I had the standard, Windows photo of Stonehenge as my wallpaper at work for well over a year. A couple of weeks ago, Smashing Magazine had an article on wallpapers, and a stack of free ones. There were so many fantastic designs, I decided that it was time to start mixing it up a bit.

For the last couple of weeks I've had the below one from this link (minus the calendar)

Mondays

Now, because I have a laptop as well as a monitor, one of them is often showing... and changing my wallpaper alterted me to how many people actually glance at my computer screens when they walk past. The CEO finds it hilarious asking me why I dislike Mondays, and if I dislike them or hate them.

I've just changed my wallpaper to the following (from here)

Hippy

It was close - there were 2 others that are on my shortlist for my next change:

Thinkoutside

and

Elemental

I absolutely adore the Stephenie Meyer books, so much so that I got myself the audiobooks from Amazon.

I'm doing a stack of document formatting today, which is completely mindless, so I've been listening to Eclipse as I work. There are a few parts of this book that are just so sweet and mushy and gooey, that they make me blush. It's not that they're overly explicit or anything, I'm not quite sure why they have that effect on me, but they do.

So anyway, I'm working away, listening to a particularly sweet Bella / Edward moment, when the CEO wanders out to see how the documents are coming along. And I'm sitting there with this silly grin on my face with red cheeks. Urgh.

But why do awful tutorials when I can create some lil characters in Illustrator that will be used in my final 'ad'? I figure I'm much better off adjusting the tutorials so that I'm doing the assignment at the same time....

AND HOW CUTE / IDIOTIC LOOKING IS MY CUTE LITTLE STICK FIGURE???

Kkwcgirl

Reading this post from bold as love reminded me of one of the most idiodic things I've ever done...

I had been back from my first stint at summer camp back in 2001 for maybe a month. I was living with the olds, working as a promo girl selling carwashes (yes, a career low point) saving to go back to the States, and had spent the week completing the auswim course.

It was Saturday morning, and I had the exam around lunchtime. Mum had woken me up and asked me to take my sister to her dancing class.

So I staggered out of bed, threw on a jumper, and drove bleary-eyed to the sports centre where the classes were held. The car park (which is TINY) was full, except for the disabled spot. Now, because I was literally pulling in while my sister jumped out, I used it. Sister gets out of car, runs inside, and I pull out. Or attempt to. I don't seem to be going anywhere, so I accelerate harder. And harder. Then the car jumps. I had forgotten to put my car in reverse and had managed to drive over the top of the concrete things they put at the end of stops.

Now, this spot was on a slight slope, and no amount of reversing was getting the car out. So I had not only gotten my car stuck in an absolutely ridiculous way, but in a disabled spot, whilst dressed in my pyjamas. Obviously I got help getting it off and I got home (although I missed the exam) but that bit of the story isn't very interesting.

Thankfully, I haven't had any shockers quite like that since.

This is one I've been meaning to do for a while too, over on my fellow web design student's blog sorrowfulunfounded.

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they’ve printed below.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own weblog / journal so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.”

 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible – read fair chunks of it. Love early old testament, especially the conflicting Genesis accounts.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare I’ve read probably about 8 or 9. I really enjoy Shakespeare, I WILL read them all!
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger I own this, it’s sitting in my bookcase waiting for me to have a holiday and time to read
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald another one that I picked up on sale at some point and haven’t had time to read
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll I want to give this one another read, it’s been years!
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy Another one picked up on sale that is yet to be read!!
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis Have read a couple of them, have the audiobooks of all of them, just haven’t had time to listen!!
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis.
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel I really didn’t enjoy this one… probably needs a reread, because everyone else seems to love it
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon I have my mum’s copy of this sitting on the bookshelf…
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Yet another that I own and haven’t had time to read.
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I’ve read a fair few of these, not the entire collection, but a few
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton I loved these as a kid
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks Urg, this book REALLY disturbed me. Way too much animal cruelty… when I think of this book, I think of ‘toe jam’
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Read 29 / 100.

 Not a bad effort! I don’t like the lumping together of series of books, but I’m not going too badly!

PS I have no idea what's going on with the formatting, but I'm feeling way too lazy to do anything about it right now.

The lovely Atlantis tagged me a while back, and besides being busy, I needed to wait a while so that I could forget what everyone else had written for this little exercise so I can be completely original. (ha!)

THE RULES

1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves. 
   
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules. 
   
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names. 
   
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them they’ve been tagged, and to come back and read your blog for the whole story.

1. I hate being at home alone at night. It doesn't matter where I'm living, I completely freak out. I'm convinced the house I'm living in at the moment is haunted (footsteps upstairs when I'm home alone, the doorbell that has been broken forever ringing in the middle of the night... only to be broken again in the morning, the alarm system which has been disconnected for 10 years going off in the middle of the night... you catch my drift). Because I'm living with the in-laws at the moment, I'm not about to do a cleanse of their house (my aunty gave me a crash course once in another freaky house) but I'm sure as hell going to avoid being home alone at night!

2. I get incredibly nostalgic around June each year, thinking back to my summers in New Jersey at Kiddie Keep Well Camp. I worked there for 2 years as a camp counselor, and those times were the most character building, life changing times of my life. Every year I contemplate packing everything up and heading over again.... until reality kicks in. And I think it's probably best to leave those summers as happy memories... I'd probably go back and have an absolute nightmare couple of months.

3. I am starting pole dancing classes tonight. I am one of the most uncoordinated people I know, and always was of the opinion that pole dancing was incredible skanky... but there you go. The course goes for 8 weeks, and if by the end of it my abs and arms are even half as good as the instructors, I may even continue on with it.

4. I spend more time than I should on Facebook, looking up people I know from 10 years ago. I very rarely actually make contact with them, but I can't the stalking.

5. My husband has no idea that I blog, and I intend to keep it that way. I don't think I've ever mentioned him on here, it's not like this is a place for me to post all my pissy thoughts about him (although, I'm sure the time will come.. hehe) but it's more that I like keeping this removed from 'real life'. I know a few people have stumbled upon it, my sister read a few posts once, but I like the safe feeling that comes with it being a separate entity.

6. The pyramid on my work desk is from Egypt, and customs tried to confiscate it from me when I came back into the country. I stood my ground and started an argument, and won. I like to win arguments.

7. I can't wait to be a teacher, and regret deffering uni so many times and not getting started on my degree until 18 months ago.

8. At the same time, I'm glad I DID deffer and spent my early 20s travelling and getting 'life experience'. As I nudge closer to 30 I'm getting much more settled and happier with where my life is going. The wanderlust is still there, but is sated with shorter trips that allow me to keep a 'proper' job at home.
 
Tagging... no one. But if you have stumbled across and feel the urge to do some sharing, please do! I have no motivation to do any work this afternoon, my guys are in a meeting all arvo and I need some new reading material!

Originally posted May 12th. Updates below

I started my 101 things in 1001 days at the beginning of March, but just haven't had the time to post my list or blog about the completed items (yes, I've already completed a few of them!!). So... here is the master list. This list will be updated as I work through them.

Mind / Body / Spirit

1. Get a skin cancer check
2. Get a spirit guide reading and portrait
   
3. Complete Neophyte section
4. Read 20 non-uni books
5. Get to yoga at least once a month
6. Reach goal weight of 52kg
7. Go an entire week without using the internet
8. Play a team sport each year
9. Do one gym class a week (either pump / combat / cardio)
10. Do City to Surf or other 'fun run'
11. Join a summer / evening netball team
12. Mail a secret to Post Secret
13. Go on a weekend meditation retreat
14. Do a hair treatment every 3 months
15. Get and learn how to use contacts
16. Start taking a multi vitamin and probiotic

Go Green
21.   Plant a vege garden
22.   Plant herbs to cook with
23.   Look into 'green' energy alternatives

Social Concern
24.   Clean out closet and donate clothes each year 1/3
25.   Buy 12 copies of the Big Issue 3/12
26.   Give $2 to charity for every goal not achieved
27.   Sponsor a child
28.   Volunteer 3 times
29.   Register as an organ doner

Social
30.   Organise 30th for the boy
31.   Organise 21st for sister #1
32.   Organise 21st for sister #2

Money & Stuff
33.   Buy somewhere to live
34.   Put $5 into ING for each completed task
35.   Investigate better credit cards
36.   Pay off personal loan
37.   Get rid of one credit card
38.   Sort out a visa debit card
39.   Get a student bank account
40.   Set up a joint ING account

Adventure time
41.   Go on an overseas trip
42.   Do a weekend at the Blue Mountains
43.   Go kayaking
44.   Visit Melbourne
45.   Visit 2 other Australian cities I haven't visited yet
46.   Do 1 'mystery hotel' visit per year

Art / Culture / Music
47.   Visit the Art Gallery
48.   Visit the Australian Museum
49.   Take an intro to a foreign language class
50.   Take a guitar class
51.   Build 2 websites 1/2
52.   Make a short film / animation
53.   Convert all CDs to MP3
54.   Create photo album of 04 Europe trip
55.   Organise to get Wedding album made
56.   Go to 6 concerts
57.   Listen to 8 new Aussie artists and blog about them
58.   Learn about 8 different God / Goddess / religious idols
59.   Read up on one new city each month
60.   Spend a day tye dying
61.   Watch 6 short films
62.  Get at least an outline / synopsis for novel
63.  Write short film synopsis
64.  Write 2 monologues
65.   See 12 films every and review
66.   Create 3 designs for CSS Zen Garden (and keep trying until one is accepted) 1/3
67.   Join an 'a word a day' subscription
68.   Do a drama class
69.   See 6 plays

Shopping
70.   New bedroom furniture
71.   Set up a desk / study area
72.   Get a new monitor
73.   Get Adobe Creative Master Collection

Foodie Stuff
74.   Bake & decorate fancy schmancy cupcakes
75.   Make cookies.. from scratch... that are edible
76.   Make 4 new soups
77.   Create a recipe book
78.   Have a fondue night

Education
79.   Get my BA
80.   Complete the Web Design major
81.   Research different DipEd / B Teach / B Ed programs
82.   Enrol in one of the above programs
83.   Research Cert. Rel Ed programs
84.   Start working towards B Gen Studies
85.   Look into Cert. Ancient Languages
86.   Do 2 VIS subjects
87.   Do 2 CMM / COM subjects
88.   Do the Intro to Photography course

Getting Organised
89.   Catalogue all my books
90.   Sell / donate books no longer wanted
91.   Catalogue all dvds
92.   Sell / donate dvds no longer wanted
93.   Archive all paperwork that's more than 3 years old
94.   Get the car cleaned properly once a year in an effort to keep it clean and junk free
95.   Get car insurance
96.   Set up direct debits to pay regular bills
97.   Map out assessments and exams each SP by the end of week 1
98.   Clean up and backup laptop C drive
99.   Make spreadsheet to track 101 tasks
100.  Blog about tasks as they are completed
101.  Create a 'Master Document' and file, and make sure details are given to someone.

So that's my list. I'm a few weeks in and have completed some of the easier tasks already, blog to come later in the week. I'm going to go have a look at the other lists on the official site - it's interesting to see what tasks other people are tackling!

Have finally gotten around to striking out the things I have done. Will sort out links to blogs etc this weekend.

I logged into my web design course this morning and saw grades were up. Clicked through... 13/20, with no comments. I was a little upset as I usually do much better in web design, and started clicking around a bit more to see if there were any comments anywhere.

Then I found some... and realised I was extremely lucky to even pass. I'd attached the wrong research documentation to the assignment - I somehow managed to attach the research for the site I did last semester. The tutor had said that anyone with no research automatically failed... I obviously had enough commenting throughout my code to get me over the line, but it's just so upsetting to lose 25% of my marks (plus the 25% for conceptual design - all in the research doc) in one hit for such a silly mistake.

So what have I learnt?

No more submitting assignments in the wee hours of the morning!
Time to tidy up my files and get organised!
Double check before hitting the 'submit' button!

I'm not complaining about the mark - as I said, I'm extremely lucky to have passed. There's just the irritating feeling of 'how well WOULD I have gone had I submitted the damn thing properly'... GRRR!!!! SO ANGRY AT MYSELF!!!

Just a flying visit to share this picture that made me laugh this morning....

Wrong

The you're / your thing irritates me nearly as much as the their/there/they're thing. It's funny, the email that this picture came in had "Your doing it wrong" as the subject header, and I was going to delete it without reading it.