Aunty Shabby

Scrabble on a Saturday night

Is this what I have been reduced to?? It appears so. I put it down to a hellish and busy week at work (try month or actually year, so far), a late-ish night with perhaps a tad too much champagne, followed by an early morning and a lazy day.

The offending scrabble board was actually a birthday present for Mr S (we did already have one, so now have two - what complete nerds), but if you look closely, you will see that the tiles are wooden and it is a copy of the "classic scrabble" set, which if you are old and dull enough to remember, was all wood. Mr S was in fact rather disappointed, when we purchased our first scrabble set several years ago, to find that it was all plastic. I still remember him complaining about how you could still get the original wooden sets in North America (he is not a born and bred Aussie like my good self). I think he has secretly blamed the light, plastic tiles and shiny board for his lack of inspiration and luck whilst playing and the fact that I usually always beat him. I just tell him that I wasn't top of English at my school for nothing.

Anyway, when I saw the wooden sets, I knew we had to have one! On closer inspection they are a bit crappy and for some reason the tiles had been stuck together with some tape, making them all sticky. They do feel a bit nicer than the plastic tiles though and have a bit more weight to them. In case you were wondering about the photo - this is not just a cool pic for a blog post; we have this weird habit of always taking a picture of the board after a scrabble game. It is always interesting to look at, to see the words we made. I also have a bit of a theory that the words we make are not completely random and in some way maybe reflect what we are thinking or feeling. Too weird?! I also think these photos would actually make a really cool exhibition one day. Maybe a project for the future...

Oh, yes I did win (by about 40 points, thank-you very much), but as you can see it wasn't a particularly intellectual game, with lots of easy and small words! I told you it had been a long week. Whilst he seems happy with his new board, I told Mr S that we will have to keep looking for an original set - either at a garage sale or maybe on eBay. If you have one that you can bear to part with, please let me know!

Are softies the new knitting??!!

It seems you can't pick up a magazine these days without seeing something about softies, heralding them as the next big thing! In the past few months I have seen them in no less than 3 mags - Australian Vogue (see my previous post about this), Australian Woman's Weekly (see greenolive's post) and now, a recent issue of Real Living (an Australian lifestyle kinda mag, for you non-Aussies). And these are just the ones I know about!

Is this some sort of conspiracy I wondered? Another beat-up, just like the alleged "pub knitters" that supposedly began the knitting revival in Australia in the late nineties and early noughties??! (If you don't know what I am talking about, grab a copy of Sharon Aris' "It's my party and I'll knit if I want to". It's an entertaining and quick read and is quite enlightening in terms of the whole knitting "thing".)

I confess I have seen more softies in stores lately and I have even seen the "how to" books at Borders (I browsed BUT DID NOT BUY), but are they really going mainstream?! It wasn't until a girl at work told me that someone had given her sister a toy she had made herself at a recent baby shower, that I really believed it. "A softie?" I asked? "Huh?" she replied. "You know," she went on, "those strange, kinda ugly toys you see in shops, with like, funny eyes and stuff. Like that." Yep, a softie. It seems the name may not yet be "household" but the face is!

Rediscovering Bris Vegas

I went up to Queensland recently, principally to visit my mother. Those of you who keep up with my sister, Greenolive's blog, will know that she has not been well lately. Anyway, I always anticipate my visits "back home" (I don't actually think of QLD as my home and as my parents are divorced, there is no family home anymore) with mixed feelings. Much as I love to see my parents (independently - see comment re divorce), I find it very tiring and usually come home in need of a holiday! This time I was particularly concerned about my mother, as I wasn't sure about either her mental or physical state, but as it turned out I had one of the best visits with her that I have ever had!

An arty shot of part of her new garden

Usually there is an argument or some sort of drama and tears, and it all turns sour, but we had a lovely time. I helped her out with some of her courtyard garden projects whilst I was there, which was good as she would have over-exerted herself otherwise and done it all on her own. Even though her initial steroid treatment had given her huge amounts of (unrealistic) energy, her recent cutting back on the dose meant that she was actually feeling (realistically) tired by the afternoon, so I would need to keep telling her to stop and have a break or nap and have a drink of water. I think at the time she found it quite amusing, but told me a few days after I had left, that she missed me, especially me telling her these things! It was also hot up there (about 30 degrees but high humidity, about 80%), but luckily not as hot as it usually is in December!

The riverside cafe at the Art Gallery

One of the other things we did was go to see the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Art Gallery. We got the CityCat (groovy Brisbane ferries) and as we approached the new Art Gallery complex I was stunned. I hadn't even set foot inside and I was already impressed! The new buildings and design and use of the river is great. Even though I go back to Brisbane about once a year, usually for a week at most, which is enough to notice most changes, I haven't lived there in over 10 years, so don't really have a great feel for the city or what's happening. It really has matured. I always find myself wondering if I could live there again (a question my mother also always asks me every visit) and this time I seriously considered it. Well, maybe for a minute. My husband, Mr S, wouldn't be in it though - he's not a big fan of Bris Vegas and he can't seem forget a particularly bad trip we had there a few years ago. I will continue to enjoy my solo trips to see my parents and hope to keep a connection with a city I am growing to appreciate once again.

One of our lunch companions, a water dragon!

Needless to say the Andy Warhol exhibtion was amazing. We actually thought we were done, having taken our time wandering through some of his ealrier works, to discover that there was a whole other room to see! We needed to stop for lunch - which was great, outside at the Riverside cafe (note: amazing tempura prawns and nougat) - to regain our strength for the rest. I think we were there for over 4 hours in total! If you can get to this exhibition - it is in Brisbane only until 30 March 2008 - it is well worth a visit.