Song in the Silence

So we had maudlinrose's brother here for dinner along with four of his friends. My favourite moment was when maudlinrose, tamarillow and I were discussing old forms of contraception. We were talking about sponges soaked in vinegar from the couch came... "covered in whipped cream" and we cracked up. He couldn't have timed it better if he'd tried.

Saw Natasha Beddingfield do a terrible cover of something while at the gym this morning. I think it was a cover; I vaguely recognised it. I don't know why I thought of that now. My gym has new fancy cardio machines which you can plug an ipod or some other sort of memory device into. I may have to get an ipod at some point, if only so I don't have to listen to the music channel on the TVs if I dislike the music. I have been listening to a lot of Elizabeth Marvelly recently. I bought the CD just before Christmas on impulse from Borders and I really like it. She's a young Rotorua opera singer who is currently on tour with some guy named Paul Potts. Her voice is lovely - very clear and almost crisp, if an opera singer can be said to be crisp, and easy to listen to. Her CD has a range of things, from opera covers to covers of modern songs such as Love Can Build A Bridge to a couple of original pieces to a couple of Maori songs, including a glorious rendition of Tarakihi.

It's weird being back at work and knowing that I only have four more days at Baldwins before I go to Simpson Grierson. I realised today that when they asked me what I'd need to be comfortable at my new station, I completely forgot to mention my kneely ergonomic chair and ergonomic keyboard. Hopefully this can be sorted out next week. I've got mixed feelings about being back - yes, it's good to see everyone again, and I'm glad that the Christmas break wasn't the last I saw of people - but at the same time, I am aware that I'm mostly putting things in order so that other people don't have trouble whenn they take over my files. Plus, my period started today and my emotions have been swinging around and doing the polka. It's not usually this bad, I don't think. And it's humid, windy and raining.

I'm backstitching my fourth figure on my brother's wedding present. If I applied myself, I could mostly get it done tonight. I think I'll get at least the rest of the people backstitching done, but maybe not all the lettering. I had to redo a bit on it - I did one coat in the wrong colour, changed a dress colour and a light pink to a different light pink. I decided that the light pink wasn't contrasting enough and chose to use the light pink varigated silk that was in my sister's wedding sampler. I like the thought of that continuity and connection. Also, it looks really good.

...did an online typing test the other day and ended up with 70 words per minute, which is all right, considering it was an annoying test and the words weren't in any sort of structural order which makes things easier.

My Kapcon LARP character arrived today. I think I will enjoy playing her, or at least I will when I'm not really pissy and easily annoyed. She's competent and I appreciate that. I'm also getting organised for running Honour of the Family again. I even bought a prop!

Bought manga yesterday since Borders was have a 3 for the price of 2 sale. I now have four more volumes of Saiyuki Reload (leaving only one or two to get) and two volumes of Petshop of Horrors (eight more to get that I know of). PSoH is actually really sweet. It's pretty screwy and bittersweet in parts, but is a lot of fun.

A couple of years ago, I started writing down what year I bought a book when I put it in my catalogue and I've done this fairly consistently since 2004 when I did my major cataloguing work. Since I've started recording the year (and some of them I can guess, such as most cancelled Hamilton City Library are from 2001 when I worked there) I've mostly purchased about 100 books a year. Last year, not including books I bought in 2007 and sold again, I bought 132. That's like a book every three days.