I am a Blogess!
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| Day 209: I must've been a VERY good girl! |
Oh my gosh!!!! My sister came and spent the Saturday with me. We did girly stuff, like shopping and eating and wishing we had more money. And SHE BOUGHT ME THIS! Now, Supernatural Season 7 has not aired over here yet. I think Season 6 might be showing on some channel but we are pretty far behind. In fact, apparently it was rather difficult for her to find a store that had Season 7 in stock. They were either sold out or hadn't come in at all yet. I am loving watching this because it's the first time I've been able to see the series special features like commentary and deleted scenes and gag reels. I haven't finished watching the season yet. I know, I know, y'all can't believe it. I should've been finished within one weekend, but it has been (and will continue to be) a very busy few weeks. And honestly? I don't want it to end. Season 8 has just started to air in the US, so I'll have to wait like a whole year before it's released on DVD. I may go into withdrawal.
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| Day 210: The Mostly-Fiction bookshelf. |
I have 3 bookshelves (hey there's an idea for other photos...). The first is a small one I inherited from my mother (she had no choice) which holds all my 'pretty' classics. Mostly. The third is a - I think 'modular' is the word - a 'modular' bookshelf that I fell in love with and had to have. And then decided it would house all my reference books. Mostly. The one above is the first bookshelf I bought when I moved out of my parent's house and the second I put in my new house. It is mostly fiction, and the long term plan is that it will become ALL fiction, just as soon as I get enough bookshelves to house the non-fiction currently kept here. It should be mentioned that my system does change periodically. For example, my Harry Potter's and Tolkien's etc were once kept on the pretty-classics bookshelf because, well they are, but then I ran out of space.
My books are generally arranged thematically and then alphabetically. Until I run out of space for that system and books just need to be arranged for optimum space usage. The top three shelves here are general fiction, ending with a pile of to-read books and a manuscript from a friend that is just so good, that is where it needs to stay. As you can see I arrange themes according to differently oriented stacks. The next shelf is miscellaneous odd books like The Big Book of Insults. Then important fantasy books and their associated publications starting with my Harry Potter collection, including Beedle the Bard and Hogwarts text books, and moving on to Tolkien, my Tolkien companion, my Middle Earth map, and my one LoTR movie guide. Then come my beautiful hardcover editions of The Neverending Story and The Princess Bride.
Next, stacked horizontally, comes the biographies, autobiographies and other real life books. I would prefer these to have a separate shelf, but economizing is key. Next comes all the books that technically belong to other people (like my mother) that I still have to read.
The bottom self is dedicated to books too large to put elsewhere and reference type books. Starting with my Illustrated Guides to the Star Wars universe, then Star Trek and X-Files companions, then fairy tales, and a children's Bible, and a set of old Household Encyclopedias (which are interesting and hilarious. They include recipes, laundry tips, dog breeding tips, articles on gardening... Everything a housewife needs to know...). Then we move on to my travel section which is all about South Africa with one book on Swaziland. And lastly comes my pet section.
Huh. On second thought, maybe it would be better if I don't include photo's of my other bookshelves. I seem to get carried away...
Onwards!
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| Day 211: Magnetic nail polish! |
Another prezzy from SisHaw. You can't see it so clearly in this photo but the nail polish is striped. What you do, is paint one coat on all your nails. Then start with the second coat; you paint one nail and immediately hold the little magnet that comes with it over your nail for a few seconds. And
voila! Stripes! You have to do that finger by finger so it takes a little longer than usual but I think it looks great. And an added bonus is that this is the best lasting nail polish I have ever had.
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| Day 212: My Bella shirt. |
You know. Coz it's plaid... As one Facebook friend pointed out this is also a bonus photograph of my boobs. You lucky things.
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| Day 213: Church Square from another angle. You can see the statue of Paul Kruger looking over his city towards the north. |
This is taken from the north, looking south. The photo of the Square on Day 52 was taken sort of from the south-east. At least, I think so. My compass point direction skills are not good. Anyway, as you can see it was an overcast day. We've been having a lot of those. But I love the filter I used because it makes it look like one of the photographs which I've actually seen of the Square from like 30 or 40 years ago.
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| Day 214: Missing! One sun. Makes periodic appearances just to tease and then disappears again. |
Another photo taken with my little BlackBerry that I am very chuffed with.
It had been such a rainy week, and I was just complaining to my friend, who lives in Pietermaritzburg where they are having a similar problem. I mean I love rainy days. I really do. But I cannot remember the last time we had so much rain during September/October. We are a summer rainfall area, but it's never been like this. In fact the last 10 years or so, our
really rainy period has been March to May-ish. And the temperature is crazy cold for the end of the year here in Sunny South Africa. As I sit typing this, I am wearing winter clothes and have my office heater on. Again. On the 9th of November. (I totally had to check that it was Friday. I nearly panicked)
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| Day 215: We're booked! |
SisHaw and I are all official for the midnight screening of Breaking Dawn on 15/16 November. It seems they are actually having a 10pm screening as well, but that felt like cheating.
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| Day 216: Happy Birthday! |
The 27th of October was MaHaw's 60th Birthday. As it fell so close to Halloween, SisHaw and I thought giving it a Halloween theme would be one way of making it memorable. It was a good evening with friends and family. What better photo for this day than one of the three Haws?
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| Day 217: Silly sleepy puppy. |
The morning after. I think Penny was hungover...
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| Day 218: Happy Gotting-You-Day Sam! 5 years today. |
I don't know Sam or Oliver's birthdates. So we celebrate their Gotting-You-Day's instead. Sam's is a particularly special day. You see, in August 2009 Sam went missing. I know, cats wander. But Sam doesn't. Sam is a stay-at-home-preferably-in-one-spot-all-the-time-don't-make-me-go-outside cat. She has issues. Most people will say she's not a very nice cat. One of those people might be me. I
will say she was a horrible kitten. She's not friendly or cuddly and she shouts and cusses at me every day. But she loves me and I love her. We understand each other, or at least I understand her most of the time and she appreciates that. There are occasions where she cuddles me; she will climb on top of me, snuggle down, and gently put her paw on my face, and that there is her saying she loves me. I better not move though. I love Sam, and when she didn't show up for supper that day, I basically knew she was dead. She's a home cat, she does not explore, there is nothing that would keep her away past supper time. We searched and searched, and I put up flyer's everywhere. I couldn't just give up even though deep down I had. Sam needed me. She is not an outside cat with street smarts.
She was gone for 17 days. Possibly the worst 17 days of my life. Every evening I would go out to the front, and then to the back of the house to call her, just in case. There was nothing more that I could do, but I could keep doing that. Honestly, after 17 days, what was the point? But I did it every night, breaking down in tears every time. On the 17th night I'd left it pretty late. I got up and went out the back and called. Nothing. I went out the front and called. Nothing. As I was locking the front door, I thought I heard something, but do you know how often I thought I had heard her during those 17 days? Then I heard it again. I flew outside and started calling again and then I saw her running to me. (I may be getting teary writing this) I burst into tears and scooped her up in my arms. This was late at night, and I have no idea what the neighbours must have thought but I didn't care. I held her so tight and she barely struggled even though she doesn't like it. I took her to the kitchen, sobbing the entire time and gave her food. I then proceeded to sit on the kitchen floor and ugly-cry while phoning my Mom to tell her Sam was home. And she was fine. A bit thin but fine. I have no idea where she went or how she managed to get back home but I am so grateful. I try to remember this every time she cusses at me loudly when I don't feed her on time.
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| Day 219: Happy 91st Birthday GranHaw! |
October is just full of birthdays! GranHaw is PopHaw's mommy and is your typical cuddly granny. You know, the one who bakes and lets you get away with anything? I don't see her nearly often enough since I moved.
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| Day 220: HAPPY HALLOWEEN! |
All of my awesome Halloween duckies came from my awesome friend Worm, all the way from America! She sent me about 67 rubber duckies, and these are all the Halloween ones!
I had a fantastic Halloween. It's not so big here, yet, so there are no Trick or Treat interruptions. It was a cold rainy evening, so I bathed, snuggled under a blanket with some pumpkin soup and sweets, and proceeded to read horror Twilight fanfiction, listen to my Halloween playlist (which I had made for MaHaw's birthday party) and tweet all the songs that were playing. Perfect.
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| Day 221: Post Halloween stash. |
This stash actually lasted a lot longer than anticipated. In fact, I still have a few lollipops.
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| Day 222: Waiting for car repairs... |
Because expensive and important things always break when all the money is gone. This time, it was a brakespring...?
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| Day 223: Almost Married! |
For more on this, go
here.
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| Day 224: How could I not make this my photo of the day? |
I know,
I
know I post a lot of photographs of my herd. But really, when they do things like this, what am I supposed to do? I feel I should apologise for the amount of pet photographs, but I'm not going to.
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| Day 225: Jacaranda adorned driveway. |
The Jacaranda's are in bloom once again in the Jacaranda City (as Pretoria is known because of the sheer number of these trees within the city). Everything looks so pretty and purple I can't promise you won't get more Jacaranda photos.
This the driveway of the property on which my house is situated and I get to drive through this every day for a few weeks every year!
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| Day 226: THEY CAME THEY CAME! THEY FINALLY CAME!!!! |
Lori sent me these new editions of her books, with the newly designed covers, months and months and months ago. But they never arrived. And the transport strike over here did not help. We were so worried that Lori contacted the company and they promised they'd send a new set. Now either these are those, or the originals finally found their way to me, and there is another set on the way...
Aren't they pretty?
Don't you just wanna read em?!?!
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| Day 227: Murderous ants. And very hardworking. |
May I just say that this is a hell of a thing for one to witness first thing in the morning while one is brushing one's teeth...
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| Day 228: CheeseHaw cooking a kiddie! Meet Sprog. Sprog is part Vulcan... |
...as is clear from it's ears.
Everyone is very excited although PopHaw is disappointed that no where seems to make racing suits or helmets for under 3 year old....
That's all for now, folks!
