Desparately seeking heat

Uh, so I think I have broken my department of defence gas heater....

On Thursday night I was leaning over it to see if the pilot light was going and I caught my cross in it. The cross was yanked separate from the chain....and into the heater. This is happened once before, also when my husband was away.

Last time I got my cousin in to help me dismantle it, but seeing how I know how he went about it I figure I can do it too. So next stop was to get my husband's toolkit out and take it apart. Eventually my cross fell out and some 1 and 2 cent coins (out of circulation for almost 20 years)...so that gives an indication of how old it is.

I managed to put it back together...sort of...... it is now a little wobly on one side. So on Friday night I get home from work freezing and turn it on, and proceed to give my Mum a ring. While chatting on the phone I smell smoke and see it coming out of my heater. Needless to say I turned it straight off. A phone call to the Defence repairs line and they are sending someone out to fix it this weekend.

So, it looks like I will spend the rest of the week camped out on the fan heater!

All Spruced Up With No Place to Go

My puppies had a haircut today. The lady who does their hair is lovely. When she called to say they could be picked up she said "your babies are ready". Too cute!

Anyway, here is Monty looking very masculine with his black collar bow.

And, here is Abby with a pretty purple bow in her hair. She was being a little Madam when I went to pick them up and basically tap dancing in the cage. Can't you see the cheeky spark in her eyes? But, at least she is sitting!

They are a little chilly now with their shorter coats, so they both have their housecoats on. I also think the excitement of the day has exhausted them. They have both taken to MY bed.

Pay it Forward...

The lovely Kappa Prep of Monograms and Manicures nominated me for a couple of awards, so I am passing them on.

This was really hard for me as there are so many blogs I enjoy. So, I have decided to nominate a couple of blogs I have been reading for a while and always get a kick out of:

Simon over on Stuck in a Book....for his musings on all things literary and Oxfordish.

Tara at Books and Cooks....who always tempts me with her cooking ideas.

Lauren at Adventures of a Southern Newlywed for her sweet take on life in general.

100 Things About Me

I wrote this post last night. Unfortunately when I came to publish it all my numbering disappeared and I didn't have time to redo it. You may notice I was complaining about not receiving a phone call from my husband. It never came through. Unfortunately I woke this morning to read that one Australian soldier had been killed in Afghanistan and two seriously injured. When an incident like that occurs the communications network is shut down to ensure that the families of the casulties are the first to know. I hope to speak to my husband tonight, but I have had an email to say he is safe.

Moments like this really make you think. I am so sorry for the families of those killed/hurt. And yet, I am so grateful that it is not my loved one. Feeling like this gives me a lot of guilt, and the only way I know to deal with it is to pray for the families affected and those injured and killed. I don't suppose there is a lot else anyone can do - except pray that the wars end soon and all our remaining service men and women can come home safely.

Anyway, on to a more cheery topic.....here are a hundred facts about me. Current at 10 pm last night!

1. I am an only child.
2. I went to the same school for 12 years.
3. I did all 14 years of my school education at girls’ schools. I do not think this has negatively impacted me in anyway, despite the rude comments some people make about this kind of education!
4. I loved school. My favourite day was Heather Lamont Day – a craft and performing arts day held once a year.
5. I think I still abide by my school motto, ‘per ardua ad alta’. It means “strive for the highest”.
6. I have an Economics degree.
7. I graduated with first class honours.
8. I did a study abroad at a college in upstate New York. My time there was the highlight of my university experience.
9. I am originally from Western Australia. My family still lives there.
10. My Dad’s side of the family were founding settlers in Western Australia. My (7) Greats Grandfather arrived from England on HMS Sulphur on June 29, 1829. Foundation Day was June 29, 1829.
11. My Mother is from New Zealand.
12. I have dual citizenship because of this.
13. My husband and I married young at age 22.
14. My husband is my best friend.
15. My husband and I were high school sweethearts.
16. My husband is the only man I have ever dated.
17. My favourite bible verse is “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future” Jeremiah 29:11.
18. I love dark chocolate.
19. I also love bread and butter pudding.
20. I do not like seafood or mushrooms. I will not eat either – or anything that has touched them.
21. I do not like my foods to mix. I try to keep them separate on my plate.
22. I can not stand the smell of tuna.
23. I am currently waiting for my husband to phone me from Iraq. We will have 10 minutes to talk when he finally gets through. I wait all day for this – it is definitely the highlight.
24. I just bought my first item of clothing from Ebay. It is J Crew and I am concerned I might not have got the right size, as Australian sizing is different to American sizing. I guess time will tell.
25. I still do ballet and Irish dancing. Some people think this is strange.
26. I should be sitting my Royal Academy of Dancing grade 7 ballet exam in October.
27. I play the piano.
28. I can sight read the treble clef. The base clef takes more effort.
29. This is unusual as I played the Euphonium for 8 years at school. All music for the Euphonium is written for the base clef.
30. I love to read. I get through about 3 or 4 books a week. Most of my reading is done on public transport.
31. My don’t think I have a favourite book but I have a number I like very much.
32. I wish I spoke a foreign language. Unfortunately all I have is school level German.
33. I am really close to my parents. I speak to them at least once a day.
34. I am very indecisive.
35. However, I am extremely organised. This does not work well when you are married to someone in the military. With the military, you can not plan on anything.
36. I like lists.
37. I like to wear hair ribbons. At 24 I am not overly sure this is always appropriate.
38. I am terrible at parallel parking. This is a problem as most parking in Sydney is parallel parking.
39. I also do not like to park turning to the left, or reversing.
40. I enjoy writing. Not creative writing, but writing essays.
41. I have two small dogs – Abby and Monty. Both are Maltese X and both were rescued from the pound.
42. I have very fine, straight hair. It drives me nuts because it does not keep any body. I do like the fact it is naturally blonde.
43. My favourite colour is pink.
44. I prefer to wear skirts and dresses to pants or shorts. When I was a child I flatly refused to wear jeans.
45. I can be very stubborn. See previous.
46. I have blue eyes like my Dad. My Mum has green eyes.
47. I am more of a cat person than a dog person, but as my husband is highly allergic to cats we have dogs.
48. I miss my cat and dog which stayed in Perth with my parents. I think my cat feels like I abandoned her.
49. I moved to Sydney to take up a graduate position. My husband managed to get posted here when we got married.
50. When I open a packet of medication, I like to work from one end to the other. My husband thinks I am slightly OCD.
51. Nuts and liquorice are the only foods I will eat that my husband will not.
52. I like the cold. You can dress for warmth but not always for coolness.
53. I like having nice writing paper.
54. I prefer hand written correspondence to email.
55. I get nervous speaking on the telephone.
56. It really annoys me when people don’t acknowledge gifts – particularly those sent through the post.
57. After 12 years of wearing a green uniform there was a phase where I could not stand the colour.
58. I love wicker baskets.
59. I sometimes wish I had been born earlier as I love the fashion of the 1950s.
60. I am slightly baby obsessed at present.

61. I hope that I can stay home when I have children.
62. I used to do speech – or elocution if you prefer – exams when I was at school.
63. I have a very quiet voice. People often complain that they can’t hear me. This is the reason my Mother put me in speech and drama classes.
64. I am still waiting for my husband to phone. He is 76 minutes late. I am concerned the communications network might have been shut down at his end.
65. It annoys me when people don't keep left on escalators. I suppose if I was American it would annoy me if people didn't keep right.
66. I believe somebody hears my prayers.
67. I do not particularly enjoy my work. I do not think it is a bad job, but it is not right for me. I am hoping to find something that is a better fit in the future.
68. I start work very early – 7:30am. I asked to do this so I can finish early. Usually I can leave about 4:15pm. Unfortunately it means getting up at 5:45am.
69. I am currently letting the dogs sleep on the bed. My husband does not approve.
70. The dogs will have to unlearn this habit before my husband gets home.
71. My favourite version of Little Women the movie is the 1949 one with Elizabeth Taylor in it.
72. I love watching musicals.
73. Among my favourites are “Thoroughly Modern Millie”, “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” and “Meet me in St Louis”.
74. I can not stand to have marks on my clothing. I was really obsessive about this as a child.
75. I drink lots of tea. I do not drink coffee.
76. I am obsessed with Chai Lattes at present. The lady who mans the coffee machine at the cafeteria at work knows my order!
77. I do not like it when people are late for engagements. I think it shows a lack of respect for other people’s time.

78. Eating golden toasty warm crumpets, drinking tea and reading are my favourite things to do on a cold, wet wintery day.
79. I like to bake. Biscuits and cakes are my favourite things to make. I try not to eat them too much though. My husband's absence has really hampered me in the baking regard as I have lost my chief consumer.
80. I eat a lot of fruit.
81. I love summer fruit including berries, apricots, grapes and plums.
82. For winter fruits, oranges are my favourites.
83. I am a bit of an Anglophile. I think this is a result of my Nanna’s influence.
84. My best friends are friends from school.
85. I love my three year old niece (cousin’s daughter). She has such a big personality and makes me laugh. She also loves to give hugs and I love getting cuddles.
86. I lost my teddy bear in America when I was 6. The owners of the hotel found it in the bed and shipped it back to me in Australia. It took 3 months.
87. My teddy bear still sits on our bed. Her name is 'Teddy'.
88. I have a fondness for bed linen.
89. I like embroidered table cloths.
90. My favourite flowers are tulips. I was very disappointed to not be able to have them in my wedding bouquet because they were out of season.
91. I like to have porridge (oatmeal) for breakfast. I serve it with walnuts, apple or banana, and brown sugar.
92. I think that whether or not people agree with us (Australia) having a troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan they should support the soldiers that are there. I am proud of my husband.
93. I can’t wait for my husband to come home. He will be back in 3 months.
94. I only have 6 weeks before I see him for his R&R. We are meeting up in Malaysia.
95. I believe that when people move to another country they should accept and embrace the values it upholds.
96. I am having strawberries, Greek yoghurt and granola for breakfast tomorrow. I have to go and chop up the strawberries in minute.
97. I am not very good at sports. I think that this might have something to do with me not liking to perspire. My Nanna always said “pigs sweat, people perspire”. I think of this when I hear someone say they are sweaty. It makes me laugh.
98. I like watching Oprah so much that I tape it every day and watch it when I get home from work.
99. For relaxation I read detective stories. The kind with the nice clean murders….I just want to read about the detecting. My favourite fictional detectives are Mrs Marple, Poirot, Inspector Brunetti, Mma Ramotswe, Agatha Raisin, Daisy Dalyrymple, and Phryne Fisher.
100. I mowed the lawn for the first time 2 weeks ago. It was such a traumatic experience that I am never doing it again. Even if we only have a 2 metre square patch I am getting a professional in.

A Brief Absence

I will be a little quiet here for the next couple of days as I am hitting the ski slopes for the weekend. Somehow I doubt I will look like this....as it is my first go....we don't have ski slopes on the West Coast......

What Ya Readin': A Secretly Good Read...

I have just finished a really wonderful book. It came as a recommendation from the wonderful author Deanna Raybourn - who has a really fun blog and writes quirky murder mystery books. I can highly recommend Silent in the Grave, and have Silent in the Sanctuary in my reading pile for an upcoming trip.

Several weeks ago Deanna demanded that her blog readers read Eva Rice's book The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets. Deanna likened it to I Capture the Castle - a book I adore. It was duly, and rapidly, ordered from The Book Depository. And, I love it. It has gotten pride of place on my bookshelf (the cover is very pretty and I am a sucker for covers), and will sit next to my copy of I Capture the Castle as soon as the person who borrowed it 3 months ago gets around to returning it (what is the ettiquite for getting back loaned books? I seem to be singularly unlucky in this regard).

Anyway from the dust jacket

"Set in the 1950s, in an England still recovering from the Second World War, The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets is the enchanting story of Penelope Wallace and her eccentric family at the start of the rock 'n' roll era.

Penelope longs to be grown-up and to fall in love; but various rather inconvenient things keep getting in her way. Like her mother a stunning but petulant beauty widowed at a tragically early age, her younger brother, Inigo, currently incapable of concentrating on anything that isn't Elvis Presley, a vast but crumbling ancestral home, a severe shortage of cash, and her best friend Charlotte's sardonic cousin Harry...."

You must read it, you simply must.......

What Ya Readin': Books not read!

I pinched this from Monograms and Manicures Blog. She is having an amazing time in Europe at present so do pop over and have look. Anyway, I thought I would have a go. The ones in bold I have read, those in italics are on my shelf to read. I have only read 16...looks like I have some reading homework.

"106 Books of Pretension
1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Catch-22
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion
8. Life of Pi
9. The Name of the Rose
10. Don Quixote
11. Moby Dick
12. Ulysses
13. Madame Bovary
14. The Odyssey - on my husband's bookshelf
15. Pride and Prejudice
16. Jane Eyre
17. The Tale of Two Cities
18. The Brothers Karamazov
19. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
20. War and Peace
21. Vanity Fair
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife
23. The Iliad - well it's on my husbands shelf
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assassin
26. The Kite Runner
27. Mrs. Dalloway
28. Great Expectations
29. American Gods
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
31. Atlas Shrugged
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
33. Memoirs of a Geisha
34. Middlesex
35. Quicksilver
36. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
37. The Canterbury Tales
38. The Historian : a novel
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
40. Love in the Time of Cholera
41. Brave New World
42. The Fountainhead
43. Foucault’s Pendulum
44. Middlemarch
45. Frankenstein
46. The Count of Monte Cristo - again, on my husband's bookshelf
47. Dracula
48. A Clockwork Orange
49. Anansi Boys
50. The Once and Future King
51. The Grapes of Wrath
52. The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
53. 1984 - always thought I should read this given its my birth year
54. Angels & Demons
55. The Inferno
56. The Satanic Verses
57. Sense and Sensibility
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray
59. Mansfield Park - actually I have read half
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
61. To the Lighthouse
62. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
63. Oliver Twist
64. Gulliver’s Travels
65. Les Misérables
66. The Corrections
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
69. Dune
70. The Prince
71. The Sound and the Fury
72. Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
73. The God of Small Things
74. A People’s History of the United States : 1492-Present
75. Cryptonomicon
76. Neverwhere
77. A Confederacy of Dunces
78. A Short History of Nearly Everything
79. Dubliners
80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
81. Beloved
82. Slaughterhouse-Five
83. The Scarlet Letter
84. Eats, Shoots & Leaves
85. The Mists of Avalon
86. Oryx and Crake : a novel
87. Collapse : How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed - my husband says this is brilliant.
88. Cloud Atlas
89. The Confusion
90. Lolita
91. Persuasion
92. Northanger Abbey - I just saw the new BBC adaptation and I really want to read it now.
93. The Catcher in the Rye
94. On the Road
95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
96. Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side of Everything (uh, I have an economics degree)
97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : An Inquiry Into Values
98. The Aeneid
99. Watership Down
100. Gravity's Rainbow
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood : A True Account Of A Multiple Murder and It's Consequences
103. White Teeth
104. Treasure Island
105. David Copperfield
106. The Three Musketeers