I made up this rough outline/definition for 'Mail-Tag' last week (and forwarded one to Ilona below) and thought I may was well share it around. You should play with someone :) The idea was inspired by one of my favourite TV shows, Our Hero and I wrote up some 'rules' based around it. I've played it with a lot of friends and it is a really nice getting-to-know-you kind of game. Of course, it is nice for some of these things to evolve organically through letter writing, but asking some out-of-the-blue questions is pretty fun too.

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It was, again, so warm today. Wtf, weather? 25˚C+ days in Winter? Regardless, it felt lovely and I although I love the cold weather, I'm really looking forward to a Newcastle Summer, beach and warmth. I realised today that I kinda pretty much love this city. I begrudge it some days, but it does have a charm to it.

C and I went for a wander into town this afternoon. We ogled beautiful, slightly unattainable bicycles at Civic Bikes and C pondered for a while about whether he should spend his tax return on a lovely new bike (I hope he does).

Then we went to Centrelink and saw our friend Murray, who asked us to write something on his new very white volleys, I wrote; "A list of words that rhyme with Murray: hurry, worry, flurry, slurry, durrie" and then after we left I thought of 'curry' and 'scurry' but I was too late. We're going to the Lass tomorrow night to see Murray's band play which should be very pleasant. Apparently the first five people to get naked get a free grilled cheese sandwich, any takers?

Afterwards we visited the comic book shop (I'm pining over those Buffy comics, C ordered in the first edition book of them), did a mini-shop (between us we have a total of about $10, but only til tomorrow), saw Manneh riding a tiny little bike and wandered through a dark park home. C just made some delicious curry and then rode off to work. He won't be back until after midnight so I'm going to be domestic and then watch some Angel with the cats.

I sent this one a few weeks ago, but I thought I'd post it here regardless. Here is a letter I sent to miss Missive Maven;



Postcards received this week (so far);


From: Coutts Crossing, NSW; Hungary; Kansas; Germany.

I hope good days were all around today.

I just finished watching the final episode of Buffy (yeah, I'm a little behind the times). So good :) Now to get my grubby little hands on that comic book series and plow through 5 seasons of Angel...

NEVER HAS UNEMPLOYMENT FELT SO SATISFYING.

Today I discovered all of this wonderful free downloadable stationery, and now my life is complete. Not really, but pretty close. I have had a stomach ache for two days. It is really very painful. I thought it might be my appendix, but the pain is more in the centre. I Googled 'diagram of human body' and tried to check out what organs are in the painful areas, and decided it's probably just something to do with my intestines. Intestines is a gross word. I should rename this blog 'Bianca's Health Hypochondria' instead. Anyway, you got me off track, I was talking about downloadable stationery;


Flower print paper, download here.


Printable Matrioshka labels, download here.


Vintage trim gift tags, download here.


Postage Font, download here.


Obama bats font, download here.


Dream catcher list pad, download here.


Little red and snow white note pad, download here.


Carnivorous plants calendar, download here.


Gridded notepad, download here.


Library card and pocket template, download here.


Printable polka dot paper, download here.


Simple printable stationery, download here.


Mushroom labels and note pad, download here.

Fonts For Peas is also cool.

I cleaned today while C was coaching his soccer team and feel quietly accomplished at the lack of mess hiding anywhere. Later we went up to the Sydney Junction hotel for the fortnightly soccer club meet and as nobody showed up from C's team to claim the free player's player cocktail, I got it again. The cocktail I picked, for the second time, comes with the over indulgent title; "Sexual Chocolate". It's basically an alcoholic desert. Too rich, but so good.
If the huge pain pangs in my stomach don't go away by morning I'll be off to Dr Calee.
I'm going to watch some Buffy and maybe rewatch some United States of Tara. Naaaight :)

^ I love this. You can actually buy this as a t-shirt here.

So, after spending a few days in the lovely Dungog countryside, at my parents' new house, C and I are back home to the cats. Spending time with my mum and my sister was really nice. On the first night C and I were making our bed in the spare room, which was an antique wooden bed my parents recently bought, and upon getting in, the bed collapsed in the middle. Turns out they'd never tested the bed when they bought it. It was pretty hilarious. So we ended up putting the mattress on the floor. We spent some time with my friend Laura and we played a ridiculous Wii game called 'Boogie' with her daughter Keira, which involved dancing and singing to very bad Top 40 songs. I came out of it with a 9.4 score singing 'Hot n Cold' by Katy Perry, and felt a little dirty inside. It was pretty fun. We also watched a couple of episodes of Buffy on Laura's MASSIVE projector screen with all the blinds pulled down. It was better than the movies, and a lot more comfy. I imagined coming home to an over flowing letter box, but reminded myself of the value of quality over quantity, and was excited to find this little gem in my letter box when I got home;


^ From the desk of the lovely Missive Maven (from the On Tender Hooks postcard set by Chronicle Books). I sent her a letter earlier in the week and I'm excited for her to receive it.

My health crisis: I have almost entirely lost my sense of smell and taste lately. It's pretty miserable. I was eating strawberries earlier (78c a punnet at Aldi, omg!) and I couldn't even taste that they were sweet. I think if I closed my eyes and you fed me food I wouldn't be able to tell you what it was! Your sense of taste obviously has a lot to do with your sense of smell (I think 70% of it comes from your sense of smell) and as a result of chronic rhinitis, I have a very limited sense of taste or smell. I sneeze about 50 times a day and can't leave the house without a pillow case as I blow my nose at least twice a minute (I am fully aware of how gross the pillow case thing is but tissues don't cut it). Sometimes it occurs to me that I've accepted that I live like this and it never occurs to me that it isn't normal. Imagine the worst cold you've ever had, and having that every day. Basically unless I can get together a whole lot of money, seeing a specialist for an operation to remove polyps in my sinuses doesn't seem presently foreseeable. There's also a high risk that the operation will cause a permanent lack of sense of smell, which sounds just about as fun. I've had cat scans and tried medication to no avail. I generally hate talking about it, because there are so many people in the world with health problems much much larger than mine. It's obviously not life threatening, or painful (sometimes it is), but it is life altering. It ends up feeling debilitating and often directly affects my abilities. I can't imagine working in hospitality or retail or any occupation where I have to talk to people or touch things and I just feel so unhealthy, daily. SO, I'm giving myself an ultimatum this coming week that I am going to at the very least, call the few 'nose, ear and throat' specialists in Newcastle and see if I can get some kind of idea of what monetary amount it might involve to get this problem fixed. Hold me to it, please. Ha. I can't even imagine what it would be like to breathe through my nose!

Tonight C is making pumpkin soup and some mysterious desert he won't tell me about, and we're both going to lounge around in our sickliness and watch Buffy and The Wire. I am feeling happy because my half sister Taegan now has a Facebook. Our contact over the last few years has been pretty sparse (she lives in Melbourne and we've spent a pretty limited amount of time together), so with the wonders of interweb social networking this might be mended in some way.

Hope you're having a good weekend so far :)