my man the Ocker-Geek!

ok, so you've heard of the Uber-geek, the anime-nerd, the WoW tragics and the white dwarf cultists, but have you heard of an Ocker-geek?

Well I'm living with one. The lovely ghenkis has finally found his niche: blokey truck-driver with footy injuries who drinks beer by day, he arrives home to metamorphose into a MMORPG-playing, fantasy novel reading soon-to-be BComp student who drinks beer! I loves him!

In other news, i've been invited to an awesome partay! woot! a friend who throws the best parties has decided once more to throw a gala masquerade affair in early august and by virtue of actually being on her email list for the first time i know about it a month or so in advance instead of a week or so in advance! The result of this is mad costume making like you have never seen before. I'm going with the venetian masquerade theme, whilst the afore-mentioned Ocker-Geek will be turning up in the monochromatic ensemble of the Dread Pirate Roberts! I'm making my own dress (simplicity pattern 4453 in royal purple and gold embroidery), my gloves, purse, fan, jewellery and mask! I have also been requested to make a mask for my friend Storm who has procured a ravishing red gown from ebay. Of course this would all be fantastic if it wasn't for the fact that i'm running out of gold jumprings as we speak and my sewing machine just went berko for no apparent reason. But at least tomorrow i get to put plaster and vasaline on Storms face without her hitting me for it! There may be pics! Woot!

Oh yeah, and my job sucks and i'm over it. I am going back to uni next year or i will find a bridge to jump off!

*sigh*

wow, 2 posts in one day. I'm either really bored or really in need of someone to talk to! Actually it's a little it of both...

There are times when a woman needs a gay male friend. Not just so you can meet him for coffee and not have your man get all jealous and weird about it, although that would be a plus. No I mean a male friend you can ask about communicating with a man and who isn't too macho or so out of touch with his own feelings to just say something flippant and unhelpful.

Like say, you had this friend and she wasn't really that into making love, even though she had a good man whom she adored, it's just not that big of a deal to her. And one day her good man tells her it concerns him that she doesn't seem to want to have sex with him. Oh, he doesn't say anything about taking it as a personal insult or comment. And he doesn't seem interested in listening to her explain that a hard wang in her hip isn't exactly the best way to get her in the mood. See, then she could have this gay male friend who is a lot more attuned to his feelings and she could ask him how to explain to her good man that if he only kissed her a little more often, or showed a little more physical affection sometimes, then not only would this be a nice addition to the relationship, but it may even progress into lovemaking a lot more often than just a nudge in the ribs with his woody, er, would.

hypothetically speaking of course.

but, if anyone out there has a gay male friend they're not having coffee or going shoe shopping with this week, could they send him my, er, friends' way?

bleah

*coughcough hack spit sneeze* ow!

I am so over this cold. I didn't know the human body could contain that much phlegm.

oh well, time to go chip the ice off the car and go to work. Short day today so i will soon return to play with blender! I luuuuuuurves my blender!!

Richard Cranium

ok, it's been colder the last two days than it has a right to be, especially inside the freakin supermarket!

Thanks to all of you who have voted already for Indian Gothic Bridal. I know i'm being a pain in the ass about it, but I'm really grateful!

the bastard managers have swooped in and rearranged our meat cabinet for us. unneccesary, unadvised and completely ridiculous. Now we have lots of little packets of meat which the bogans can just shove in their pockets rather than the huge bulk packs that they had to put under baby blankets in prams or stash in green enviro-bags. Tomorrow we'll be marking down the little packs that were made yesterday when the idiots insisted on it. We did do any today and our point will be that they don't sell. Not that they care about meat or anything, or what sells and what doesn't, they just like using big words like 'demographics' which have fuckall to do with our jobs. I was wondering earlier this week whether or not to go part time to uni next year and hold on to my job. But after all this crap I'm going full time uni and finding a part time job somewhere else! I'm over it!!

Outside of that there's not much happening. My folks have had their house plans priced and after dad recovered from the heart attack decided that perhaps renovating wasn't such a bad idea! hopefully they'll still let me do some designing for them, it was the art ideas for their house that got me back into drawing just recently and reminded me that my job is pointless and so i shouldn't let any of the crap that goes on there get to me.

anyhoo, just doing the whole keeping you up to date thing. catchyas!

Indian Gothic Bridal - VOTE NOW!!

Here it is folks. A month's worth of work and one gorgeous model later and the Indian Gothic Bridal set is available for voting on crystalpark.com.au

Now anyone who is reading this has probably already seen this on deviantart and read about it in the email i put out shamelessly begging for votes from my friends and family and anyone else they wanted to coerce into voting too! but hey, this is the Hardly Normal method of advertising here: Shamelessly pimp yourself in every medium at every chance until people are so full of hearing about you that they can't think about anything else!

So here it is again. And I gotta say I'm damn proud of it! Each piece uses some similar components, but is fairly unique in itself. Not surprisingly, the handflower took the longest, with each crystal daisy being put together individually, the band done in japanese 4:1 chainmail and each of the five chains done by hand.

The set is available for voting now at www.crystalpark.com.au (click on the red 'vote here' banner at the top of the page). At the current time (or at least at 4pm) on sunday 10th June, it was at number 35 on the list. The entries are listed in reverse alphabetical order, so when a new entry is submitted to the list, the others are shuffled to allow it to be put in order. The set is titled 'Indian Gothic Bridal' and so if you find the I's you'll be pretty much there! I'll keep an eye on it as it moves around. There were already 75 entries on the list by the time i entered and we've still got 3 weeks so it'll change quite a bit. Everyone's saved their best work for last and there are some fantastic entries on the list at the moment. hopefully I'm up there with the best of them!

Remember you can vote as many times as you like and please let me know if you do vote so i can thank you personally. It's very much appreciated!

And finally a massive hug and thankyou to my gorgeous model Katelyn, younger sister to my wonderful ghenkis. She's already got a comment or two on deviantart saying how pretty she is! She is also the only model amongst the competition entries, so hard to miss!

Thanks for the support guys!

I DARE YOU TO BE HAPPY

That's right, I dare ya!

Have you sat (or stood) at work and thought about how much it sucks? Do you feel drained of all energy and creativity when you get home? Can you barely be bothered looking after your health or being affectionate to the people you love and care about?
yes? Well me too. you've been reading my posts, you know how much my job has been getting to me. The people, the pay, the expectations, the conditions, the complete lack of satisfaction or even hope for satisfaction. It's pretty bleak.

Well lets look at it this way. I have a stable full-time job, it pays for the rent on a great apartment i can come home to every day with a wonderful view of the small, safe city i live in. It also allows me to afford electricity to listen to the music i like, watch the movies i like, have light to draw and read by, have the internet to connect with my friends and the rest of the world, have hot water, hot food and even warm my house so i can be comfortable in winter. I live in my nice comfortable apartment with a good man who loves me, puts up with me and cooks for me. He has the patience of a saint and the smile of an angel. I live in a place and a time where i have the freedom to be a pagan, a voter, a woman, an artist and not fear prosecution or shame for any of those things. I have a reliable car, dear friends, a family who, despite outward appearances, are a close-knit group of wonderful, supportive people who get along wonderfully well. The people at work, with a few minor exceptions, are friendly people, I have weekends off and finish work at 3.30pm most days.

JUST WHAT IN THE FUCK AM I BITCHING ABOUT???????

So you know what? I'm not. I'm not bitching any more. I've made the decision to be happy, to be grateful and to recognise that no matter how stressful work may seem or how horrible some people may be, in the grand scheme of things I'm blessed and i have no right whatsoever to be complaining about these tiny things as if they're the be all and end all of my life.

So come on, are you going to make that decision too? It's easier than you think. You may have to let go of some pet gripes, recognise that you (like me) are a bit too much of a drama queen for your own good, hell, you may even have to cry to let some pressure out. Or even a good laugh. That's what i did this morning whilst driving to work. I laughed. hard. it felt great! it would probably have sounded insane to someone else at the time, but it felt awesome to me. So go on, let it out, scream into a pillow, laugh, spin, cry. Do something to make the pressure go down.

The hardest part of this decision is putting it into practice. You have to monitor your mood, be conscious of your thoughts during the day. Whenever you feel yourself having a negative thought about someone or something, stop. Take a moment to distance yourself from that feeling, or that train of thought and think instead about something fun. What are your plans for your day off? What is a nice thing someone has done for you lately? What is something you like to eat? What is your hobby? Focus on these things. Actively turning away from negativity and focusing instead on the positive parts of your job or other aspects of your life is the most basic way to keep your happy attitude. And that's the bottom line: happiness is an attitude, it is a decision you have to make. It's handed to you in the little blessings and the good friends and beautiful parts of the world, but you have to choose to put those blessings higher up on your priority list than the little stresses and annoyances of everyday life.

So how about it? Want to join me in a happiness decision? It's easy. Just make that choice for yourself. Work, petty people, bad traffic, little spats with your lover or friends all suck, that's for sure, but they do not deserve to take away your positivity. Don't validate them by giving your precious energy and time to worrying about them. Take positive action and take care of yourself. you'll be amazed at how much extra energy and time you seem to have, how much better the workplace and your relationships can be when you're not grumpy and tired all the time!

And when all else fails, think of the colour yellow! Think of a big stunning yellow rose, or the yellow sun, or a buttercup. Yellow is a fantastic colour for happiness! Good luck and remember, having a good day is entirely up to you!

hidey-ho bizatches!

ok, MASS UPDATE ALERT!!

Sorry for once again neglecting my blog, to the what 1, 2 of you who actually give a shit? Anyway, i'm not dead, just lazy!

Full-time work is highly overrated!! I WANNA GO BACK TO UNI!!!!!

I'm not kidding. Alright the meat room is a fuckload better than any other department in the supermarket, but a co-workers 20 YEAR ANNIVERSARY of working in the company put into perspective the fact that there are NO PROSPECTS for my line of work, at least not here in tassie. Also it is completely soul sapping. I have no energy for being creative out of work hours, weekends are spent drinking and sleeping in an effort to relax before turning up on monday to do it all again. It's been 2 months or less and i'm already over it. there is a myriad of things about working at the supermarket i hate, most of which have been well documented in previous posts and which are getting worse instead of better, especially now that the person i was being trained to replace has now left, but there's no one to replace me so i'm required to be 2 people at once. considering i get paid minimum wage for 1 person this is hardly fair, especially when they call me up to help with service, effectively saying they expect me to be 3 people but they are only prepared to pay me to be 1, and that only barely.

But this week I've come to realise what it is i need: more education!! I mean yeah, it's nice to have the extra cash, but is it really worth it when i'm exhausted, i feel soulless and used and i'm turning to alcohol to feel a bit better? I hardly think so, some people might, but i don't. I miss university life, i mean sure i was broke most of the time, but my brain was being stimulated, i survived exams and met interesting people, i didn't have to get up at 6am and i felt like what i had to say in essays and reports was being listened to, if only by the person marking it. my only regret about uni the first time around was that the course i studied didn't improve my employment prospects! I mean I loved it, and i think that was the problem, because i'm an arty person but there's just not that many art-related jobs that pay a living wage. having said that, if i went back i would be doing a course in fine arts, but i would combine it with a computing degree and focus on the multimedia aspect, including web design, animation and other digital artforms which would allow me to find work in a burgeoning industry similar to that of my wonderful ghenkis! Actually his recent decisions have influenced me a great deal on this. He has come to the revelation that after 6 years or so of busting a gut he actually hates what he's studying! He's changing from engineering to computing, being able to have some of what he's studied credited to the computing course, he will finish it in the same amount of time it would take him to finish his engi course and still provide employment oppurtunities but in a field he enjoys and is actually very good at.

Anyway, so that's what's going on with me at the moment, being completely fed up with a job i've been in for barely 2 months and needing to return to study. Of course I will hold onto my job, probably transfer to a supermarket closer to home and uni and just take on 10-15 hours a week for extra cash on top of centrelink. But damn i would be awesome to go back and to try to put myself in a situation where i actually feel i am moving forward instead of spinning my wheels amongst people who really do have nothing better to do with their lives than pack meat and stack shelves.