Yay! It looks like the house will be ready in about 4 weeks - about a month or so ahead of schedule too!

It's wonderful timing - it coincides with school holidays, so I won't have to worry about organizing Bek for school during this time. So if all goes well, I'll be taking two weeks off work to concentrate on packing and moving - for what will be the last time... hmm, maybe ever?

More new photos in the album - it's lookin' good!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=58726&id=632019844&l=08ad34baaf

Cute or not cute?
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&item=290323497622

 Recipe posted >>here<<, for those of you what wanted it (it's a crock pot recipe - let me know if you need me to adapt it for conventional cooking)


 And this is the link to the community : kitch_n_bitch

Hope everyone's having a lovely weekend!

I've just got myself a new toy, it's a thermal cooker. I'm very excited about it, since it is a great way to cook - it works kind of like a slow cooker only way more energy efficient - doesn't have to be plugged in all day while I'm at work (which frankly makes me anxious) and I can still have dinner ready and waiting for us when we get home.

What happens is that you start it off on the stove, then put it in an insulated casing which retains the heat, and then it keeps cooking for up to 8 hours while you're off living life. They're a bit exy but I see it as an investment. If you do a lot of soups and stews, in time it ought to pay for itself in the power you save, and the environment will thank you for it. Think of the difference it would make if everyone used one!

Not only that, but there is no chance of overcooking/scorching the food (which is what my slow cooker does because it runs a little hot), and more nutrients are retained.

So if you're interested or know people who might be, please direct them to the community I've set up here: http://community.livejournal.com/thermal_cooking/

(Really, please - because I'm sick of talking to myself about it and want some people to bounce ideas off!)

This morning I got a reply from the radio station in question:
I'm glad that some good has come from it :)

Thank you for your feedback regarding the May 28th and June 3rd, 2009 broadcasts of "The Rob, Arnie and Dawn Show." I understand the seriousness of the issue, and want to share with you a copy of a notice that has been posted on our website, www.krxq.net.

During these shows, Rob and Arnie made what we, and they, recognize were completely unacceptable remarks concerning members of the transgender community, especially children. Accordingly, this Thursday, June 11th, 2009, the show will be dedicated to what we anticipate will be a forum to promote a better understanding among all listeners of the issues involved.

John D. Geary

Vice President / General Manager

 

• A glass of red
• Got the Ipod going on shuffle in the kitchen (which also means periodic spurts of dancing)
• Dinner in the oven (apricot chicken)
• Coaxing the perfect seafood chowder into existence (for tomorrow - always better the next day)
• Kris is happy playing X-Box
• Bek is happy doing whatever she is doing at the moment
• Annie's online playing lexulous with me (in between chopping and cooking - for my part)
• It's cold outside.

This, my friends, is a perfect, perfect evening.

eta: omg! Janet Jackson!!!
eta: omg!! Celery!!!!
eta: omg!!!! Alanis!!!!

 Cross-posted in various places...

Hi folks,

Been thinking hard about being more proactive about caring for the environment - recycling more, and avoiding one-use things like plastic wrap etc...

I thought I'd share a couple of useful blog posts on the topic. The first one is excellent and really weighs up the pros and cons of a number of alternatives.

http://simple-green-frugal-co-op.blogspot.com/2009/02/alternatives-to-plastic-wrap-and-other.html
http://www.fakeplasticfish.com/2008/09/plastic-free-in-freezer-airtight.html

Oh, anyone use these silicone bowl covers? I'm thinking of getting some...
http://www.naturalcollection.com/natural-products/Lower-Price-Cash-Saving-Eco-Dish-Covers.aspx?f=affwin

Kris and Beks went out to the block yesterday to find that the builders have done the excavation - so exciting!
So things are starting to happen. You can see where the split level is going to be - wh00ts!
I can't wait to get out there and have a look and start planning the gardening stuff.
I also wish I knew where the camera was...

Does the dog die in the end?
(If he does, I'm not gonna watch it)
xoxo 

Hi here is a translation by a friend of a friend of the French newspaper article that has hit the headlines. I think it's pretty cool :)

TRANSSEXUALISM will no longer be classified as a mental illness in France 

published on Saturday 16 May 2009 at 20H07 


Translated by Curtis E. Hinkle, Founder of the Organisation Intersex 
International 


TRANSSEXUALISM will no longer be classified in France as a mental 
illness, a government decision hailed Saturday as "historic" by the 
associations concerned, on the eve of the International Day Against 
Homophobia and transphobia. 


The Minister of Health, Roselyne Bachelot, has appealed "in recent 
days" to the High Authority of Health in order to make a decree that 
transsexualism be removed from the category of psychiatric disorders, 
a spokesman for the department stated. 


Until now, transsexuals benefited from a fee waiver for their medical 
care by being classified under ALD23 (affection de longue durée 23 – 
long term condition 23) for “recurring or persistent disorders”. 


For the Department of Health, it is a "strong signal sent to the whole 
community", since transsexuals felt that being included under the 
ALD23 was stigmatizing. 


This classification, arising from that of the World Health 
Organization (WHO), was also linked to the fact that transsexualism 
appeared on the list of pathologies identified in the DSM (Diagnostic 
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) to which the medical 
profession refers, as was the case for homosexuality a few years ago. 


In a forum published in Le Monde (newspaper) dated Sunday-Monday, 
numerous personalities including first secretary of the Socialist 
Party Martine Aubry, the communist Marie-George Buffet, Green (party 
member) Daniel Cohn-Bendit and even Nobel Prize winners such as 
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (medicine) and Elfriede Jelinek (literature), 
asked the WHO “to no longer consider transsexuals as being affected 
by a mental disorder". 


It is because the WHO decided on the 17th of May 1990 to remove 
homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses, that this date has 
been retained for the International Day Against Homophobia and 
transphobia, celebrated Sunday, starting Saturday in many places. 


It is therefore symbolic that France chose this time and date to be 
"the first country in the world" to "remove transgender identity from 
the list of mental diseases", commented the IDAHO Committee. 


This "historic decision" is also "an explosion of hope for all trans 
persons around the world", according to Joël Bedos, secretary-general 
of the IDAHO Committee. 


The HES (Association for Homosexuality and Socialism) also “hailed” 
this announcement which is in response to “demands that the LGBT 
community have been making for a long time in France. For HES, it is 
time, at present, to go beyond the symbolic and take concrete actions 
to fight against the violence and discrimination facing trans persons. 


Because beyond "this measure for declassification, there is still much 
to be done before transsexuals (...) are recognized as full-fledged 
citizens", insisted the coordinator of the group Inter-LGBT. 


Original French article: 
http://www.laprovence.com/articles/2009/05/16/817434-France-La-transs...

Hope you find this useful...
http://drkathleenyoung.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/fibromyalgia-awareness-day-is-may-12/

http://twitter.com/ursy_ten

I don't know what this means, but I guess I'll find out.

I mean, really. I have nothing to say. 

Speaks very very loudly, in Chinese. We're been here since November, and until recently, I thought she was an angry, angry woman.
But the other day she was talking loudly and sounding angry, and then laughing - so maybe she isn't always angry, just very very loud.

She certainly sounds angry though - all the time! I wonder what she's saying sometimes...

 BOOKS
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 books from this list. Copy the list into your own note. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.Delete 'x' from any you have not read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (X)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X )
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling ()
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible (X - bits of) :
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (X)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell ()
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ()
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens ()
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ()
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ()
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (X -- well, some of them)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ( )
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ()
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ( ) :
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ()
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ()
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald ()
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ()
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ()
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (X)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ()
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ()
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ()
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ()
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ()
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis ()
34 Emma - Jane Austen ()
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ()
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini ( )
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ()
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (X)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ()
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - 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 (X)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ( )
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ()
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 (x)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck ()
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ()
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (X)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ()
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (x)
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 Inferno - Dante ( )
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 (X)
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 (x)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ( )
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ()
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (x)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ()
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery ()
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (X)
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 (x)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ()

Yeah! Like it :)

 17 March 2009

Sex and gender: not always a simple key to identification
Human Rights Commissioner, Graeme Innes, launched the Australian Human Rights Commission's concluding paper for the sex and gender diversity project, Sex Files: The legal recognition of sex in documents and government records, containing 15 recommendations for improving the current system for legally recognising sex identity, at Parliament House in Canberra today.

"It is difficult for most of us to understand being born into a body that is the wrong sex, or into a body that is not exclusively male or female," said Commissioner Innes, "but for some people this is an extremely frustrating reality that they have had to deal with in their lives."

( Read more... )

Is anybody else's dying?
Or maybe it's just a quiet time of year...

Is everybody Facebooking instead?

 The settlement went through on our land today.

Wh00ts!!!

Now I must organize to get the trees removed. I hope Bek forgives us!
We're going to be planting more trees than we will be removing, so hopefully that will count for something.

I am busy looking at landscaping things... it's fun. I'm currently collecting Australian native bush tucker-type plants... just 'cause Bek loves being able to snack from the garden... 

So I've got a Cedar Bay Cherry, also known as a Beach Cherry (I think it's a type of Lilly Pilly), and I'm getting a Davidson Plum - special request of Bek's. They're meant to be quite tart... I'm wondering if there will be anything I can do with them and whether she will actually eat them.

I'm also very intrigued by the peanut butter tree, or bunchosia argentea. 
(details here: http://www.daleysfruit.com.au/fruit%20pages/peanut.htm)
It's not an Australian native though... it's native to Central and South America.  Has anyone ever met a peanut butter tree? Did you like it?

Also planted some wild raspberry seeds, and some wild strawberry seeds - but  my success rate with growing things from seed is not the best - so, fingers crossed on those ones.

Oh, but the bestest news of all is that my lemon drop tomato plant has some itty bitty tomatoes on it! I am so excited - the only crop thus far I have gotten out of my garden was a single bean (and then all the leaves fell off the bean plant and it died), and some purslane, so I am oh-so-very-excited about the new 'matoes!

I just hope and pray that the possums don't want to eat them...