I just got a random email from someone saying they love reading my books and I am one of their favourite authors ever.
I figured it was just a spam email since I get them frequently - usually wanting to sell me something - and its too my author outlook email which is advertised in the books and on my twitter profile, etc.
Check the email address and it’s from an education email address - so the ones they give assign to kids at school.
Could still be a bored student taking the piss, but I choose to believe I just got my first ever fan e-mail.
Oh wow! Straight to the pool room.
Right!
I’d love to say thank you but the way the world is, it probably isn’t a good idea.
Thank the kid via a return compliment to the schools contact email address?
It didn’t say the school - email address was like a state wide one - but worked out a solution that will hopefully work.
I would have loved to have you in as a book week author but my clientele are just a bit too young I reckon.
That nice fuzzy warm feeling when someone appreciates your work is so heartwarming.
It is an amazing feeling. Really motivates me to keep going when that motivation can be lacking.
So I’ve completed 3/4 knowledge assessments, and submitted 2/4 practical assessments. Tomorrow is prac day, so I can ask the questions I need, finish up the one assessment I still need to do, and then submit those. Then I’ll check the last quiz tomorrow afternoon, and attempt it, note down any questions and save it for Friday. Once that last one is done, I’m finished with my classes for the semester and can enjoy some holidays!
I still can’t believe I’ve changed my trajectory.
Well done. You’ve worked your butt off and now you’re kicking ass!
☺️ thank you! I couldn’t have done it without the support of you and the DT! 💜
yay, happy dance 🙂
Eeeeeee!!! 🙌🙌
I admire your organisational skills and motivation, good on you!
ta da, I finished the little cabinet and have loaded up some of my shell collection. I think it looks pretty cool and I’m well pleased with how it turned out. 🙂
spoiler
Looks great. Do you polish the shells yourself?
No, except for a few cameo and scrimshaw cowries they are all natural.
Nice!
Beautiful!
Not long back from the vet.
Results of second and more comprehensive ultrasound - Sammi has pancreatitis.
Hopefully they’ll be able to control it with cortisone injections.
Also she got a bravery award from the ultrasound people and the staff said she was a model patient and love her. Which is nice. 😊Aw poor baby, pancreatitis is so painful 😣 I hope that if she is back with you, that it is a mild form of it and she’ll make a full recovery! She’s a toughie and I’m positive she can pull through! 💜💜
No wonder she felt so poorly!
Oh ouch! Poor squish
poor sweetheart
she needs all the hugs
She’s still Very Cross with me, so most I can manage is a stealthy head snuggle 😂
Poor Sammi cat, she has been through a lot. At least there’s answers now. I hope the treatment works too
Oh poor Sammi. Fingers crossed for the treatment 🤞
Poor baby :( Such a good girl.
Melbcat was on steroid tablets for a while, didn’t know there were shots.
Poor fluffball. Fingers crossed for a speedy recovery ❤️
Onto my sixth load of washing today and I might squeeze in a seventh as I think the sheets will dry quickly (been doing clothes, towels, oodie, blanket, doona cover/pillowcases…) What a relief, i havent changed my bedclothes in ages and the whole house feels so much fresher now that all of this is getting washed.
Going in and out has also definitely helped break the monotony of today’s work, which I just have no mood to do at all. People suck!
E: that was a long day and I didn’t get everything done. But I do have heaps of laundry to fold tonight after dinner! Even the cuffs of the oodie are dry which is a surprise given it was only out for about 2 hours.
I’ve been watching Los Espookys after enjoying Fantasmas so much and it’s a nice low key fun show in Spanish. I really hope Fred Armisen’s characters daughter gets impaled in the second season though, the aggro shtick didn’t fly as humour
Surprisingly easier to disconnect from work thoughts with this job.
It only matters when I’m sitting in front of the laptop, and then, it’s over.
Kinda nice for a change.
I’m normally happy being frugal, it’s been a way of life for so long. But I have to say I’m getting really sick of it being so severely enforced. Especially as disability = hard mode.
I’m not happy with the direction Australia is going for any of us. As much as people tighten their belts it’s pointless. Corporations and banks just take more, the government just cuts more. The severity of this could have been avoided.
It’s great to be frugal, but shitty to have absolutely no other choice but to have it so ruthlessly rammed down your throat. The farmer struggles for a minimal return, consumers pay a premium for bare essentials and the fat cats and shareholders in the middle get all the cream. Grocery shopping is essential and should be treated as such, with essential items price protected, but time and time again governments are gutless wonders.
This is exactly how I feel and about housing too
Yes, I totally agree. When I was young I used to think, if you’ve worked hard and bought yourself a little weekender or property to one day retire to, like some of my friends did, then good on you. But with negative gearing, stagnant wage reform, stagnant social security payments, the air bnb situation, and people owning not “a little weekender” but 10, 20, 100 properties, it’s beyond a joke. Housing is a right and should never be treated like it isn’t.
so many hugs
in times like these our friends and family is our greatest asset
I’d say better policies :(
Policy is written for those with the funds to lobby for it. The concept of policy is great. The reality of policy is that it seems written for corporations these days.
On being frugal, I like that frugality almost directly links to anticonsumption. But there’s being frugal and becoming poor because everything is costing more. I used to spend slightly less than I brought in, now I’m spending slightly more.
of course, but we should also take measures on a personal level to make our lives safer, more stable and more resilient against the knockbacks of life
It’s all I’ve ever done. I scrimped and saved for a long time to get an emergency fund for myself and Melbcat, and our money is getting eaten into so already rich people can get obscenely rich.
All meetings cancelled. Party time 🎉
All meetings finished 💥
I have been well fed.
Nothing beats a simple beef sausage and bread with tomato sauce with some coleslaw.
I’m now kicking back on the coach trying not to fall into a coma now.
Government House. I think the photo didn’t load. Here for a friend’s OAM.
It’s so nice how little my work have for my regard they schedule some randoms to have a meeting in my ‘office’ and not tell me.
So work from home today.
thats pretty poor!
Par for the course for this place.
I would just sit in there and carry on working. Perfect time to slurp coffee or tea as loudly as possible.
Lol. Sadly I do not have your shit-stirring abilities.
They do take a while to develop, for real. All the best in dealing with your situation.
And have loud conversations on speaker phone…
with a recruiter!
so how many items did they steal from your office?
They stole my cubicle walls a few weeks back. Which means no one can see my ‘sometimes I feel like a t-wreck’ with a picture of a sad looking T-rex on there picture. And also my garfield ‘I hate mondays’ picture.
Jesus christ Milton
But you still have your stapler?
Training is draining. Today is day 8 of training in new job and I’m tired. Still another week and a half at least of just training. Feels like my cup is full but they just keep on pouring, and now that stuff theyre pouring is spilling out of the cup onto the table, dribbling off the table onto my pants so it looks like I’ve peed myself. Peed myself with excess knowledge.
be grateful it is water not curry
i was there three
thousand yearsmonths ago and now i can confidently answer the new trainees’ questionsmaking my own notes also helped a lot if they allow you to bring it home to study
I’ve been training myself pretty much. Using the company “Ai”.
No train, no gain, Force! cracks whip You shall imbibe of The Knowledge until it flows out of all your orifices like a jacuzzi!
No but srsly that first firehose/info dump is hectic especially if you have superiors whose brains maybe work differently and just go at full speed in bursts and expect everyone else’s to. Hopefully it all gets less overwhelming after the first month
Peed myself with excess knowledge.
Don’t know why, but this is just hilarious to me.
pakige…
Two days with “we couldn’t deliver”. Two days I’ve been here all day. Either they are not trying or they can’t figure out how to operate a buzzer.
EDIT: more ranting Oh and now they have cut me off from the phone line three times in a row. I’m now on chat to Amazon making a complaint. I’ve never had anything delivered by Dragonfly couriers before - this is terrible
EDIT EDIT: Ok I know amazon are evil and all that, but 3 mins in the chat and they are sending me a replacement with a new courier company. THat is nice
And so the enshittification of everything continues.
Looking forward to the post apocalypse, just so I can build a shack and call it my own. Defend it with some pitchforks and I’m sorted. May the enshittification continue so that one day I may own a home lol
Today’s little “hobby from a distance” is looking at vinyls and high end hi-fi equipment I can’t afford
A Baku can dream
For me it’s travel and dining out in various places whilst I’m doing it sighs
When I win the lottery I’m getting these;
https://awave.com.au/shop/uncategorized/barefoot-mm12-active-monitor-each/
Daaaaamn.
I hear you. Just picked up the Pro-ject Debut Evo and the S2 Tube Pre-amp. Vinyls are also holding their value, so I’m curious how rebuilding a collection will be.
I really want to get into the vinyls, but most of them seem to be between 70-170 bucks a record. And then there’s the whole player + preamp/amp, and speaker situation 😭
I’ll have to stick to being gobsmacked at a distance
sigh
when it comes to sound systems the sky is the limit
Any of you sewing types successfully Re-elasticated a bottom sheet? I suspect attempting such would be economically inefficient and I should rag bag it.
It depends. Is is elastic in a pocket or sewed directly onto the sheet? I’ve done both, rethreading the first type with a safety pin took a while, but the overlocker does a reasonable job on the second.
It’s direct and I don’t have an over locker.
You could just zig zag over the existing elastic.
using zigzag stitch does the same job . It’s tricky to do tho. You need to stretch the elastic while you sew it to the fabric base
Ever met this beastie?
yes I have , they scare me lol My mum used all these weird feet for things like shirring and ruffling, I just use plain feet and use hand tailoring methods to do the same thing
I found a manual for it but am still scared. You can’t unpick those results.
He’s an interesting little fella.
I have a gizmo for that but have never tried it. And a super complicated pleater foot that scares me
I used to do it with just a plain foot and stretch the elastic by hand while sewing it on
Is it something some fitted sheet clips can fix?
Oh! Had not heard of these. Might try them even on newer sheets. Wrinkles near my feet are one of my Things.
Shoot me a message sometime and you can have my sheet clips, they’re not for me. They’re like big suspenders, black ones. They do not spark joy for me.
I find those things a bother.
I definitely now prefer sheets made of spandex, never bunch up under you. So good.
Oh another thing! I’d really want to touch those in person first at that price point though.
Wow, they sound amazing. I have many questions… actually just 4: How do they handle romantic interludes and the various resulting bodily outcomes? Are they sweaty in summer? Do they dry easily after you wash them? Do they stain easily?
Well @[email protected] just killed my attempt at polite
Lol I’m as subtle as a train crash when my diplomacy fails, there is no middle.
I don’t fuck under the covers usually, I couldn’t tell you! But I have spilt chocolate and coffee on them. They look and feel brand new still after a year of washing and machine drying. Seems safe with oxygen bleach.
They aren’t sweaty/hot to me. I sleep hot at the best of times, I think I would have noticed if they make it worse.
I’ve not had the need to air dry them, my guess is they’d be similar to cotton.
Thanks for the info. I sleep hot also and once bought microfiber… ugh. Worst sheets ever. Using a cotton blend atm but the dust and fibres! I change the sheets and make the bed and it looks like I haven’t dusted in weeks!
Er, May I send you a rather personal question about these?
Sure
Somehow, I’m brutal on my sheets. I wear through fitted sheets quickly. I’ve taken to using a heavy linen throw as my base sheet, it seems tough enough to take whatever I’m throwing at it.
Check out W H Amad online - they supply Sheraton Hotels in Australia with all their sheets and linen, and Ronald McDonald House with theirs. The plain white sheets are amazing - lovely strong linen that copes very well with all kinds of abuse. There’s a direct to public shop in Gaffney St Coburg.
Only tried once, and it was at best a very qualified success. Removed all the elastic, hemmed the raw edge and sewed on 2 tie tapes per corner. The problem was adjusting the knots on the tapes when putting the sheet back on the bed. Maybe using a strip of elastic instead of tapes would work? Sorta kinda like the elasticated tapes on a mattress protector sheet. On the plus side, the sheet was very easy to wash and fold once the tapes were untied.
This mattress is way too heavy to tie under! Diagonal elastic corners would be an affordable experiment
Elastic is expensive. Unless it is a nearly new sheet that cost hundreds I wouldn’t
Exactly, the sheet isn’t utterly dead but far from new. Better used as draft fabric me thinks.
I have never but I’d still give it a go. All I’d do is reinforce the corners.
