Private Island

From that fantastically chosen title of mine, you are probably thinking that this latest blog will be about me owning a private island and vacationing there every now and then with a few of my besties and/or family.

Now I mean this in the most polite way possible, but, and you have no idea how much it hurts me to say, you are in fact WRONG!  .... I do not in fact have a Private Island of my own in that Caribbean, although I will admit how nice that would be! That would, however, imply that I am secretly rich and able to just buy a piece of land in the middle of beautiful clear water out in an almost perfect climate.

I am not rich, nor have I been saving for 400 years to be able to afford said Island. No ... no, this is merely a distant dream of mine at the moment, a bit like owning a property in the South of France.

HOWEVER, a dream it is, and not to be reckoned with .... and I will let you in on a little secret, if you want something bad enough, and you put in the right amount of effort and hard work, you will eventually get it. I’m talking as realistic as you can get in this situation, if you turned around to someone and said, well, I want a pink elephant with blue stripes in my backyard to keep my pet giraffe with the bell around its neck company .... well that’s probably unlikely to happen ... I’m not ruling it’s possibility out all together, I’m just saying there is a slim chance of that occuring.

ANYWAY .... I think my aspiration to own an island one day is not THAT far fetched .... you never know what’s around the corner – that’s the beauty of life!

So when I’m older and I have purchased and jazzed up said island and I’ve bought the boat that I can water ski behind and the sea plane that I can skydive out of, I’ll let you know.

Who know’s, I might even name one of the beaches after you!

Metal Images

You know how you get those images in your head when someone says something. It triggers mental pictures and thoughts that you otherwise wouldn’t have had.

Well, that happened to me today!

My mum had left our super radical spaceship like vacuum outside. She had been vacuuming the car and had come in for lunch. Anyway, she said to me, “just keep an eye on my vacuum outside would you? I don’t want anyone steeling it!”

Now, one would think that the proper mental image here would be someone driving along, spotted an easy target, thought ‘sweet as, free vacuum’, pinched it and then drove off ... Everyone’ different, I just thought this would be classed as the norm in said situation!

However, that’s not the case ... You see my though process is quite different and this was yet another chance for my imagination to let loose!

See instead of a car, I just picture someone nicking the vacuum and running down the street with it ... Why they are running is beyond me ... maybe they wanted the exercise and the fresh air!

Secondly ... it wasn’t a person that I had a mental image of ... It was Speedy Gonzales!

Why my subconscious chose a little Mexican Mouse running around with a sombrero pinching my vacuum is unfathomable ... but I can’t control that ... after all, it’s my SUB-conscious.

Bonjur ... Possibly Maybe!

Bonjur – I’m pretty sure that’s how you would spell it in English ... just in case it’s not and I accidentally said something like ‘slimy chickens’ in Portuguese, what I meant to actually say was ‘hello’ in French!
As France is one of my newest obsessions ... notice how I excluded Paris from this ... I have never been to Paris, and don’t get me wrong, I think (from what I’ve seen and heard) that it is a beautiful city ... and don’t get me started on the architecture. Being an architecture student, Paris evokes some sort of longing architectural passion in me! ... I’m absolutely in love with its French architecture ... as I am with a lot of other architecture ... but that’s all beside the point and I’m rambling again. The thing is, there is just something about the South of France, the little villages and towns, the beaches that are oh so close and those little coffee shops that scream ‘come inside, hot, sweet, caffeinated goodness ... drink me and marvel at my deliciousness!’ It all just sparks an excitement in me! I would very much like to possibly maybe live there someday ... part time!

Eventually I think it would be absolutely amazing to go and study or even work as an architect in France or London or somewhere like that!

I would also absolutely looove to travel to Greece one day, Santorini in particular and Athens, and anywhere else you can think of around the world!

SANTORINI - In the Greek Islands!

As you probably have already gathered, I have an insane thirst for travel! ... and Architecture ... I think it’s amazing to explore different cultures and fantastically fascinating!

Well .. this post has mainly been about my infatuation with travel and the South of France at the moment, however given the current circumstances, I really don’t care ... I feel like rambling about the South of France, so I’m going to ramble about the south of France!

This is a little town in the South of France called 'Plan De La Tour' ... Isn't she pretty?!

.... Okay, I think I’m done rambling about France.

Onto another subject, the weekend that just passed, I went to a basketball game ... now I really really LOVE basketball ... watching it, playing it, coaching it! ... it’s an awesome sport ... for those who aren’t that into basket ball .... just skip reading this paragraph.

Okay .... well I waited until the last minute to tell you to skip reading the above paragraph, so you had to put up with me talking about basketball anyway .... it’s not like I can just insert new words in the middle of a sentence now can I?

I really don’t have any awesome closing paragraph or anything today ... so I will just say one thing:

Life is what you make it ... SO MAKE BUBBLE GUM! 

Pirates

I went to the premier night of Pirates of the Caribbean on Stranger Tides last night. I'm not going to lie to you, it was a little bit freaking awesome!! I went with some of my besties, and I didn't get back home until about 1:00 AM ... and I had to wake up again the next morning at 7, the thing is, I felt really really energised and I am still really energetic and enthusiastically excited!! ... I guess that's what a dose of Captain Jack does!
It was not as good as the original however, but what is .. usually most sequels are a bust, I think Pirates has done a good job at keeping even them up in the box office ratings!

This fourth installment in one of the most epic quadriligies of our time, was directed by Rob Marshall ... Now I'm not sure if many of you know that he was the director of movies such as 'Chicargo' and 'Memoirs of a Geisha' ... Not titles that you would generally relate to a Pirates of the Caribbean movie that's for sure, however, given the circumstances, I must say that the movies didn't completely go down in flames, again despite not having the talented direction or Gore Vebinski like the Pirates previous movies. The script was easy to follow however somewhat predictable at times and definitely not as funny as the previous movies .... Captain Jack Sparrow still had his dry sense of humour, but on a more watered down scale, but I definitely will say this ... the fantastic performances of Geoffrey Rush, Kevin McNally, Penelope Cruz, Ian McShane and of course the one and only Johnny Depp, were intensely exciting and passionate and they still brought that much needed essence to their character that absolutely brought, what could have been a disastrous movie, up into what I would rate, on a scale of 1 - 10 ..... 6 awesome's.

Moving on from the fact (which you have probably guessed already) that I have a major celebrity crush on Johnny Depp .... I would like to ask you all a question ... yes ... that would imply that I had actually been thinking about this for some time ... "What's that? she is actually thinking! ... holy crap run!" ... no .... In my recent outing of said awesome Pirates movie ... I got into a heated discussion with one of my friends about whether or not Disney will do yet another sequel in this awe inspiring series of Pirates and Caribbean and Johnny Depp Awesomeness. This is basically how the conversation played out:
(For reasons beyond me I have decided to give my friend an alias .... so instead of his actual name ... I will be calling him CS .... short for Captain Shapera)

CS : Will and Elizabeth weren't in this one .... Do you think they will be in the next one?

Me : *perplexed* Next one?

CS : Yeah, apparently they are planning on doing up to 7 sequels ... they were planning it from the start!

Me : What ... No way .... NO because they weren't even planning on doing a sequel to the first movie ... however given the fact that it did so well at the box office ... they said 'okay ... we can totally do another one now' ... or something along those lines ... then they said .. 'well okay, lets shoot 2 back to back' ... hence how the whole POTC 2 and 3 came about .... NOW .... they went to the script writers and basically said ... 'we need 2 sequel scripts for POTC .. back to back' and the writers then pretty much said 'oh shit .... what are we going to do for 2 more sequels .... we are out of mad ideas' ..... ANYWAY  .... when they started shooting number 2 the script writers had not even finished the 3rd script ... and they had a lot of problems with budget and all that jazz ... that's basically how the TRILOGY came about .... the idea to do a 4th installment was up to how well ratings were and how far they could push the boundaries ... but lets face the facts shall we ... nothings permanent in Hollywood.

CS : *silence* ...

.... I'm guessing he was wondering when the hell I was going to shut up and let him get a word in!

And they call me the movie buff in the group!!!

Killer Kitchen Implements

I deemed it necessary today to let you all know with complete and utter class the I TOTALLY GOT MY STITCHES OUT OF MY HAND TODAY ... HELL YES! As graceful as I could possibly sound over a form of digital communication, where it is incredibly hard to convey what emotions are running through me at this time ... I think that sentence sums it all up pretty well.
It’s sort of gross though, the big swollen red mark with a slice of flesh still kind of missing on my once, may I say, attractive finger ... okay, well it was as attractive as a pinkie finger can get, which in my opinion is pretty damn good looking!

But I have accepted the fact that I will have a scar across the base of the smallest, most helpless finger on my hand, seriously, it hardly seems fair, the poor little finger probably gets picked on by all the other fingers, purely because of its size, and then I go and give it a healthy scar to maybe toughen it up a bit ... and now I’m thinking that it’s going to get bullied some more.

I am feeling so guilty right now. I’m so sorry finger, please forgive me ... without you I can’t look posh and hold you away from my cup while sipping tea.

I really don’t mind having a scar on my finger, honestly, it matches the one I have on the other hand, the one I got while chopping carrots in the kitchen. Seriously, I swear the kitchen implements are out to get me, they get smart on day and decide to band together and gang up on me.

The pots and pans will form one giant super stainless steel kitchen pots and pans robot that will shoot cutlery out of its pot lid hands.

I’m never cooking again!

On another note though, I’m going to share this with you because I thought it was amusing, well in my opinion its funny, whether you find it amusing or not I guess is completely up to you.

This afternoon I was in my room studying and my Dad yells out “Athena, come here, quick!” so I race out to the lounge room with a million things running through my mind as to what my Dad so urgently needs me for. “What??” I said with a slightly, what I can only imagine to be a bewildered look on my face. “Look at the size of Julia Gillard’s ear lobes!” He says to me, all urgency gone in his voice, “It looks like Spock gone wrong!”

I laughed so hard I almost collapsed.

So the moral of these events:

Number 1) Don’t let your kitchen utensils get the better of you. Always stay sharp, you have to be

      one step ahead of them at all times, or they will get you when you least expect it!

And number 2) There isn’t really any moral in this. Oh wait no, I take that back, the moral is .....

              Those heavy earrings will only harm your lobes in later life!

Birthday Invites and Dust Busting

So it's my sisters birthday at the end of this month and I designed some invitations for her party. She wants to have it at Movie World! Hollywood on the Gold Coast .. pffft unlikely, I don't see Courtney Cox walking down the main streets or in line for the Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster ... and may I just say that maybe I should be getting some kind of payment or compensation for giving Movie World advertising!
Anyway, because she's really really into Harry Potter at the moment (as I'm sure a lot of us were at that age, and still are, at ages 17 + ) I decided that I would create such an awesometastic invitation for her that it would beat any retail invitations, hands down!
And I did. But the problem is, that I did such an awesome job, (that I was quite proud of if I do say so myself ... I'm not egotistical at all ... I just like them!) that I wanted to keep them for myself. I didn't want her to take them to school and hand them out to her friends, I created these with my own hands! I wanted to keep them. I even constructed hand made little envelopes with the houses out of Harry Potter on them (Slytherin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw - I apologise to all the die-hard HP fans out there if I spelt the house names wrong) I was so proud of my creative efforts.

I thought about it, and decided that it probably would be a good idea to actually give them to my sister to give to her friends, after all I did initially start making them for her. So I let her have her invitations. But as a compromise, I took a photo of them so I could keep a digital copy and the memories!

Also I thought that I would share that we got a new vacuum today .. and may I add ... a pretty radical vaccume! ... It looks like its about to launch into space, and/or crash landed on earth from space in all its suction awesomeness! It's like a little bug shaped UFO with vaccume bags for aliens! Definitely a superior technologically advanced dust busting machine!
It is a lot better than the old broken one we had. I don't mean to sound horrible or hurt its feelings or anything, but it just wasn't doing it's job. We had to let it go, fortunately it wasn't getting paid a cent and did not have a family to feed so it was an easy task!

So rather than just skimming over top of the dirt, then the dirt turning around and looking up at me saying "HA HA, your not getting me, I am far to good for your crappy vaccume" in their arrogant tone, I suck it all up now with no arguments at all!

So screw you dirt!

Mother's Day oh .. and Friday

Awell Hellooo!

How are we all on this fine Mothers Day?

Lets hope we are all as awesome as I am ... although, let me tell you ... it took some work getting to the mood I'm in now, I didn't just wake up this morning, jump out of bed like a ninja and evidently was in the best mood one could be in at the ungodly hour of 7:00 AM on a Sunday! BUT, the main thing is that I an in a fantastic mood now. The day started with moaning and groaning as I realised that yes, it actually was that dreaded time to crawl out of bed. Waking myself up just enough to be considered barely conscious to make breakfast I realised that today was in fact Mothers Day, and what kind of daughter would I have been while living at home and not making Mum breakfast in bed, so she got my famous microwaved scrambled eggs and toast, OH and coffee of course!

I woke up a bit more and after we gave Mum her presents I went back down stairs so I could eat and get ready to go out to Wivenhoe Dam for a Mothers Day Picnic with the family! OH and guess what! ... I totally drove out there! 2 hours baybee! ... I know that probably doesn't sound that interesting to you but I love driving so therefore it's incredibly awesome news for me!

So that was basically my mothers day! So besides having a great day today and bragging, I thought I would tell you something bad, you know just to even up the equation and not make you feel to bad if your day way crap.

My Friday night was crap also, so there you go, no need to feel jealous of my great Sunday because my Friday balanced the scale!

So the morning was okay and then I got out of bed and it all started to go down hill from there. First, I remembered that it was Friday, and that may seem like a good thing, but Friday is my cleaning day, which evidently means what it sounds like, I had to clean a two storey house that has had 3 young kids trashing the place since Tuesday. Now I want you to know that I really don't mind cleaning it that much, but I was in a foul mood that day!

When I accepted the fact that I had to do this, and that it was better to be positive about it then to actually whinge about it all so that the time might seem to go quicker (according to psychological studies ... apparently, don't quote me, I'm completely under qualified for digging around in other peoples minds) I decided to drag myself out of bed and get ready for work.
Now the rest of the day I'm not going to bore you with, same things happened basically, I studied, worked and cleaned, it wasn't until about 4 / 4:30 PM came around that thing started to turn pear shaped again!

I was starting to put the dishes away from earlier that day (I know I very lazy) and as I was going to put the coffee cups away up in the top cupboard, I dropped one and when I went to catch it (in a weird way might I add, I don't know what I was thinking trying to catch it with my back hand) it hit the bench at the same time and shattered over my hand. I looked down and my right pinkie figure and ring figure to assess the damage I might have done. My first thoughts were "okay, well I don't think it that bad, not much damage there at all" and then the blood started to gush out! It wouldn't stop, either my platelets were being really lazy and not clotting my blood, or I had done some serious damage.
My thoughts then were things like "Oh my God I am going to die of blood loss, no time to get to the emergency room now, either I'm going to die here on my kitchen floor with my lasts words being unpleasant cursing, or I'm going to have to stitch myself back together myself .. wheres the sewing kit?"

After Dad looked at the damage, he basically said "you'll need a stitch" and I was thinking 'oh great, well are you going to do it, or would you like me to attempt it .. there's no time for Doctors now! If we wait I might loose my hand!' ... But as I talked myself out of my over dramatization I thought ' okay, well maybe there is some time to drive 5 minutes down the road for a qualified Doctor to look at my hand, maybe, just maybe, I actually WON'T bleed to death!'

So that's how my fight with a coffee cup landed me with a syringe full of anesthetic injected into my pinkie finger and two stitches to hold me together. Anyway, as it turns out, I'm not going to die from blood loss, but I could get an infection if I don't keep it covered and clean, which probably wouldn't be the best thing in the world!

Anyway, I'm off to do some of the simplest tasks in life however find them impossibly difficult due to my new found injury ... God, am I looking forward to next Friday!

Adulthood Sucks!

Adulthood is not all it’s cracked up to be! And this is coming from a person who has only just recently entered it!

Upon receiving my college paper back after it had been marked (unfairly may I add) ... I took one look at the mark on the front cover and my heart almost jumped out of my chest ... I was going through the grieving process ... OVER A PAPER!

Now, I know what you’re thinking, ‘one little letter, it probably wasn’t even that bad at all’, but let me tell you this, that one little letter pushed me into my mighty consumption of many bags of pineapple lumps and whatever chocolate was left over in the fridge from Easter.

I was unstoppable! The radar that I forgot excised reared its ugly face as my overwhelming desire to eat any chocolate in sight consumed my passion even for adrenaline at that time! (Which might I add is saying something, adrenaline and as it turns out, chocolate, is my kryptonite.) Chocolate to me is like putting a drink in front of a recovering alcoholic. Wave that bad boy in front of me and you might as well say goodbye to your arm!

I would also like to warn you that I tend to go very hyperactive in the presence of chocolate. Let me tell you that hyper activeness in not at all the same as energetic. Energetic is the adjective that would be used to describe a playful puppy, and I’ll tell you that I was nowhere near resembling a puppy at this time! I think that if you tried to heavily sedate me, wear me out by making me swing on that damn ab swing pro and peel my eyes open to make me watch speed in high definition and on fast forward I would still have enough energy to fly around the world 8 times and feel no jet lag what so ever!

Now I know what you are probably thinking! ‘She’s a total loon, maybe a few too many drinks she might have had today ... its one paper’ ... on the contrary though ... I have not been intoxicated with any alcohol nor am I insane (at least I don’t think I’m insane.)

However, this particular paper was the paper of all papers. If any one of Einstein’s theories were compared to this architectural paper, then I think I know which one would triumph. Considering the amount of work that I had done on it! But no ... The markers of my paper thought otherwise and unfortunately, now ... I am wallowing in the guilt of consuming every inch of chocolaty goodness in the fridge, which was evidently caused by this paper. I sure that it will now start a chain reaction that will cause me to spiral downwards and crawl into a hole filled with crunchies and caramel filled chocolates and not come out. Then because the world will have a student with a half finished course, it will be in short supply of architects which will then mess with the entire space time continuum and I will eventually be blamed for the cause of the end of the world!

Okay ... so maybe that was a little over dramatic. I can always resubmit this paper anyway!

Bending the Rules

I recently went to the cinema to see the latest addition of the 'Scream' movies. I must admit that 'Scream 4' was pretty good, and lived up to it's reputation for being a scary movie. The slogan was, 'Scream 4 breaks all the rules.' Now if that were me creating a slogan for a movie, I would probably have said something like 'This is fictional horror! There are no rules at all! People are going to get killed no matter what 'rules' may be enforced.' But that's just me. All in all, I did enjoy it! ... I'm quite the movie buff. BUT the thing that I really hate about going to the multiplex, is the ad's at the beginning of the movie. The commercials for other movies are all right, after all, I do like to know what I would plan on seeing next time. But the commercials from TV are just absolute crap! ... You go to the theatre to get escape reality, and sitting there watching a massive screen almost 10 times bigger than the poxy little one that I watch my DVDs on at home displaying the new ab swing pro, is not escaping reality! .. I don't want to be reminded that I was to lazy to do any exercise that day.
Somehow they will also manage to slip in a cleaning product commercial as well. That's another thing that I don't need reminding about, that my house is absolutely filthy!

So in the event that you may find yourself in a situation where you are reminded of reality when you absolutely don't want to because it will probably make you scream out to the world 'I HATE BEING AN ADULT' by all means ... feel free to waltz down the aisle and dance out to the candy bar .. because after all ... what can't candy fix?

Revenge seeking ant

I have decided to start a blog! You have probably already guessed this because you are reading it. BUT ... I must have you know that this is my first post EVER! So feel privileged! You may be the first person EVER to read it! And the reason why I keep putting 'EVER' in capitals is because I think that it deserves capital letters. Ever is one of the most comprehensible words there is. I think that, used in the right contexts, this word could rule all words in the English language!
Worship it. Respect it. Fear it.

As much as I could go on and on about how 'EVER' is a fantastically awesome word for all to desire and worship. I won't. I think I've bored you enough with that don't you?

So, in my efforts to defer the subject I will mention something completely off topic and totally random, working in context with this segment. Ants! Rather than bore you with the inner workings of Ants, I will just mention this: there is quite possibly, THE BIGGEST ANT I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE right near me. Watching me. Stalking me! I know this because I swear that I saw the exact same ant yesterday and tried to squash it. So not only is it a stalker ant, but its a survivor ant! No matter how many times I have tried to destroy it, it just keeps coming back! It's like those villan's in super hero movies that, no matter how many times you try and kill them, they keep coming back because they have sworn revenge on you! That's what this ant it. A massive, surviving, revenge seeking little insect with nothing better to do with its time then to creep me out!

I doubt I'll be able to sleep tonight.