Notre Dame has cracked the Top Ten. Commence cheering.

Good grief. This Metatalk thread is like watching a traffic accident in slow motion. What is it about the act of posting on a website that makes people reluctant to take responsibility for their actions? Is it the anonymity factor? (i.e. “If nobody knows my real name, I don’t have to say I’m sorry.”) Yeah, it sucks when people gang up on you, but if you’ve made a genuine error, admit it and move on. The Net would be a much nicer place for all of us.

Damn! Claire has killed her blog. Now I’m going to have to seek out some other Aussie bloggers to fill the void.

Dude, it’s a llama!
The Snook and I just watched Dude, Where’s My Car?. We laughed a lot. (No, we weren’t stoned.) It had Micheal Bolton in it! And Fabio! And the Alias chick! And I’m a sucker for bubble-wrap humor. And movies that use “Bust a Move” on the soundtrack. It rocked. We’re looking forward to the sequel Seriously Dude, Where’s My Car?. Seriously.

Notre Dame wins its fourth straight with a 60-yard touchdown off a pass from the backup quarterback with 1:15 left in the game. Holy crap. I’m torn between being upset that I don’t get to see any games this year and the knowledge that – as the ultimate jinx – if I did, they’d most assuredly start sucking again. So it’s a trade-off.

Hooray! I got worms! I ordered them Thursday from Sydney Garden and I was hoping they’d arrive in the mail yesterday. The lady called though and said she’d keep them til Monday so they wouldn’t possibly get stuck in the post office all weekend. I was disappointed. But just now there was a knock on the door, and there she was! She’d been going out to dinner with friends in our neighborhood and just decided to pop ’round and deliver them personally. How nice is that? (Did I mention she did all this without me giving her a cent?) Worm farmers are good folks. So now I got a big bucket of 2000 reds, blues, and tigers all ready to move into their new home. Pictures in the morning!

It’s random picture time! Here are a few photos I’ve been meaning to post.

     

     

Going from top-bottom, left-right, you have:

1. Snookums transplanting marigolds in our garden. It’s been so lovely and spring-like here that I felt we needed to grow things. We had four planters of dead flowers back there, so we chucked those out and put in some seedlings. We also planted some basil and parsley too. Yum.
2. Baby fern fronds. We have some amazing huge ferns along one side of the garden, and the other day I noticed that tiny new fronts are coming up in the middle. I just love the way the little arms unfold.
3. Low-carb pizza. I don’t know how he did it, but the Snook managed to create a relatively low-carb pie that tasted great. It’s still not something you can eat every day, but it’s good for a treat once in a while. Let me know if you want the recipe.
4. Our new dining room set! It just arrived this morning. Finally our dining room isn’t empty anymore! There’s one more chair that goes on the far end, but we’re going to keep it elsewhere until it’s needed (to leave more space to get around). Now it’s time to start organizing some dinner parties!

Stay tuned for more random pictures from my life…

What’s your pirate name? I’m Bloody Anne Rackham. ARRRRRRR!

Wow! I was just checking my backlinks and discovered that my site was linked in USA Today‘s “Hip Clicks” column last year. They pointed to my review of the Goonies DVD. How cool is that?

Friday Five:
Man, my answers are depressing this week.

1. Would you say that you’re good at keeping in touch with people?
No. I suck at it. You’d think living so far away I’d have learned the importance, but sadly no. I talk to my immediate family pretty regularly, but as for my friends, I’m the worst pen pal in the world. I don’t talk to anybody from high school on a regular basis, and there are only a few college buddies that I keep up with. It’s just hard.

2. Which communication method do you usually prefer/use: e-mail, telephone, snail mail, blog comments, or meeting in person? Why?
Phone with the fam, because I miss hearing their voices. With everybody else, internet communication is the method of choice. (Of course, I’d go for “in person” if I could, but at $1600 a plane ticket, that’s an expensive option.)

3. Do you have an instant messenger program? How many? Why/why not? How often do you use it?
Yep. I started out on Yahoo Messenger many years ago but quickly switched to AIM when I figured out that’s where most of my friends were. Now thanks to iChat and our ADSL connection, I’m logged in 24 hours a day. The time difference to the States makes it difficult, but I occasionally catch folks on there.

4. Do most of your close friends live nearby or far away?
Do I need to answer this? Far, far away.

5. Are you an “out of sight, out of mind” person, or do you believe that “distance makes the heart grow fonder”?
A little bit of both. When you live this far from everybody, you necessarily have to try to put them out of mind or you’d just be homesick all the time. I still get my moments, though, when I realize how much I’ve missed out on and how much I miss certain people.