by

N is for New Years Resolutions

When you think about it, December is entirely the wrong time to be making plans for the year ahead. December is a time for legitimately consuming stupid amounts of chocolate and wine, not making potentially life-altering plans. Now is the perfect time – the Christmas tree has been taken down, there’s no more ‘best of 2011′ lists in the news, everything is back to the brain-draining sameness it was before Christmas.

So here it goes. In 2012 I WILL:

  • be brave
  • be me
  • write
  • stop worrying
  • take much better care of myself than in previous years, physically and mentally.

And in 2012 I WON’T

  • let people bring me down
  • panic
  • be so damn hard on myself

Ugh, now that I’ve read that it seems so self-indulgent. Fuck it, it is blogged therefore it is done. Though I might add ‘get five stars on every song on Dance Central’, just for balance.

by

In which I deck the shelves with lots of books

First of all, THIS WAS MY DINNER ON THURSDAY NIGHT

Suckling pig from St Katherines in Kew. I was in a food coma for three days after this.

Seriously blog, money might not buy happiness but since I’ve had this job money has bought me a five course banquet at St Katherines (including one tenth of that pig), tickets to Eddie Izzard (greatest night of my year) and a third-share in a XBox Kinect which will go down in history as THE GREATEST THING ANYONE IN THIS HOUSE HAS EVER BOUGHT.

One of my many new years resolutions that I’m working on for next year is to blog more. About what, I have no idea. But I will. Once I think of something.

In the meantime, I’m going to wallow in my own crapulence for a while, because I GOT ALL MY CHRISTMAS SHOPPING DONE IN NOVEMBER. I’ve never been so awesome. Naturally everyone is getting books, so for my own personal exaltation here is what I bought:

My grandpa: Life on Air by David Attenborough
My Pop: The Black Echo by Michael Connelly
Pop’s girlfriend Bern: The Snowman by Jo Nesbo
Dad: Game of Thrones by GRR Martin
Mum: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safan Foer
My brother: Don’t Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs, She Thinks I’m A Piano Player in a Whorehouse by Paul Carter
My bro’s girlfriend – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer

In the interests of full disclosure, I have almost no idea what the Paul Carter book is about, and I really don’t care if my brother even reads it. That’s got to be one of the all time greatest book titles EVER.

What books are you buying this Christmas interwebs? What books are you hoping Santa might chuck down the chimney? And are you as excited about the new Sherlock Holmes book as I am?

by

In which facts are learnt…

Here’s what I knew about strokes before I started working at the Stroke Foundation:

My Dad had one and lived. He was very, VERY lucky.

Here’s what I’ve discovered after nearly three weeks at the Stroke Foundation:

  • Stroke is Australia’s second single greatest killer after coronary heart disease and a leading cause of disability.
  • In 2011, Australians will suffer around 60,000 new and recurrent strokes – that’s one stroke every 10 minutes.
  • One in five people having a first-ever stroke die within one month and one in three die within a year.  (Did I mention how my Dad was lucky?).
  • Stroke kills more women than breast cancer and more men than prostate cancer.
  • Close to 20 per cent of all strokes occur to people under 55 years old.

Did you know that??  Although Dad wasn’t old when he had his stroke, I was staggered at the percentage of people under 55% who suffer a stroke. And stroke kills more women than breast cancer! How did I not know that???

Suffice to say, I love my new job. It’s so great to work at a place that has makes such a tangible difference to the community. Yeah, it’s not publishing, but I haven’t ruled out going back to that later on. Who knows, maybe I’ll start writing again. Good luck to anyone doing NaNoWriMo this year – I just didn’t have it in me this time around.

In other news, I finally finished The Selected Works of TS Spivet by Reif Larsen after buying it at the MWF about three years ago. It has taken me a month to read (which is unheard of for me), but it was so worth it. My mind has been wonderfully melted.