One Word Meme and a 123 meme

Saw these at Wendy's - looks like fun....

All you have to do is answer the questions with one word, and tag four people. Tag yourself if you want to play along.

1. Where is your cell phone? Bed
2. Your significant other? Who?
3. Your hair? Greying
4. Your mother? Muriel
5. Your father? John
6. Your favorite thing? Music
7. Your dream last night? Gone
8 Your favorite drink? Vodka
9. Your dream/goal? Travel
10. The room you’re in? Bookshop
11. Your hobby? Photography
12. Your fear? Falling
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Somewhere
14. What you’re not? Gay
15. Muffins? Occasionally
16. One of your wish list items? Gibson
17. Where you grew up? Liverpool
18. The last thing you did? phonecall
19. What are you wearing? Clothes
20. Favorite gadget? Camera
21. Your pets? None
22. Your computer? Laptop
23. Your mood? Anticipation
24. Missing someone? No
25. Your car? Corolla
26. Something you’re not wearing? Bathers
27. Favorite store? Bookshop
28. Like someone? Sure
29. Your favorite color? Blue
30. When is the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? Yesterday

123 meme:
The rules
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you. As always, tag yourself if so inclined.

"Friends of one of the others," the Dune man said. "Just friends from a village who wanted to see the spice sands."
Kynes turned away, "Fremen!"
- Dune by Frank Herbert

Unconscious Mutterings

1. Loneliness :: of the long distance runner


2. Traffic :: jam


3. Chaos :: bookshop


4. Burp :: 'scuse me


5. 500 :: D


6. Movie :: film


7. Coma :: -tose


8. Bark :: tree


9. Stare :: it's rude to


10. Angelina :: I so don't want to write "Jolie" but there's nothing else I can think of.

from here

Happiness is.... this week's collaboration.

With Janet. I don't know about you, but live music played well is always a happy experience for me. Unless you've been living in Outer Space you'd be aware that I saw The Cure in August '07 and absolutely loved the show. It still brings a smile to my face when I think about it. In June of this year Madame Snape went to a Robert Plant/Alison Krauss gig. A show I'd love to see too but I doubt Australia is on their tour agenda. Oh well, I'll just have to hang out for the full blown Led Zeppelin tour. :)

Happiness is...., originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

Saturday Photo Hunt

This week's theme is "bright". What could be brighter than the sun?

Sun crop 3, originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

Happy Birthday Paula

Paula, originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

Contemplating the approach of the big five-oh next year.

Memememememe

Saw this at Susan's.

1. What is the last thing you googled or searched for online?
ND (neutral density) filters
2. Who is the last person you kissed?
Uncle Brian - and it was a very chaste "goodbye, see you next year" type of kiss!
3. When is the last time you got flipped off? Or flipped someone off?
In jest, yesterday at my sisters - football banter. Not in jest, I can't remember.
4. What did you have for breakfast today?
Coffee
5. What was your favorite song or album when you were fourteen?
Led Zeppelin II (1969, sheesh!)
6. What is the last thing you laughed out loud about?
this

Tag yourself if you feel so inclined.

Doctor Page OBE

The University of Surrey is proud to confer the honorary degree of Doctor of the University to Jimmy Page for services to the music industry. The award was made on Friday, June 20 at Guildford Cathedral. Jimmy generously signed a guitar (see attached photo) which will be given away in a competition at the upcoming GuilFest festival. Surrey’s involvement with GuilFest this year celebrates its innovative music programmes that reflect the diversity of contemporary musical practice.
James Patrick “Jimmy” Page, OBE is a world renowned guitarist and composer. Born in Middlesex in 1944, he grew up in Epsom, Surrey where he developed a passion for both painting and music. Throughout the 1960’s he was in demand as a session musician, leading eventually to his becoming a member of The Yardbirds. After various personnel changes, the band renamed themselves Led Zeppelin, and played under that name for the first time at the University of Surrey on October 25th 1968.
Over the next decade Led Zeppelin effectively redefined ‘rock’ music, drawing on a wide range of influences to create a string of legendary albums which have, to date, sold over 300 million copies. Led Zeppelin are unquestionably one of the most important and influential ‘rock’ bands ever, and the highly successful reunion concert at The O2 in 2007 shows the phenomenal interest in their music which persists today. Through his work with Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page, a major creative force within the band, became universally recognised as being one of the greatest and most versatile guitarists of all time.
Away from music, he has been involved in the Action for Brazil’s Children Trust, or ABC Trust. His commitment to this cause goes back to 1994 where he witnessed first hand unrest in the largest of Rio de Janeiro’s shanty towns. He resolved there and then to do something to help, which led to the establishment of “Casa Jimmy”, a shelter for abandoned street children, which continues to be run successfully today and has helped over 250 children to find a better life. Building on this, the ABC Trust was set up with Jimmy Page as the founding patron. In 2005 he was awarded an OBE in recognition of his charitable work, and also made an honorary citizen of Rio de Janeiro later that same year.



Seen here

Friday Fill-ins

1. Birthdays are everywhere this week. Evan, Janet, Paula.

2. Spring is my favorite season because everything comes out of hiding.

3. I feel my best when I can relax.

4. Whatever someone else cooks is my favorite food!

5. First impressions are usually correct.

6. The best piece of advice I ever received was listen to this!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to doing nothing, tomorrow my plans include possibly another b'day dinner for Paula and Sunday, I want to do not much at all!

FFI

stress relief

Bubblewrap

World's End

by Mark Chadbourn.
Book 1 of the Age of Misrule trilogy.
Basically a classic fantasy in that the central character turns out to be the hero needed to fight off the forces of evil and save the world.
However, it's more than that. There are five unlikely heroes - the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. The world, well actually just Britain so far, is under threat from the Fomorii and the Night Walkers; ancient evils who have broken the covenant with the ancient Celtic gods and are attempting to reinvade the land. These are creatures of horror.
To prevent them taking over, the 5 heroes must find the 4 Celtic talismans, hidden for centuries, and free the Celtic gods, the Danann, from their place of exile. Only then can the evil be banished once more.
For a while the story turned into yet another Grail hunt which had me sighing with "oh no, not again, not another Grail story". But, thankfully, that was only a smallish part of the tale.
It's a story that gallops along at a reasonably adventurous pace. Plenty of mythology, magic and more than enough bloodthirsty horror. The 5 "heroes" are quite disparate people - 2 women, 3 men. All carry plenty of baggage and there's little love lost between them all. There's action aplenty which kept me turning the pages in anticipation. At times they escaped dire circumstances a little too easily but not so that it spoiled the story.
By the end of this first book of the trilogy they have freed the Danann and the evils appear to have been vanquished. However, the Danann have made it clear that they are not about to leave. Instead, the land is now theirs for the taking.
Book 2 awaits......

And so it begins...

Wimbledon.
Two weeks of sleepless nights coming up. Roger (my man) Federer has already won his first round match. Shame about the face 'cos the rest of him is hot hot hot. Best backhand ever. Poetry in motion.

This is a weeping song

No visuals on the video but the live sound is great. Lyrics below the vid.




To have his arms around me, to sense his perfect trust
I'd give all I ever had, all I ever had.

I'd love to see him dream, I'd love to watch him sleep
To have his arms around me,
Held his arms in mine, sense his perfect trust
I'd give all I ever had for a moment of his love

He's my heart and my soul
He's my blood and my bones
He's my prayers and my hope
My wishes and dreams
Seems so long ago, so long ago.

I'd love to watch him dream, love to see him sleep
To have his arms around me, feel him as he breathes
Hold his hands in mine, sense his perfect trust
I'd give all I ever had for a moment of his love

He's my heart and my soul
He's my blood and my bones
He's my prayers and my hopes
My wishes and dreams
Seems so long ago.

He's my blood and my bones
He's my heart and my soul
He's my prayers and my hopes
My wishes and dreams

A boy I never knew
And the man I'll never know
I'll never know, I'll never know.

To have his arms around me, sense his perfect trust
I'd give all I ever had.
- A Boy I Never Knew - The Cure

Freakshow

Tagged

By Shirl

The Rules:

Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What I was doing 10 years ago:
Teaching History at Emerald Secondary College

What 5 things are on on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):
Sell books, add books to database, upload databased books to the website, price and shelve books, recharge camera battery.

Snacks I enjoy:
Toast, cheese, dips and crackers, anything really.

Things I would do if I was a billionaire:
Quit work. Employ someone else to run the bookshop. Travel the world. Buy a swanky house on the beach somewhere a bit further north of here. Pay off all family debts, mortgages, etc. Buy a '59 Gibson Les Paul. Travel the world again. And again.

Places I have lived:
Liverpool, England. Melbourne, Australia.
Tag yourself if you feel so inclined.

Unconscious Mutterings

1. Goodbye :: You say goodbye, I say hello. Hello hello.


2. Cage :: trap


3. Buddy :: friend


4. Magic words :: abracadabra


5. Library :: books


6. Fall in love :: don't


7. Tense :: stressed


8. Work! :: a four letter word


9. Empty :: void


10. Heat wave :: NOT HERE!!

from here

Happy Birthday Janet :)

Yay. Sort of.

Saints had a win last night. Beat Fremantle 65 to 57. Low scoring, scrappy game which wasn't pretty to watch. But still, a win's a win. Not out of it just yet.

Saturday Photo Hunt

This week's theme is "water". I had a few to choose from :)

Water, originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

Photo meme - kinda fun :)

Photo meme - kinda fun :), originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

The concept:
1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, and pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

The questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food? right now?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. What is one word that describes you?
12. What is your flickr name?

If you click on the mosaic it'll take you to flickr where I have the answers and links to the original photographs in the comments. Play along if you feel so inclined.

Friday Fill-ins

1. A smile is priceless.
2. Pictionary is my favorite board or card game.
3. I would love to have more money in my life and less stress.
4. When I think of the Summer Solstice, I think of Christmas.
5. I just remembered I need to try on my costume to see if it fits.
6. One of my favorite song lyrics goes like this: I've been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they're real.
I've been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel - Pictures of You by The Cure
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to preparing for tomorrow night, tomorrow my plans include our annual Medieval party and Sunday, I want to recover!

FFI

Thursday Thirteen

I pinched this idea from Madame Snape. Thirteen of my most viewed photographs on Flickr.

13 of my most viewed photos, originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

T13

Unconscious Mutterings

1. Purchase :: buy


2. Squeaky clean :: brand new


3. Blended :: scotch


4. Wednesday :: what is it?


5. Function :: key


6. Look down :: and around


7. July? :: No, Julie


8. Raspberry :: Beret


9. Assertive :: forceful


10. Cracker :: cheese

from here

This week's collaboration

This week's photo with Janet, who was definitely the leader this week. I have to admit to being absolutely clueless when it comes to photographing food. It's a lot harder than it looks.
It just so happened that we'd cooked the same thing (hehe) - although the methods were different. I deviated a fair bit from the recipe, which calls for bbq, and baked my chook in the oven. BBQ? - in this weather? No way! But, oven baking the chicken made it look all pale and ick in the photo. Tasted great though.
This week was a real challenge.

I had honey-mint chicken for dinner, originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

Saturday Photo Hunt

This week's theme is "emotions". I went through some family shots and put together this collage which shows, I hope, the positive side of the emotional coin.

Emotions, originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

Friday Fill-ins

1. Travelling the world is high up on my bucket list.
2. My favorite quote is I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days; it's from Bull Durham.
3. Shirl inspired me to start blogging.
4. Strawberries are best soaked in champagne.
5. A visit from Janet wearing a dress is the last dream I remember having.
6. The most enjoyable time to go for a walk is at sunset, along the beach.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to watching the footy on TV in front of the fire, tomorrow my plans include work, then a family dinner and Sunday, I want to have sold enough books to pay the bills!
FFI

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen photographs of my phone. Taken for the One Object 365 Days Project on Flickr. So far I'm up to day 271 of 365 and I'm beginning to worry that the phone is not going to last the distance. The wear and tear is beginning to show. Anyway, if you're interested you can see the full set of pics here.

Phone X 13, originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

T13

Banned books

I saw this meme over at Wendy's and had to do it. The titles in bold are the ones I have read at one time or another.

#1 The Bible - bits of it only.
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - I've read bits and pieces of this one.
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin - dipped into it but haven't read the whole thing.
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce - tried, couldn't do it.
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell - Everyone should read this book.
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Capital by Karl Marx - although I had no idea what it was saying!
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys - another one I've dipped into but haven't read properly.
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant - I did two years of Philosophy at university. Two wasted years at the time.
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker - saw the film.
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - this was a school novel.
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson - this was banned? We teach it to 12 year olds here.
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler - bits of it. The most turgid book ever written.
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder - saw the TV show
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

17th out of 215

Melbourne apparently has the 17th best quality of life ranking of 215 cities worldwide.
It says so here. Zurich tops the list while Baghdad, understandably, is at the bottom.
Australia has 4 cities in the top 35. Not bad :)

Unconscious Mutterings

1. Rambling :: on. Keep a ramblin' baby.


2. Magnetic :: compass


3. Again! :: and again and again and again and again.


4. Acoustic :: guitar


5. Mahogany :: wood


6. Promises :: broken


7. Ill fitting :: clothes


8. Sublime :: ridiculous


9. Poop :: deck


10. Disoriented :: confused

from here

Half way through the season.....

Saints have won 5, lost 6. Finals are looking more and more unlikely. Even the coach came out last week and labelled the players "soft". I think he may be right.
*sigh*

This week's collaboration

with Janet. Again showing the seasonal differences between here (Melbourne) and there (Boston) - this time through shots of trees in the backyard.

Winter gloom, Summer sunshine, originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

Friday Fill-ins

1. Idle hands are twiddling their thumbs.
2. I love getting clean in the shower.
3. My favorite time of the day is when I can feel relaxed. Somedays, that's never.
4. The last tea I drank was about an hour ago.
5. I like to get wet in the Summer.
6. My mother always said "tut". And still does.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to being warm, tomorrow my plans include not saying in case they fall through and Sunday, I want to enjoy a Saints win, although I'm not hopeful!

FFI

Thursday Thirteen - Mornington Peninsula

Thirteen of the photos I took on the trip down to Mornington on Tuesday.

Mornington Peninsula, originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

T13

Yesterday

Yesterday I went down to Mornington, the extreme south-eastern part of Port Phillip Bay, to see a photographic exhibition. The exhibition features photographs of Led Zeppelin during their 1972 concert at the Sydney Showgrounds. Most of the photos featured either Jimmy Page or Robert Plant. There were three shots of the whole band, put together as a triptych, and one each of John Paul Jones and John Bonham. All were black and white and huge. The largest were 4 feet by 5 feet in size. Prints of those can be ordered for a lazy $3500. The smaller ones start at $1200. Shame about the price because they'd look magnificent on my wall!
No cameras were allowed inside but I did manage to sneak a couple of shots with the phone's camera. Terrible quality but at least it's something.

Phone sneaks a peek at the guitar god of all time., originally uploaded by jsarcadia.

After the exhibition I wandered around Mornington for a bit and then headed further south to Portsea. I thought I might get some nice sunset shots at the ocean beach there. However, I was way too early. By the time I got back to Mornington the sun was starting to go down so I stopped there again and lugged the camera and tripod down to a little beach near the pier.

The Only One

New song from The Cure - the first single of the new album, due out later this year. Dunno about this one. When I first heard it I thought it reminded me too much of earlier stuff - like Friday I'm In Love and songs like that. The happy side of The Cure. I always did prefer the doom and gloom atmospheric songs.
Check out the tattoos on Porl Thompson!!

Unconscious Mutterings

1. Gossipping :: idle chatter


2. Misplaced :: lost


3. Spaceship :: Enterprise


4. Ignore :: disregard


5. Bodily :: functions


6. Tweezers :: splinter


7. Goodnight :: Irene


8. Curls :: hair


9. Faucet :: tap


10. Right? :: right!

from here

This week's collaboration

This week's collaboration with Madame Snape is based on "breakfast". The idea (Janet's) was to use products peculiar to our own countries. That meant, of course, that Vegemite had to be on the menu.

Uncle Toby's Strawberry Fields, originally uploaded by jsarcadia.