I’m trialling the new Australian streaming service Stan, so the Snook and I have finally started watching Deadwood. I was getting a little lost in the stylised dialogue for the first few episodes so I googled to see if I could find any recaps. To my surprise, TWOP came up. I thought it closed down last year! Instead, the fan outrage seems to have convinced NBC to keep the archives up. I happily started reading the first recap and then ran into trouble when subsequent pages kept timing out or getting stuck in a redirect loop. I guess that while NBC kept the site up, they sure as hell aren’t doing any maintenance on the servers. Just as I was starting to get really, really frustrated, I found the answer: TWOP One Pager. That awesome little online tool allows you to paste in a TWOP recap link, and it will then fetch all the pages and combine them into a single document. It works great, even on the crappy archives. Highly recommended!

Also highly recommended: Deadwood. Damn. Although the more I watch, the more the, uh, colourful vernacular threatens to impinge on my own vocabulary. I almost called the cat a c**ksucking hooplehead this morning.

Breakfast: Coffee with coconut cream
Lunch: Green salad with tuna, bacon, and baby beetroot
Snack: Apple
Dinner: Carrot and cardamom soup with some sauteed prawns

Breakfast: Apple and a couple handfuls of almonds; black coffee
Lunch: Leftover Paleo Tex Mex casserole
Dinner: Apple Dijon Burgers (no bun of course!) and oven-baked sweet potato fries

Could You Go 40 Days Without Being Mean? — The Cut – Given that they include sarcasm in there, I’m gonna have to say “No.” (I’m amused by imagining Dr. K trying this experiment. I think her head might actually explode.)

Lessons on Women and Power Dressing — The Cut – Interesting thing to think about. I want to be someone who has a definable personal style, but I’m constantly getting distracted. I can never quite get it together to ruthlessly curate and edit a wardrobe to just things that go together. A few years ago someone gave me a tip that Sportscraft would suit me, and I’ll since bought several of their dresses. But they’re mixed in my closet with dresses from Op Shops, Target, Heart of Haute, Myer, and of course, dresses that I’ve sewn myself. If I’ve got an important meeting, I usually dress a bit more “grown-up.” (That’s how I actually think of it in my mind.) But at the end of the week on a Friday, all bets are off. Yesterday as I walked to work in a homemade sundress, cardigan, and sneakers, I found myself standing at a crosswalk next to a 10-year-old wearing pretty much the exact same outfit. Hmm. I secretly wondered if I looked ridiculous, a grown 37-year-old woman dressed like a grade schooler. I went from feeling happy and comfortable to a bit embarrassed. Maybe the real problem is that I OVERTHINK EVERYTHING, RIGHT?

I did dress “corporate” for the three months I worked at CBA, and I hated every minute of it. I hated having to always tuck in my shirt; I hated having to carry a “sensible purse”; I hated hated HATED women’s slacks. It was such a relief to get out of there and back into a more “startup” style culture where a bit more personal expression was expected. Maybe that’s why I haven’t settled on a work “uniform” yet – because my career has meant that I never really had to.

Still, my style has changed a little. The big change is that I wear dresses a lot, LOT more than I did just a few short years ago. When I first participated in Frocktober in 2011, one of my co-workers at the time commented with surprise that “You never wear dresses!” And now I’ve got enough for every day of the month plus some. And now here we are a mere three years later, and when I wear jeans now people comment on the novelty of it. So I guess that’s pretty much the extent of my style evolution these days.

Oh, and I wear a little makeup now, but only when I feel like it.

The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit | Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy recut into a single 4-hour film – Interesting! I would like to see that. I did laugh when I read this bit about one of the additional cuts s/he went back to make: “taking out the Bombur “barrel bounce” (which is apparently the bane of some people’s existence)”.

Huh. I just realised that I used “he” in the original version of this post, automatically assuming that it would be a guy who did this. That bothered me. I changed it.