Confessing my love for Offspring

So there's this television show called Offspring on Channel 10 at the moment that pretty much everyone I know watches. It has consistently achieved top-ten ratings every week since it begun & my family & I have been watching it every week, recording the episodes on tIvo when we weren't home or were worried we'd fall asleep. I probably shouldn't admit here that I like such 'mainstream' television/a show that isn't HBO (!) but I do love Offspring. I liked it from the first ever episode, where Nina has trouble reverse parking & she ended up hitting a car (I'm sketchy with the details)...I was like, yup, I can relate to being absolutely bloody hopeless with reverse parking, I'm going to like this show!

I mean, you could be satisfied enough watching it solely for Dr. Chris (Don Hany), Patrick (hello!!!!) or the guy that used to play Jack in Neighbours. This has led to much debate regarding the whole Nina/Chris Havel/Patrick triangle; in the first season we were all in LOVE with Chris Havel, but now, well, Patrick is sooo much more gorgeous and Chris missed his chance and now he's come back and his hair is all wrong. One friend & I were sending numerous text-messages on the topic last week..."I want Patrick to kiss me like that"..."I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive Nina for this betrayal"...and even "lol I'm in my trackies and ugg boots. Dreaming that he will love me however I look..Patrick loves me for me lol lol lolz"...oh and "that black suit and jacket is the sexiest thing a man has ever worn" (please note the text-message extracts are ones my friend sent me, so I can't take credit for their total-hilarz content)


It's worth watching for Asher Keddie & Kat Stewart's acting & Eddie Perfect's hilarious song compositions. However, I was informed the other day that both Nina (Asher Keddie) and Bille's wardrobes on the show were gaining lots of admirers. (The Nina Proudman fashion page on facebook has 4000+ followers at the time of typing) My mother seems to have the impression that I am totally in awe of Nina's wardrobe. My mother is in her 50s & despite being quite well-dressed for her age (I know she reads this, so I'm being nice but honest too), Nina's outfits are perhaps a little 'busy' for her taste. Me: I like colours, patterns, scarves...not so big on accessories but otherwise, yes, I do like Nina's wardrobe with the exception of jeans at a hospital. Also, I've noticed that Nina & I both tend to wear our denim jackets alot.

It should be no surprise then, that when (again with the assistance of my mother, being on holidays means we spend WAY too much time together) we were doing the wardrobe clean-out/Mum discovers all the hidden new clothes on my floordrobe and chairdrobe with the tags still on, we found ourselves labelling items of clothing to be 'Nina outfits' or 'Billie outfits.' Hahaha. And when I went out last night, I said to dear Mother "I'm wearing a really Nina outfit because I can't do up my jeans"...FUCK I LOVE OFFSPRING.

Meet my boyfriend, Murphy the dog!

Murphy came into my life the summer of 2003. Gradually I nursed him from 'baby Murphy' to 'Murphy' (Mum keeps telling me he was never a baby, he was a puppy - I tend to disagree). Despite the fact that he thinks he's a human & seems to think I'm his friend, not his owner/boss, I couldn't be happier with our relationship.

Apparently, dogs are like their human owners. My seven-year old Maltese poodle Murphy and I are similar in the following ways:

- We were both born in the first week of October

- we both like to be lazy and waste an afternoon sitting on the ducted heater

- We both probably have COPD (Chronic, Obstructive, Pulmonary, Disorder)…it’s a lung/bronchitis thing. Murphy baby has been coughing all the time & now has to wear a harness on his walks so he doesn’t choke himself when he runs ahead.

- We’re both scared of big dogs

- We’re both neurotic & obsessive & like to know where everyone is at any given time

…MY DOG IS THE LOVE OF MY LYF, Y’ALL

Holidays are so damn boring.

I swear, every hour I think to myself "God I'm bored."
I've been on unexpected holidays for two weeks so far - don't get me wrong, I dream of holidays generally just having more time to do things I've been meaning to do for years, however, all I have achieved thus far is:

- Importing 442 new songs into iTunes
- Backing up my 75+ gigabytes of music
- Online shopping: the Daria box set for $45, two new dresses last night...
- Sorted through all my university piles, chucked out about a folders worth
- Cleaned out the underwear & accessory draws
- Avoided cleaning out my shoes, bags and any other clother sections of my wardrobe
- Made more mess on the floordrobe
- Went out to a gig during the week!
- Taken advantage of having the house to myself & blasted a number of cds downstairs
- Got back into exercise, some days even power-walking 7.5kilometres! Attended two yoga classes. Deliberately slept in to avoid Body Pump classes.
- Nearly finished Season 2 of "the secret life of us"
- Had two weekends with lots of drinking, eating & fun times
- Then again I'm writing this blog post at 7:30am Sunday morning so obviously I've had a quiet one last night
- Saw the final Harry Potter movie!
- A number of coffee dates with friends :)
- Found plenty of new music to become in love with
- Finished maybe three books? But they were only 250 page books. Which doesn't help my hoarding 'issue' at all because I have also purchased two new books in this time.
- Become addicted to tumblr/the internet.

in short (oh the irony), I've done a lot of things that aren't very productive.

Why is it that everyone looks forward to their holidays, and yet the majority of my friends spend substantial time on facebook complaining about how bored they are, how much their parents are annoying them and how much they wanna move out? The holidays inevitably mean chores > BORING! Also, most Gen-Y kids (adults?) living at home like myself have no excuse not to participate in domestic duties like doing your own ironing, washing your work shirt, the dog poo, doing the dishes and making gravy for the weekly roast. Usually I do some of things anyway, but recently I have to stop myself saying "I don't have time". Ugh. My mother will love this post.

What can I say? I'm BORED. Actually, I need to do my homework. The Sunday paper will be here now so I have something to do. It's too cold and foggy to go for a walk just yet. I think I only posted this so I could feel accomplished and say I've posted in this blog today. Ugh. FML, seriously.

How to be the perfect Woolworths customer:

1. Bring your own pen. Do not, under any circumstances, expect that a checkout-chick will have a pen that actually works. Better yet, start living in the 21st century & get a pin for your credit card. As long as our eftpos machine is up & running (or there's no 'pin error' or 'system busy' message) this is the easiest method of payment.

2. Ask the checkout chick (or boy) "How are you?" Sometimes we forget. It's rude and lazy of us, yes, but very rarely do we deliberately not ask "how are you?" (only when it's a regular customer who we know is incapable of stopping talking & therefore holding up the queue). If you engage us, we'll be nicer to you. Or at least fake a smile. The same applies to "have a nice day"

3. Take your coat hangers off. Obviously this only applies when you are purchasing clothing. There is nothing worse than a customer that rocks up with a trolley full of discounted kid's clothes (that we have to enter manually, FML but that's another story), all with hangers on (especially two-sets or underwear, no we're not embarrassed it's just so fucking fiddley), and yet has absolutely zero comprehension for how long it will take to get the hangers off. These customers are too busy playing words-with-friends on their iPhones to notice how long it's taken. FUCK YOU!!!

4. Wear deodorant. This is pretty self-explanatory. A shopping centre is packed enough & with Westfield & department store cost-cutting, often in summer air conditioners are left off. This means that the smell is FUCKING PUTRID. Do us a favour and at least smell okay, or not smell. Thanks, much appreciated.

5. Wash your hands. Another downfall of being a check-out chick is how disgusting and dirty you feel after a shift. One's hands have touched possibly hundreds of other sets of hands; hands that have just eaten greasy Macdonalds, hands come straight from work at the mechanics with oil all over them, hands that have just wiped nappies, hands that have just felt up body parts in the privacy of Big W photo lab...WASH YOUR FUCKING HANDS. And we haven't even discussed money-handling & where the cash has really come from. Checkout chicks get sick and die from exposure to this shit. Be responsible!

6. Don't have a tantrum when we've run out of plastic bags. Honestly, you have the entire bottom of your pram to put your nappies, whaddya need a plastic bag for? GREEN BAGS WERE INVENTED FOR A REASON. I've spent too much time already complaining about plastic bag use on this blog...

7. It is not cute when your "unexpected item in the bagging area" is your 30kg child. It's just annoying. If you have primary school aged children, DO NOT go through self-serve.

8. Pack your own bags. Don't suck up and smile to us, then walk five metres away and re-pack your entire bag.

9. Offer for us to expect your backpack/suitcase. I'm always astounded by the amount of shit people seem to think is necessary to carry around with them in a shopping centre. Often you customers can look quite sketchy (and I know it's bad to judge, but) and we're a bit shy too ask you to let us look inside your bag, so we probably decide that we can't be fucked/are terrified of you pulling out a knife or something. It makes our job so much easier if you offer.

10. Don't threaten to kill us!!! This has actually happened. If we don't let you return something, move on. Pick on someone your own size. Ring up Head Office if it makes you feel better (i.e, scream at a telephone, not a person). Don't question my authority because I'm a female. You realise you've just embarassed yourself in the company of hundreds of people? And we might win a $20 voucher from a store manager from having to deal with you? Ugh.

Enough said.

a few things i have learned:

1. In my last post I referred to the fact that not having easy access to a mirror in my handbag was a problem. Today, I realised that the bathrooms at my fieldwork agency don't have mirrors. I have two really bad blind pimples at the moment and I was actually DYING all because I couldn't re-apply concealer or squeeze. When I finished work & got into my car, wow, I spent like ten minutes being vain and squeezing pimples. I'm totes glamorous.

2. I'm really bad at explaining anything.

3. I'm exceptionally incompetent at using parking money machines. As in, the boom gate ones you have to put money in before you leave. Having to reverse because I mis-aimed the machine/required length of my arm needed to reach down and place the money in, or even stepping out of the car (note to self: remember to switch handbrake from "drive" to "park" first) is really embarrassing when you're holding up five doctors in their BMW's behind you.

4. Don't eat sultanas and force other staff members who are unlucky enough to in the office at the same time to put up with the smell of your subsequent flatulence.

5. The incompetence of drivers on Glenhuntly Road is PHENOMENAL. It is NOT acceptable to (repetitively) perform three-point turns into peak-hour traffic, people!!!

i'm bored.

A mix I made for a friend and subsequently learnt how to use megaupload for:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KF72UHS9 (copy the link into browser, follow the link, download)

for all of my good friends who read this and are bored.

just another saturday night at home on my computer :)

Fun facts of my week; or basically just my observations on the Sandringham line train/landmarks around Prahan station and Greville street.

1. The American hip hop/"indie" band Why have an album called Alopecia. BUT I was reading an article the other day, I think it was in Vogue at the x-ray place or something, and Alopecia is also the name for a medical condition relating to loss of hair or baldness. I wonder if Why knew this? I'm sure they did. I don't get it.

2. The same people get the same train every single weekday for YEARS. It didn't quite hit me until one day this week when I got the train to work placement. I haven't got the train in peak hour for about two years yet I recognized everyone except the school kids. Wow.

3. Also on the train, WHAT IS WITH this trend of rolling down knee-high socks? I mean, it was fucking five degrees. We used to hitch the skirts up, but we were at least sensible enough to wear tights. These teenage girls were wearing school shirts with pink bra's underneath (no jumper, wtf?), eating tee-vee snacks, with bare legs. At 7:45am in the morning. OMFG.

4. It's really really snobby, but I really got off on the fact that I'm 99% sure I was the only person on this train to be listening to Bibio, or follow Flashlight Tag on tumblr.

5. Getting the train has made me realise my reliance on the mirror in my car. The driver's side flap with mirror has become a necessity for touching up my concealer at red lights. I can't believe I've turned into one of 'those' people. I need to invest in a compact mirror for my handbag.

6. My morning trip on public transport to work placement meant I a) had no-one idea where I had to walk (Prahan station: label your fucking streets) and b) hence arrived forty minutes early. I decided to go for a mini-walk around the block, which meant all around Wesley college & the Victorian College of the Deaf before reaching what I think was St.Kilda road/street. Wesley college security staff kept looking at me funny, clearly I wasnt a sibling or a parent, but perhaps they were too embarrassed to ask me if I was lost. Probably blasting CL Sosa didn't work in my favour. However, WHY was this (see photo below) advertising car parked in the driveway of Victorian College for the Deaf?



OH YES, LET'S "IGNITE THE SPARK"

7. Anyway I actually have an excuse have an for being home on a Saturday night because I went to the doctor on Thursday night and apparently I have bronchitis. I took a day off yesterday to have a blood test and an x-ray and sleep and sit in bed and watch the Secret Life of Us. Boo!!! But, as I sent in a text-message to someone this morning, I LOVE DRUGS (calm down, I was referring to anti-histamines, even though according to my mother they haven't been working because I insist on cutting them up and they're supposed to be swallowed whole, but I can't swallow tablets). Oh well. They might be placebos anyway, ITS PSYCHOLOGICAL PEEPS

Secret Life, shower, read & blast with my new in-ear earphones that keep falling out of my ears, sleep. NA NIGHT xxxxxxxxxx