web-goddess

HOLY CRAP. Guess who was just in our shop? Parker Posey. PARKER POSEY. She’s in town filming Superman, where she evidently plays the “female baddie.” And no, I didn’t even get to see her! The girls just told me she was in and I was like, “WHAT? YOU DIDN’T CALL ME?!” And then I started reciting all her lines from Dazed and Confused and now they think I’m weird. And get this: she’s only been in town a week and she’s already been in our shop TWICE. And since she put stuff on hold today, she’s evidently planning to come back! I am officially on ParkerWatch 2005.

Well, it’s probably dark over in the U.S. by now, which means most of you will be settling down for some fireworks. Bastards! I wish I could see some fireworks. Or have a holiday. My whole family – and apparently most of the state of Indiana – are heading to Cedar Point this week. Me, I didn’t even realize it was the 4th of July til over halfway through the day. I had to call the Snook immediately:

Me: It’s the 4th of July!
Him: What, today? Can’t be.
Me: It is!
Him: Well, we’ll have to do something for that!
Me: I think so.

So we dined on Italian sausages braised in beer, spicy wedges, sweet corn, and berry shortcake. Oh, and the Snook swallowed his pride and picked up a six pack of MGD, which he felt was appropriate. (Stay tuned for the ensuing DietBlog post tonight in which I admit how much weight I gained this week…)

Mary-Helen quite rightly takes Stella Minahan to task for her shoddy and – in my humble opinion – offensive research. Minahan is the person mentioned in all the Australian papers this week as the “researcher” looking into knitting, the Internet, and “stitchnbitch” communities. What I didn’t realize was that Minahan has specifically restricted her survey to women under 40. Huh? My first SnB experience was the Newtown SSK group, who – while definitely not all over 40 – were pretty much all a fair number of years older than I was. Even at our Tapestry Craft SnB we get a good mix of older and younger ladies. How silly of Minahan to exclude them from her work when they would definitely add a different perspective!

If anyone is interested, the direct telephone number for the ANZ branch at Centrepoint in Sydney is (02) 9232 6322. I am posting this because I am annoyed that the only phone number they publish is the general freephone number and I had to wade through fifteen menus before getting to a human that could transfer me. So I’m posting it online out of spite. I’m takin’ ’em down!

I AM THE BAROMETER OF THE NATION. Every time I get mad enough to vote on Big Brother, that person invariably gets booted. Or maybe web-goddess has more influence than I thought? At any rate, the Shearer is gone and I’m loving it. Lefty Tim for President!

Good Food Show 2005
Good grief. What a day. The Snook and I were excited to see that the Food & Wine Show had moved to Darling Harbour this year, as that’s pretty much within walking distance of our place. (It used to be in Homebush and the long train trip was a source of hesitation.) We made it down there about 3:00 today and figured three hours were more than enough to get through. We were wrong. We found ourselves amongst huge crowds, shuffling down long aisles full of bogans treating the show as an all-you-can-drink buffet. Once you got past that, though, it was pretty good! We ran into Steph and Eva fairly early and waved a greeting as we were swept past. Our first major purchase was a tagine from Spice Bazaar (that’s the red conical ceramic dish). The booth owners were really nice and we got a packet of Moroccan spice to go with it. The Snook’s already planning a recipe for tomorrow! We also bought some nice olive oil and verjus (which we tried for the first time). I also ate my very first pickled onion, which wasn’t that bad! What else…? Oh, we picked up some gyoza molds for two bucks, and I grabbed some free Atkins stuff (which finally seems to be breaking into the market here). I pretty much blew my Points for the day, grazing on everything from cheese, laksa, Jelly Bellies, more cheese, dips, olive oils, mustards, and jerkies. Oh, and more cheese. We also picked up some tasting glasses and began sampling the wines on offer. YUM. The only misstep was a truly wretched Rioja, but other than that everything was really good. We came across the booth for the Wine Society and ended up chatting with the nice attendant for a good fifteen minutes. By the time we staggered off, we’d signed up and been given our complimentary Riedel glasses. Time was running short so we hurried off to the beer area… where the Snook promptly discovered the Australian Beer Club. We joined that one too. We never even made it down the last aisle before they kicked us out! What a day…

It has a kangaroo on it.
I just sent my postcard off to Emma today, so I thought I’d share what I wrote to remind any of you that haven’t done it yet to get cracking!

Hi Emma! My name is Kristy and my Dad is your neighbour Ron Howard. I grew up in Indiana like you but now I live in Sydney, Australia, which is pretty far away! My Dad told me about your leg so I decided to get my friends all around the world to send you postcards too. I hope you get lots! Australia is a nice place to live but I sure do miss those Indiana summers. (Sweet corn is my favorite!) I hope you have a good 4th of July and your cast comes off soon. Hopefully I’ll get to meet you the next time I visit my Dad! Your friend, Kristy

Observations: I use a lot of exclamation points when addressing children. I also noticed as I was writing that I’ve mentally adopted the British/Australian spelling of “neighbour” but “favorite” remains American. Odd, that.

Whoa. Lismore’s been officially declared a disaster zone. I hope Major‘s family are okay…

What type of Disney fan are you? Much like Moire, I’m a member of the Disney elite. (I’m not though. It’s just that I really liked “The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast”, and “Mulan”, and that knowledge got me past several of the questions.)

Holy crap. Apparently the Snook and I had a stowaway on our last visit home to Indiana! A ‘roo in South Bend? That’s nuts. (Link courtesy of Brigita.)