Something strange happened on the weekend – something that doesn’t happen very often around me: I finally finished something I started.

To be honest, the true miracle was that I actually started the thing in the first place.

And just what is this “thing” I’m rambling on about?  Why, it is the photobook from my Tassie trip that I mentioned way back in January in this post here.  Since then, I have trawled through hundreds of photos, created a shortlist (the term “short” is highly misleading here) and managed to create a photobook that brings back memories of the trip every time I glance through its pages.  And that’s just in electronic format!  I can’t wait until I have the actual printed object in my hands.

In the meantime, I’d like to share a few of my favourite pages from the book:

The whole experience came with an unexpected side-effect, however: I now want to make more photobooks.  Many more photobooks.  Hundreds of photobooks.  Photobooks for all! Does anyone need a photobook?

It’s an obsession (just in case that wasn’t obvious).  The layout I used in this book is pretty basic and it was just an exercise to get me started.  I’m planning to be much more adventurous in upcoming photobooks.  Much more adventurous.  I’ve been gathering up all the realia I can find from previous Failboats trips – my lanyard and card from the Pacific Pearl, the ticket to the Beechworth ghost tour, Jen’s awesome fascinators from New Years… they’ll all be part of upcoming books.  And there’ll be text.  Headlines.  Quotes.  Vector patterns.  I am so excited about it all.

Exactly how excited and/or obsessed am I?  Well, I now have a copy of InDesign on my own computer… for fun.  Yes.  I created this book with Photoshop, but InDesign is a much better choice, especially since I want to involve text and other goodness in the future.  I’ve even been spending my time daydreaming about processes for putting upcoming books together.

Did I mention the obsession thing?

There will be more rambling and photos when the book finally arrives – hopefully in a fortnight or so.  I can’t wait!

Once upon a time, I happened to stop in a town called Kyneton.  It was pure convenience, really; the good Dr. Turkey, Aimee and I were on our way to a wedding and we had all felt the call of coffee and cake, a call that required I take the next exit off the highway and find us a café.  The little town we ended up in seemed nice and I made plans to return at some point.

When I did return, this time with the Chef in tow, I had a jolly good wander through the foody area of town and managed to completely forget that there was a fantastic abandoned hospital on the outskirts of town that I should probably have visited.

Third time lucky, then:

We were slightly disappointed to discover the place had already been sold – we’d been making plans for it, because we definitely have a spare million or so dollars to throw around.  If only we did (or had), though – a gorgeous old building with various outbuildings (including a morgue – who wouldn’t want one of those in their backyard?), situated in a lovely town with a reputation for fine food and produce… it all sounds like my idea of perfection.

As we were walking back to the car, throwing away our dreams of creating Something Awesome, we just happened to meet someone who’d actually been born in the hospital.  I wish I’d been born in such an adorable country hospital – I’m pretty sure my place of birth isn’t quite as photogenic.  On the other hand, it was much closer to the house my parents were living in, which was probably their main concern at the time.

As for the town itself, here’s a little taste of it:

And now, for a different type of tasting: lunch.  My chicken and leek pie was delicious but the lemon meringue pie failed on so many counts.  Well, two counts at least.  1. The meringue was soft.  2. There was no actual lemon taste.  I could have coped with the soft meringue if they’d actually remembered that lemon is a slightly vital ingredient in a lemon meringue pie.

Our lunch was consumed in the botanic gardens, so we went for a little walk afterwards, finding, among other things, a set of statues featuring a sheepdog and two sheep.  The Chef and I both realised that I needed to pose for a daft photo on one of the sheep and this seemed like a fantastic idea until I actually sat on said sheep and realised that it had absorbed quite a lot of heat from the sun.  Still, a true exponent of Being In Stupid Photographs will always deliver despite any awkward circumstances and I like to think that’s what I did here.

So we saw an abandoned hospital, purchased items in an op shop, ate mostly good food and posed on a stupidly hot sheep statue.  In my book, that’s a good day indeed!

And when I say “back” I mean “waaaay back”, as in “some time last year, slightly before Christmas”.  This is your mid-February flashback to Christmas cheer!  Or something.

I had a wee bit of spare time on my hands at the end of last year, what with finishing up one job in mid-November and not starting a new one until the end of January.  What better way to make use of it than to hop on a train and hope it would eventually arrive at its country destination?  Actually, that’s not fair: the trains do arrive, they just consider their timetabled arrival times to be somewhat of a guideline that somebody heard about once.  On the up side, I could pretty much count on an extra forty-five minutes of reading time on any given trip…

The feature of this particular trip was a Christmas Market, held under the meagre shelter of the historic courthouse building in the parents’ home town of Beechworth.  It was a very modest affair, what with the terrible weather and nonchalant approach to promotion, but the ma sold some of her stuff in spite of it all.

After taking some photos and contemplating a purchase of a plate of hedgehog slice (I resisted, somehow), I wandered back to the parents’ house and its rooms of decorations…

I’m not sure what was going on in the last pic there, but I strongly suspect the influence of my almost-sister-in-law, Sonia.

Barely half-way through my brief stay, the ma was already painting some more decorations to squeeze onto the few square millimetres of space she had unaccountably left empty.

Since I was in the area, I picked up some research material for the planned Failboats trip over the new year.

I intelligently left it all behind, of course.  Why take useful brochures with me when I can just leave them on my parents’ kitchen table?  I’ve heard of logic, but I’m pretty sure it’s meant for other, more organised people.

And thus, we gradually begin to catch up to the here and now.  Still to come: an abandoned hospital in Kyneton and the aforementioned Failboats’ new years trip.  For now, however, sleep!

The good news is in: I survived three days of camp with Year 7 students and I am most grateful to be home again with my quiet places and sock feet and proper tea from a pot.  I don’t know what the Year 7s got out of it, beyond some pretty decent food, a few bruises and some new friends, but I certainly learnt a thing or two.  This learning took the form of slightly practical things (such as how to tie a knot whose name I’ve subsequently forgotten); it also took the form of a bit of self-realisation, as I wrote in my diary on Monday night:

I can’t be one of those endlessly noisy people; I’m rubbish at small talk.  I like silence + watching + listening + imagining.

I’m a little in awe of people who can talk about anything, but I’m never likely to be one of them.  For ages, I’ve felt like a bit of a freak because of this, but I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it makes me happy.  Not to mention that there are some people (ie. the Chef, family and the Failboats, to name but a few) who either give me the confidence to say stupid things or don’t mind if I’m being quiet.

Please note I don’t often write in my diary.  In fact, if you were to glance at a random page in my diary, you’d find it adorned with a to-do list I mostly regarded as a vague sort of guide, mostly to be ignored.

Luckily, not all of the things I learnt while I was away were quite this introspective.  I was able to hide my love of quietness behind my camera for most of the time and it was during this time that I truly learnt why a zoom lens is so fantastic for portraits.  Not only can you snap wonderfully candid photos of people from a sneaky distance, it also renders the background into the sort of meaningless blur that is perfect for focussing on your subject.  It was something of a revelation to me.

Generally, I spend the time between taking the photos and seeing them on my laptop screen in a state of dread lest they all turn out to be horrible.  This evening, I managed to chase that dread away in record time and replace it with stupid amounts of pride.  I wish I could show you some of these photos!  There’s one fantastic photo of a boy who happened to notice at the very last second that my camera and its giant lens were pointed right at him… so he gave me this simple smile.  That photos looks incredible.  I’m so proud of it.  I’m proud of dozens of others, too – emotions caught in crisp focus, amazing achievements snapped at the right time… but I’m afraid you’ll just have to imagine them.

Instead, I shall leave you with this photo taken while the kids were noisily donning their life-vests and helmets.

And now, I shall sleep the sleep of someone who is very glad to be home again.

Once upon a time, the good Dr. Turkey (aka Gillian) threw a party to celebrate a) her birthday, b) passing a major exam, and, c) Jen’s highly successful completion of her Masters.  She invited the Failboats, who promptly declined, stating various highly legitimate excuses, sweetening this refusal en masse with the reminder that we would be together for New Years and it wasn’t that far off.

Unbeknownst to the good doctor, however, three of us had made a secret plan to fly up to Canberra and become the “best birthday present ever” (Gillian’s own words).

Somehow, we managed to keep this secret plan intact, despite Gillian’s calls to Bec in which she lamented the fact that her friends were complete cows and why didn’t they realise how important a party this was?  Didn’t they care?  Didn’t they love her?  At all?

The day arrived and Jen met our very late plane at the airport, armed with bows on headbands and a roll of wrapping paper – her plan was to get us to Gillian’s front door and wrap us up like a giant present.  As we sneakily circumvented the video doorbell system and tip-toed through the slightly-flooded bottom floor of Gillian’s building, we were discovered prematurely and the building rang with screams and laughs and all sorts of happy noises.  Goodness knows what the neighbours thought of it all.  There’s even a video of it here, although I recommend turning the sound down before you play it.

Here are one or two photos from the weekend…

Jen gave Gillian a signed copy of Wyrd Sisters, possibly one of the best Discworld books of all time.  Bec’s contribution was a TARDIS journal, much like the one used by River Song in the recent series of Doctor Who.

I bought a giant “good luck” card for us to decorate, for the following reasons: a) the only giant 30th card I could find was incredibly boring, and, b) it amused me.  We dedicated ourselves to making the card as faily as possible, once we’d returned from our random trip to a local cemetery and café.  (The café wasn’t actually located at the cemetery, although that could make for quite the quirky establishment.)

Soon, it was party time.  This brought with it the understandable act of drinking champagne and the slightly less understandable act of holding chickens while looking serious.

The next day involved a deliciously unhealthy breakfast, Rock Band, various pets and a shoe party.

Two of us succumbed and finally bought Isobelle Carmody’s The Sending and it provided us with entertainment while we tried to pretend that time wasn’t ticking down to our inevitable departure.  (Bec was later to regale us with her version of the book when we were all back together in Rutherglen over new year.  More on this soon.)

All in all, a highly successful operation, even if I do have an unquenchable taste for Baileys chocolate crackles now.  I need to find a recipe I can pass on to the Chef…

And now, I must finish my packing, for I am off to the wilds of Yarra Junction to spend the next three days with one third of the Year 7s.  If I survive (and I am reasonably confident I will), I will see you all again on Wednesday with more photos and stories.  Until then!

One of the fun things about my new work (beyond the fact that everyone is fantastically crazy and today I twice interrupted a conversation a particular colleague was having with herself) – beyond that, one of the fun things is the set of kindles we loan out to the students.  Each one is packed with dozens of books from all different genres and they’re apparently quite popular.

Since I’ve never used a kindle myself, I thought I’d better invite one home for the weekend so we could get to know each other a little better.

Alas, I have to say: I don’t think it’s going to work out.  We gave it a good shot and we spent a lot of time together, but there was an unspoken realisation lingering behind our contact.  This isn’t working.  We’re not right for each other.

On the one hand, it’s amazing to be able to sit there with several million books (well… ninety or so) in your hand.  On the other hand, it just doesn’t feel right.  Whenever I imagined using a reader instead of an actual book (and while this may be more often than you think, it’s not that much more), I fancied I’d miss the feel of the book or the look of the words on the page.  I thought it would be the tactile or the visual things that were lacking.  I had no idea I’d actually miss the sound of reading.

Somehow, reading isn’t right without the rustle of paper, without that whisper of sound as you turn each page.  And if you’re reading an old book, that movement will often summon up a breath of the book’s scent, too, which can be pleasant or otherwise, depending on the book’s history.

For me, a book is more than just words on a page or a screen – it’s the feel of the book, the texture of its pages, the weight of it in my hands.  It’s the scent of the book and the sound of those pages as they are turned over… without this, it just doesn’t feel right to me.

So the kindle and I have gone our separate ways and I think we’ll both be happier for it.  After all, it’s going to be spending its time with a whole bunch of people who’ll give it the affection  it so desires, with its un-numbered pages and clicky little buttons.  Meanwhile, I have a bunch of books I need to go and listen to.

Once upon a time (and yes, I do need to go back that far), the Chef bought me a violin.  I’d wanted to learn the violin since I was in secondary school – it would add a different section of the orchestra to my musical repertoire (which already consisted of piano and flute) and plus, they just look amazing.  So it seemed like a rather good present, all told.

Naturally, since it was something I really wanted to learn, the violin has been sealed away in its case for quite some time now.  And when I say “quite some time”, I really do mean quite some time.  Occasionally, I would glance at the violin case in passing and have a fleeting thought of doing something about it, but that was the extent of my effort.

The Chef, understandably, gave up on my ever doing anything about said gift of violin and did something about it himself.  He bought me a lesson.

I went to said lesson yesterday.

Why did no-one ever mention you can feel the music when you play a violin?  If someone had done that, say a couple of years ago, I would have been in on those lessons straight away.  The piano is awesome because you can play bass and treble clefs at once and get into beautifully complex music; the flute is awesome because the notes come from your own breath.  But I can’t feel the music through my fingers and arms with either of them.

It all reminds me of one of my favourite Terry Pratchett quotes:

I don’t want to be rubbish at this instrument and I have a feeling I’m going to drive myself crazy when I have to start working out how to make notes other than the basic G, D, A and E.  When it comes to music, I can tell if a note is flat or sharp, but I can’t tell what that note is; it’s so frustrating.  (For some reason, my ma decided to give her gift of perfect pitch to my brother, who doesn’t even use it.)  So I’m already trying to work out how to overcome that and I’m kind of stupidly happy that I can tell my G and D strings are fine, but the A is flat and the E is verging on an F.

It’s fair to say I’m rather addicted right now.  At the moment, my homework involves playing long notes on the G and D strings and trying to stop the bow from straying onto angles (or other strings entirely).  It’s… it’s boring, honestly, but I’m completely addicted to the feel of those notes as I play them.

So sometimes the Chef is right about this whole “get off your backside and do things” business.  I just hope it doesn’t go to his head.

Once upon a time, I went on a holiday to Tasmania and it was awesome.  It was my first ever trip to the island state.  It was when I realised I could quite happily have smoked salmon for breakfast, lunch and dinner (and did, in fact, do this thing).  It was where The Failboats and the tradition of Failboats photos began.

It also took place just over two years ago.  Therefore, I decided it was about time I finally got around to doing something with the photos.  It’s all very well to have them sitting on my hardrive, tempting me to browse through them occasionally.  Surely it’s even better to compile them into a photo book so I can flip through them on lazy days or bore unwitting visitors senseless with them.

The correct response to that is Yes, yes it is.

And I say “them” because I plan to make several photo books.  I have thousands of photos from the various Failboats trips since Tassie.

So I’ve been going through the photos from Tasmania and re-living all of the fun times.  I’ve also been asking questions such as: Why didn’t any of us take any photos on the last day?  And I wish I’d written notes for more than just the first day.  I wish I took the sort of photos then that I take now.  Really, only 450 photos from six days of roadtripping?  That’s ridiculously inadequate!

And photos such as this one:

Photo of me by the most awesome Doctor Turkey

…make me wish I was back there right now.

There’s a lot of catching up to do on the old blog and I figured the best way to do it was backwards.  Yes, backwards.  It is in no way logical (especially since the slightly Christmas-themed one will now turn up long after the actual holiday), but it’s the way that suits me best.

So instead of starting way back in the past, we will start with something only slightly in the past: my trip to a friend’s house in Jeeralang.  If you don’t know where Jeeralang is, don’t worry; most people have no idea, unless they’re remembering the devastating bushfires of a couple of years ago.  More people should know about it, though, because it’s a gorgeous, hidden-away type of place, full of endless views, cows and winding roads that challenge your sense of direction.

On the day we set off, it rained.  This came as no surprise to me, since this is what usually happens on any given holiday of mine.  It rained for most of my stay, in fact.  And when the rain took a break, the wind stepped in and took over.  And yes, there is an actual fire burning in the photo below, and its cheerful heat was most welcome, despite the fact that we’re in the middle of Summer.

We went and visited Morwell National Park where we encountered our nemesis for pretty much the entire trip: stairs.  So many stairs.  They also featured on our mini-roadtrip to the coast around Inverloch.  They were everywhere.  And yes, I am wearing boots in that photo below.  They may not be everyone’s idea of beach footwear, but they certainly came in handy when running away from freak waves on the rocks.

My friend thought she had the perfect seat for her photographic endeavours… right up until a freak wave crashed over the rocks and pretty much kept going, burying that seat in foamy water.  We had to run to escape its wrath.  I may have squealed.

On our way back to Halfway Farm, we spotted a sign for an historic church, which of course necessitated a detour.  The church was so small, we almost drove right past it.

On the second night, my friend’s husband took us out in his four wheel drive, up bumpy tracks and down bumpy tracks, venturing to all manner of interesting places.  We saw a sunset, a beautiful moon, two wallabies and an eagle, not to mention the lights of all the surrounding towns.

There’s even a swing with a view at Halfway Farm.  What more could you want?

Where have I been?  What have I been doing?  When am I actually going to write out a full blog post?

Good questions, all, especially the last one.  It feels as though I’ve been posting brief teaser posts since around Christmas Eve, mostly due to my insistence on gallivanting around the place for a good couple of weeks.

The photo below neatly demonstrates the activity that’s been occupying most of my time: reading.  Yes, even while on holiday with the Failboats.  That’s one of best things about the Failboats, in fact: at any given point on our holidays, you’ll find several of us just lazing about, reading.  And when I’m not reading with the Failboats, then the Chef is suggesting we take our newly-acquired foldable chairs out to some beachside locale for – you guessed it – more reading.

They have been lovely, lazy days and they have passed far too quickly.  In just over a week, I’ll finally be back at work – that will be a bit of a shock to the system!  In the meantime, I have much to do, including the long-overdue re-vamp of my blog.  If there’s one thing that must be completed by the end of my extended holidays, it will be that.

Of course, I’m hoping to squeeze in a bit more reading along the way.