As previously mentioned here, Bruce and I really need to find a new house for Schroe.

I'm doing the more specific post here because I don't want to spam everyone on the other blog. :)

We need to find her a new home because we're moving to France and it's going to be traumatic and expensive ($1800) to take her. That said, if she doesn't have a new home in the next few weeks we need to set the wheels in motion to take her anyway because it takes a while to organise.

So, these are the options:
1) Someone adopts here (or promises to) before the end of September.
2) We start (on the 1st Oct) getting her microchipped and given rabies shots, suck up the cost and take her anyway.

She is a very cute 9 year old cat called Schrodinger.

She is a very friendly cat who mainly stays inside. She is scared of new people and will probably hide inside most of the time until she gets comfortable. She LOVES attention from anyone and everyone. Once she gets used to you she'll happily sit on you if you don't look like you're going anywhere in a hurry. Or if you are doing something important involving a computer or reading. :)

Generally, I just leave dry food (whiskas) and water out for her and she regulates herself. She'll let you know if her food bowl is looking a little empty. Occasionally, I give her some wet food and she loves me to bits for it. She'll always come running at the sound of a tin opening. Don't bother feeding her nice bits of meat because she'll only sniff it and leave it there.

She can be an indoor-only cat if need be, but she is much happier if she can go outside when she likes. I don't think she'd like being outdoor-only very much. Also, if she's inside-only she really needs a scratching post. She likes free access through doors.. she gets a little stressed out if she gets stuck on the wrong side of one (which can be either side).

When she goes outside she rarely ventures beyond her own backyard. I think somehow she understands that I have no control what goes on over the fence. She's scared of everything, so she won't go far. She has never been a real threat to wildlife. I've known her to catch a few mice and a rat before, but never a bird or other creature.

Also, here's a reference given from a previous landlord regarding Schroe.

This letter is to confirm that for an 18 month period during 2003 and 2004, Schroedinger and her owner Ms. Angela Randall boarded at my primary place of residence.  Schroedinger was fully house-trained and at no time did she defacate or urinate inside the house other than in her kitty-litter.  She did not damage or cause damage to any furniture in the house and confined her claw-sharpening to an appropriate scratching post.  Schroedinger shared the house with another elderly female cat, and while there were occasional personality clashes, these were not significant and did not disturb the sleep of either myself or Ms. Randall.

In summary, Schroedinger is well-trained, intelligent and a good-natured cat and I would not hesitate to commend her to any home-owner.

(Personal details ommitted for privacy)

Please pass this on to anyone who might be interested. I can guarantee she will hate all the vet visits and the plane flight to France, so if we can spare her from that then we will. Thanks!

Labels: bruce, cat, schroe, travel

Posted at 2:41 AM # | Comments

I know it looks as if I forget this blog exists, but that's really not the case. I remember it's here and then all of a sudden I remember it's here again. Goldfish style.

The bits in between remembering about this blog are a crazy mix of socialising, work, study and rehearsals. You are probably scoffing right now in disbelief. Us? Socialising? But we haven't seen you in ages. Yeah, I know. If there weren't so many awesome people in the world then we'd have more time for a few good people. But, the curse of being ancient over-30-year-olds is that we know a hell of a lot of people.

Now, a few quick calculations and a look at my calendar tells me that we are bloody close to leaving the country. I'm struck with the urge to bolt the door and sort through our stuff. Sadly, I know that will be as boring as batshit and that it will be much more fun just to give all of our stuff away later.

Anyway, the upshot of all this drivel is this:
a) If you're poor and you need some household stuff then let us know. We're going to sell as much as we can, but you never know what you might score free.
b) We're going to have to do some medium-sized-group cocktail nights, dinners and whatnot so we have a chance of seeing you all before we go. I'm going to go crazy with the inviting soonish.

A bientôt!

Labels: blogs friends family, bruce, busy, europe, house, moving, study

Posted at 1:51 PM # | Comments

Things change. We're now heading to France. This is all to do with Bruce's job and a request from the company he works for.

In some respects, this is a huge change of plans and we have a LOT of things to work out - like learning French instead of Swedish. In other ways, a lot of things are pretty much the same - we still need to get rid of heaps of stuff and pack up our lives entirely.

It's a bit of a stress, but it should be fun wherever we go. :D

Labels: bruce, europe, france, language, travel

Posted at 12:12 AM # | Comments

The wedding was excellent. Bruce and I had a great time and it was pretty much exactly what we wanted. And - we GOT MARRIED! Not getting over that in a hurry. :)



Here are a whole stack of photos from our wedding:

Beth's Pics, Adria's Pics, David's Pics, Emma's Pics, John's Pics, Rachel's Pics and Allan's Pics.

If you're a facebook person, keep an eye out for pics posted to the wedding event (cause some people actually bother putting them up there).

And keep an eye out for pics tagged with me or with Bruce. And that should keep you all in sufficient photo goodness for a while.

PS. Sorry if you've seen some of this post before - there's a little bit of cross-posting action happening.

Then we went on honeymoon in McLaren Vale and had a most awesome time. Mostly, we sat around in a spa (we had a choice of two spas in our cabin) drinking wine and eating gourmet food or lounging about reading, rehearsing or watching sci-fi. We love our geekiness. :) It was only a couple of days, but it was brilliant.

Since a few sneaky people gave us some money as wedding gifts (even though we said no presents) we thought we should invest in a digital camera so we can share our travels with all you lovely people. So, we have lots of honeymoon pics (which also double as "Oooh we have a camera - how does it work?" and "Really not sure what setting this should be on so I took 15 versions of the same photo" pics)!



The edited collection of honeymoon pics are on Flickr and facebook.

Well, we thought that was enough excitement for one week, but two of Bruce's sisters had other ideas and had babies within one day of each other! Bruce and I are now REALLY glad we bought a camera on our way to the honeymoon.

On Thursday morning Alyssa Cara Firth was born to Heather and David. Bruce and I had the camera rolling a few hours later. Alyssa's best pics are here on flickr and facebook.



Very late Friday night (only 36 hours after Alyssa was born) James Patrick Hall was born to Mhairi and Justin. Bruce and I met him at about 15 hours old and got him well and truly used to the life of a supermodel. Our best photos of James are here on flickr and facebook.



Even that wasn't quite enough excitement for us, as the Fringe and Festival are now well and truly upon us. Bruce is now performing almost every night in As you like it. I've got a few Mediaeval Magic performances with Lumina, but I have even more shows booked to watch. Should be fun!

Labels: ange, bruce, photos, wedding

Posted at 11:15 PM # | Comments

It's been a while. I'm really busy.

Bruce got older, I've moved most of my stuff to Bowden, I'm studying hard and working more often. Sorta wondering when I'll get a chance to unpack properly. The house is a mess!

And Jason's in town this week! Yay!

And in vague geekiness, I'm also wondering how long I have to wait before:
- I can post to blogger from gtalk
- Facebook gets an allconsuming application
- Facebook can show rss feeds (like of my blog and lj) or get a blogger and lj app
- Facebook gets a delicious app
- Twitter gtalk posting actually works

Labels: bruce, house, jason, moving, stress, study, work

Posted at 6:58 AM # | Comments

Last night was so much fun! Bruce and I went to see the Zombie Walk which was a good laugh. There were at least 50 zombies lurching up Rundle Street. We also saw some very traumatised people who had been walking the other way.

We had a few hours before the Mal Webb gig so we stopped in to visit a friend in hospital and then went to Gouger Street for dinner. While eating, I saw Mal Webb outside so I went to check what time the gig started. Somehow, that resulted in Mal, Tim Bennett and I singing Baterz songs out on the street.

We dawdle down to FAD for the gig and get there way too early. Start doing the last minute sms invites and Michael Gehling decides to come in. Michael turns up just as Mal starts the completely improvised piece where he gets an audience member to say something and then turns that into a song. I tried to point at the girl next to me and got dragged up myself.

Since Mal had just finished talking about someone saying "My little sausage" in German I decided to say that. It was awful pronunciation but whatever :) Mal messed around with it and then did a little rap about a girl called Ange who didn't want to get on stage cause she knows what happens but she got dragged on anyway, so sucked in Angie. Tee hee!

Oh god and I've just worked out where I've met Tim before. He's my brother's ex's new boyfriend. Heh!

Labels: bruce, gigs, mal webb, michael

Posted at 2:56 AM # | Comments

Finally, we have a venue for the engagement party!

The invite is for yourselves, partners, good friends etc. Please pass on the invite to any friends of ours who may have been overlooked in this sudden invitation frenzy!





----------------------------------------------

You are invited to the Engagement party of

Angela G. Randall
and
R. Bruce Alcorn

starting at 5pm on the 12th of May, 2007
Please call me for the venue (Ange - 0410 863 740)

This is an informal event, and we'll be there until at least midnight.

Soup and a simple buffet meal will be available between 6 and 7, please let us know if you are eating with us so we can estimate numbers.

Some beer and wine provided, but you are very welcome to BYO.
Nibbles and soft drinks provided until they run out or everyone falls asleep...

We realise that this is very short notice, and we'll completely understand if you can't make it.
Feel free to drop us a line, though, and let us know you're with us in spirit!

Labels: bruce, crossposting, engagement, invite, love, me, party

Posted at 11:25 AM # | Comments

Bruce and I are sitting at the park and he asks about what I'm wearing to Heather's wedding (a sister) at the end of the month. He pretends he is going to try to match his outfit to mine. I ponder a few dresses and then pretty much decide on the blue one I wore to my birthday party. Bruce is nodding and smiling.. and then pulls out a ring, grins and says "Do you think it would go with this?". Yes, yes, yes.. and yes! And actually it would go with the dress, too.

SNEAKY BUGGER! This is an heirloom ring which he had his mother get out of storage especially. It's his great grandfather's tie pin which was turned into a ring for another great relative many, many years ago. And now it's an engagement ring! Squee!

(That was an excerpt of the larger LJ post - Sorry to people reading both)

I have written a huge post detailing our journey across Australia on LJ and the photos of the trip are in a Flickr set here.

Labels: bruce, crossposting, engagement, love, me, pics, roadtrip, travel

Posted at 8:12 AM # | Comments

Bruce got out of a CMAX trial Sunday morning and we're leaving for Sydney on Tuesday evening.. so we've been packing in as much of the Film Festival as possible.

Friday night (without Bruce) I went to see Passio with Bruce's mum. This was a really strange performance as quite a lot of the audience was there to see Part's Passio and didn't really know what to expect with the film alongside it. Most of them wouldn't have gone if they'd known what to expect since the film was pretty traumatising most of the time. It had a lot of old footage of science experiments.. but without knowing what it was it looked like torture. Even though it's a sort of relief to find they were medical experiements it doesn't really make it less disturbing to watch. The experiments were things like electrical shocks on dead bodies. But it originally looked like tortured, naked people outside freezing to death with other people watching. There was also eye surgery, naked people with what looked like giant pads sticky taped to them (sometimes acting as a slave so I'm not sure what that was about) and a very primitive caesarian which for some reason was reversed (or put back in?!?) at the very end. I explained ending with a caesarian birth and Bruce thought that sounded very relevant up until I mentioned it being put back in. Most people I know weren't even watching by then so no-one has many theories on the relevance of that. Is that a bit Freudian? Or is that just me?

Seriously, people were leaving in droves. Most of the remaining audience had their eyes shut. The lady next to me nearly threw up and then bolted. I've heard someone DID throw up. The poor guy to my left had brought his 15 year old son and had to take him away. It should have had an R rating.. or a warning or something. Poor bugger just paid $40 for the kid and $50 for himself just to walk out soon after it started because it was unsuitable for the teenager. Pretty rough. What's worse is that the festival had screwed up the ticketing (with lots of people apparently) so these two weren't originally seated together.. and they weren't told. They just received the tickets and they were for other sides of the town hall. We let the Dad squish in.. and if we hadn't he wouldn't have been able to get his kid out. That's nasty shit.

Apparently, the movie tied in really nicely with the meaning of the text.. but without the meaning of the text in front of me as I watched I really had no idea. I've talked to a few people about Passio and what they felt the film maker was doing.. and my best guess is that he had a whole heap of film footage he wanted to get out to the world. He created a controversial film and set it to something people would go and see. After a whole bunch of unsuspecting people see his film with the music they came to see there is an uproar. Then through that publicity the word gets out to a whole bunch of people who really want to see that sort of stuff.

That said, the music was AWESOME. Theatre of Voices have some amazing soloists.. and Chamber singers (even though most of the chamber singers had disappeared to sing in Tim Sexton's/Philip Glass' Satygraha) sounded fantastic too. It was very hard to concentrate on the music with the movie on, though. I did note that it seemed like the choir was singing whenever the movie got REALLY disturbing. I think the pieces fitted well together in that way. That's not to say that I thought the choir were disturbing.. well, whatever :P

Sunday we saw Mike Reiss from the Simpsons talk about stuff he'd written for the show. He was a pretty funny guy and a great public speaker. He did his research, too. Only a few jokes fell flat because he didn't realise Australians didn't really know what he was on about.

Then we had coffee between shows (Bruce hadn't had any coffee for three weeks and was killing for some good coffee).

Then onto The Host. That was some serious Korean Monsterlicious fun. We also had a huge bonus when we found out the director was going to watch it with us and do a Q&A afterwards. Yay us! We were stoked. The director was young and very pleased we liked his film.

The film was great. The plot was vaguely plausible in a sci-fi kind of way. The military were made to look like inefficient, power hungry wankers. A small family was shown to be completely dysfunctional but protective of their young. The monster looked like a realistic, scary monster. It made me jump and clutch Bruce's hand several times. It was great!

Now we just have to set up Bruce's house around the Sydney trip so we can have guests stay for Womad. Nothing to stress about (Hahahaha).

Tomorrow we're watching Into Great Silence which looks pretty amazing. We'll probably be too busy getting ready for Sydney to tell you all how it went.

Labels: bruce, cmax, festival, film, me, movies, moving, simpsons, tv, womad, yay

Posted at 9:19 AM # | Comments