Frockage by Jimmy...

Oh! BTW! I have started a separate but linked blog for Frockage. I thought I would keep it separate as its probably not very interesting to people who aren't frock nerds like me.

There is a link in my little section titled "cause I am a big girly frock nerd" for any of you other like minded frock nerd who is interested ...

xx

feeble snot girl tries to get a life....

So what have I been up to since I went to Shrek land? Recovering from yukki flu and then catching a yukki cold mostly. This has limited my enjoyment time and thus I have had much to complain about. This makes for unfun and boring girly blogging so fair play to me I have kept it to myself.

Other then feeling sorry for myself I have been: -
Having a fun and yummy dinner at Mouse and Topsy’s place on Friday -
even though Nicko was very sniffly. Mr Tops does great pizza and Miss Mouse does good Eurovision review!

Getting my hair cut on Saturday (yay new hair! And they made it amusingly curly!) then hanging out at the Rose on Cleveland out for a few hours - tres nice.

Partying at Jackson Jackson with Nicko, Meg, Snerg, Scruffy and Miss DV on Sunday – the verdict? They rocked! I really like bands that keep the energy right up for the whole set and who look like they are loving every minute of it. I also wish I could have a posse of girls in red frocks to follow me around and echo what I say! The Factory, which is the new music venue in Marrickville where the show was on is fab too. It’s very new and shiny but a really great place to go see a band. I’m a bit over the kind of venue where you stick to the floor! It’s a nice middle sized venue and I had a great time dancing away (even if no one else was!).

Avoiding my civic duty - I was a bit tired and seedy on Monday morning when I had to show up for Jury service. Yay. Thankfully I got stood down by about 1 pm so I don’t have to go back again for a while. I was kind of looking forward to it after 4 hours of waiting though so I actually felt a little disappointed that I didn’t get picked. But at least my life is not thrown into turmoil by having to rearrange my work so all is good and happy. And I got to watch 4 hours of the shopping channel and a nice public information video about Jury duty.

So there you go… not much to report. Will hopefully have a more fun life over the next week! xx

The Wolfies, a skinny blonde and the jolly green giant…

Yes, We went to the Shrek premiere last night courtesy of my bro. It was cool! We were in the line outside wearing stupid paper crowns (invitations…) and they stopped the queue right in front of me. And who should step out of the approaching limo but Cameron herself! 1 metre from my face! She is one slim girl. This worried me slightly as she looks normally slim in magazines, not celery stick skinny. How skinny must Victoria Beckham be? She looks scary in the magazines!?!?! Cameron looked like she was having fun though, even though she was wearing a slip of a thing in the middle of Sydney winter. And she looked healthy so I guess that’s good!
The film was great! We decided to forgo the snack bar only to find that as you entered the cinema they offered you a buffet of free snackage all of the shrek-themed variety. There were shreks bacon balls (not green) shreks cheese sticks (twisties) and some kind of shrek custard (not wanting to know which part of shrek that comes out of…). YAY for free food.
We still had no idea how Mylo had wangled free tix, until the exciting moment in the film when the baddies attack the city and “Joker and the Thief” rang out through the cinema! We were very excited! GO WOLFIES! We had to stay till the end credits to see their names.

crying and laughing and crying and laughing.....

I saw a really remarkable piece of theatre last night, the kind that is life affirming and life changing. The kind of production where you come out of the theatre either shaking with emotion or drenched in tears. Its such a rare experience to feel like something inside you has changed – whether you understand more or you feel more – just because of a story. That’s what I felt like last night.

Holding the man is a story about two young men who fall in love at the age of 15 and spend the next 15 years with their lives intertwined trying to discover who they are and what they mean to each other. It has to be one of the most wonderful love stories I have ever seen. It's actually based on the autobiography of Timothy Cosgrave – a young Australian actor (and NIDA graduate) and a playwright but the play has been adapted from the novel by Tommy Murphy who I went to uni with and who is a really talented (and nice) guy. I highly recommend going if you can convince someone to sell you their ticket!!!
For a wonderful review go here and for info go here!

Extreme girlyness in a puddle of feeble...

I am not very well. I don't usually take kindly to being unwell and today is no exception. Poor Nicko has had to put up with extreme feebleness today. He dragged my sorry carcass to the doctor who 3 minutes and $65 later pronounced that I have a virus and should go back to bed and take more panadol. Thanks Mr Doctor but I could have figured that out without getting out from under my warm and comfy duvet. Then I lost Nicko because I was too feeble to remember to take my mobile to the shopping centre and had to find a telephone that a) took real money not a "telimax" (or some shit) card and b) worked. Finding a public phone is much harder then I used to be when I was a lass. Scary how adrift I felt without ready access to my mobile and this was compounded by the fact I also felt extreemly weak, dizzy, achy and downright feeble. Me and my mobile have become co-dependant! AAGGGHHH!
I am going to eat soup and go back to bed now...

Friday afternoon procrastination and reminiscence of mighty glory...

I didn't get to boast about our latest glory - "When Minger met Minger" hammered them at the Gladstone Trivia this week. I am getting used to not paying for drinks there! We were a team with its full contingent this week -
Minger Justin - strengths: current and obscure sport, Australiana including pub rock
Minger Gidget - strengths: literature and pulp fiction, history, odd musicals, general oddities, classical music and the 80s
Nicko - strengths: Trains, engines, odd music, crap music, contraptions, also general oddities
Jimmy - strengths: books, movies, musicals, faces, history, crap music and trash mag gossip
Tony - strengths: anything you may want to debate about, history, wierd geography and pretty much anything political.

As you can see we almost cover all possibilities! Thats why we keep winning! We beat the closest competition by 10 points or so this week and we also won 2 spot questions! $80 all up. Hooray!

A wander down memory lane with the Goons...

I went to see “Ying Tong: a walk with the Goons” last night at the Opera House Drama Theatre. It was really fabulous. As a girl, I grew up with a Goon mad father who had all the recordings and all Spike’s books and it took me years to actually decipher what they were even saying. I realized last night though how much I actually took in during my long goon exposure all those years ago. The play is primarily about Spike Milligans’ nervous breakdowns, in particular the one that forced the end of the Goon Show in the early 1960s. It also deals with the relationships between the four men (Wallace Greenslade who was the BBC style announcer on the show is also a character in the play) and the power struggles between Sellers and Milligan that culminated in Milligan trying to kill Sellers with a potato peeler (funny but awful at the same time). A lot of the play is in the form of unashamed flashbacks and the crazy characters of the Goon Show interacting in Milligans’ mind and memory. I haven’t laughed so much in ages – even though at times the laughter is bittersweet. Spike Milligan’s battle with mental illness is central to the play and such a horrible yet wonderful story. I recommend anyone with a love of the Goons, Monty Python or British comedy in general to go and see this play, which is really a tribute to probably the greatest comic genius of the 20th Century. For a more sufficient review then what is essentially my gushing, go here or here ! I have to say, it was also a lovely walk down memory lane as it reminded me so poignantly of my wonderful Dad who loved to laugh.

That damn song is stuck in my head though...

Dissapointment

Something wonderful happens. You are so excited you want to burst – you want to tell someone, a friend who will be as happy for you as you are. Its not that you need positive reinforcement, you just want to share your enthusiasm with someone who knows how much it means to you. Someone who will just be glad.
The overwhelming feeling of sadness and regret when you realise that this person no longer exists.

Girly moments at the wedding in Wagga....

It has been a hectic week – the only explanation for this seems to be that we went to Wagga on the weekend for a wedding and thus are knackered. The wedding was really lovely, held right on the banks of the river and the sun was out and the bride and groom were dazzlingly happy. Of course, being the girly girl I am I started crying about the time the vicar stepped up and didn’t stop till the last snog. Should have worn sunglasses.

After the wedding, My boy and I (and a group of friends who were putting us up in their spacious Wagga hotel apartment) went to Subway and then on to the reception. We were feeling bad about our need to snack but it turned out to be a necessity as we ended up sitting in the wrong place for food service. Lots of food came out but unfortunately we were revelling too much to notice and were seated in an out of the way place. Thus several of our party went to sleep VERY early. Obviously yours truly was not one of them and on a diet of not much food and a fair bit of champagne those of us still standing went on a rampage (well – loud wander) through Wagga. I was reasonably well behaved given that there really is not a lot to do in Wagga after 10 pm. So we were tucked up in bed by 11. Which was good as we had a 5 hour drive home to contend with the next day.

Breakfast was a highlight with the discovery that the hangover café down the road did fabulous and enormous breakfasts at very low prices. We suggested they move to Sydney but they were not convinced.

Other then the Wagga expedition not much has happened this week: -
We went out to yummy Indian in Seaforth on Monday for a friend’s birthday.
I did sewing on Tuesday and more on Wednesday whereupon I decided that there was no way my dress was going to be ready for Saturday and gave up at about 10 pm.
On Thursday we had a lovely friend Sarah over for dinner and heard all about her amusing job making Nicole’s clothes on “Australia”.

And tonight we go for dinner with DV….yummy!

Anna in the Tropics...

I went to see a play last night, “Anna In the tropics” written by Nilo Cruz which was part of the B Sharp season at Downstairs Belvoir.

The blurb by Belvoir reads: -
It’s 1929 and Anna Karenina hits the steamy Tampa, Florida, by way of handsome Juan Julian who has been employed to read to cigar rollers as they work. In the hothouse environment of the factory, his choice of Tolstoy’s epic novel stirs passions and emotions that have been simmering for months as the lives of the workers are mirrored in the book. Ultimately the potent force of the novel causes all of them to think about what is at stake in life and love and the results change their existence forever. Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Anna in the Tropics is about love and progress and change and the transformative effect that literature can have on our lives.

Both my boy and I really enjoyed the play. The revamped downstairs theatre is still not what you would call first class comfort, but despite wriggling a bit I was completely engrossed.

My friend Krystal Giddings designed both the costumes and the set and both were beautiful. Amusingly one of the actresses altered one of her costumes and added in a shirt of her own in the last scene. This was the one thing I didn’t like about the production as I thought it stood out a mile! Very modern and completely unfitting with the rest of the world that Krystal had created. Actresses!

There were one or two moments of direction that I would have done differently myself, but on the whole it was really enjoyable and the world was quite believable (the actors did pretty admirably with difficult Cuban accents). Being the big girly girl that I am I shed a few tears at the end (it is unusual for me NOT to cry though…).

For a more indepth review check out the professionals…

Xx

J is for Jimmy and ....

Here goes!
DV gave me the interesting challenge of a mememe on the letter J.

J

J is for Journeys
Internal and external

J is for Journals

I love writing but don't do enough

J is for Jimmy Jams
Those what keep me warm and snuggly buggly

J is for Jacobites
Everyone has to have a hobby...

J is for Jovial occasions
I love birthdays, christmas and times with my family

J is for Jet-setting
I love to travel and I love going to England to see my family and friends

J is for Journeyman
That what I aspire to be.

J is for Jake

and all the other lovely techies from NIDA



J is for Jamaican rum
DOGGIE DOGGIE DOGGIE


J is for Jim Henson's muppets
They rock! Especially Ralph.


J is for Jokey Fiance
him what cuddles me.



And finally, J is for Miss JIMMY!

what not to do and when not to do it...

Yes. I was celebrating last night - our third consecutive win at Gladstone Park trivia! Hooray! Mrs Minger confiscated all the prize money though. It didn't help - there was celebrating to be done, school night be damned!

I am feeling less enthusiastic about our win today as I am suffering for it. mmm.

I have learned a new thing - that when you post on blogger inebriated, there tends to be more woofing. No surprise there really.

I don't want to shag him...not like dylan...

david is funny. hahahahahaha dylan is funnier hahahhahahahhaahahha woof.

woof woof woof woof woof.

trickiness, trivia and interstate travel...

Its been a while!

What have I been doing? Not going to the gym enough that is for sure!
On Anzac day I spent the day at Topsy and Mouse's watching my friends children fling themselves off garden furniture and get their clothes all sodden. It was a fun day even though a bbq in the rain is trickier!
Then we went to the lovely (cough) Gladstone park Hotel and won their trivia for the second week running with our fantastic team "Hey Minger!". We won only $60 this time as there were no tacky music spot questions for my boy to show off the knowledge he gained working in a bar in Cornwall.

After spending Thursday recovering from consuming our winnings, I flew down to melbourne on Friday to join the lovely DV! YAY! I flew into Avalon airport which was hilarious. Its basically a cafeteria masquerading as an airport. I then bussed into central melbourne and met up with DV and her amusing mates and we went to the sherlock homes for a bevvy or several. I loved the Sherlock Holmes! When it said english style pub guess what! It really was! That never happens. The feel was right, and you could tell when looking at the interior of the bar that the place had actually been built by an English publican. All the stupid but essential quirky features were there. Exposed wiring, display cases where the public can't view them, and pipes wrapped up in duct tape. They even ran out of ice! (my boy would have been happy). To top it all off there was even a few random drunken englishmen loitering at the bar. It felt like home!

After a lovely morning of late breaky and meandering with DV around the shops, I flew home on Saturday arvo and headed straight to Hrothgars for tea. YUM! Hooray for dinner and chatting!
I topped off my english inspired weekend by cooking a roast on Sunday. This made my boy very happy and appreciative. Note to self - must do this more often!

Not a lot has happened since then as I got sick sometime between sunday and monday. Yukko. Developed icky migraine which is only just buggering off (wed arvo). hmm. The only entertaining thing about this migraine is the odd dreams I have been having where people throw things at my head. And that isn't very entertaining.
Stay tuned... things can only get more interesting from here! Not to mention that DV gave me a meme on the letter "J" which will be forthcoming when I can think of some stuff.
xxx