Prepeare To CRINGE, AWW and ROFL!

Miles introduced me to this series of videos yesterday.

Today is a Leap Day, and I MUST share this with you:



Skip to 2:09 for my favourite bit ^.^

At my Intermediate school the boys had a bit of a thing for playing with their Wrestling 'Action Figures' (Dolls). The school-wide obsession became so much that the teachers gave up and ordered the Math, Woodworking and Art teachers to help them build a scale replica of the WWF/WCW ring in a spare classroom, since the boys were breaking too many desks when their enthusiasm levels outstripped the durability of their chosen playing field.

As an obsessive crafter, I was pretty impressed by the level of craftsmanship and attention to detail involved in the project. The banding together of the ENTIRE male population of my school
in dedication to their labour of love was also impressive. Never before had I seen people so united over something they loved, and so determined to work together for a common end.

Now if they had had kitten-days the girls would have gotten in behind the project too!

(But lets be honest here, what 11-12-year-old boy really gives a toss about girls? Interest in the female of the species doesn't hit until puberty!)

~Peri

HOLY VLOGGING, BATMAN!

Thank you for reminding me, Honor! Now I'll get a 'partial success' on this mini-goal XD

<3

~Peri

Z?

Right now I'm so tired I've lost all my words.

Missed a day of medication this week, thanks to my idiot self not being organised. Boy was that fun! I shouldn't have worked yesterday. Slurring at the customers is NOT a good look for Noms'R'Us, no matter how much weed the Chilled Foods Dayshift Gimps smoke on their breaks.

What can I say? It was a Tweedle-Loudmouth-free-shift. I'm a sucker for those.

I need to have a rage about another co-worker, but I can save it for another day when I'm more coherent.

There have been more congenial co-worker relations, however. ANOTHER trip down to the Milton Wool Mill's Factory Shop with a mate from Butchery and her Mum.

GOOD NEWS:
Ashford, the makers of spinning wheels in Ashburton, has bought the machines that are used to prepare their fibre and have employed some people to run them.
BAD NEWS:
They did NOT buy the wool-spinning machines, so the factory shop WILL be closing and the majority of the original factory staff WILL become permanently unemployed.

In other news:
My Yarn Stash is now organised. I need to do some s-e-r-i-o-u-s knitting over the next few days, since it is heading into Autumn here and my stash is threatening to go out of control if I don't keep ontop of it.

Last year my poor broke studenthood kept me from purchasing yarn, while giving me copious amounts of free time to procrastinate on study by knitting.

This year, I'm spending most of my time at work, and the extra hours are taking. . . fluffy form.

(At least if I spend the money of yarn, I can't spend it on binges, right?)

And: Miles took me to see this tonight.


Two words: Fucking brilliant.

Now for bed. Sleep is AMAZING.



Sing Soft Kitty for me?

~Peri

Red and Black, We've got Your Back.

12:51pm, February 22nd 2011.

Heart ripped from a city.

A nation rocked to the core.



I remember sunny afternoons in the Square, coffee with friends, watching international tourists take their photos outside the Cathedral. Picturing Sugra's exploits and laughing silently at the poor cops on duty. Shopping up and down the streets now cordoned off in the Red Zone. Staying at Cokers, the wonderful paintings, the scruffy charm and the Swap-A-Book and Free Clothing Trade boxes, now gone forever. My favourite bookshop, motorbike shop, comic shop, the Illicit store and Real Groovy all gone.

I spent last night talking with my neighbour, who is herself a Quake Refugee. She had to move to continue her course of study, since the Christchurch Polytechnic isn't exactly in full working order. Watching the video footage on the news, sharing memories. Her gasps of shock when she saw familiar faces on the news footage. Trying to bolster her confidence that Christchurch will be rebuilt, that the continues shakes are not some new disaster, merely the faultlines resettling for another long sleep of millennia.

The Christchurch-that-was shall live on in memory, tender embers from which she will be reborn. Phoenix-like in her renewed splendour, the heart of Canterbury will rise again after the time of birthing pains is done.

~Peri

P.S.
While there have been two major quakes that have pretty much totalled Christchurch, the aftershocks and smaller quakes now number in the tens of thousands. 185 people lost their lives on February 22nd last year, making it the second most deadly Earthquake in New Zealand history.

Behaviour Modification Through Positive Reinforcement

If it works for training horses, it should work for me, right?

Except I'm nowhere near as pretty as a horse.



(Yes, I have a totally non-anthropocentric standard of beauty. We're all ugly monkeys. Deal with it.)

(Also, this may or may not be triggering for people with EDs.)

In order to get myself OUT of my habits of bingeing in an attempt to improve/anaesthetize my depression with food and boredom eating, I've worked out a reward system with myself.

Side note: I've only had takeaways once this year, because Miles bought it. I don't buy chips, ice cream, biscuits, any form of junk food really. I do indulge my sweet tooth with a little chocolate when Irma brings the PMS rages, but otherwise nutritionally void calories make no sense to me. So I end up bingeing on "healthy food", since I don't have any other kind in the house. This is nutritionally brilliant, but not good if you're on an antidepressant that roots your liver and thus one of the main drivers of your metabolism.

My system is thus:
Using FitDay, which thankfully takes BMR into account for my total daily caloric balance sheet. . .
Every whole 100cal deficit at the end of the day earns me one point.
Anything 1,000cal or more in deficit for the day voids the count and no credits will be earned for the day. Therefore a maximum of 9 points per day can be earned by food. (No fasting, it fucks your metabolism)
I must consume at least 100% of RDI of Fibre & Vitamin C.
Every whole 30min of calisthenics earns a bonus point. (Maximum of 2 per day)
Every whole 10min of cardio exercise earns 1 bonus point. (Maximum of 4 per day)
Exceeding those exercise limits will void any bonus points that would otherwise have been earned.
One rest day per week, minimum. (Rest days are shopping-on-internets days.)

Every point earned is 50cents($USD) to be spent on Etsy/Ravelry/DBNY/Interweave. Oh be still my beating heart! Ultimate Motivation right there.

Obviously the point to this is to get back in shape without letting my disordered habits go completely batshit and take over my life again.

Lol, we'll see how well that goes, won't we?

~Peri

An Unscheduled Break In Your Regular Program (Randomness)

Am I the only one who finds Capchas with blots of different colour or really warped text intimidating? Every time I see one I feel like I'm about to fail a basic intelligence test and be declared incompetent or something.

I've seen a lot of them today. You may or may not have noticed me being a good girl and trying to catch up with you all. Work completely annihilated my ability to concentrate earlier this week, so I was quite a bit behind with you guys. Yikes!

I dunno what it was, but I seemed to get pretty much every single last BITCH in town over the course of the last 5 days. And when I say bitch, I mean bitch. These people take derogatory condescension and turn it into an ART. There must be some kind of night school for it or something!

I wonder if I can get lessons? It's not something I'd like to deliberately cultivate, but you have to learn to box if people are going to keep jabbing you in the face.

Subject change: SHAZAM!

Ya know what blew my mind the other day?

(Ok, so it was three months ago, but we need something POSITIVE in this post before I get all pickled and bitter in here)

Related Fact: There is a saying about how even when you're tired and grumpy and feeling like the ugliest thing ever to stagger along on two legs, there will be someone looking at you and thinking 'Damn, they're hot!'
Related Sub-Fact: Everyone agrees this is total BULLSHIT.

What blew my mind was finding out that this is true.

(Well, it's true when beer goggles are involved.)

I was walking home after my shift on a Sunday night, tired and sweaty and grumpy and listening to some Diggy Diggy Hole remixes to try to cheer myself up. Blowing past all the other pedestrians who were out drinking and enjoying their days off, trying to get home to shower and play some Minecraft.

As I was stomping through The Exchange in my khaki and steelcaps when some random, really buff guy comes running up from behind me, cuts round in front and waves his hands at me to stop. I pulled my headphones off and readied my keys Wolverine-Style in my pockets in case he was simply bailing me up for his mates to grab. I figured I was close enough to the taxi stand and the Casino for s good scream to get me some help.

Imagine my surprise when he then backs up a step or two and drunkenly admits to wanting to grab my ass (Da crap? Nobody has hands big enough for that!) and compliments me before his thoroughly embarrassed mates dragged him off tot he next pub.

What. The. Fuck?!?

He was really buff so I gave him a hug, but I didn't warm him that I wear my hair in an ibis clip that is angled to eyegouge the unwary. (Remember, kids: Hairpins can be handy concealed weapons!)

I nearly pissed myself laughing.



Completely. Fucking. Bizarre.

~Peri

Happy Valentines Day!

For this year's Social Conformity Day, I give you a Valentine.



You, my dearest reading person, are gorgeous and wonderful and I love you to little bits and pieces.



If nobody else spoils you rotten today, I demand that you do it. Treat yourself. Take a bubble bath with a glass of wine, get yourself some pretty new paints or some jewellery, curl up with a book, FUS RO DAH some guards off a cliff, punch some trees, whatever keeps your vessel buoyant.



Because you are fantastic and need to be spoiled rotten on a regular basis. Don't let anyone or anything tell

So Happy Valentines Day to you all.



I love you no matter what you look like. Doesn't matter what gender you are, what you dress like, if you prefer Marmite or Vegemite, who you like to have your Adult Relations with, if you're here reading this I LOVE YOU.

~Peri



P.S.
All this sappy stuff with flowers and cupids is going to give me emotional diabetes pretty soon. It's giving my poor emotionally stunted, stoic cultural mores the shaking terrors. What can I say? You guys bring out the softy I try to keep safely locked away in the dungeon next to the Good Twin. It's probably a good thing, she doesn't get as much daylight as she should.

Mukashi, Mukashi no Kyou no Watakushitachi - Once Upon an Us.

I'm slowly working my way through "All Blacks Don't Cry" by John Kirwan, and reached a really hard chapter.

I'm hating him SO MUCH right now, with a bitter, envious kind of hate.

Yup, he got depressed. But he was HAPPY before his depression, and could get happy again afterwards and:

HE. NEVER. FELT. SUICIDAL.

That lucky, lucky bastard.

Still, even if I've never been without some form of depression for longer and a few weeks in my 25 years I've had some pretty fun times AND I have found some amazing friends here who have stuck around through my whinging and whining over the years and are such an amazing blessing that this hardened sceptic could possibly, maybe, almost start believing in some form of deity or godhead.

Or at the very least that humankind isn't as completely abhorrent as my years of customer service work and exposure to the daily news would have me believe :p

This song popped up in my YouTube sidebar today, and I started crying little happy tears while watcing the video.

It's perfect.

I can't believe it. Some insanely talented Vocaloid fan has made something approaching the perfect song for the wonderful friends I've found here in Blogland. The beautiful people who have helped me through some really shitty times.



"The heart is something only others can see"

We see the truth of each other's hearts and hold up the bright mirror to reflect some light back along with our own when our mates are in places where they can't see anything but the dark mirror smack bang in front of them.

Thank you so much for your light, your brilliance and wonder and time when I'm locked in the dark places in my head. You shine the light at the cracks in the doors and windows to show me the way out.

I hope that one day I can return the favour, and show you how much you are loved in return.

~Peri

Learning Curve

Let it be noted that while Going Out! and Doing Things! can lead to blog fodder, so too can Staying In! and Doing Things!.

Actually, make that Staying In! and Learning Things!

(May you never, ever know just how many typos I had to remove from those two sentences.)

Let it also be noted that spinning totally rewires your hands and makes typing without errors pretty much impossible.

You see, a few weeks ago the urge to use my shiny then-new drop spindle for something was just too much for me to resist. I decided to break it in (Or take it's "Spin-ginity") by plying the two strands of yarn I had made on my Spud Stick.

Yup, I plied yarn for the first time.

All by myself, with a help from books and lovely people on Youtube.

Being your typical Kiwi, I figured I didn't need to do all that fancy mucking about with winding my singles into centre-pull balls (Despite actually owning the equipment to do so!) and associated setting-up nonsense. I simply chased the cat outside, put my improvised bobbins (Cut-up cardboard tubes) onto a jerry-rigged Lazy Kate (An old towel rail jammed into a half-open drawer), thought "She'll be right!" and proceeded to have at it like Monty Python's Black Knight.



Yeah, I pretty much got my ass handed to me by a handful of sheep hair.

-.-

You see, immediately following the initial period of complete ineptitude you inevitably experience while attempting to learn something new, I experience a corresponding period of INTENSE RAGE.

This period of rage at my own clumsiness immediately precedes the "Oh, duh!" moment of epiphany and total comprehension of the process, if I can only stick it through the rage instead of storming off in disgust.

Third Note: You probably don't want me around your children when I'm trying to learn something new.

You DEFINITELY don't want me around your children if they're young, impressionable and apt to repeat any interesting new words the surrounding big people come out with, or if they're not quite so young and easily horrified by the absurd behaviour of the supposedly older and more mature people around them.

(Read: Small children and teenagers)

Actually, you don't even want to be around me yourself. It's much smarter to go do some shopping, go visit your mother or take a walk or something. Clear out for a few hours for the sake of your own safety and untarnished innocence.

You see, the period of rage I experience when attempting to learn something new usually manifests itself with a lot of swearing, verbal abuse of the objects and process I am attempting to master, and very very occasionally, actual physical violence.

Not child friendly, or people friendly for that matter. I think I need to go apologise to my neighbours for the kind of language I subjected them to tonight.

However, despite all this I AM VICTORIOUS.

There is a tiny skein of very wonky yarn hanging in my shower to dry, but IT IS YARN.

AND I MADE IT.

I MADE IT MYSELF.



~Peri

Pops Gives Good Tips

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEHEHEHEHEHEEEEEE!

That was me trying to do an evil witchy cackle. Did it work?

Maybe I should just pull a smug face instead.



I went and got the spinning wheel! :D

For some reason, this being New Zealand and all, I was kinda expecting it to be an Ashford, but according to the little brass plaque it's a Sleeping Beauty instead.




It came with 4 bobbins and a 'Lazy Kate' (Sorry to all the Kates out there, it's a rather unfortunate name for what is basically just a bobbin holder/organisermejigger. It should be called something cool-sounding like Niddy-Noddy instead.)

From what I can work out, all it's missing is the drive band, but for $NZD145 it's in pretty good nick. Most second hand wheels I was looking at were easily double that.

To top it off, the power comapny sent me a crank-powered torch so I'm never "left in the dark again".

How sweet of them.

(Or maybe the hydro lakes are low enough for rolling blackouts this winter and they're just covering their asses?)

~Peri

BASTARD!

Dad just rang me.

He's in a theatre in Sydney, about to see TIM MINCHIN live.

I'm being eaten alive by jealousy.

That fucking skiting bastard.

Dad: Hey Peri, guess where I am? At XXX Theatre in Sydney, 40feet away from Tim's piano. He'll be on stage in 15mins.
Me: YOU SON OF A BITCH!
Dad: I take it you know my mother, then?
Me: Yeah, I knew both of them. YOU LUCKY BASTARD.
Mum: What?
Dad: *Tells Mum what I said*

At least being consumed by the burning fires of envy stops me from feeling depressed, ne?

He said something about souvenirs, and redeemed himself very slightly by putting me on the trail of potentially acquiring a spinning wheel of my very own.

I may forgive him before his 60th birthday, if he's lucky.

Tim fucking Minchin. I'd have his illegitimate ginger-haired lustchild!

It would be a redhead too. Dad's a ginger and I'm getting random orange strands in my regrowth. Maybe I'm going to go red instead of grey? We shall see.

~Peri

January Review and February Mini-Goals

Time to review.

The Mini-Goals I set for this month were these:

January Mini-Goals:
1) Play recorder for 10min a day
2) Begin building strength for Judo and practising footwork&turn-ins&breakfalls.
3) Vlog three times.
4) Post at least ONE of the THREE packages that have been gathering dust since March last year.
5) Crochet two granny-squares. TWO! You need to stash-bust in order to avoid the dreaded Yarn Diet.
6) Get mindless boredom-driven eating under control & Understand what is currently making you binge

How did I go?

1) FAIL! The recorder still remains untouched.
2) SUCCESS! I've increased my top weight for bicep curls, minutely increased my stamina and my form on Lat Pulldowns is MUCH BETTER!
3) SUCCESS! 1, 2 and 3! Read 'em and weep, bitches!
4) FAIL! I allowed the Reggo, Doctors and Yarn Sales to eat my spare cash. Bad budgeting!
5) SUCCESS! In fact, I made THREE. Unfortunately I went out and bought yarn specifically for it instead of decreasing the size of my Yarn Stash >.<; Addict? Me? Never! 6) SUCCESS! I am no longer beating boredom by eating. I have discovered that since I'm too damn lazy to cook when it's just me, so I end up snacking and consuming 1.5-2 times the recommended amount of calories for a chick my height&weight&age&activity level. Cook a damn dinner, Peri!

4/6, not bad, not bad.

Could be better.

Checking back over my New Year's Goals, s

February Mini-Goals:
1) Crochet three more Granny squares.
2) Find out what the requirements for passing the Full Class 6 License test, and how much it'll cost.
3) 10mins of recorder practise three times a week. (Maybe I was a little too ambitious about overcoming that phobia of being heard)
4) Work on increasing cardio fitness by doing 2km on the rower once a week and recording your time.
5) Get research images printed out for taking to Tattrix & price that snake ink up!
6) Vlog once a week AND do at least one photo-post at some point in the month.

Last month I did take start-point photos and record my weight, but I didn't take any measurements. Now I'm kicking myself for that, because I'm starting to see a bit more definition while the scales aren't co-operating due to a combination of Aunty Irma and the fact I'm building muscle. Muscle is more dense than fat and hence weighs more despite taking up less space.

Fuck you, scales. I have opposable thumbs and you don't.

~Peri