A fortnight in the life of...

So turns out the pesky knee pain I've been having required getting a MRI and revealing a disrupted cruciate ligament injury which I actually injured last year. So this injury I just did some more damage. So surgery here I come which is a really scary prospect for me as I've never broken a bone or spent any time at all really in hospital.

Excitedly I am finally seeing the final Harry Potter film tomorrow. Being one of the few not to read the books when I finally do read them (maybe during surgery recuperation?) it will be unique in that I will already be picturing Harry as Daniel Radcliffe etc having watched them first.

Luna and Norbit, my long term cat fosters both went on a trial within a day of each other to new families. After having them for nearly 8 months more than a few tears were shed and I should know whether they are permanent homes by this Thursday when the trial adoption period is over.

You know you're watching too much True Blood when your boyfriend walks in with a red Mother drink and you think it's V. Seriously loving that I am finally able to watch this show, not at all what I expected after reading others opinions for so long though but definitely entertaining.

Holy crap!

You guys. This Brutus is real. I know he's not Lake Placid size or anything but seriously this is awesomely scary, no? Read the background info here.

My Girl 2 or the one with a dreamy Austin O'Brien

Not sure about that hat though

I was 11 at the height of my 'Austin O'Brien is adorable' phase, so not inappropriate at all. Plus he then played Logan Bruno in the BSC movie so I was hooked (although he was terribly miscast I believe).
I loved the original My Girl as many did, but I think my pre pubescent self liked the sequel more in a way as I was it's target audience in many ways when it was released. Veda Sultenfus (Anna Chlumsky) from the original is now 13 and summer vacation is coming up. She decides to complete an assignment on someone she's never met and their accomplishments, on her mother who died when she was a baby. To research her mother, she goes to LA to visit her uncle Phil and his de facto Rose, and her son Nick (Austin O'Brien), which is where her mother went to school.
I know this is a 'family friendly' film, but I must have blocked out how many corny lines are in this movie. The kiss at the end was awkward (but appropriately so). Nick had some of the worst (romantic) lines in the film (maybe also appropriate for a 13 year old?).

I did like the relationship between Vada and her uncle Phil (Richard Masur), that may be because I just have a soft spot for Masur but it seemed quite natural. I thought the way they handled his and Roses (played by Christine Ebersole) relationship missed it's mark in some ways. It was supposed to be very risque that they were living together yet not married, and instead of going down the route of making Rose to be self assured and not needing the marriage card, by the end of the film they are engaged. Just seemed like a lost opportunity of making more of a statement. But what am I talking about - this is a family movie.
When I was younger I loved Vada's wardrobe. My friends and I had a thing of watching these movies from the mid 90s (the Sandlot Kids, Now and Then) and loving the wardrobes and activities they did and trying to recreate them, like by riding our bikes more, trying to play baseball on our school oval and wearing flannelette shirts. If just wasn't the same. You don't even want to know about our Clueless and knee high socks phase.

I like Anna Chlumsky and the character. Sort of precocious but also interesting and a bit different. I also think she's a better actor than what is presented on her CV. Definitely better than Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain atrocity she did with Christina Ricci while sporting really awful hair.

On a personal note, I had 3 weeks of unemployment, scored a casual job which required at least 10 kilometres of walking a day and then I hurt my knee playing basketball the week before. I have awesome timing. It's been tough but I'm not on the bread line yet.



Not Norbit



Foster wise, I still have Luna and Norbit the cats, and Mylo and Herbie the Labradors. I had one woman come and look at Norbit the other day and actually was attracted to him due to his similarity to an Australian Mist cat. Has anyone even heard of this breed? Weird. Maybe he does have some pedigree in him.

Crafting and cats

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Zoe is a fellow foster carer and she also has an excellent blog. After a few of her own kitty vet bills piled up she enlisted help of other generous bloggers to help raise money, go to Giraffe in a Scarf to read the whole story. I've got two entries, am pretty excited but you've gotta be quick to get in the draw!

Starting to freak out about lack of money as evidenced by my dreams

So last night I'm drifting off to sleep and it's fricken freezing but I can't have the heater on for too long as I only have 3 more days of employment before I have to consider doing something drastic to earn money so we can't afford a high electricity bill. But it's okay because I have my hot water bottle between my knees and I begin to think that this is a great idea but what about my feet? They're cold, maybe I really need a full length hot water bottle like the full length body pillow I like to hug more than my boyfriend when I'm going to sleep because it doesn't move around a lot, snore or try to grope me. Then I know I'm nearly asleep because I start having the most random thoughts/ideas which I only have in the last 5 minutes before I'm actually asleep. Because we know a full length hot water bottle would also be very costly to my budget every night, not to forget the facts of possible burns etc etc.

Then I had a very unsettling dreams where clowns were trying to eat me much like Bart Simpson, but we warded them off with some quick thinking ie we locked the doors.
By the way does anyone know where Dibly Fresh has gone?

Like totally redundant

So the job hunt begins...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Some things I learned after a recent viewing of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990):

Donatello was voiced by Corey Feldman.

I still don't understand how four turtles who grew up in New York have such a strong Californian dialect.

I enjoyed the banter between Michelangelo and Donatello.

The turtle costumes are passable until the turtles open their mouth.

A bit darker than I remember for a kids movie, 3 deaths and a little light swearing. Raphael is still my favourite. He's so moody.



I've now seen a movie where Elias Koteas had a full head of hair

Um does the date count as a title?

I have been woefully without much to say on ye olde blog. We have decided to adopt Herbie, so are now just looking for the right home for Mylo which I am pretty certain I am going to be devo about when it happens.
So we are now a 2 dog family which is just weird as we usually just have the one dog (and a few cats). We are looking into pet insurance which a few years ago would seem pretty weird but after all the allergies trouble we've had with our original fur baby Ebony, it just makes sense. And with Labradors being prone to things like hip dysplacia I think it's a good gamble. I wish my own health insurance was as cheap.

And yes we still have the kittens, Luna and Norbit. Though not so much kittens anymore, Norbit is a real tubber, they're going on about 9 months old and I've had them nearly 6 months (!). Boyfriend believes the cut off to be 6 months as I'm getting (hell already) attached and we need to move them to a new carer but I really like to see the adoption through. It's happened before, not every animal is an easy one, but they find homes eventually (hope I haven't jinxed myself).

I feel like this needs a LOL cat caption

We are moving office as well, and now my work will be even further from home. You can imagine how exciting this is. And I end up getting resentful and petty about my boss stealing all the boxes I made up to store his own crap. Gah. So in conclusion no real reason why I haven't been posting, just that nothing much interesting has been happening.

Ah to end on a high note, I don't know how many of you not in Australia have heard of comedian Chris Lilley but I was very excited to hear this morning that his new show Angry Boys is premiering next week. You should YouTube Summer Heights High or We can be Heroes: finding the Australian of the Year if you've never seen his stuff.

In My Mailbox

In my mailbox is a weekly meme created by The Story Siren to share new books you've received in the last week.

So totally not an original post again, but the old household has been a bit hectic.
We still have Mylo and Herbie, Luna and Norbit (going on 6 months!) and my two fur children. Also we had a sleepover with an adorable German shepherd puppy mix named Costa on Saturday night. Three puppies together and unsupervised time outside means many holes.
Luckily the Easter long weekend is coming up and I'll have time to recuperate from the craziness. And go fishing. And the weather is finally cooling a little and we had our first rain in something like over 65 days (we're meant to be in Autumn) so I can try and do some gardening. And now I'm just transitioning into old person hood. Moving on.

The Seance

This cover is gorgeous in a Gothic way. Also Harwood is an Australian author, so if I want to review for Aussie authors month I'd better get cracking.

Fast Food Nation

I can't remember why I wanted to read this one or who got me onto it, but if anything puts me off junk food it can only be a good thing.

The Year of Magical Thinking

I'm reading this one first surprisingly. I think it was the first I received, and so far I'm just feeling morbid about death but I'm only halfway through.


Don't Look Now and other stories

(Sorry about the tiny cover but it's exactly the cover art I received) I have to thank Sadako for alerting me to the fact that the movie Don't Look Now was based on one of  Du Maurier's short stories on Scarina's website, after she had reviewed the film (which is excellent). I'm really looking forward to reading this one, and yes I was seduced by a cover again.

My ABCs

Stolen from The Deadly Dolls House of Horror Nonsense which for someone who is a scaredy cat when it comes to horror, I enjoy Emily's blog.

When choosing I found myself thinking of films I could watch over and over again and so seemed to pick more which were comedy or rom coms. Ergo my choices now seem very populist and mediocre (and some letters either had too many good choices or not enough). Oh well.

A is for
Aliens

B is for
Bridget Jones Diary

C is for
Crocodile Dundee

D is for
Dirty Dancing

E is for
Edward Scissorhands

F is for
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe

G is for
Groundhog Day

H is for
High Fidelity

I is for
Innerspace

J is for
Jaws

K is for
the Karate Kid

L is for
Love Actually

M is for
Million Dollar Baby

N is for
Naked Gun

O is for
Old School

P is for
the Princess Bride

Q is for
Quill

Ok I didn't like it that much but it was the only Q movie I had seen

R is for
Raiders of the Lost Ark

S is for
Say Anything

T is for
Tremors

U is for
Urban Legend

V
is for
the Virgin Suicides

W is for
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

X is for
X-men

Y is for
Young Einstein

Z is for

Zoolander

The Others or Nicole Kidman at her icy best

I saw this movie ages ago, I think when it first came out (2001) and remembered it having quite a few genuinely creepy moments.

I wanted to revisit it and introduce it to my boyfriend mostly because he's always trying to subject me to 'boy' movies or wants me to watch random animated stuff which is actually awesome  but I resist watching initially (How to Train Your Dragon and Astroboy).

Nicole Kidman plays a mother, Grace, in 1947 in England with her two photosensitive children who live in a huge mansion. The war is over but her husband hasn't returned and the servants up and left one day and never returned. Enter 3 wanderers who require work and previously worked in the mansion, 2 women (1 mute) and one older man. Even though they never saw her advertisement in the paper (the postman didn't pick up the ad) Grace allows them to stay and work.
Strange noises begin to appear to Grace and the children, Nicholas and Anne. Especially Anne who says she can see a young boy named Victor. They begin to refer to the people as the intruders and we are not sure if Anne is making it up to scare her brother, whether the new servants have something to do with it all or if there is something else living in the house.

I am an awful horror movie viewer as I've said before, so while this time around I still found some moments scary I'm not sure if the general population would agree with me.
In particular there is a scene where Grace is in the attic investigating strange noises but she finds nothing amongst all the furniture covered with cloth for storage.
Also not long afterwards she finds in a trunk portraits of dead people, including babies and children. Apparently it was once tradition to do this as they believed their spirit would live on through the picture. Gah. I just did not like that at all and hope it is not a real tradition. Gave me the heebie jeebies.
Another scene I found tense was where Anne is trying on her first communion dress and playing with the marionette (has also been spoofed in one of the Scary Movies so perhaps has lost some of it's initial impact!).

The final ten minutes I also found suspenseful and I did not pick the ending when I watched it originally and my boyfriend didn't on his first viewing. Think of that what you will.

The whole movie has an atmospheric spooky vibe due to the children not being allowed access to direct sunlight and only use low level gas lamps throughout the film.
I thought the child actors did a pretty good job, Anne was decidedly sinister in some scenes, awful to her brother and then just a normal scared child in others.
She hasn't gone on to do a lot more acting apart from a role in Girl with a Pearl Earring which is a shame because she was a good actor in The Others.

The score at times really helped the storyline during some of the creepy scenes and then sometimes it seemed a bit dramatic and over the top. Some of the camera angles used were cool too, particularly when they are searching the house and do a panoramic view of each view as it is revealed to be empty of 'intruders'.

Kidman was at her rigid, icy and slightly religious best I think. Her accent was a bit muddled, it didn't seem as English as the childrens was and I have read past criticism of her accent in The Hours too so maybe it's not her preferred dialect.
Overall I still enjoyed it, although maybe I had built up in my head how creepy it was. 3 stars.

Mylo and Herbie

I know, I know I just resort to writing about dogs when I can't think of anything else. Sue me.

Most of the other dogs I've fostered have been mostly normal, apart from maybe Jasper.

Mylo and Herbie were picked up by me at the vet along with a few other carers who were picking up random other animals which had been rescued from a puppy/kitten mill/hoarder.

It was crazy. The woman brought down about 5 dogs in various states of mood and physical deterioration in a dog trailer and in her Ute she had a several cat cages.

There was a very hyper (and on heat) King Charles cavalier, a west highland terrier who couldn't really see through the hair in his eyes, a spotty dog that the woman was adopting and then there were my two Labrador boys. They were almost comatose.
Mylo has severe mite mange but was wagging his tail but didn't want much to do with us. Herbie would not move. They both had pee and feces on them from the trip and also from soiling themselves anytime there was human contact. I had to carry Herbie into the vet for his vaccination, and got another carer to try and pull Mylo in on his lead. They'd never been socialised and presumably just stayed in the one spot at the back of the shed for their whole lives. They just didn't know what a lead was.

Every time the vet came back into the room, both dogs cowered, the breeder was a man and I'm not entirely sure what he did to them in their 4 months, but their reaction was heartbreaking.

Once we got home, they tried to get under the water bowl (which is connected to the water source and stuck to the wall) and didn't seem to move all day. They eventually found a jasmine bush growing along the wall and managed to wedge themselves amongst its roots.

Luckily they are both quite food orientated so I think this helped to get them out of their shell. They now come into the house by themselves and lay on the rug quite contently, though Mylo is still so skittish. While he initially seemed like the more outgoing one as he walked a little bit around on the first day and is always wagging his tail, he is actually the one that is going to take more time. They just don't trust us enough, and don't understand the things dogs who have grown up in a normal household would. Noises such as the washing machine, the TV are all new, as well as not sleeping in waste and that raising a hand doesn't mean something bad.

They are also now learning how to be puppies which is so sweet. My dog loves having other dogs chase her, and Herbie has resorted into the very puppy like behaviour of stealing things out of rooms and then hoarding them on the lawn.

I know some people get really angry about the people that cause these reactions and behaviours, but I've barely thought of him. It really killed me to see their sad little faces those first couple of days, but now I'm also seeing improvement so I'm glad they were brought out in time. I really can't believe they're the same dogs I met six days ago.

Get Him to the Greek

I finally watched this film with Russell Brand and Jonah Hill. It uses the character of drug addicted rocker Aldous Snow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and pairs him again with Hill but he is playing a different role. Here he is Aaron Green a record executive or something who needs to get Snow to the Greek Theatre in LA from London for a 10 year reunion concert in 72 hours.

I really liked FSM and I think this was due to the likability of leads Jason Segal, Brand and Mila Kunis. I thought Brand was hilarious and his interactions with Segal great. Never mind that he is essentially playing himself in some ways (I enjoy his stand up as well so this makes me biased) - he does it well.
I liked FSM better than GHTTG, maybe it was the preference of Segal to Hill or maybe the storyline just made a little more sense (I did enjoy the scene in the hotel room with Snow, Aaron, Snow's dad and Sean Combs though. Mind fuck indeed).

Rose Byrne plays Snow's ex girlfriend though and her scenes were too far and few in between. I couldn't believe it was the same actress from the serious films and TV shows she normally does.
With her cockney English accent she really pulled off the skanky girlfriend with more aplomb I would have thought possible. She always comes across as so ladylike and proper in interviews and other roles she takes, so it was interesting to see her play against type.

Seeing as Brand is an addict himself I often wondered how close to home filming some of the scenes hit.

Overall I think the film got a little muddled in the end and it seems like a quick personality turnaround for Snow and the attempted threesome scene was just odd.

But you know twas an enjoyable film to wile away some time. 3 stars.