Category: The Life of Lara

But you might want to put on the “Lara is about to be tasteless” filter….

When I was growing up, Eastwood was the place we went to to “go to the shops”. We did our grocery shopping locally, but Eastwood was where the big new flash shopping center was. They had a big Target, and I think there might have been a Grace Brothers (showing my age again), and going there was always an adventure.

Fast forward 30 years, and the character of Eastwood has changed. A lot. The blue rinse nannas have been replaced by young chinese and koreans, and Target and GB’s have been replaced by a growing number of $2 shops. Eastwood has become a Mecca for the $2 shop lover, and yesterday I visited the newest member of the tribe, which has taken over the site of the old Target shop.

And I saw this.

First, the disembodied head of a deer in the headlights. I know how he feels.

An incestuous family of cane toads

Chain mail anyone ?

A garden sprite for your lounge room?

Homo erotica? Hobo erotica?

Rover on the attack.

Does it get much creepier than this ?

Yes, my children, it does…..

Run Rabbit, RUN!!!!!!!

and it appeals to my twisted literary pretensions. I’ll try to be honest, then you’ll all know exactly how tacky I am.

How it works: bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won’t, and underline the ones on your book shelf.

The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown – Not on my bookshelf. On the floor under the dirty clothes pile.
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J. K. Rowling
Life of Pi – Yann Martel It’s on my iPod – does that count ?
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story – George Orwell
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien Dad read it to me as a kid. I blame him for a lot of things 🙂
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies – William Golding A school text. Not a fave.
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
1984 – George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons – Dan Brown
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C. S. Lewis
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
Good Omens – Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Atonement – Ian McEwan
The Shadow Of The Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Dune – Frank Herbert

So I think I am learning something about myself – I seem to have a need to own books. I appreciate libraries, but I prefer to won and revisit books that I really love. And I am not very strong on popular fiction, or poetry.

They closed the doors this afternoon.

Never drive behind a car with a sticker that says “Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly“.

Also avoid cars with a hat or a box of tissues on the back parcel shelf.

I would also add that it’s best to avoid fish decals and “In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned“.

But that is bloody obvious.

There were offers for the shop on Friday. They couldn’t tell us who, they couldn’t tell us how many, and they couldn’t tell us how much. But there were offers. The offers were to be looked at, discussed, and presented to Apple, who have the final say.

Years ago, I worked at another reseller who were forced to sell their flagship store. They got a good offer, and took it to Apple, who rejected it because the prospective buyer had no experience running an AppleCentre. A month later they accepted another offer from a competitor. The final amount was just 10% of the original offer.

Tomorrow I have to turn up for work, not knowing if I am transitioning to new ownership, or winding up for liquidation. Best not to think about it too much, but the last few weeks have taken a toll on my sunny disposition.

Yesterday was fun – but too short. I went to Rubi + Lana’s in the morning, then to Jussi’s farewell party (where I met some people I’ve been dying to meet for ages, they didn’t disappoint), and then to Mijal’s for our first Thanksgiving dinner. Mijal is a great cook, and I apologise if I was a little touchy on the subject of the Turkey.

Last year, we lost one of our chickens on a very hot day, and we resolved to either let the girls free range (so they can have dust baths, or to bring them inside in hot weather if we aren’t going to be home to make sure they are ok.

But the weather bureau didn’t predict the temperatures we got yesterday. And I am so wrapped up with what is happening to me right now that I didn’t even think to ask Mark to check on the girls when he got home yesterday evening. We went out for dinner with friends in Newtown last night, and complained about the heat.

This morning, I put on a load of washing, and noticed that one of our big white feathery girls wasn’t moving, and was covered in ants, but I couldn’t tell whether it was Grace or Janis. I lifted up the nest box, and there was another big white girl who wasn’t moving. Barbara and Liza are fine, but both my big white girls are gone.

Both of them were rescues. Grace from a petting zoo (I hope petting zoo operators are reincarnated as baby bunnies in a petting zoo – see how they like being poked by toddlers 8 hours a day), and Janis from a kind lady that saw her fall from a truck on its way to the slaughterhouse. She couldn’t stand up at first, and it was days before we saw her walk, or peck, or scratch around in the dirt like a real bird. She acted like she had never seen the sky before, and was our little (or not so little) special needs girl.

Having an animal in your life is a huge responsibility. I don’t have kids and I think of these little ones like children who are utterly dependent on my care and attention. They live and die by my actions alone, and I have failed these two.

They did have good lives with me – they were free to pursue their interests in digging, destroying my veggie garden, singing the “I Laid an Egg, It’s a Really Good Egg” song, and pooping frequently and in great quantity. I hope they were happy, and I hope my generally good parenting will be taken into consideration.

But I still feel rotten.

“Being an ice addict is like taking the Concorde to New Zealand. The trip is good, but you end up in a bad place.” Dave Hughes

Apologies to Justine – NZ is lovely. I’ve been there. Honest.

We just like to take the piss.

And no-one would believe that you could take the Concorde to Mt Druitt.

So they axed the ABC’s highest rating show. And Our Mighty Leader denies all responsibility. He didn’t axe the show, he just appointed an “independent auditor” who did it for him.