We now return you...

...to your regularly scheduled blogger.

Heya peoples!

Sorry to be offline for so long but as I hear and see Lovergirl's told you, it wasn't exactly my idea. Don't remember much of the Lurch, but from what I do I was having a fair amount of fun until it was cut short.

I'm... mostly okay now I guess - I'm writing from family home rather than friends home, and eyes are being kept on me. It seems I shouldn't be left alone? I don't really get that to be honest, but then there's a fair amount I'm not getting just yet. I'm told I'll be getting better over the next few days and I should be good to work and study from monday next, but I still feel a bit spaced out for now. Thank you for the comments - they were printed out and brought in, and much appreciated. I can't wait to read what you've all been up to while I've been gone, but not tonight - I'm a bit on parole as it were, after I insisted I had to go online, but I won't be on for long (read: my mummy's coming to scoop me up and tuck me into bed in a sec - I won't be fighting too hard).

Plans are for a recap of what's been going on over the weekend, then for next week I'll take shameless advantage of the lack of movement I can get away with right now to do a blog-road-trip of sorts. That and the fact that I'll go stir-crazy if I can't get out in one way or another.

Thanks for not giving up on me while I've been out of it.

Your friend,

Ash(ley)

Good News

Stephi again.

I tried to post this earlier, but the site wasn't cooperating - good news! At the visit today we found out that (for a number of reasons) Ash is going to be getting out of hospital late (late) tomorrow. While she will be having to have an eye kept on her for a bit, this means she'll at least be staying at her family home over the long weekend, and hopefully coming back to the Asylum sometime next week.

Last I saw her she was still a bit out of it, but she said thanks for all your kind wishes and gave me a message to relay back: 'Greetings to a wider world and thanks for the fond wishes.'

This may or may not be the last you hear from me directly - hopefully Ash'll be good to be typing and talking if nothing more exerting but if not I'll be happy to play scribe for her.

Yes!

Stand-in Writer Stephi

Update

This is a quick update, explaining both the long silence and hopefully what's been happening.

First off, I'm Stephi - Ashley and I tend to call each other Lovergirl so that's how (she says) she's been mentioning me.

We went to the Lurch out at the goth festival just after her last post and it was a fairly fun evening if a bit rowdy until some asshole came up and king-hit Ash, then started kicking her until we got him off her. Police are charging him, and we've got witnesses all out the wazoo, so hopefully he'll reget it.

We called an ambulance when she didn't get up, and it turned out she was in a coma. Doctors made anxious-sounding noises and did what they could, but it was touch-and-go for a while there. Good news is she was showing signs of recovery and she actually woke up Friday evening. They wouldn't let in any visitors other than immediate family over the weekend, but we got to go and see her on Monday. She'll be sore for a while, but she should be good to head home some time towards the end of the week or early next so long as people keep an eye on her.

She said you guys would probably be worrying or wondering, so she asked me to come on and give you a few updates - just saying she's alive and kicking and such.

This is the first of however many until she comes back, so I'll keep it short. I'm visiting her again this evening with grapes and cherry tomatoes (which she says she's craving), and I'll try to write when I get back.

Stand-in Writer Stephi

Brrrraaaaaainsss

On April 30th this year, a strange zombie virus struck Sydney! From 1pm the walking undead started to emerge around our Town Hall from shopping mall and bus, as well as from the dozens (literally) of tunnels that surface in the area. We gathered under the big clock until it struck two, then all hundred and fifty of us or so started lurching off through the streets of Sydney.

Crying out our chants of 'Undead Rights!', 'Don't take Death Lying Down!' and the classic 'Braaaaaaainsss', we had more than a few odd looks from passers by. One bit that I did feel a little guilty about was when this little boy took one look at us, screamed and ran off in tears.

This was mostly made up for though when one of our more graphic corpses staggered up to where a fiveish-year-old girl and her mum were watching and mock-bit at her. The mum looked a little shocked, but laughed - the girl? She giggled and went straight for his leg. Took a couple of his mates to separate them, everyone laughing their heads off.

Though when the Lurch continued, his limp was a little bigger than before. Girls rule, am I right?

It took us almost three hours to get to the Opera House (which surprisingly enough was actually where we were headed) delayed slightly while one pack of us attacked a passing bus, another wandered over towards some cops and (later) my gang mauled a poor hapless passerby (who
was actually one of our friends we'd asked to meet us there - looked spontaneous as all hell though).

We chanted slogans, waved our placards in the air and were promptly mobbed by a passing trio of buses filled with tourists happily snap-snapping away. We even drew a television crew or two!

By the time we lurched off into the sunset, we were well-content with ourselves.

Chaos, Panic, Fear? Our work here was done.

Why am I bringing this up today? Well partly the dead-girl-walking feeling after just getting my last assessment - a speech - all written and finished about two minutes before I had to read it out on Friday Evening.

And partly (as you'll hear in the You-Tube) because there's a reprise of the Lurch happening in Early September. Tonight in fact.

Sorry to type and lurch, but I hear my lift outside ^_^

Back tomorrow,

Anomaly

PS: Linky to a you-tube of the Lurch I found the other day - its only a few minutes and its fun to watch... if you watch closely I show up (briefly) around 1:16... not that that's the reason to watch it ^_^

Dev An's Art of Procrastination

So you have come to learn from the master, young grasshopper? Then let us begin.

The art of procrastination is a manifold path - it is not simply putting things off indefinitely with the constant chant "I will" - as so exquisitely personified by Jase in his younger, less responsible years. That is simple laziness, and while there is indeed a certain charm to leaving everything until someone is actually shouting at you (at least then there's someone to help you go through the piles across your desk) there is an unfortunate and inherent danger in that.

Firstly, you may get a reputation for not doing the work (not exactly a good thing in employment). Secondly in some areas - college being a favourite - noone actually cares of you do the work or not.

You just don't get any marks if you leave it too late.

The dictionary has Procrastination as:

Pro‧cras‧ti‧nate 
1. to defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost.
2. to put off till another day or time; defer; delay.

But the Art is so much more than that. It is leaving the work for later, yes - but doing it at the eleventh hour (and fifty ninth minute in some cases), just in time to hand it in. Ideally, noone should even know you're doing it, you just inexplicably always seem to have more free time than anyone else.

Funny, that.

Of course, no guesstimation is perfect and sometimes there just isn't any way around a certain amount of research - especially if you don't actually read the question before the day it's due. If anyone tries to tell you the Art is about avoiding hard work, they seriously need to think again. While you haven't been wrestling with the assessments for as long as they have, have they ever tried putting together a 3000-word report in the three hours before it was due, having had minimal sleep the night before (while preparing a different assignment, also due that day)? Incidentally No-Doze on an empty stomach is officially a Bad Idea.

Apparently I was acting like I was high. Can't imagine why.

All too many times, procrastination seems to be no more than a choice between stress early and confidence later or relaxation early and stress at the last minute. Which makes it all the more important that if you're planning to put things off you keep a very close eye on the calendar.

Or keep an industrial-sized pot of coffee behind the textbooks on your shelves (all my roomies are as big a coffee-fiend as I am). And now I've gone and told them where it is. Hang on a sec.

The other big thing to fight is distraction. If you're going to do multiple assessments in a short time - say, hypothetically, one fifteen minutes from the time of writing and another two for Friday - then you can't afford to go off and do something else that might delay your task any later. The due-date is looming over you after all.

So make sure you avoid "just one more" phone call (guilty), "just checking my email" (guilty) and above all, making a blog-post "just while I'm on the computer anyway" (since you're reading this, presumably guilty). Or you too will enjoy the delights of sidling innocently into class twenty minutes late, doing your best to pretend it has nothing to do with the assignment due that tute.

Nope, nothing at all...

NB: Assignments may be devouring me for the rest of this week, so I'll likely be a little sparse on posts and quotes until Friday evening, Aussie-time.

Wish me luck?

Enter the Dad

The first Sunday of September each year is Father's Day here in Australia. Basically we spend the day thanking our long-suffering fathers for all the grief we put them through the rest of the year, maybe give them small gifts and overall just try to take care of them for a change. In 2006, that day is today.

This Father's Day's one of the more interesting I've had in... well... ever. As I mentioned earlier, my dad died last year, though my mother recently remarried (in June). So... the day for me started off with visiting my dad's grave in the early morning. We always used to have this tradition of giving presents on birthdays and christmas (well, apart from the Tree Presents) really early, all sitting on my parents' big queen-size bed? So I thought it was only right to go as early as I could to give him his present and... just to spend some time with him I guess?

Still went to my mother's for a late breakfast (blueberry pancakes with maple syrup, mmm!), meeting up with Jason and his girlfriend (Taylor). More congratses were had, and we teased Jase that by this time next year we'd be giving him chocolate too!

He seemed somewhat stunned by that - apparently it hadn't occured to him yet, though Taylor laughed.

Gave my step-dad (in no particular order) a hug, a giftcard from my work and one of those larger Toblerone bars (750g or something like that?). He gave me (same no particular order) a hug, a hair-ruffle and told me it was always good to see me. And it was good to see him, too - though he'll never take the place of my dad with me, we get on well enough. Much hanging out and barbequed lunch ensued, though I begged off dinner. Lovergirl asked me to go with her to meet her parents at dinner (moral support I guess), which means I should really start getting ready soon - but I'm in a reflective mood so I'm just sitting here now, thinking about my dad.

Who was he? My dad was the warm pair of knees when I was a little one, the giver of big hugs and the solver of all ills - from what to do when my budgie wasn't eating its seed, to why exactly I couldn't multiply 2 by 1 and get three (blame it on my bad handwriting). The man who told me that a warm smile wasn't always a sign of undying love, and the man who picked me back up when I went on to find that out for myself. Always there for me when I needed him (and I did).

I miss you, daddy.

Happy Father's Day.

I knew you were going to do that

We're all familiar with the myths about multiples, am I right? They share everything, are the best of friends, can't be told apart... and have some odd kind of ESP? And that's just for starters. Well I don't claim to be any kind of expert on twins, but my brother and I seem to have a twin-link of our very own - if an odd one. No, we're not twins, he's two years older than me (an ancient 21). We're definitely not identical. None of the other myths seem to hold for long (we're friends sometimes, other times... not so much), but it's gone on long enough that it's the teensiest bit freaky.

In a good way, of course.

First time I can remember it kicking in was when he was celebrating a victorious soccer season with his primary school team at a McDs - families were invited, naturally. I'd gotten a little high on excitement and two large Cokes (I was five - sue me) and was running madly around the playground when one of the boys on his team dropped down off the climbing frame, landed on my back, and wound up breaking my leg.

I spent a couple of weeks in hospital with my leg in traction (slightly complicated by the fact that it took them a week to realise I was fairly violently allergic to the plaster in my cast) - two days later my brother joined me. He'd come down with Meningitis and the hospital wound up putting him in the other bed in my room. I guess it made it easier for the parents to visit or something?

Anyway, the next 'big' thing I can remember was when I was in Year Four. Remember how I mentioned the end-of-school play? Turns out they'd been rehearsing in the school hall after class on a nice hot summer's day when he blacked out (still won't admit he 'fainted'), fell face-first down three stairs and broke his jaw on the hard wooden floor. My mum raced off to take him to the doctor's when the school called, which meant that when I finally got home (the buses around here - well I'll be generous and call them slow) it was my dad who came to the door to let me in - just in time to see me faint and fall off the balcony into the garden. Luckily flowerbeds are softer than hardwood, so I only needed a dozen or so stitches.

Next case of the 'twin-link'? Ice-skating with friends from high-school. We were both there (mutual friend's birthday), and I fell over fairly early on, hurt my wrist and went back to skating after taking a break. He slipped over at the end, bashed his own arm hard enough that the parentals took us by a doctor on the way home. Seems he'd fractured his left wrist and - you guessed it - I'd actually managed to do the same to my right. By the time we finally headed home we each had our plastered arms like mirror-images, and I was puzzling over how to do my exam the next day.

If you're getting the impression that this twin-link of ours is only to do with the many interesting ways we manage to hurt ourselves, think again - those were just the more memorable times. I've lost count of the number of times since he moved out that one of us has gone to call the other, put our hand on the phone - only to have it ring because the other one (he's usually faster than me I 'fess) felt like talking. Not to mention the time we both bought U2 tickets as a present for the other one at Christmas.

Or when my dad died last year and I'd literally just heard when Jason (my brother) rang. "I just felt really down all of a sudden and felt like talking", he said.

It just seems that almost all the major things and many of the minor in my life have been fairly closely mirrored by him (with one exception) or visa-versa and soon after at that - so we joke about our 'twin-link' and leave it at that.

Except he just called this morning to tell me he's going to be a father...

Should I be worried?