So it's raining on my holiday

It's been raining for two days. The kind of solid, consistant rain we really, really need, and it's driving me up the wall already. Nothing will dry, so there's dirty washing piled up in the hallway and my holiday plans are in tatters with the weather keeping me house-bound and frustrated. At least I've been catching up on some sleep! I braved the shopping centre today in search of an airing rack, but Kmart defeated me soundly. When did shopping at Kmart or Target become traumatic? I can never find anything, half the time their stock has been trashed and the store people are completely unhelpful. They're not even really any cheaper than the smaller stores, despite their apparent bulk purchasing power. Ah well, long live small stores and local products.

In a break in the weather yesterday Kelvin and I went to Park Road for coffee. Coaldrake's bookshop beckoned and I found myself walking out the door with Growth Fetish, by Clive Hamilton. Two pages in to the introduction and it seems like an excellent read, but not yet: I still have to finish Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, and then Collapse. I thought getting glassess would get me back in to reading, but I'm having problems - the glasses work, but now I get headaches really quickly when I read or work on the 'puter - so I think I'm going to have to go back to the optometrists. Also on the annoying side, I can't read whilst drinking a hot cup of tea/coffee/hot chocolate! Damn steam...

Today I went in to Toowoong to finally get my piece of Japanese paper framed. I've only had it since September... Also re-visited my antique fish and reached the familiar quandry. I'm having a consumptionist dilemma: the antique print store down in Milton has 3 prints put away for me (since September) of marine fish. These prints are pages of the origianl book describing the fish of Australian waters, so they are the colour plates first drawn of these fish. They are hand painted and absolutely beautiful. They are also $150 each! Now, as they are antiques, they will only increase in value and so would constitute an investment, except, of course, that the future is going to involve peak oil and they'll probably then be worthless. *sigh* They are really historical art, and for a fish nut like me they are fascinating. Just bloody expensive! If I don't buy them soon I'll lose my hold, but I can't seem to justify spending that much, despite having a very happy bank balance right now. But I covet them so!

I did buy some more lilies though =)

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There are still interesting things to be found on the internet. Please have a read of this here Wellbeing Manifesto - it has a few important points to make about our culture and society.