Vicarious Thoughts

… filling the house with that hot buttery, yeasty smell. Too bad smell-o-vision isn’t a reality.

Still labouring away on 101 in 1001 revamp, 2010 Goals and maybe a little LotRO (Lord of the Rings Online). :P

I said goodbye to my comfy couch in my office today, and hello to two new items of furniture. Daughter and I made a trip to our closest Warehouse Stationery and grabbed their Student Desk and Chair package. She was quite excited about having her own swivel chair and wanted to be the sole driver of the hand truck on the way to the car. I love kitset/flatpack furniture

It didn’t take too long to put together and though I was a bit worried, the keyboard tray trundles in and out relatively smoothly. The chair is a bit deep for my daughter but so long as it swivels she’s happy, and so long as she’s sitting at the correct height I’m happy.

The moment she saw it after it was put together, she grabbed some paper and coloured pencils and she was happily engrossed drawing in her new chair at her new desk with a big smile on her face.

Still, I am going to mourn the loss of being able to snuggle up with a book on the couch in the relative peace and quiet of my office. Maybe that will be a motivator for getting the office decluttered some more. :)

This is today’s photo; the tip of an Acanthus Flower, with added cobwebs, viewed through my office window.

The leaves of the Acanthus, or Bear’s Britches as it is colloquially known (I’m guessing it’s an English thing), my Classics teacher taught us, was the plant which the leaf is shown on the Corinthian column. The glossy leaves are quite statement-worthy in the right setting.

Bother!
My computer crashed tonight and since all I had left to do was write this post, I opted to try using my phone instead. Unfortunately, I was cutting it close to midnight, as I am wont to do and though I got it written, I didn’t get it saved before my session got trashed by Vodafone’s daily data rollover. Doh!
So I’ve rewritten this post and uploaded today’s photo, which was taken on my phone, but I can’t easily insert it in the post tonight.

My daughter gave me this Hebe flower and said it was like a “Purple Christmas Tree” (seeing as she’s a bit obsessed with Christmas still). I really like the vibrancy of the purple.

Update: Couldn’t find the publish button in my mobile version of the WP Admin area so gave up for the night.

Was planning on getting some shots of the night sky. However, clouds and marauding insects knocked that idea on it’s head. Speaking of which, anyone got a great product or remedy for taking the sting out of insect bites?

Very tired and have neglected to put the camera to good use today.
This is one of the things I’ve been doing this evening.

Not bad considering it was well over 2 days worth of podcasts to listen to two days ago.

I rather like how the lcd matrix is captured by the camera.

Looks like I’ve been semi-subconsciously been planning to make another attempt at Project 365 which is also item number 72 on my 101 in 1001 list.
So here’s today’s photo:

The Everlasting Daisy reminds me of staying with my grandmother who grew them and harvest them and mount them on floral wire for craftwork. If you’ve never encountered them before, each petal feels like crisp thin plastic and this contrasts with the fluffy centre of the flower.

Spent today catching up on on a backlog of podcasts. I’ve been trying to find a decent podcast manager in Ubuntu. I found a great application that works for me in Windows called Feedreader (which incidentally is also my preferred RSS feed reader for Windows), and am currently using Rhythmbox in Ubuntu. It’s not as good but is so much better than Songbird which drove me insane with it’s continual attempt to download all files in each podcast’s rssfeed. Rhythmbox does seem a little hit and miss in auto downloading the latest podcasts and I’m not entirely trusting it just yet but I’m willing to persevere until a better alternative is brought to my attention, or Rhythmbox itself gets an upgrade in the podcast department.
Whilst catching up on podcasts, I’ve been working through the resources we’ll use in our first year of homeschooling this year. Still coming up with a way to keep everything organised and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the mountains of books currently taking over my office.

And now a last minute photo for today.

Another scintillating view from my office. This is the shelf closest to where I sit at my desk. Scarily despite the duplication I do often use all these dictionaries and thesauri though I did weed out a reference book that I wasn’t getting any use of recently. I grew up with the same edition of Roget’s Thesaurus as is shown and think everyone with vocabulary memory problems NEEDS to have one on hand. The Ladybird clothespeg is from a bouquet of flowers I received from husband. The paperweight is a gift from my grandmother-in-law and I love the flower design that was created within.

I’m feeling a little rattled at 2010 having arrived already. I don’t have all my goals for the year jelled yet, though I have some pretty good ideas as to the direction some parts of my life are headed, which is a good start I figure. So while I’m working on all that – have a photo.

This is a tiny portion of my desk.
The flowers (hydrangeas) were picked and brought to me by my daughter yesterday, and are in a milk jug which is part of a wedding gift from my Grandmother – mainly because the vase I would have used has gone walkabout.
The mouse is one that works and I haven’t seen an upgrade for it as left-hand friendly mice with side buttons let alone at a reasonable price are pretty far and few between. Ultimately, I’d love to have a wireless mouse and I’m sure the perfect mouse will fall in my lap when it’s needed.
The mousepad is a gift from my Dad and is pretty cool. It’s a mouse rug and my one is a digital replica of a Tehran Qum flower rug. It’s really comfortable, is a great mousing surface and what makes it pretty cool is the image on it isn’t printed on but each individual coloured thread is glued to the base to form the overall design.