The Buffer.

Elsie and I were talking about flat-breaking, which is where your flat is sold or your flatmate(s) moves out or you have some kind of BIG uncertainty about where you will live and what you should do and how much your rent will be and specifically, how long to pay the rent on a 2 bedroom unit while you try and find a flatmate. We've both been very lucky and never had to pay the whole rent on a unit in a flatmate gap. And the idea is quite frightening, paying 2 or 3 times your rent for an unknown number of weeks. I mean, my rent is not far off 1/3 of my income already. What a horrifying thought. Anyway, Elsie said "I actually shouldn't stress about spending my buffer, because that's what it's for." Mind Blown. I'm the kind of person who saves a buffer, which is to prevent stress at times of financial uncertainty. But then if I stress about spending the buffer, that defeats the purpose of the buffer. It's there so you don't have to worry. You've got the money, it's for a rainy day, it is actually raining right now, so don't worry about whether you should stay wet or spend it! Focus your worrying on other things, haha.

Ben appearing

Jelssie has long been fans of Vanishing Point but neither of us have had the opportunity to meet the illustrious author and illustrator, Ben McLaughlin. Until now. Until today. You see, Ben and I work in the same neck of the woods and one of his colleagues is a friend of mine and today! today! I met Ben randomly at the local pub!

So dear Ben, the big question Jessica wants to know is: were you as excited to meet me???

New use for snails.

According to a facebook ad I saw today:

I reckon we could cut out the middle man and just rub snails on our face. That would probably be friendlier to the snail.

No can opener?

So the drama today was that I had a tin of tuna with no ring pull, and the office has no can-opener. I had a salami sandwich instead. But I was surprised to learn that there is more than one way to open a can. More than 2 ways. All my life I had just assumed that the can and the can-opener were made for each other and there was no other way around it. Thankyou, friends.

Too amazing to think of a title.

On Friday night, just before I went to bed and the house was pretty dark, I opened some mail. I ripped up the glued-down flap, just the corner. And I saw a tiny flash of light. Weird. Must be my eyes. Ripped a bit further, another tiny purple flash of light. Disbelief. Peeled the rest of the envelope open and every rip was another little purple flash. 

So how did I get this far in my life without seeing or even hearing about envelopes having purple sparks and flashes? It was just so crazy that I walked around the house giggling madly because either:

1. everybody else knew about this and I somehow missed the fact that envelopes have purple sparks, or
2. nobody has ever seen it before and nobody will ever believe me that it happened. What if it was just that one envelope?

And then my flatmate got home, and when she understood what I was cackling about she got her own mail, turned off the light, and opened it they way I told her. MORE PURPLE SPARKS!!! Proof that I am not mad, I have made an amazing discovery.

Wow, about fog.

On the radio today I learnt about humidity. It started as a question about why it can be raining, but only "50% humidity", not 100%. Answer: humidity is the amount of water in the air. In the air, not in raindrop form. When a cloud reaches 100% humidity the conditions to make raindrops are ripe. Warm air can carry more water in it than cold air. And this is the beautiful part: fog is the water coming out of the cold air and forming droplets and hanging around. Like magic. I love fog.

Flabbergasting.

Valentine and Glover were discussing moments that feel like eternity, and one of them is the time when you squeeze the petrol pump handle and no fuel comes out because you're waiting for the man in the servo to push a button and release the fuel. Why can't it just come automatically when I squeeze the handle, they complain.

WHAT?

I had to turn to the people next to me and ask them if they knew about this. Somebody googled it, and said "I'm flabbergasted". Too right.

Another fuel fact from the ABC recently, a caller ranted about the 15 cents that replaces the zero when you start pumping fuel. Like it costs 15 cents for the fuel in the hose*, or something ludicrous. Have you ever noticed the fuel starting at 15 cents instead of zero, quickly flashing past when the dollars start climbing?

I hope your mind is blown.

* Stingy people apparently don't just shake the drips out of the pump handle, they lift up the hose and drain the fuel that sits in the loop.

Stuff I just need to put on the internet.

Funny how most of the blogs I read have been paused for the holidays while the bloggers recharge their creative juices, but here at jelssie we are still over-flowing with the usual rubbish. Energy levels soar with Christmas snack food intake.

I feel like saying a few things about TV.

FIrstly, how much does off-season suck. Why do I have to watch re-runs of The Mentalist when there are new episodes on the other side of the world? Why is off-season so long? And it's not like on-season has that much better quality. And this year summer has been wet so in weather terms we should still be in on-season. I'm not going to the beach every evening, I'm home in front of the TV.

I've noticed in the last week on ABC1 three new newsreader ladies. Only one is blonde, and she has an interesting face with a crooked mouth, actually a little bit like Elliot from Scrubs. The other two are dark haired, in fact "ethnically diverse" in appearance, but with Australian accents. I like them all! I can't choose!

ABC2 plays David Mitchell's Soapbox. I love him. In this one he gets right to the heart of the baby name issue.



Seven2 is such a waste of time. I have decided to never check that channel ever again because it's always lame.

The various channel 9s used to always have Big Bang Theory during prime time, but lately they haven't. This is a sad regression. Replacing 2.5 men with BBT was the best thing 9 ever did, along with buying Sherlock and The Mentalist, because until then I had never watched 9 at all. I'm looking forward to new Sherlock, esp to see how they resolved the cliff-hanger.

And lastly, have you ever thought about staples? They are amazing, because they are made from metal, but they are sort of stuck together, but only stuck together exactly the right amount so that they can be broken off individually in the stapler. So amazing.

Interesting news in the news.

If you are an avid reader of the Maitland Mercury, you will be all over this story already. I just wanted to find out if there would be anything interesting to do while I'm in Maitland... little did I know! Someone might put caltrops on my front lawn! Wouldn't that be interesting? Ancient booby traps like giant bindys. I think that's interesting.

http://www.maitlandmercury.com.au/news/local/news/general/greta-grandmothers-horror-find/2399581.aspx

One thing they were right about on Masterchef…

Olive oil makes things better. I watched a bit of George? repairing some failed meals and he dribbled oil all over them—gross, I thought. Shiny, yes, but yuck. But then a couple of weeks ago I had a friend over and baked bread, and she asked for olive oil with it. WOW. I never realised. It's my new sweet chilli sauce.

Honey is amazing.

Whenever I squirt a drop of honey into my tea I marvel "this is a bee's whole life's work". Bees that spend their lives laboriously collecting tiny blobs of flower juice from lots of little flowers each make about a teaspoon of honey—in its life. It's a bit weird to think about that, but it also makes me appreciate each teaspoon of honey a lot more. Appreciating effort always adds value to the experience.

Woooo! Clean windows!

It's very hard to clean the windows in block of units. Impossible, really. But on Monday I will have clean windows, because we are getting NEW windows! Clean on the inside AND outside. I shall be so happy. If we get fly screens as well, that would be Christmas!

Single lady randomness.

Being a bridesmaid has been an insight into marriage preparation. Not much of it seems to be very fun, but I'm not a fan of organising stuff, it's people like me who create the market for wedding planners. Or people like me with heaps of spare money. And a fiance, obviously.

While I've been avoiding buying a pair of black high heel shoes and other boring shop tasks, I've been enjoying digging through my parent's counselling resources. I'm not a maths person, but this book and other stuff by John Gottman are actually rather comforting. Marriage is a bit less scary when it's reduced to a ratio of 5:1 positive to negative interactions. It's also a bit less romantic. Check out Romeo and Juliet on page 112.

On a related note, I had a good cackle at the rewritten Beyonce lyric I saw on Facebook, "All the single ladies, all the single ladies, PUT YOUR CATS UP", and when I was stuffing envelopes at work I was following an interesting trail of covers and found THE COOLEST cover.




On an unrelated note I was watching the down escalator at Eastgardens last night and I saw a lady catch the toe of her sandal in the bottom of the escalator, she tripped out of her shoe and then her shoe was sucked right under the escalator and the escalator stopped!! I knew escalators could eat people.

Super funny ironic frustration.

You know what happened to me today? I wanted to remember a word like "contrast" but different, and I wanted to search it in an online thesaurus, but I couldn't think of the word "thesaurus". I was stuck hovering over my blank Google search. What do you do when you forget the word "thesaurus"? It could have ripped a hole in the vocabulary-communication continuum and imploded the language universe.

Something really really amazing!

Rachel found a conjoined almond today.

If you want to see it in real life, you have just one day. She will be eating it tomorrow.