oooooh the lengthiness of the last weeks before vacation!

People, it is 9 days 8 hours fifty eight minutes and twenty two seconds til the last days of work (yup - I am geeky enough to have actually placed a countdown timer on my desktop!)

I CAN HARDLY CONTAIN MYSELF!! No really.

BUT TIME IS DRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGING!!
so loyal readership (cher)
what's news?

So on friday i have two year end parties - one day and one night and both of them are pirate themed... what are the chances.

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!

Have i used that title before? probably. I'll be honest, it's not my most original effort, but it is VERY multiplicable. Yes, i made that word up, hence it is a cazism.

Multiplicable: - (adj) Applicable in various ways, Applicable for a number of reasons, eg. the title of Jake White's autobiography In Black and White is multiplicable in that it refers not only to the colour of the text on the paper, but also puns on his surname as well as referring to the racial debate in SA rugby.

I could SO write dictionaries!

Anyway, to expand upon the multiplicable nature of THE FINAL COUNTDOWN:

1) It is the final countdown - 17 days to go - until I take a ONE MONTH VACATION!!!!! (Don't moan... masters and a full time job - you KNOW I deserve it!!)

2) It is the final countdown - a matter of hours - til one of my favourite people gives birth to her bambino and I find out whether I'm an aunty or an uncle. haha, ok til i find out if it's a boy or a girl... clarification for those that live in these parts: KATE IS IN LABOUR - woohoo!!

3) It is the final countdown until I am back to my wedding weight.... lost 6kgs only 4 to go.

4) It is the final countdown until I see my dog - PHOEBE!! Yay! And also all my brothers, my neice, my folks and my gran!
This is Phoebe... how cute is that!!


5) It is the final countdown til I find out whether or not I am preggers, knocked up, etc. HA HA Cherilyn, don't freak out... I REALLY REALLY doubt it, however, due to extenuating circumstances there is a slight chance.

6) It is the final countdown til I hear whether or not I passed my Masters (sometime at the end of the year)

So anyway, I trust I have been successful in embedding that song in all of your heads? haha

Whose birthday is it??

LISTS

So I found an interesting new blog click here to see it - quite cool - and it inspired me to make my own little list which I'm sure will be added to over the coming weeks and I hope you guys will add to it to (if there is anyone out there....anyone at all?)

LIST OF THINGS THAT BUG THE HELL OUT OF ME:
* Vodacom service provider (obviously)
* Facebook users that invite you to every stupid application there is - like vampires???
* Facebook profiles that have a gazillion applications and take forever to load
* IT people who know less than me
* Cold weather when it is meant to be summer :(

LIST OF THINGS THAT MAKE ME EXCEPTIONALLY HAPPY:
* My hammock!!!
* My band!!!
* The month of holiday that is fast approaching
* Being done with my masters (and seriously this one is big enough to stay on the list for my whole life!)
* My absolutely ADORABLE neice. Seriously, how cute is this child!!!

NO MORE NERDINESS

Ok guys, I know i've been a disgrace to blogland, but it's been a heavy year!!!

But never mind, below, you see before you SUCCESS!!!


Ok that is me*, the blogger formerly known as nerdabluddylert with my completed masters thesis. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The relief is beyond description.

Of course, there will be even more relief when i know whether or not i actually passed!!!

Anyway, now do you forgive me scarcity?? scareceness??? or whatever?

* DISCLAIMER: please note that that is me after arriving at work at 8am (ok, fine 8.45) and leaving at 2.30am - working for 18 hours straight!!! so I am looking smelly and tired and mildly neurotic - this office is creepy after midnight!!!!!

How to annoy a vegetarian

Found this article on news24.com. I think it's fantastic!!

The next time you get the urge to antagonise a vegetarian – and if you're a meat-eater you probably suffer from a perverse need to do so – lean towards them over the dinner table and deliver one of the following immortal lines:

1. Did you know Hitler was a vegetarian?
2. But you’re wearing leather shoes.
3. So what made you give up meat – was it for religious reasons?
4. Moo/Baa/Oink (in accordance with whichever meat dish you’ve just ordered).

This will elicit a reaction, but not, as you may like to think, because you’ve ruffled fragile vegetarian sensibilities with your rogueish wit. The real reason they’re peeved is that they’ve heard all of these facetious remarks (not to mention the barnyard impressions) many, many, many times before. The prospect of getting into an argument with you also bores them to death, so more often than not they’ll just give you a pained smile and return to their tofu.

But there are lots of important things they could say to you on the topic, so, to save them the bother and tedium, I’ve listed the appropriate responses to the above comments for you here (except for number 4, which is too puerile to waste another second on).

Vegetarians, please feel free to print out and distribute as needed:

Did you know Hitler was a vegetarian?
Let’s just consider for a moment what the man would have been like, and the implications for world history, if he hadn't been a vegetarian. And anyway, there are enough overwhelmingly virtuous famous vegheads - Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, St Francis of Assisi - to cancel him out.

But you’re wearing leather shoes
This is quite a tricky one actually… OK, here goes:

The world is a complicated place, rendered in shades of grey. Deciding not to care about an issue just because it gets a little confusing and morally murky is sheer intellectual laziness. It’s not great to wear an animal’s hide on your feet, true, but it’s considerably better than wearing one animal’s hide and also partaking of the flesh of several others.

So what made you give up meat – was it for religious reasons?

The irritating implication of this question is that if you can demonstrate you’re a vegetarian for religious-cultural reasons, then you’ll have the right to be taken seriously, whereas any other reason is somehow flakey and light-weight. Here are some of those ‘light-weight’ reasons:

Because it eases the burden on the health system
Buddha aside, how many overweight vegetarians can you think of?

Studies suggest that a vegetarian diet reduces risk for some of the biggest killers stalking the modern world:

Cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and stroke
Cancer, especially of the colon and reproductive organs, Obesity,
Type 2 diabetes, Gallstones and diverticular disease

In addition to these ills, feeding on other animal species, especially when they’re kept en masse for convenient culling for the dinner table, is not a great idea if you consider the communicable diseases that have arisen from the practice. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow) and avian influenza (bird flu), to name just a couple. And let's not forget that HIV/Aids is thought to have had its origins in the human consumption of other primates i.e. bushmeat hunting.

Because it eases the burden on the planet
Billions of flatulent cows and, to a rather lesser extent, sheep, produce an awful lot of methane, one of the most potent of the greenhouse gasses. This, plus the vast amounts of fossil fuel required to accommodate, slaughter, aesthetically package and transport all that tasty meat makes livestock farming one of the biggest contributors to global warming.

And it takes up huge tracts of land and gallons upon gallons of water. Growing crops uses resources too, but nothing like as much. Besides which, most of those crops are used, not to feed the world's growing human population, but to feed livestock destined for meat-eaters’ plates: about two thirds of grain produced is fed to animals farmed for meat and milk.

Because underdogs rule
Despite a slight increase in visibility and status in recent years, vegetarians remain an often derided and unappreciated minority. But it’s always been cooler to be an underdog than a top dog, to buck the system than to slavishly follow the status quo.

Vegetarians' cool rating is further elevated by some of the Names they have in their midst: J.M. Coetzee, Alice Walker, Steve Jobs, Annie Lennox and, for some unfathomable reason, a large number of pro skateboarders, BMXers and other extreme athletes. OK, there’s also Larry Hagman and Pamela Anderson, but that just serves to show there is no such thing as a vegetarian ‘type’.

But mostly they’re cool because they’ve put some pretty deep concerns before the craven appeasing of their own appetites. As freestyle BMX vet and all-round ultra-cool extreme vegan dude Taj Mihelich succinctly puts it: “I don’t think that I’m so important that an animal has to die every time I want to eat.”

nerd a bluddy lert

Hi all
I'm sorry i suck so much! phew. It's the Bluddy Masters. Note: the official title is now The Bluddy Masters. Not the Masters, the BLUDDY masters.

SOOOOOOOOO tired of it now. tired of reading about climate change.

Figured out that I have been studying now for 19 YEARS!!!! NERD-A-BLADDY-LERT!

My thesis needs to be in and complete at the end of Oct so i pretty much need to finish this weekend to allow time for corrections etc. OOOOH THE STRESS!!!

the band has been away ALL WEEK so i have got some work done. But it has been sooooooooo lonely and i've had horrible nightmares every night - tam: even worse than a nipple on your bum! All these shark dreams and dreams about radioactive virus things and poisonings and supporting the indian cricket side. seriously.

Anyone out there a grey's anatomy fan? How yum is mcdreamy!?

anyway, i'll be back sooner next time.

Sux

These are things which suck at present:
* I have flu AGAIN (cough cough cough)
* I have a blister on my ankle from my stoopid leaking hot water bottle and it is feeling sorer than it should... I hope they don't have to amputate
* stupid blogger doesn't allow for bullet points so i have to use these dumb little *s
* I can only breathe through one nostril
* one of our cars was stolen last night
* it was the one i moaned about and called a pile of crap
* it wasn't insured
* i have to sit at home tonight and work on my masters

Hen's night... help!??

So I'm trying to organise a very last minute somewhat unofficial hen's night for a buddy of mine. Her wedding and all her bridesmaids are in natal, but she has moved to stellenbosch and has a lot of friends here who can't make the hen's night in natal.

Anyway, so now i am trying to put together a quickie low key one for thursday night. I NEED TIPS PEOPLE! And tips a little more creative than "strafdops".

One idea which i thought was quite funny was as she opens her presents (it's a lingerie party) someone writes down what she says and at the end she has to read out all the comments and we say it's what she'll be saying on her wedding night. So it will be look "Oh that is soooo cute! I love purple. Thanks so much, that's lovely!" etc. hahaha, Ok, well i think it is pretty funny. Anyway, what else? I am stumped. Anyone got a good recipe for mohitos? I thought that afterward we could take her out in Stellenbosch with a "scavenger" list of duties etc. I had one on my hen's night and it was pretty funny. For example: I had to take a photo inside the guy's bathroom, I had to collect 3 chest hairs, I had to sing a song on a table, i had to get 3 guys to propose, etc etc. And because you're dressed funny with the list hanging around your neck, people get really into it. WHAT ELSE THOUGH???

I’m married to a saint… and sometimes I want to kill him

So I don’t know if I mentioned it, but last month I got a lovely new car. It’s beautiful. Air con, power steering, great sound system, doesn’t have the tendency for sporadic epileptic fits as soon as I hit 100km/hr, doesn’t require a broom handle to hold the boot open. All in all, by my standards pretty darn luxurious. Driving it makes me feel happy. It makes me WANT to run random errands.

Ok, so now you know, I love the new car.

Unfortunately I have pretty much forgotten what it looks like. Why? Because my darling, wonderful, generous husband, ever so kindly lent it to his boss’s wife for 3 weeks while he had to use their vehicle for work purposes.

Where does that leave me? Well it leaves me driving a cranky piece of ... rubbish which has absolutely no heating system whatsoever. As a result I have been coughing up lungs for the last month.

“Last month?” You ask. “But I thought it was a 3 week loan.” You and me both!

You see the 3 weeks ended on Saturday, but now the car he has been driving needs a service and new parts and stuff, so in the meantime I continue driving the … crud car.
Which is fine… What’s a little hypothermia between friends….

Except that for the past two mornings it has BROKEN DOWN ON MY WAY TO WORK!!
(I am so calm… I am SO FRIKKEN CALM…. I AM SO BLUDDY FRIKKEN CALM!!!!!!)

This morning I had a staff of petrol attendants pushing the pile of cr… crud. Until FINALLY, EVENTUALLY it came to life again.

Anyway, being married to a saint is sometimes not all that heavenly

Blue in the face

It's reeeeally been one of those days. Anywho, I dashed home at lunch time and attempted to open a tin of tuna. Stupid non-electric tin opener was giving me grief but eventually with a colossal splat(!) the tin opened, at the same time covering my VERY nice black coat with tuna water. SIIIIFFFFF!!!!!!! I quickly half washed that part and rushed back to work. But by the look of my colleague, it still STANK! NASTY.

I am sick. Flu. *cough cough* And WWF is obsessed with meetings. Meetings, meetings, meetings. Unbelievable. The two don't mix well.

Anyway, I keep choking. Sorry if that's gross, but I'm trying to paint a picture here. I keep choking coz I am sick. But when you're in a meeting you hope it will just go away. But of course it doesn't, so around the time that my bulging eyes start watering and my face starts turning blue I have to flee out the room to get water. I must smell and look like a fish out of water. hahahahaha. Sorry. time for my meds.

the Pizza from the oven of hell

Hi all. Prepare yourself for a somewhat uninspired post. No wait, that's not the way to keep an audience. Let me start again....

SEX.
Now I've got you! So sex, hmmm. what to share, what to share.

Well the band and I went to hermanus for the weekend. It was a trip doomed from the start.... The stupid bloody antihijack device unglued itself and sucked back into the underworld of the behind-the-steering-wheel section place. So we basically had to undo the whole interior to access it so we could use the bloody car. ARGH.

That little adventure took several hours. Yes, hours. So we got there late and grumpy. the up side was that we could hear the sea. That's a very very BIG upside from she who hails from Nahoon. Sound of the sea must be one of my top 2 sounds of all time. (the other being the sound of thunder)

Anyway blah blah blah the weekend was good but had some... er.. unfortunate moments which sucked. One of them was that we went out for dinner and had the worst meal ever. A pizza, esp a simple margharita (spelling??) with pineapple is ussually a fairly safe bet. I mean how do you stuff up a pizza?? they managed. It was thin thin thin and rock hard and flaky. Dairy intolerants could have eaten it - so scarce was the cheese. Acidic ulcer sufferers could have stomached it - so rare was the tomato. Vampires in the greater western cape would have fled the province, so abundant (AND RAW) was the garlic. So siff was the pizza (and so hungry was I) that I ladled tomato bluddy sauce all over it just to give it any flavour that wasn't raw garlic. heavy days. I think i probably still stink.

Also that whole thing about garlic being good for you must be bull... my throat is killing me. And I'm very grumpy.

PS Hopelessly unstable and LOUD headboard coupled with close proximity of host's parents resulted in zero of the first mentioned topic of this post. Grumpiness multiplies.

DESPERATELY IN NEED OF A HOLIDAY

So I can do a whole lot of this.......

Celebrity liaison to the stars!!

That's right guys.... It's in my future!

So I've been SWAMPED with planning for the Live Earth concert for the last couple of months, so that's totally my excuse for being so useless and scarce.
forgive me?

Anyway in the end I ended up looking after the celebs on the night a bit... getting them to the stage on time etc,etc. So I met Pauly Shore (sullen), Joss Stone (floaty) and UB40 (old), Danny K (hmm), Angelique Kidjo (What a legend!), Zola (beaut!), Baaba Maal (sweet), etc etc.. the best of all were the Parlotones. SUCH NICE GUYS!

I think I definitely am destined to be CELEBRITY LIAISON TO THE STARS!!! Wentworth Miller is next... or maybe Josh Lucas..... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Preggers?!

Well for the past two weeks I have been utterly convinced I was preggers. I was nauseous every day. I was waaaaay late... My body just didn't feel normal at all! To cut to the chase, no, I am officially not. But a funny thing happened while I thought I was....

You know how freaked out I've always been about the whole "being someone's mom" vibe? About forgoing my career and life as I know it? About getting bigger boobs? About labour (boo-boop - mock charge!!)and all that stuff,... ok I must stop elaborating coz that pseudo morning sickness is coming back.

Anyway, the very very very VERY (you probably don't understand just how VERY) strange and unexpected thing is that I was totally (secretly) stoked! I was actually disappointed that I'm not preggers. ISN'T THAT UNBELIEVABLE??? I mean we would have been financially screwed! My DREAM job would have been overs. And on and on and yet, faced with all these realities I was merrily picking out names in my head and planning how to announce it to the family!

In the 1st 6 months of marriage I was uber neurotic about falling pregnant. I wanted 4 years with my man before any additions came along. My greatest fear was that I would fall pregnant and be devastated... that would have been awful. I think a child should be seen and spoken of as a blessing from conception! So I was way scared that I would be the evil maternal unit who was embittered by the untimely arrival of her spawn...

So I guess my point is that I am really really really happy... God has changed something in my heart. And now when I am pregnant I know that no matter what the timing I will be really really excited.

Disclaimer time all you broody peeps out there: If it goes according to PLAN this will not happen till possibly late 2008....

WATCH THIS SPACE

More vegetarian laughs

HORRIBLE CAZ

Sooo sorry guys, I have been unfaithful to you, my loyal readers. It's bluddy facebook. It's so dang addictive. I even managed to sell two VERY ugly couches on it!!

One of those days....

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

The return of the soul mate

Chris Roper has always been my favourite news24 columnist and I really missed him since his column ended last year. Well the great man is back and his very first column confirms that great minds think alike (yes, cynics, it may also prove that fools never differ). Anyway it seems that Mr Roper also feels The Rage thanks to VodaCON.

Click here for his column

Neeeiiiighbours, everybody needs good neighbours!

My landlord is a typical European genteel kind of guy. Very polite. Very respectful. All in all he's a great landlord... except for one thing: His uncanny knack to catch me in the most seemingly inappropriate moments.

The band and I live on a smallholding. No one can enter the grounds for a visit without calling us from the gate. Hence we do not have the worry of people dropping by without warning. Plus our little cottage is very private... no one walks past. You have to intend to go there to be there.

For these reasons we are quite relaxed at home. Correction: we were fairly relaxed at home.

It's my landlord

He has the most uncanny knack of coming by to drop of an invoice, fix a tap, tell us stuff when WE ARE LEAST EXPECTING A VISITOR.

Now for the most part it is not even that we are doing anything dodgy... it's generally completely innocent but would APPEAR completely dodgy.

Some examples:
I will put on some clothes.
Notice a missing button or something.
Remove pants
Sit on couch in g-.. sorry guys who know me..overshare... In onnies.
Begin to sew pants (domestic little me)
And... "knock knock knock"
Look up (through glass door directly facing me)
See Edgar.
Jump a mile high.
Do some adrenalin induced unstoppable Zulu war dance movement
Hit the floor
Leopard crawl into the safety of my bedroom and leave the band to deal with it.
(nice caz, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal subtle!)

Else he will come midway through our sunday afternoon nap. We'll hear a sound, assume it is the pooches. Stef will go to let them in... in his onnies as well and looking creased and messy haired and dubious in general and Hallooooo Edgar.

Probably the worst one, however, happened yesterday. My man had been changing a tire or something manly and as we walked back to the house I sensibly checked that there was no-one around before quietly making a somewhat lewd suggestion about him ... um ... well .... (*this blogger swallows and wonders who will read this post*) about him removing his...er...dirty clothing and ...er... lying next to me for a bit of a...rest. (Ok, fine, so it was said a whole lot more lewdly than that as is the prerogative of a wife)

naturally, obviously, predictably this is followed by a big smiled "Hi Edgar!" from the band who had spotted the landlord mere steps away lying down fixing something under a door.