Proof I'm not insane

I know you all laugh at me for my fear of boogie men, toilet snakes, zombies, axe murderers in closets, and the undead in general, but now I have photographic evidence that my fears are not unfounded:


Take THAT, skeptics!

P.S. No, I didn't make this, some random person at ihasahotdog did. It just happens to have my name on it. Which just goes to show that people named Lisa are naturally inclined to having very reasonable (reasonable, I say!) fears about such things.

I won!!!

Tuesdays with Dorie, one of the most fab cooking blogs around, recently hosted a competition for readers to submit new logo designs. Since I like a challenge and needed another excuse to procrastinate instead of study, I whipped one up and sent it off. And I won!

I created two versions of the logo for them - this one:


And a more brightly colored version:


I'm not sure which one they're going to use in their blog layout, but I'm so excited that they chose my design! As a prize, I get to pick the recipe from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours that will be baked on July 7; I chose the 'Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies', mostly because I adore Katherine Hepburn beyond reason, even if she looked like she never touched a brownie in her life.

This means that I'll also be baking along with the TWD blog for the first time, since the person who chooses the recipe also has to post it on their blog, preferably along with some gorgeous photos demonstrating the steps and/or end result (like so).

Hmmmm.

You all have seen the previous results of my cooking efforts. Like this. Oh, or this. So don't be surprised if my recipe post is full of incoherent babbling - I'm probably sobbing in a corner, surrounded by brownie making debris and humming to myself. And it will all be documented with photos. Check back in on July 7 to see my nervous breakdown!

Heaven in a candy cup

I know I promised to write about the Zoo, but I'm going to put that off for just a minute because I'm too excited about something else right now.

A little while back, I helped the fabulous Jaime of Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats design a new blog layout. To say thanks, she asked me if there was anything I missed from the USA that she could send me. "Oh," I replied lightly, "how about some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups? I love those things and they cost an arm and a leg here." (No, really - they're only sold in specialty candy stores and they're like $5 for one of the 2-cup packs.) I was hoping she might send me a couple of the 2-cups, or maybe even a small bag of the mini-cups if I was really lucky.

Today, I got a package in the mail. USA postmark. Sent by Jaime's husband.

It was a big package. Really big.

And when I opened it up, this is what I found:


OMG.


OMG.


OMGOMGOMG!

Jaime sent me TWENTY-FOUR PACKS OF 4-CUP REESE'S PEANUT BUTTER CUPS!


They're a wee bit squished from all the flopping around during transit, but they taste just as good as ever. This was confirmed during the very necessary quality control test (carried out before I popped them in my freezer, which will now be known as the Reese's Horde):

*mmmmm*

*drool*

*lick*

*burp*

Why......no..........I didn't eat an entire 4-pack by myself. That would just be greedy. Um....a guy jumped in the window and ate three, then jumped back out the window. You all are buying that, right?

Jaime, you are the awesomest ever and I can't believe you sent me so many - thank you!!!

The Zoo Part I, or: It's Way Too Freaking Early In The Morning For This

Hi. Remember me? The world's crappiest blogger who hasn't posted anything in six days? Sorry about that. Anyway, I'm here with the promised recap of our visit to the Taronga Western Plains Zoo, the one that I was sooooo excited to see during our trip to Dubbo for my citizenship test.

Because we'd decided to take advantage of the opportunity to get up close to the animals during a special dawn tour, we rolled out of bed at a ridiculously early hour. Now, I don't do mornings. It was freezing cold and pitch black outside when the alarm went off, and I voluntarily left a nice warm bed. This should give you some idea of how enthusiastic I was about this idea. By 6.25 we were on the road, and at just past 6.30am we pulling into the Zoo's main road.

As we approached the front gates, I started getting hyper over the animals we were going to get to see up close and personal. Giraffes? Elephants? Maybe even a lion! I was nearly vibrating from excitement by the time we hit the front gates.


Yes. Those front gates. The closed ones. As it turns out, the zoo was only doing the dawn walk on the weekend. Oops.


The Zoo didn't open until 9am. We had hours to kill and since we'd already checked out of our hotel room, no cozy bed to go back to nap in. So where do you go at dawn in Dubbo? The only place that's open. Hungry Jack's.

Aussie Tip of the day: Hungry Jack's is the Australian name for Burger King. Same chain, different name. When first opened franchises here, "Burger King" was already trademarked, so they had to come up with an alternate name.

We wasted about 40 minutes there, chowing down on greasy hash browns and reading the local newspaper. Eventually we ran out of boring articles to read, and since we didn't want to be Those People Who Hang Out At Fast Food Restaurants All Day, we made our departure. Even the store signage taunted me with false promises of close encounters with a lion.

Sorry it's blurry. Blame the husband who was driving the car and refused to stop so I could take a picture.

Since we still had another couple of hours to kill, we decided to cruise along Camp Road, a scenic drive that loops between tourist attractions nearby the Zoo.

That's where we spotted these little guys. Sometimes I forget that I live in Australia. So cool.

Yes, they really are the rodents of the outback. Just in case you were wondering.

The first stop on the road was the Dundullimal Homestead. There was only one problem:


It doesn't open until 10am, and we hadn't even hit 8am yet. Oh well. We'd seen on the signs that there was also a winery and an observatory on the road, so we kept going.


Ah. The winery is also only open from 10am. Moving on.

"Star attraction." Heh. Heh. Heh.

And naturally, the observatory is only open at night. D'oh!

So what do you do when you can't see a single attraction? You wash your car! Or at least, that's what you do if you're us and you've been meaning to wash your car for oh, about six months now. We followed the handy sign from the highway directing us to a local car wash:


That would be this car wash:


By this time I was laughing hysterically. Is anything in Dubbo ever open? Luckily, a little aimless driving brought us to this:


And there was no closed sign! Praise Jeebus!

Ben scrubbing. Me, uh, helping. Yeah. That's right. Helping.

Me helping some more. Photographic documentation is a very important part of cleaning a car, didn't you know?

Finally the car was clean, we were both queasy from our breakfast of deep fried hash browns, I was starting to twitch with impatience, and 9am had rolled around. It was time to see some giraffes!

Up Next: we finally make it into the Zoo.

There's a moral to this story

I hate porta potties. Hate. With a passion. Not only are there the issues of smells and highly questionable levels of sanitation, but I live in mortal fear that someday I'll be in one and it will be pushed over. It's irrational, but this is me we're talking about.

Today that fear was tested.

A water main broke, leaving half of the town without running water, including the university where I work. The library couldn't be closed because it's the middle of final exam time, so we had to stay and tough it out, regardless of the lack of drinking water and, more importantly, bathrooms. Reinforcements were called in: a row of four battered looking porta potties that were stationed outside the back door of the library.

Needless to say, I was not impressed. Visions of pushed over potties danced in my head. But unfortunately I could only hold it for so long, and eventually I had to give in and casually stroll outside, meandering like I was just out to see the views until oh my goodness! There's a porta potty here! Well it would be just rude not to pop in, wouldn't it?

Inside, it was the usual mélange of grubby toilet paper, inadequate ventilation and highly suspect puddles on the floor. To make matters worse, this particular porta potty was the semi-flushing kind, which wouldn't have been a problem if it had actually had water in the little tank to flush with. But it didn't. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

And then someone rattled the door. Not just rattled, but rattled. It shook the entire porta potty. I was certain that it was about to be tipped over. My whole life flashed before my eyes, and I may have yelled out that the potty was occupied and could the shaker please desist. Or words to that effect.

While I made it out alive - and thankfully not covered in porta potty poo - today's events brought to light a memory I've tried to scrub from my mind: one of the single most embarassing moments of my life.

About a year ago, Ben and I went for a drive to a nearby city; after a couple hours of wandering around and window shopping, we had lunch - I got a large coffee and a doner kebab. I don't always react well to kebabs - they go through me pretty fast about half the time, but I still love them. About twenty minutes later, I realized that yup - gotta go. In fact, with the extra help the kebab got from the big coffee, I need to go now. Not in ten minutes, not in five minutes...NOW.

I grabbed Ben and started toddling toward the mall (home of public restrooms) as fast as I could. It didn't much help that I got a sudden cramp in my side as I was walking, so I was doing that hobbling walk-from-the-knees-down thing. I looked like a constipated duck. About halfway to the mall, I saw a sign pointing toward bathrooms. Normally I wouldn't use one of those individual cubicles (something like this) in a public park, what with the questionable sanitation and all, but things were becoming quite...urgent.

So I wobbled over there, pushed the button to open the automatic door, then stared at the wall inside, trying to figure out how to shut the door. There wasn't a manual lock or anything, just two buttons: Open and Close. I figured it must automatically lock when closed from the inside, so I hit Close, and after about five interminable seconds, the door slowly crawled shut. I spent another five precious seconds lining the seat with toilet paper (why are seat liners are only available at airports in Australia???), and finally went about my business.

As I hummed along to a bad instrumental version of "What the World Needs Now Is Love" (who knew these cubicles had muzak?) and swore off kebabs for the rest of my life, the door suddenly started sliding open. Yup, it failed to lock, and standing outside staring in with gaping mouths were a mom, dad and their three boys. To make matters more interesting, the toilet was set to automatically flush when the door opened, so I was also on the receiving end of some fairly undignified splashing.

I flung myself at the door as fast as I could (which was a waddling crouch since my pants were still around my ankles) and repeatedly slapped the Close button in a panic. Of course, it took another five seconds for the door to actually shut while the mom stammered apologetically, the two teenage boys laughed hysterically and the younger one turned bright red - dad just stared at an imaginary airplane.

Well, long story short, once I got the door closed, I quickly wrapped things up and fled the scene. Ben was laughing so hard he could barely walk. (You might be wondering where my dear husband was this entire time, since he should have been guarding the door - he'd wandered off to look at something or another, which he WILL NEVER DO AGAIN.)

The moral of the story: only use public bathrooms that have a manual lock.

The end.

Lisa the Australian - Part IV

Well, we're back from Dubbo, and I'm halfway to being an Aussie!


I passed the test with 100% - 20 out of 20 questions right (it's a 60% pass, so you really only need to get 12 correct). Because of the cultural immersion I've had for the last seven years, I think I could have easily passed it without studying, but even if I didn't live here, it wouldn't have been too difficult - I find this kind of hilarious considering what a long, expensive, complicated process it was to become a resident. I guess they figure that if you've made it through all that, there's no point in torturing you any further to become a citizen.

Now that I've passed, all I have to do is file the application and pay a fee, but it's gotten a little tricky at this point. I want my married name on my citizenship papers - otherwise I'd have to pay again to get the paperwork redone, and although it's not thousands, it's also not cheap, and I'm a total tightass about my money. The problem is that the immigration department won't accept an overseas marriage certificate as proof of a name change. Every other Australian government department will, but not this one.

So now I've had to file with the state department of Births, Deaths & Marriages to get an official Australian name change certificate to include with my citizenship application. I sent the request off first thing yesterday morning because it takes seven weeks months for processing; luckily the test results are good for six months, so as long as I get the name change certificate back before then, I'll be able to apply and finish everything off - so I'm halfway there!

By the way, there WAS a question about sports on the test! I thought it was easy, but I'm curious to see how many people know this (no fair Googling if you don't know!), so here's a clicky poll version (I've noticed that these polls don't always show up if you're using Google Reader - so if you don't see it, I haven't lost my mind - it really is there!):

poll by twiigs.com

Lisa the Australian - Part III

Whew. Today was a long day: I had the final exam for the first class in my Master's course - not the worst experience ever, but not the best, and I'm relieved it's done. Anyhoodle...

So, remember how I was talking waaaaaaay back in January about becoming a dual citizen? Well - tomorrow is the big day, because I'm taking the citizenship test! I had to make the appointment months in advance, so this has actually been coming on for a long time - I can't believe it's finally here!

I'm a weensy bit nervous, although I think it will be relatively easy, at least going by the sample test the Department of Immigration has on their website.

I love this. LOVE it. Australia is SO into sports...I'm dying to know if the USA asks questions about Joe DiMaggio on their citizenship exam.

I have to travel to Dubbo to take the exam; we're staying overnight, so while we're there we're going to check out the Taronga Western Plains Zoo - I love zoos, and we're doing a special dawn tour where you get to see areas that are normally off-limit, so it should be pretty awesome!

Squeeeee! Giraffes! My favorite animal at the zoo, along with elephants.

I promise to bring back as many photos as my little point-and-shoot can handle (which between you and me, it isn't many - it doesn't do well in low light conditions, and I'm assuming I won't be able to use a flash for fear of a rhino stampede)...wish me luck!

It's officially winter

As of the first of this month, winter has officially begun down here. And since I now live in the frigid central west of New South Wales, it means I'm experiencing winter in all it's snot freezing glory for the second year in a row.

I don't actually mind the cold - I love having real seasons again, love the crispness in the air, the coziness of snuggling up under a blanket on the couch.

That said, I'm still a child of the desert and feel I may need one of these:

It's a personal hand warmer that you store in your pockets. Praise Jeebus, because these hands weren't made to freeze!

I love technology.

One for the ladies

Ladies, I am about to make your day. And gentlemen, I'm about to solve all of those pesky gift giving occasions where you need to buy a gift for a woman but are low on ideas (which judging by my husband is...always? Love you, hon!):


Those are chocolate shoes from Gayle's Chocolates.

Let me repeat: chocolate. And shoes. I have never seen more perfectly targeted marketing in my entire life.

They also make other designs, like this adorable polka dot dinosaur:

And cute scarf-toting penguins:


Plus sweet ways to say "Congratulations":


Or "Happy Father's Day":


But come on. You know you want the shoes.

I really need to stop looking on etsy

Really.


Really.


REALLY.


The Goods:
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The best beauty product you will ever buy

That would be this stuff:


It's a restorative serum made by Boots, and the only beauty product that I swear by. I've tried everything from Clearasil to Creme de la Mer, and nothing lives up to it's advertisment promises. Except for this.

It hasn't made my skin perfect and dewy, with a complexion kissed by a thousand roses. I don't look Photoshop sleek. But what it does do is make my skin...better.

It's smoother. Softer. More even. I seldom wear foundation these days - I just slap on some concealer here and there and a little powder, and I'm good to go. I've been plagued by problem skin since I was a teenager, so feeling this confident about how I look is a big deal for me. If I stop using it for a few days, I can tell the difference in my skin texture almost immediately. It's actually rather eerie. (It's also a hell of a lot more affordable than Creme de la Mer, only about $20USD at Target.)

And it's not available in Australia.


So when my awesome stepmom Myra asked me what I wanted sent from the States for my birthday in January, I didn't hesitate to say, "Boots No. 7, please." Yeah, it was a weird request, but Myra is fully aware that her youngest stepdaughter is a few pecans short of a fruitcake, and she sweetly packed some up and shipped it overseas.

There's only one problem.

I'm out.


Totally, completely, 100% out. I've squeezed and squished and smooshed to the best of my ability, but that sucker is empty.

But, luckily for me, not only is Myra awesome, but she's about the BESTEST STEPMOM EVERRRR. Because this lady sent me not one, but TWO bottles of Boots No. 7 for my birthday.


Because she's awesome like that.


P.S. No, this isn't sponsored by Boots. I wish it was.