the quiet revolution

I had a lovely time this weekend.



On Saturday the boy and I attended the Marriage Equality rally here in Hobart, as part of a national push to draw attention to the shocking policies of both major political parties on same-sex marriage in the upcoming election. For those overseas, despite 60 % community support for same sex marriage, both mainstream political parties have stated they will not support it (despite our current PM being a declared aethiest with a lesbian misister! Poor Penny Wong, I feel for her being the kicking post for this issue). The speakers and participants at the rally made me feel proud for what we stand for and we were both glad we attended. I took the opportunity to grab a few photos of the very lovely crowd, and I'm quietly chuffed with the results.

Saturday night we had our new friend K over for dinner, which turned into a late night with K staying over. I think we can chalk that one up for a win!



On Sunday I baked cupcakes for the RSPCA cupcake day, while the boy provided a funky soundtrack, cracking out the vinyl on his decks (he mixed, I beat). I made gluten-free lime & poppyseed cupcakes with cream cheese icing, and gluten, dairy & egg free (vegan!) dark chococalte cupcakes with mocha icing. The vegan ones turned out suprisingly well given the lack of buttery goodness, no doubt due in part to the large amount of melted dark chocolate I added to the recipe! Well worth the effort for the smiles on the faces of my digestively-challenged colleagues when they found out there were tasty treats they could eat. I don't know how much our team raised, but if you fancy making a donation you can: go to http://www.fundraise.rspcacupcakeday.com.au/consulting_cooks (sorry, you don't get any tasty treats for your efforts, but I can provide recipes, or owe you treats in lieu).



Now it's onwards full-pelt into the week, with the federal election looming this coming Saturday. A pox on both their horrid, homophobic, racist, incompetent parties.

...that our Melbourne trip was made entirely of awesome.

Aquarius-fest 2010 has been fantastic fun, and the boy and I are sorely tempted to make it an annual event.

I'll write more when I've recovered some more from 3 weekends of fun, friends and general hedonism. <3

A few months ago I made mention of attending a work dinner in fancy-dress. The gallant fivecats requested photographic evidence of the night's constuming endeavours.



Well I've finally got around to processing all those shots. It took a while, especially as I decided on a visual style reminiscent of slightly faded 1-hour photo prints (which worked, for the most part, I think).



The full set of images can be found on my flickr account here, along with mini-biographies for each subject.



But for those disinclined to do so, may I introduce Borys, the cutlery-chucking Serbian stud and his lovely lady, the Croation manic mystic Ivanka.



Needless to say, their passionate relationship frequently disintegrates into destruction. Ivanka over-dramatically blames that floozy psychic Madame N.

As you've probably guessed, the home computer is working again. Many thanks to stephanduke who took the ram out, jiggled it and put it back in again. The benefit of a working home PC is I can play with photos again. The down side is that Photoshop locks more often with the files from the new camera. You win some, you lose some. When I'm less poor [1] I'll invest in a new MoBo, chip, video card and monitor. Eventually...



We've had a lovely weekend after a busy first week back at work. Not only did we get see the mischievous drspleen and his LSF, who's company we had been bereft of for the last 12 months, we also got to take the internet-free blue_kitten to our new best local coffee-shop, and had the pleasure of a visit from Adrian and Mari, who have upped and left Sydney to join us here in drought-stricken Brisbane. A weekend full of people we love is one well spent.



I am officially smitten with my new camera. Not only can I now take proper macro pics (as you can see - these ones have not been edited), I can also shoot in low light without pixellated graininess. I have some photos from the Regina Spektor concert that are quite frankly amazing considering the conditions and my inexperience with single lens reflex. I'll get around to processing the cream and posting them up sometime this week, and eventually I'll start going through the 1.5 gig of shots from our holiday.



[1. when I stop spening all my money on fish, photography and concerts]

Smiley's not at work today. Smiley has a cold, so she's at home with happy hard pumping loud. Long live BiPolar!



So, Mayhem. What can I say? Fan-f*cking-tastic once more. I spent the day before madly sticking my fingers with a sharp needle, making groovy arm decorations for Alex and myself. By 7pm we were all done and wondering where our celebrity guests had gone, and we were overdue to be invaded by Melbourne folks. Eventually, zenandtheart, nurseysarah, the_trav and binkee arrived, and we all crammed for the bathroom at once. An hour later we were all dressed up with somewhere to go.



We arrived at the venue to find a strong police presence, and as expected, the sniffer dogs were out. Now, from a harm minimisation perspective, I'm not a big fan of the dogs, so they have no right to be so damn cute! Alex and I were confronted by a very young and extremely wriggly black labrador that was just so excited about it all. Eventually we all made it inside and quickly located the other 10 000 people we knew (well it felt like that, anyway.) I had a chat to Mr. Alek Szhala himself before commencing the hugathon. Names and faces; Flash, Jason, Alex, Josh, Lisa, Milan, Ty, Danny, Dash... It seemed most everyone had made it.



I decided that first things first, I'd tour the grounds and grab a few photos. This plan whent exceptionally well until I realised BiPolar were on in the main room, so I dashed back to the cloak room, ditched the camera, then made my way to the front of the dance floor, where (surprise) I found my hubbie and most of our crew. Bang on! At the end of their set I caught a bit of Sven/DJ Hiro in the chill room, then hit the Happy Hard room for Finn number 1, Drumhead. His set finished all too soon, so after a bit of a wander it was back to the main room for the next 3 hours: Carbon Based (live FiNRG), Clerics of Anarchy (live locals, freeform), and Alek Szhala (also Finnish). Just wow.



Carbon Based had quite a stage presence and so much energy. During their set I found Amanda and Sarah in the crowd, then turned around to see a super-cute Corch behind me! Carbon Based were good fun and got a decent crowd going, but as they finished, the crowd really swelled, as next on the decks were the Clerics, local hero Seventy7 teamed with Wispa (and yes, they came on stage in the robes). What can they say? They completely blew me away. Set of the night as the two of them bounced around and pumped out some of the freshest, fastest freeform I've ever heard. Absolutely everyone went off and I didn't move from my spot, despite having an extremely full bladder I couldn't leave; the music was just too good! After a quick dash to the ladies, I was back for Szhala, though after COA, his set lacked oomph. He was still worth seeing, the talented man, as he performs all his own music and does get the crowd going.



Now it was 3am and I'd seen all the main acts I'd come to see, so I thought I'd go for a spin ont he dodgems. It turned out everyone else had the same idea. Ditto for the jumping castle, so Alex and I wandered around chatting to people before settling into the chill room for a bit of a snuggle. Turns out the DMF folks had the same idea! By 4am, the underslept among us were starting to fade, including stil not recovered from the trip Alex and I. By 5am we were walking out the door, and for the first time in 2.5 years Alex and I weren't there for the very last set, but then again, no one we were that keen on had the closing set.



So a select party (Amanda, the Trav, Corch, Sarah and Pam, along with Jason and Alex and 2 of their friends) headed back to our place to recover, where we were later joined by Flash and a friend of his. At 7am I mysteriously recovered my energy and managed to bounce around for the next 3 hours until everyone deserted us.



At some point I grabbed 3 hours sleep, and then we were off to collect Josh for a de-briefing of his night. We watched Miyazaki's Nausicaa and the valley of the wind over dinner then crawled into bed around 9pm. As I closed my eyes, lasers flickered before me and the bass beat filled my head until I drifted into sleep.