Sometimes blue- superdrewby's blog

Bandwidth Overload

There is a very real chance that the site will be down for a couple of days as I am about to exceed my bandwidth limit.

I will try and increase the bandwidth to address this and get it back online quickly if this does happen!

Some Incredible hotness

The Battle Lines are drawn

A fight is brewing in Australia as the Labor National Conference gets underway.

Gay Activists are pushing for Gay Marriage, whilst the Prime Minister has reiterated his opposition to Gay Marriage and has said that he will only support State based registers of same sex relationships.

I am huge advocate for Same Sex Marriage as a legal definition enshrined in law. It's not about religion it's about true and total equality.

Whilst I am an activist by nature and actions I am also realistic, and believe that the current fight is strategic rather then realistic.

I doubt very much that the current Government will enshrine Same Sex relationships in the marriage act.

But I do believe that we must continue to push for gay marriage as a strategic push so we can get incremental gains over the coming years to eventually achieve our goals.

It's a hugely controversial issue and is dividing the gay community, many of my gay friends simply do not want gay marriage. Some of them in relationships some of them not in relationships.

Small baby steps lead to walking and running, but for now it's more like the baby has tentatively walked and now is back crawling again.

I do think in 20 years time people will wonder how the government could be so discriminatory as same sex marriage and full legal equality is the norm.

Battle of the Downstairs Couch

Ever since we bought the beagle home the cat has decided to pretty much live upstairs.

She generally seems quite happy with this arrangement and calls the dog when she wants to say hello by meowing loudly at the top of the stairs.

The dog and cat have an 'understanding' whilst there is no fighting between them, the cat and dog have a funny relationship.

I think they would both like to b

e closer friends, but the dog just can't get her head around the fact that the cat doesn't like to be rumbled with, have it's ass smelt or barked at.

The dog also knows full well that the cat has sharp little claws and if she gets too close and has pissed the cat off, she is likely to get a quick slap to the side of her face.

Over the last several weeks with the boy away in Canada however the cat has started venturing downstairs for attention.

Generally when the cat comes downstairs the dog does everything in her manipulative power to 'encourage' the cat to return upstairs. She will bark and pounce and generally act like an idiot around the cat and this has been enough for the cat to slink off back upstairs.

But now the cat has grown bolder and is now firmly standing her ground, and much to dog's chagrin the cat has started to take up residence on the couch next to me, just where the dog usually sleeps.

I called last night 'the battle of the downstairs couch' !

The dog tried every trick in the book to encourage the cat to go back upstairs but to no avail. Even worse the cat decided that she would plonk herself right in between me and the dog.

At first the dog got one of her toys and chewed at it furiously all the while edging closer and closer the cat, until she 'accidently' bumped the cat off the couch.

The dear old cat simply picked herself up hissed at the dog and jumped right back on the couch.

When this didn't work the dog decided to go upstairs and sulk under the bed for 20 minutes until she realised that this wasn't working either.

So she sheepishly came back downstairs all the while giving me and the cat the dirtiest looks she could muster.

There was no chewing this time just a very forlorn looking beagle and a triumphant cat who spent the rest of the night side by side on the couch.

Cat 1

Dog 0

The renovations and decorating

The second bedroom has almost been completed all the walls and shutters are in and the furniture has been delivered as well.

In the end we decided to keep the room very minimal (like the rest of the apartment).

The room mainly gets used for:

Dog's Bedroom
Drying Washing
Playing Xbox
Guest Bedroom

In that order really so all I wanted in their was a nice unobtrusive sofa bed, a lamp and the low entertainment unit to hide the technology and rest the LCD screen on for when the boy disappears and goes killing things on XBOX Live LOL

The Sofa bed was custom made for me by a local store in Surry Hills, Dellis Furniture, If you need something you should give Spiro a call he did a great job of taking my basic ideas and having them made into a real sofa bed.

In fact I am so impressed with the way the sofa was made i am thinking of having a Bed Base and Bed Head made to the specification I would like.

But that will have to wait a while.

The lamp chosen is a copy of the famous shadow lamp which looks fantastic and casts a lovely soft golden glow across the room.

Interestingly when I posted the picture to my FaceBook account last night a friend also commented on the artwork on the wall a Caroline Numina from the Northern Territory.

It's a great artwork and on doing some Google searches about her discovered that the prices of her work in galleries has increased by more than 10 times in the last few months!

Wow!

So next on my list of items to finish in the apartment is the new door to the spare room, the skirting boards and a roof for the downstairs balcony.

The bed will do for now, but I am thinking of using the winter sales to get some quality pots, planters and plants for the upstairs roof terrace.

We don't use it much in winter because it's too cold, but with the winter sales on for stuff like that it would be silly to wait till summer and pay full price.

Apart from the painting needed, downstairs is done and looks perfect, so it's no just the few small things to complete.

Knowing us though we will probably end up selling as soon as I have finished decorating and I will never get to live in a fully decorated apartment heheheh

Labels: apartment, art

Some more random GWIP hotness

Guys with iPhones - Random Hotness

Labels: gwip

Sterotyping and Profiling

The incident in the USA where an eminent Black Professor was hand cuffed and questioned by the Police for breaking into his own house raises a very serious issue.

In this case the Professor was with another Black friend trying to unjam his front door. A passer by noticed 'two black men breaking into a house'. What ensued is anyones guess, as there are two sides to every story.

But the basis of the incident is that two black men were seen at a house and the member of the public and the police assumed that they were breaking in to the house.

Racial profiling at it's most basic really.

Profiling based on race and ethnographic characteristics is very common, in the 1970's the Chief Investigator of the Watergate incident immediately felt that the break in was more than a simple burglary because the majority of crime was believed to be conducted by black men.

Profiling is pretty powerful stuff in crime, but and this a huge but the racial profiling here is more based on stereotypes and not profiling.

We live under the shadow of stereotypes all the time if we are gay or lesbian, and stereotypes are used to incite, violence, quash equality and perpetuate the stereotypes themselves.

The recent furore over the movie Bruno is particularly perplexing one, does the crude humor encourage stereotypes, or not?

I personally don't think so, but other disagree and disagree vehemently.

Food for thought!

slightly withdrawn and tired

I must sound like a broken record by now, so I will not mention my work load.

Needless to say work is busy!

The boy is away in Canada for almost two weeks, having left on Sunday for a work trip.

It's always strange when he's away, so much of our lives are wrapped around each other and I am such a routine person.

The first few nights are always the toughest when he goes away, the bed is empty and the apartment is quiet.

But I still find myself going to make coffee in the morning for two, and when I make my dinner at night I have to remind myself not to cook for two.

I even found myself getting out two sets of plates and cutlery.

Anyway!

I have now finsihed about 3/4 of the next chapter of Life at a private School, trying to fnd time when I am not tired or not working is aways a challenge for me. But I am enjoying my word of Tim and Josh.

It's funny how much I am enjoying writing again, doing something non technical, no work related.

Hopefully I will get at least one chapter if not two chapters finished this week.

I can't decide whether to publish the new chapters straight away or wait till I have finished the rest of the chapters.

But I am sure I will have another barrage of emails telling me to publish them straight away.

Right now though I am cooking my dinner and then going to spend some quality time with the Beagle on the sofa watching some TV and relaxing.

Thanks to everyone who has emailed me to say they are looking forward to the next chapters, you don't know how much that means to me!

Revisiting old memories

Yesterday afternoon I revisited the story I started writing nearly eleven years ago, Life At a Private School.

I still get countless emails every month asking me if I will ever finish the story and from people who have been touched by reading it.

Well I have finally started writing the final chapters again.

It's a bit strange really starting to to write again after so many years of not writing this story.

I wrote half a chapter last night and even though I had the synopsis of the chapter planned out the story took on a life of it's own again and I wrote something different to what I had meant to.

It's strange but Tim and Josh's story seems to have a life of it's own and the story just seems to come out of it's accord.

I had to re-read the story myself to remind myself all the things I had written, yes I knew the basic story and in my head I have the rest of the plot laid out but many of the nuances, turns and plot twists I had quite forgotten.

117 pages later and thousands of grammatical, spelling and other errors, I am ready again to finish the story while the boy is away in Canada.

I have six chapters to go to finish this story and finally give people the resolution that they have been asking for for the last 6 years since I wrote the last chapter.

It was weird reading the story, I found myself going back to all of those feelings in my own head that I was feeling as I wrote the story to begin with.

When I write fiction I tend to try and put myself in each of the characters heads and see what they are feeling and describe those feelings.

But I am not the same person I was when I started writing the story, so there has always been the fear that the writing and the emotion in the story will be substantially different and readers will notice this change in style.

but none the less I will now at the very least finish the story even if the last few chapters are written with a different style.

So there we are a non work task for the next couple of weeks!

Make a submission to the senate inquiry on gay marriage

Boys and Girls...

This only takes a few minutes, and is important for us to get behind...

On 25 June 2009 the Senate voted to send the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009 to an inquiry.

The Bill was lodged in the Senate the day before by Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.

The Bill seeks to amend the federal Marriage Act so that same-sex partners are able to marry in Australia, and to recognise same-sex marriages legally entered into overseas.

The inquiry will be conducted by the Senate's Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee. No date has yet been set for a close of submissions, so we suggest you make your submission as soon as possible. The inquiry is due to report by 26 November 2009.

Anyone can make a submission, ensuring that the balance of submissions to the 2009 inquiry accurately reflects majority community support for equality.

http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/senatesubmission.htm

Happy Birthday to me

It's sometimes overwhelming the amount of people who want to call, email, Facebook , send cards etc

I had a jam packed day yesterday with lots of work and a Strata meeting in the afternoon.

I don't have much time to write a blog this week, so it will just have to wait till the weekend when I do have some more time!

So thank you all for your Birthday wishes!

One of life's great ironies

In two days I will be 37 years old.

That's not a revelation in itself, unless you have not really met me and just chat to me as I run around at parties (often in my underwear).

I am constantly told that people think I am mid twenties which is extremely gratifying since all I can see in the mirror are the negatives.

But that's not the great irony.

Over the weekend we threw a rather large party from my birthday and ended up at friend's the next day for a recovery party with a very large number of 20, 21 year olds (they were friends of friends).

Apart from the age thing I keep on being told by my friends and people who do know me that I look amazing ad I must be working out so hard because I am looking so toned and tight.

Only one small problem

I haven't set foot in a gym in months.

I feel unhealthy, weak and generally lethargic.

It's ridiculous when I do work out really hard and I feel great, I don't get compliments, but when I haven't been to the gym in 6 months and have been working my ass off I get compliments.

So all I can work out is that what others view as a great body is a defined lean body.

*sigh*

I don't really give a crap I just want to feel good about my body

Random hotness GWIP

I am so in love with the Guys with iPhones website, it is so cool!

Labels: gwip

Censordyne

Hump day picture

http://guyswithiphones.com/post/057413/

Labels: gwip

Beavering away

All I seem to do is moan about how busy I am at the moment.

Yes I am busy but I really should stop moaning about it, as I tell my mother, If you want to get ahead in life you have to be prepared to work hard.

And I want to get ahead in life.

I am not really good at the while work like balance at the moment, working 7 days a week, starting early in the morning and finishing late.

But you know what?

I feel like I am achieving things not just now but for the future.

I am in the process of hiring a new part time telesales person and boy if that ain't a task and a half!

I have blogged about this before, the need for a part time sales person to call customers and sell them our products. One of the single most important skills is the ability to speak English.

Not a few fractured words, the actual honest to God ability to speak English.

In the first few days of having the job role online we received literally hundreds and hundreds of resumes.

Wading through them was pretty easy.

The number two requirement was experience in some sort of outbound sales roles.

So the three hundred or so resumes were reduced to about 50, of those 50 spelling mistakes and an obvious ability to write English reduced it to about 5.

Out of 5 two will be interviewed face to face, one had no phone manner and the other was looking for a full time role - again how does Part Time = Full Time?

You know I am fully aware of how hard a job market it is out there and how much people need work, but it's almost insulting to be auto sent some person's resume that has meets non of the criteria for my role.

*sigh*

Let's just hope that at least I do manage to find a new person who can perform.

And on totally, totally unrelated issues, I am fed up to death of the canonization of Michael jackson, yes he was a great performer and musician, but he was no saint and he was not a great man.

Ghandi was a great man.

Can we please just get over this, bury him and move on?

I'm not as mad as people think

As most people who know me already know I take the Beagle Lucy to the office every day.

She loves being in the office and it's often a great stress reliever to have the furry mutt say hi and have some puppy time.

I was on the Boston.com site and there is a gallery of other people's dogs at work and I came across the picture above of a very cute beagle in the office called Penny.

Source

Previous Posts

Archives

Friday, July 31, 2009

Bandwidth Overload

Some Incredible hotness

Thursday, July 30, 2009

The Battle Lines are drawn

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Battle of the Downstairs Couch

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The renovations and decorating

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Some more random GWIP hotness

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Guys with iPhones - Random Hotness

Friday, July 24, 2009

Sterotyping and Profiling

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

slightly withdrawn and tired

Monday, July 20, 2009

Revisiting old memories

Friday, July 17, 2009

Make a submission to the senate inquiry on gay marriage

Happy Birthday to me

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

One of life's great ironies

Monday, July 13, 2009

Random hotness GWIP

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Censordyne

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Hump day picture

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Beavering away

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

I'm not as mad as people think

Superdrewby Twitters