyre’ and Mr Rochester.  I love it a LOT.

The movie: Jane Eyre

The menu: McDonald’s

The audience: Me and Nilly.

I don’t think Nilly really enjoyed the movie.  She fell asleep half way through and I kept accidentally waking her up when I would sigh dramatically and say “I can’t stand it anymore” in regards to all that tension or when I would squeal at something romantic.  I think she found me annoying.  So it’s probably very good that the Roomies were also away this week!

I, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed it.  The costumes were amazing, the sets and scenery were gorgeous and the two leads of Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester (played by Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender) were outstanding.  They are two of my favourite fictional characters, so real and layered and the actors completely brought them to life.  The support of Judi Dench as the housekeeper was great, it’s a thankless role but she’s Dame Judi Dench and she rocked it.  And then there is recently re-discovered (in my eyes anyway) grown up Billy Elliott aka Jamie Bell who was unfortunately hidden away behind a HUGE pair of sideburns.  Shame.  But probably just as well.

I really liked how they told the story in flashbacks.  Haven’t seen that before so it gave something new to the story that I know so well.  Obviously it’s hard to tell such a long nuanced story in the length of a movie (and the movie fades in comparison to the 2006 miniseries) but I thought the movie did a great job and I look forward to watching it again.  They messed up a couple of things though.  Pilot the dog was completely wrong.  I’m not sure if he has a breed in the book but in my head, he is a huge black shaggy dog.  Also, I super love the epilogue of the book which got cut out of the movie. 

Recommended?  If you love period dramas and all that jazz, then I’ll think you’ll like it.  It’s fairly slow and a lot of the movie is about what is NOT said but it’s in the hands of good actors so it’s not painful.  I loved it times a million but I realise that it’s not for everyone.

Geez, sit on the fence why don’t you, Laura?!?!

Hello!

Wow, I have been a terrible blogger and commenter in recent times. Work life has gotten crazy, I've been doing ten or eleven hour shifts and then I come home, sleep and then get up and do it all again. It's because I am covering for another nurse who has just had an operation. I am very grateful for the experience and I am amazed at how much my confidence has grown in just a short week or so of doing full time nursing. BUT I can't wait until I go back to my piddly short shifts of five or six hours!! I am sick of being exhausted!!

And it's nearly Christmas and who knows when I'll be back to blogging properly. So as a gift in case I don't see you again before Christmas, here are two of my favourite youtube videos of recent time. Enjoy.

Writing challenge

I was really sad when my NaNoWriMo project fell by the wayside.  It was silly of me to even think about doing it because I was trying to finish my nursing course, have my birthday (and party), work and see my family.  Even though I had very valid reasons, I still felt discouraged and failed as a writer when I realised that there was no way for me to finish NaNoWriMo.

At that very moment in time, Sarah at Desirous of Everything entered my blogging world.  I don’t even know how I found her blog but she was also doing a NaNo project.  But it was different, more realistic.  She was writing 500 words every day.  500 words is manageable.

I have loved following her project.  The pure joy she gets when she goes on an inspired word spree, the frustration she feels when the 500 words just come plodding out.  I’ve loved reading about the mundane-ness of this writing project.  Just sitting your butt down and writing 500 words each day.

So here we go.  I left a comment on her blog and she suggested I blog about the challenge and my progress so I feel a bit more accountable.  I’ve also totally stolen her idea of writing out my wordcount on a chart and placing a rad sticker on the dates I’ve completed.  I’ll post each week.  This is it so far.

At the moment, I’m not entirely loving my story and I’m not sure where I’m going with it.  My plot is a little weak and as I’m writing it, I’m thinking to myself “That would never happen”.  I’m also completely uninspired, I just sit and write my 500 words a day.  BUT they are 500 more words than I would normally write so I am counting it as a victory.

Did someone go into my brain?!

I had this whole other blog post planned and then I was surfing the internet and this ad popped up on my sidebar and I was transfixed.

Dragons are basically my most favourite creature ever (even though I hate their counterpart of dinosaurs- go figure!). I would LOVE to see this!!!!!!!!!! Since I will never be seeing a dragon in real life, this is definitely my best chance to see them. I'm so excited that they're starting the tour in Australia. It's probably so they can work all the bugs out of the system before they head to America and Europe, but still! I'll take it.

I love that this is coincidentally my desktop background at the moment:

Did anyone see the 'Walking with Dinosaurs' stage show? That looked fabulous!

Blu Ray Tuesday #15

The movie: The Losers

The menu: Pizza. It always comes back to pizza.

This movie was recommended to me by Danielle and since my first choice of ‘Jane Eyre’ was out (and I didn’t think I’d be able to coerce the Roomies into watching it anyway), we decided to go with this one. Foreshadowing, Danielle is a self-confessed terrible picker of movies, but maybe that’s why we are friends because we share similar traits.

The first ten minutes of the movie were spent picking what was going to happen. We were correct in our assumptions. The Roomies and I do like to guess what the next line will be or pick what the shot will be.

Just have to talk about the poster for a moment. Aisha (the girl one) has her hair in that style for quite a bit of the movie and it annoyed me immensely. The reason you put your hair up in a ponytail is to keep the hair out of your face and if you are a super cool badass fighting lady, that is an important requirement in a hairstyle. WHY WOULD YOU LEAVE TWO STRANDS AT THE FRONT THAT ONLY SERVE THE PURPOSE OF GETTING IN YOUR FACE?!?!?!?!? I couldn’t get past that whilst watching the movie.

The movie in itself was ok. It’s about a black-ops team who has the chance to clear their name and get their lives back by doing one insanely tough mission. I really, really, really liked the villain. He had a lot of the best lines and was suitably unhinged. Also, luckily for this movie, my Captain America boyfriend Chris Evans dropped in to play his usual goofy sidekick character, which he does ever so well. He made this movie a lot more palatable for me to watch. I think my enjoyment of the movie was ruined by the fact that I do not believe in Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a tough dynamic leader of the group. Which is a shame because I absolutely heart him and know he can play tough and dynamic.

Recommended? Um… ok. If you want to. I’m not going to tell you to watch it but if you come across it and there’s a choice to watch this or something else- at least now, you will know what you get with this one.

And I leave you with a direct quote from the house as we sat in silence as the credits rolled, trying to work out if we liked the movie---

Me: 96 minutes? Oh well. I’ve wasted more time on longer, stupider movies.

Girl Roomie: That should be your review.

Skype Missed Connections

I’m currently sitting waiting for my friend Shelly to talk to me on Skype and I thought I’d take a moment and write about her- because I probably won't get to speak to her. There was a little mix up due to time differences because I didn’t realise that I was one hour behind her, so (in my head anyway) she thinks that I’m an hour late. It’s showing that she’s still logged into Skype but she hasn’t answered my calls or messages. And I’ve left a message on facebook and one on her phone too. But no answer. So I feel like she must think that I’ve forgotten her!

Shelly is one of my best friends. She’s a year older than me and is kind of the cool big sister I always wanted. We met in college and lived in the same dorms. I desperately wanted to be BFFs with her as she was already doing one of the same degrees that I was doing (ancient history) but I bided my time until I was a cool second year and then made my move. She always knows what to say and do which means she’s great in a crisis or if you need advice. We even spent six weeks travelling together and I know I cried like a baby when she left to go home and I stayed on.

But now we live in different states and I miss not being able to go over to her room in the dorms and stay up late watching movies or reading books aloud to each other. AND she is a grown up and just got engaged!! Here is a collection of photos that sum up our friendship pretty well.

This is us recreating a scene from ‘Highlander’. The castle was used in exterior shots in the movie. This is why I take Shelly with me when I can, she asked a random lady to take this embarrassing super cool photo of us.

This is Shelly trying to take a FB profile picture of herself and the gorgeous Scottish countryside. I decided to photobomb her. She couldn’t stop laughing when she turned the camera around and saw the picture that she’d snapped.

This is Shelly scolding the British Museum for stealing the frieze on the Parthenon in the early days of archaeology and then not giving it back to Greece when they asked for it. I am doing my “I’m so disappointed in you” face that I intend to use on my future children.

I can’t believe in this day and age that technology is keeping us apart! Maybe I should write her a letter instead?

What shenanigans do you get up to with your friends? And who's your oldest friend that you still keep in contact with?

Hair today, gone tomorrow

I am so punny. I have been putting off writing this post for a while, it’s about a week and a half old. Last Tuesday I got my hair cut. I’ve actually been growing it for a while, in order to donate to charity. I originally wanted to donate my hair to ‘Locks of Love’ an American charity but because the postal system is so finicky, I decided that sending it within Australia might be a better idea. It probably took me the entire time that I was growing my hair to actually find an Australian organisation to donate my hair to. The Princess Charlotte Foundation is one that raises awareness and money for alopecia sufferers, particularly focussing on young girls, most of whom find the sudden hair loss understandably quite traumatic. They have a side organisation called “Tresses for Princesses” where people can donate their hair to be sold by the foundation to people who make wigs for medical hair loss. The money that the foundation makes is then used to buy wigs for those unable to afford them.

This is my before picture, please forgive the squinty expression on my face. And also note the shopping trolleys in the background. My dad will not be hired to be this blog’s full-time photographer.

Looking at this picture actually shocks me at how long my hair was. It’s crazy! Must be getting used to my new haircut.

And this is the moment of truth:

Probably just as well you can’t see my face. I put on a brave face because everyone in the shop was freaking out and watching me, but inside I was squealing!!

I actually didn’t mind this haircut. This is what I looked like straight after Wendy the hairdresser chopped my ponytail off. Oh, and this is 40cm of my hair.

And this is the finished product.

And this is me and my hair, just chilling in my room.

And I now have instagram, I feel like I am finally a blogger. Seriously, that was a big week for me- new haircut and I got my very first fancy phone. I am a whole new person!

Answers to Trivia Tuesday

The answers are as follows:

1) Custard apple (I’d never heard of it either but Girl Roomie knew what it was)

2) Rhubarb

3) Peanut

4) Papaya

5) Olive

6) Chestnut

7) Pumpkin

8) Corn

9) Star fruit

10) Tomato

There was HUGE controversy over the answer to number 4, as most teams (including ours) put down ‘pawpaw’. People were yelling at the poor woman who runs the trivia night. In Australia, we tend to use the terms ‘paw paw’ and ‘papaya’ interchangeably. But apparently ‘paw paw’ is a yellow flesh and ‘papaya’ is an orangey colour. And then people were arguing that the picture looked yellow.

Blu Ray Tuesday Hiatus

Oh, this breaks my heart!! I have recently started working a shift at work every other Tuesday that finishes late so I won’t be watching a movie on Tuesdays :( Wahhhh!!!!!

However, I bring to you a new segment in lieu… Trivia Tuesday. In which I recycle questions from the Trivia game I go to on Mondays. I guess this is the part where I say, pictures are supplied by the trivia company (whose name I will get next week) and are not owned by me. Trivia company, please do not sue me, I love going to trivia and I love your work!

Place your answers in the comments and I’ll let you know how you guys went in my next post.

Trivia about the trivia: Number 4 caused HUGE controversy. There was actual yelling. It was epic. My team just sat there and giggled because really guys, it was over ONE point… in the FIRST ROUND! And it’s ‘Trivia’, it’s not ‘Answer this question correctly or I’ll kill your whole family’.

Monday Night Trivia

This is a semi-regular thing that the Roomies and I have been participating in at our local RSL club. It’s mainly for middle-aged people but we like it because we are all middle-aged women at heart… even Boy Roomie.

There are several rounds and between the three of us, we have collected enough random information to do pretty darn well. Each round consists of ten questions and if you get all ten questions correct, one team member from each winning team has to go up to the front and participate in a series of sudden death questions. If you make it through the sudden death ‘true or false’ questions, you then get to spin a wheel, like on ‘The Price is Right’ and the team who gets closest to 100 wins $25. Wow, that sounds complicated but it works.

We even have our own arch nemesis team, a team made up of two girls who are about our own age and seem like nice people from what I’ve seen when I try and spy on them. In fact, we should probably team up with them and make a united stronger team against the rest of the oldies. However they are our arch nemesises because on their first night they lucked out and won $50- and for that, I can never forgive them.

Our team name is either “Let’s Get Trivial” (we love a good pun and just shows why I love living with Girl Roomie when she makes up cool names like that!) or “That’s What She Said” (because we are 12 year old boys who still find that funny). We’ve gotten ten out of ten right on several occasions but find it hard to get that elusive $25.

We did get $25 though, one magical night. We’d been doing really badly all night, getting 6/10 for most rounds. We wanted to go home, we couldn’t even be bothered to stay for the last two rounds. But then the last two rounds were something like “Lucky Dip” and “Movies & TV” so we decided to stay. We got 100% for both rounds but failed to make it through the sudden death until the last round. For some reason, I’m the team member that gets nominated to go up and play (thanks guys!). The question was something weird like “An oyster has a row of eyes on the outside of its shell” and I was up against all these old men who were from the teams that always win every week. I decided to go with “true” but all the other teams said that it was “false”. I was like “aw…” because I assumed I’d gotten our team knocked out and then the announcer said “congratulations” to ME! And handed me a voucher for $25. And then I did a little victory dance that made everyone laugh at me. I couldn’t help it, it was a spontaneous outpouring of joy!

Oh, also we love it because the food and drinks are cheap and you get a free pancake with your meal.

Just a little something for the weekend.

Tomorrow I really must have a day away from the computer. I’ve had a number of days off that I think have been wasted because I’ve just sat in front of the computer. I fully intend to do other “time wastey” things like read a book or watch a movie tomorrow, but there’s something completely soul sucking about sitting in front of the computer. I found this great quote today.

“You can't leave footprints in the sands of time if you're sitting on your butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?”

And I leave you today with some little pictures. I had to throw out my old ipod headphones because they suddenly stopped working. These headphones have been through a lot. All thanks to Timmies.

One earbud had been chewed by this Timmy.

And then the other earbud was chewed by this Timmy.

Do not name your pets ‘Timmy’ if you want your headphones to survive. Just a little public service announcement for you.

Also:

So true!!

Work fun

I feel like I haven't talked about work in the longest time and today's the perfect opportunity to do so. My boss called me yesterday and left a voicemail message that went something like this: “Hi Laura, I’ve just looked at our schedule for tomorrow and it looks a bit crazy. Was hoping you could come in a bit earlier, say ten am… or nine. Hope that’s ok. See you tomorrow at ten! Or nine”. Needless to say, I turned up at nine because I am a sucker and I actually do love my job.

When you de-sex a dog or cat, you have to place a tattoo on the inside of their ear. It’s my FAVOURITE thing to do. I love doing it so much, I always tell my work colleagues that I’m leaving them and going to open up my own tattoo parlour. You just apply the dye to the ear and scrunch (that’s a VERY medical term) the tattoo press to the ear, kind of like doing earrings I guess. I applied the dye to the ear and was so intent on getting the dog’s hair out of the way that I didn’t notice my own hair getting in the way. So my fringe has black streaks in it. I've brushed my hair several times and you can’t really see it anymore, phew!

It was so busy and we all went a little stir-crazy, including one of the patients. In addition to howling for almost the entire day, this little madam used her Elizabethan collar to rattle the bars of her cage, like in the old movies where the prisoners rattle the bars of their cell using a coffee mug. If it hadn’t been so annoying, it would have been funny. She just sat there, deliberately running her collar along the bars to rattle them.

I was glad when it was home time, I can tell you that!! Anyone got any fun work stories to add in the comments?