happy all hallow's eve ~

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carrying on my little yearly tradition of pumpkin etching, be it pumpkins, apples.. and apparently eggplants now... i spent this afternoon thinkin up some faces. pumpkins were pathetic this year. they were way too small, way too flat and were way too little to choose from. shouldn't be complaining tho. at least woolies has some sort of pumpkin this year. i had to make do with apples last year and cut out black construction paper witches' hats for them apple-heads. anyway, here's what my eggplant turned out to look like. 'cuse his grotty teeth. he doesn't have his own toothbrush. hmmmm...what's mr. eggplant up to....

bz terrorizing the tiny pumpkin tots... AHHHHHHHH!

don't scare yourself this halloween *wink*

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we're a clinical cause of blood pressure! according to the BMJ...

A new study has shown that the presence of a medical student can increase blood pressure when measured in general practice.

BMJ 2004;329:998 (30 October)

thanks C for sharing the article with us ~

magpies are evul!

been telling everyone just that.. for the past 4 years and nobody's believed me til they've experienced an attack first-hand. and then they scream in terror. hmph.

well here's more proof on how nasty these viscously territorial birdbrains can be ~

Man fights for life after magpie attack
By Geraldine Mitchell
October 27, 2004

A MAN who crashed his bicycle after a magpie attacked him was fighting for his life in a Gippsland hospital yesterday.

He was taken to the Latrobe Regional Hospital with serious head injuries and later flown to the Alfred where he was in a critical but stable condition last night.

Police said the man fell off his bike while crossing Tom's Bridge north of Morwell about 9am.

The man, 51, told paramedics he had lost control of his bike after a magpie attacked him.

Last year, a Mildura man, 74, died after a magpie attack in which he received a serious eye injury.

Magpies swoop in spring to protect their chicks and territory, according to the Department of Sustainability and Environment.

To prevent attacks, the department suggests travelling in a group or avoiding the area. Cyclists are also urged to dismount and walk past a swoop area.

Herald Sun

nothing left..

a snippet from a budding author who decided to share part of his book...
found this, of all places, at the tibian forums of amera ~

dedicated to J.

Sitting on a cliff readying myself for the jump.

After three.

One.

Two.

Thr…

Oh, I’m sorry. Let me rewind a little and explain myself before I go.

Ah, my darling girl. Eight years together. We had gone and chosen our rings a week before, it was defiantly time to do the deed. It had been a long time coming. We had been through so much together. The rings arrived in the shop a week later, and I had to go pick them up. Everyday I received excited texts and phone calls from my significant other. Bless her. She was so excited. Of course, I was too. This was the girl I loved, and I couldn’t wish for a better person to spend the rest of my life with.

Ah, my darling girl.

The day I picked the rings up she split up with me. I wont go into details. Two days later she was moving in with another man. No explanation. Just like that. I had to figure it all out for myself.

And when I asked:

‘Are you seeing someone else?’

All I got back was:

‘Yes I am.’

Ow.

Eight years down the drain. I had no idea. Two weeks later, a good friend of mine died at a very young age.

Ow Ow Ow.

Which takes us back to the cliff edge on a warm, Spring day.

‘Three!’

I am writing this with a broken nose, four broken ribs, a broken leg, a fractured collarbone, two broken arms, one eye, a bruised banana, and a three legged dog called Jeremy.

Only joking.

Seriously, there’s more to life than jumping off a cliff. That’s the problem with jumping off cliffs, you only tend to get to do it once. There’s a lot more sounds to experience than ‘Bounce bounce splat’. There’s a lot more feelings to experience than the last ever one. There’s a lot more love to experience than the one you just lost. It’s strange. When you lose all hope, your mind is free to be how it should.

‘I don’t care about those bills, because I wont be here.’

‘I don’t care about losing a friend, because I wont be here.’

‘I don’t care about fear, because I wont be here.’

‘I don’t care about losing her, because I wont be here.’

And then everything that you have ever worried about disappears.

whoosh!

And it was at that moment, at number three, that I realised. Everything that concerns me only does so because of the way I perceive it. What does it matter if you have lost everything? You could always be dead, and then you wouldn’t care anyway.

I think

And don’t get me wrong, it really did hurt. But I’ve come to realise that life is too precious to dwell on the past. If you are still alive, the future can be an exciting prospect if you look at it that way. Out of darkness comes a light, and my light was the realisation that I, and only I, am the sole creator of everything that I will ever be. I could have blamed my other half for leaving me. I could have blamed my friend for dieing, but at the end of it all I can only blame myself for dealing with it badly. And it is our perceptions on life that cause us to act and behave in the ways that we do. Life isn’t biased; life doesn’t deal us bad hands. Only we can do that, and how we look at things pretty much determines our destiny.

I learnt the greatest lesson that day, and I have to thank everything bad that happened to me for it. Strange isn’t it?

doh!

1991: John Hunter Hospital received its first patients
~ Hunter History Highlight

The evening news has been repeating the snippet over and over on various local channels ~ the traffic accident we witnessed yesterday blocked the only road going into the John Hunter, thereby sealing off the only ambulance entrance to the hospital (who was the bright spark that decided to build a hospital with only one road leading in and outta it?! while we're onto blaming people here, who was the genius that implemented paid parking at club med?! grr), the #2 most popular hospital interns signed up to vie for, the fastest/largest regional hospital in the state. Talk about planning skills...

It took them 13 years to decide that something must be done. AFTER a semitrailer effectively plugged up the entrance. but nooooo, that wasn't the hoo-haa. it's ok that private folk aren't able to access the hospital, it's ok if the pregnant lady goes into labor cuz she can't reach the hospital, it's ok that little tommy can't get his tummy looked at and has to throw up in his mommy's car cuz she doesn't drive a big enough car with noisy sirens and flashy lights. the fuss was about how ambulances couldn't reach the emergency dept... but now they're throwing around possible solutions. *proceeds to roll eyes ...all the way to the hospital*

on a lighter note ~

happy bdae dear di! hope you had a blast!

it wasn't meant to be a gym day

cold, grey and drizzly was how it started. perfect welcome to the sexuality counselling tutorial at john hunter.. bleah. S picked up me and A, ha a terrible time changing lanes b4 the roundabout and finally made it to the right lane after a lot of complaining and staring - both by the 3 of us and by other drivers. just b4 the roundabout, S decided to do the free parking... meant he needed to get back to the lane we had just fought to get out of about a minute b4. anyway, we get a spot, cross the river of cars and got to the middle of the roundabout. we were standing in the middle of the traffic merry-go-round, looking for a gap to dash across when this happened...
('cuse the lousy sketch. teaches me to bring my camera with me at all times...)



after checking to see that the lady of the squished + dragged car was ok, after all the amagad!s and omigawd!s, after realizing there was nothing we could do.. we trudged to tutorial. wondered if we would've gotten away with not turning up if we practiced our counselling skills on the poor lady, who had burst into tears by the time we reached the other curb...somehow, i doubt so. started the day with a bang eh...

anyway, onto the wasn't-meant-to-be-a-gym-day bit... forgot to fish my wallet out from the gym bag from yesterday. 2nd time in a week i've lined up in anticipation to buy stuff, only to be horrified that i was wallet-less. my brain cells were only supposed to start dying when i hit 25. whoever did research on that forgot to include me in their sample group... anyway, thank goodness for cold soggy spring rolls from dinner last nite. first of the junk gobbled for the day...that lasted me til close to 1pm and i had to borrow moolah off S... her $20 got me cinnamon toast, rolos and lifesavers with more than $15 to spare ok, so that was the second meal of junk i gobbled down... and now...? A had an extra black forest cake from the cheesecake shop sittin in her kitchen from her dad's bdae so S, K and i got a third each. *pats tummy and burps* thought it'd be a better idea to get the picture when there was actually some cake left rather than show u a piece of foil with crumbs...



yes. that's all in there. in one sitting. go me

i'll deal with the extra rolls of spare tires on my tummy later ~

the 4400

just finished watching it... the 6-part mini series than ran as a two-part 3-hr shabang over here on the ten network. must admit, it wasn't bad... except for the hype!

with half an hour more to go, i could see it coming. i kept going.. please no, please no... it ended, leaving me neither with awe, nor with horror, or with a new perspective...but with one incredulous reverberating THAT'S IT?!?! c'mon, that's reaally all there is to it?!

[rant]
what about collier? what did he have up his sleeve? what's with the baby... sure he/she/it's gonna be "special" but in what way besides having gravitational fx on trees... and what about mya? if she's clairovoyant, why couldn't she see her own future? and while we're on this topic, why can't the rest of the clairovoyants, astrologers and such see the future and all pitch in for a nobel peace prize or help greenpeace save the world? why baldwin, of all the people in the world, why was tom the only one responsible for helping the 4400... why was kyle supposed to be the channel used to speak to oh-so-special tom, and not.. .his wife let's say? if the smarter, more evolved people of the future were picking ppl off left right and center w/o anyone noticing, why did they bungle kyle's abduction attempt. couldn't they have waited til he was alone or zapped up BOTH of them since shawn was so keen on being involved? funny how tom and diana seem to be the only field agents in the whole organization and funny how they had time to personally show up at each "event"... how coincidental that they were given just enough time to settle each "event" before the next one happened..
[/rant]

i know it's not fair to whine about it becuase they only had 6 hours to set the scene and unravel the plot.. it IS a mini series after all and it would've gotten boring exploring the daily lives of each of the 4400 returned... but geez!!! we come from the future, we picked these people to save the human race in the future. so what... now that they've figured out how to travel back in time and teleport people in a way, they might as well make the most of it and pick a few more from nearby decades?

so much hype... such great ads on tv... so much like Signs or The Village in terms of the letdown factor.. grrrrr. i feel cheated. admittedly, i probably would've spent those 6 hours eating, sleeping, online and doing very little work but it would've beat sitting in a chair staring at some cathode rays flickering the rainbow at me.

current mood:

*swooooooon*

just one word, that's all i need to say... MacGyver
DUHnanananananaaaa nananaah nananaaananananaaNAnuh!

MacGyverisms... here's a snippet from a webby chock full of them. they have every single episode there... i think ~

Episode Tricks
----------------------------------------------------------
001 PILOT
Disarmed missle with a paperclip
Matches & rope got rifle to shoot itself
Smashed pistol barrel to use as rocket thruster
Kicked grate to test for hidden laser
Lit cigarette with hidden laser
Smoked cigarette to find hidden laser
Used binocular eyepiece to catch laser beam
Aimed laser beam at source to "kill" it
Knotted fire hose to build up water pressure
Used said hose to lift steel beam
Tested heat on door with a stick (it caught fire)
Milk Chocolate candy stops sulphuric acid leak
Used shirt to filter gases
Sodium metal & cold capsule explosive
Flipped lights in morse code

awwwww my hero!
such a blast from the past ~

>:(

hello?

heelllloo...

look here, i told you before and i'm telling you again...you're creeping me out. don't try to contact me again. i've reported you to security and they are monitoring my calls. if you call back again, i won't hesitate to bring this matter to the police as harrassment and neither will security. do you understand?
*click*

grrrrr

not quite a full circle

little did i know there'd be strings attached when i first fell in love with this song from dawson's creek. here's the perfect song from J's point of view. well, from what i understand.. correct me if i'm wrong.

THE DRIFTER - David Poe

You took me like a drifter takes a friend
I'll never be that honest again
Never seems like much is going to change
Then your world comes crashing down

Your friends accommodate your darker phase
Then you find it's been 100 days
When's the last time you remember feeling safe?
You're surrounded by assassins in this place
But you wanted to be here and I'm amazed

If I appear in every story that you tell, that you tell
How can you say that I don't wish you well?
Wasn't I the one who caught you when you fell, when you fell?
How can you say that I don't I treat you well?
When I'm ringing out your name like a bell, like a bell
How can you say that I don't wish you well?
I wish you well.

Get that lonely feeling at the door
Even though you left this place before
'Cause the truth is you won't care anymore
Till your world comes crashing down again.

I appear in every story that you tell, that you tell
How can you say that I don't wish you well?
Wasn't I the one who caught you when you fell, when you fell?
How can you say that I don't I treat you well?
When I'm ringing out your name like a bell, like a bell
How can you say that I don't wish you well?
I wish you well
I wish you well

flower parade

and here come the pix ~
thanks to the power of paint shop pro and a canon powershot...*drumroll*



had fun cropping and pasting that.. okie, here come the swans. omg they were incredibly cute for some insane reason. swan lake with swan herd (gaggle? flock? what's the collective word for swans?) right behind them. got me so excited i stepped right into a puddle of mud. thought it was poo at first. yes, i've stepped in poo so i noe what that feels like *shudders* anyway, here're the swans... aren't they quaint?



everything was great 'cept we forgot to stop by the floriade shop, vote for the best scarecrow (i saw that pink starfish from spongbob as a scarecrow, forgot to snap a pic tho!) or realize that the various flowerbeds had themes such as "tropical fish" or "stormy weather".. oops. next year.. next year...
speaking of weather.. the skies cleared long enough for us to stroll through and get in and outta the vietnamese restaurant for lunch before deciding to drizzle a bit! here's the proof :)



at the end of the day tho, i was a very happy amy tho many a stranger might've thought me a tad nuts getting up close and personal with the flowers, contorting myself in various positions to get the best shot, randomly squatting so that T could take pix of me (such egomaniac eh, i noe. don't need you to tell me too)....
okie, gotta get some sleep. nitey nite from the floriade...

*snips out pix with tulips*
i wish!!! now i want my own garden and my jimmy baaaaacck

home!

it's soooooooo good to be home!!!!

don't get me wrong... the trip down to canberra was awesome. i'm just tired of sitting...the 3-hour train ride to sydney at 6.20am, mad dash to shop (none of the shops were open at 9.30! hmph) and find the krispy kreme shop in torrential rain, hopping onto the greyhound bus for another butt-numbing 3-hour-15-min ride to canberra with some tone-deaf but very vocally unabashed 4-year old kid who whined out her songs... (yes, i realize this was written by someone who is determined to be a pediatrician... so sue me for being human.)

right now, it's 1 awwwww meeting with MJ @ Canberra Centre, 1 yummy dinner feast with T's family, several doggy barks, licks + kisses, 1 night's worth of good sleep @ T's, 1 trip to the Floriade (definitely more about THAT after my digicam batteries recharge. they konked out on me halfway thru downloading pix... charge! faster dammit faster!), 1 3-hour ride up to Sydney with plenty of stories, 1 more mad dash to krispy kreme's, several donuts, 1 2-hour ride back to newie and several phone calls later....

i'm pooped but not as pooped as i expected to be...
i think it's them donuts...