I realised this week, that apart from wearing one skirt twice in the first week, every day of Frocktober has seen me wear a completely different skirt/dress every day! This really surprised me!!! I didn’t realise my wardrobe was quite so extensive!

Finally we have had some good weather that has fallen on my days off!
This weekend has seen two gorgeous sunny, blue sky days in the mid 20s.
My tan for the summer is coming along nicely, and my garden is looking rather tidy.
Yesterday I went out to the hardware store and bought some pots and some herbs: parsley, sage, thyme, mint, oregano and basil. So the new addition to my deck is a little herb garden.
In the past I have had lots of trouble growing herbs, they either die or suffer from bug infestations, so I’d appreciate you all keeping your fingers crossed for me!!
With all my busy-ness in the garden and sunbaking, I’m now taking the time to sink into the couch with a cup of coffee and a book…this is the life!!

Lucky for me, this week has been a bit warmer, so I had the chance to get a few of the more colourful frocks out of the wardrobe.

Wednesday gave me a little ego boost with the staff commenting: “Love the frock!” “Forget the frock, love the shoes!” and “Nice Legs!”

By Friday though, I was freezing my little legs off, so the summery frock certainly wasn’t the smartest option.

So being the little nerd that I am, I’m quite interested in the Amazon Kindle bookreader gadget. You see, putting gadget and book in the same sentence is like putting candy in front of a child. I love books, and I love gadgets, that means the Kindle is a go-er!!!!

So looking at it, I have come across some things worth considering:

• Books available for Kindle – not all books that are published have a kindle version, so its a matter of sticky beaking around amazon.com (and elsewhere) to see what books I could get
• Available formats – thankfully the kindle doesn’t only support special kindle format stuff, it supports: Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, Audible (Audible Enhanced(AA,AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion. This struck me as particularly useful when I came across I book I am interested in that can be purchased in mobi format.
• Publisher restrictions – Digital Rights Management is a really big deal for publishers of electronic material (and I can understand why). What this means for a kindle user is that there are restrictions on how times you can download a book that you have purchased, and to how many of your own devices you can download it. One guy had a huge rant about it, and spent heaps of time dealing with Amazon customer service to understand what was happening. I think the end result was that it is up to the publisher to decide how many devices you can share your purchased book with, and if you exceed that – typically exceeded by upgrading your devices – you need to contact Amazon to get them to release a ‘contract’ with an old device, and issue a new one to your new device, so that you can access the books you paid for. Sounds a bit nightmare-ish!!!
• Geographic restrictions – depending on where your device says you are, you may have to pay more for your books, or you may not be able to get some books at all. When books are published, they are published in a certain area, and that can prevent people from other regions having access to the digital version (obviously with hard copies you can just post them anywhere, and they can’t be tracked so easily) I found some really great comments on the geographic thing and publishing laws, but I can’t find it now – sorry.

THEN once I decide whether or not I want a kindle, which I am still going for the nerd option of..its a book gadget and I want it…then I need to choose WHICH kindle I would want.

Because its a gadget for the sake of a gadget I certainly wouldn’t want to pay a whole lot of money, so I have been weighing up the two cheapest options.

The factors that affect my decision include:

They both use WiFi, are roughly the same size and weight, they are both ad version (you pay more to get one that doesn’t push advertising to you).

Fingerprints on the Touch could get annoying, but for the extra capacity and battery life (for not much extra cost), I’m willing to give it a whirl. Actually I briefly played with my sister-in-law’s non-touch screen kindle on the weekend and I kept trying to poke the screen, because thats obviously how I felt it should be used..so I think the Touch would probably suit me better!!

The Touch also does audiobooks, not that that rates highly on my lists of ‘wants’. Also I do wonder how the cost (and possibly availability) will change based on me being in Australia.

So after all that the Kindle Touch I’m keen on won’t be released until November 21st!!So I have downloaded the free kindle app for my iPhone, and have started downloading free kindle books that sounds vaguely interesting, to see if I like the concept of reading on an electronic device (though a shiny small iPhone screen won’t really compare to the slick matt finish of a kindle).

Being a nerdy lover of gadgets is surely terrible for my bank balance!!!

Let me know your thoughts on the whole kindle thing, and … I’ll keep you posted!

Unfortunately with the weather still cold and miserable, I haven’t had the chance to wear any cute and quirky frocks.

Even so, check out this weeks frocky fashion…

I also want to shout-out to Alyce, who did a fabulous job of supporting my Frocktober efforts, by wearing a frock too.

A big THANK YOU!!! to all those who have donated so far!

Even with the cold and rainy weather, I have stuck to my mission. I have worn some dresses (Monday and Thursday) and some skirts (Tuesday, Wednesday and Casual Friday) this week.

I am looking forward to a weekend of jeans, and starting Monday will be straight back into Frocktober. Have a good weekend!!!

The Breakfast At Tiffany’s fundraising team (of which I am a member) are participating in Frocktober to raise money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation.

The challenge is to wear a frock or skirt every weekday of October.  So us Ladies will don our frocks, stockings and heels.

Please follow my journey, as I post evidence of my Frocktober adventure.

If you would like to support the cause, please donate.

Yesterday was my 29th birthday. I’m not the biggest fan of parties or celebrations, but my 29th has been a 3 day celebration and I have been reminded of how lucky I am to have such a fantastic family and so many amazing friends.

The birthday celebrations kicked off on Sunday, with most of the girls (unfortunately some weren’t able to make it) frocking up and heading out to Hadleys Hotel for High Tea. As my aunt Gerie shares the same birthday, this was a bit of a joint birthday event. It was lovely to sip cups of tea and nibble on a lovely selection of little cakes and other sweet things. It was really nice to sit down with so many friends and just relax and enjoy each others company. It was also really lovely to have an opportunity to wear a pretty frock. By the time I went home I was a very happy little duckie, with a belly full of sweets.

As it is tradition to bring something in to work on your birthday, I spent Sunday afternoon baking. I baked 36 cupcakes. With my late start on Monday morning, my friend Kat came over to help me ice all the cupcakes before heading to work. So my colleagues who work in the same area as I do, and my Computer Science students all got to enjoy vanilla cupcakes with pink icing, topped with a chocolate freckle.

Since the high tea was just for the ladies, I didn’t want to exclude my male friends, so a few people popped round on Monday night to wish me a happy day. We all sat around chatting, and enjoying a few nibbles. My friend Kat (who always sets out to spoil me rotten) made a chocolate cake topped with chocolate ganache, so we all got a slice of rich, gooey chocolate cake & it was delicious!!!

Since I had 3/4 of a chocolate cake left over, I brought it in to work on Tuesday (my actual birthday) and again, the staff loved it!! A few of my colleagues had missed out on the cupcakes, so they got a chance to share in the birthday food. There wasn’t enough to go around to the class though. But out of guilt for giving one class of kids cupcakes, I had thought ahead and brought tim tams to share with my class on Tuesday.

Tuesdays are usually a very long workday for me, but we had Quality Assurance meetings with other teachers of our subject in the afternoon, so my evening class was cancelled and I got an early minute. Lucky for me, because I was exhausted and went home to have a nanna nap.

Another birthday tradition, is to go out for dinner with the family. So Mum, Pat, Anna and I headed out to Piccolo in North Hobart for an AMAZING meal!! We shared some entree’s: seared kingfish with fried octopus; and chilli crusted calamari with some salad. As a main I had ricotta gnocchi with Huon valley mushrooms and it was absolutely delicious! I also had a little taste of Pats suckling pig, Anna’s swimmer crab ravioli and Mums fish (can’t remember what type of fish it was). I was very impressed.

Once I finished up my meal, I said I could probably fit in dessert, but Anna quickly persuaded me that that was a bad idea. I had a sneaking suspicion that she had an ulterior motive.

So we thanked the staff for some lovely food and head back to Pat and Anna’s house for a cup of tea (the new tea that P+A got me for my birthday: Madagascan Vanilla). I sat down to drink my tea when Anna brought out the birthday hat and plopped it on my head. The next thing you know, Pat and Anna came out with a HUGE cake. It was a Ben Lomond cake, which had the ski tow Giblin running up it and a skier at the top about to zooof down the slope! This cake was also a chocolate cake, with a buttercream icing and a few extra lollies sprinkled about. Served with ice cream, it was a fantastic way to end my birthday!!!

And if you hadn’t already guessed it, there is plenty left over, so my colleagues will once again benefit from my birthday as we will have had pre-birthday cupcakes, birthday cake and post-birthday cake!!!!

A birthday observation…almost all of my birthday cards have butterflies on them, are butterflies ‘in’ at the moment?

So thanks to everyone for all the lovely facebook messages, text messages, visits, hugs, cakes and presents. I have had an AMAZING 3 day birthday!!! (thank goodness theres a few weeks before the next birthday, I don’t think I can possibly eat any more cake!)

This has been my least exciting adventure to date…

At a few inconvenient times in my life, I received a notice in the mail requesting me to participate in jury service. On these occasions I was able to defer doing my jury service.

This year however, I received the notice once again and had no fantastic excuse. So it was time to do my duty.

Knowing that jury service was for three weeks and could continue longer if I was selected as a juror for a big case, I prepared three works worth of lessons for my classes (planned down to a T…knowing that I would have non-computing teachers teaching computing).

On March 8th I turned up to the Supreme Court, where they explained the procedure. We would turn up when told to, then a jury would be randomly selected. Once a jury was chosen the remaining people were expected to go back to work and continue on with daily life.

So every night I had to call the ‘Jury Hotline’ to find out if I was due back in the next morning, then send SMS’s to the teachers waiting to know whether they would be taking my classes.

After four appearances at the court house and being dismissed, on my fifth appearance my name was called…

Dutifully I headed to the court room and took my place in the jury box. The Judge then asked the two lawyers (prosecutor and defence?) if they wanted to dismiss anyone…and I was dismissed, sent to the back of the courtroom.

One by one, more potential jurors were called in, and either accepted or dismissed, until they had their final twelve.

Everyone who had been dismissed from that jury was sent home (to work) to play the waiting game again.

So after 3 weeks; hours of planning, hours of making appearances at the courtroom and lots of $$ on calls and SMSs – my jury service was a complete and utter waste of time!