In case of emergency...

No need to break the glass, just break out a mug!
You can even use Milo if your really stuck!

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

you’ll need....
4 Tablespoons cake flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
3 Tablespoons chocolate drops (optional)
1 Mug

Here’s what you do....

Add dry ingredients to the mug, and mix well.
Crack an egg and add it to your mug. Be sure to mix it
well to avoid any pockets of flour in the corners.
Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.
Add the chocolate drops if you’ve got them, and a splash
of vanilla essence too.
Pop your mug into the microwave & zap for 3 minutes on
maximum power (1000watt).
Wait until the cake stops rising, and sets in the mug.
If necessary, run a knife around the sides of the mug, and
tip the still warm cake out of the mug and onto a saucer.

Sit back and enjoy with a coffee - you deserve it!

Cups...

This week I have been reading...

Cups with no handles, a memoir of Bette Boyanton, Social Activist and interesting woman,
a country lady who with such a simple idea changed peoples lives. Bette grew up in an extremely poor family living through WW2 and the depression in Melbourne and fought against the odds to come through. She was one of the founders of the community house movement and a livelong anti-war activist.

Initially I was attracted to the blurb on the back, but this was really not representative of the story. The other thing that confused my was that I thought a Memoir was supposed to be autobiographical. Carolyn Landon wrote this book, but is using Bette's voice, which I found a little bit annoying at the start, but soon got over it.

The Cups with no handles refers to her poor childhood and always having to drink from broken cups.

I would recommend this book, it's good.

Just in case you needed proof...

I list my music taste as "unashamedly daggy".

These are the songs that played on my iPod on my way home from work tonight;

To sir with love - Lulu
Venus - Shocking Blue
Physical - Olivia Newton-John
Freedom - Wham!
Heartbreaker - Dionne Warwick
Turning Japanese - The Vapors

I am not ashamed!!!

More in the chicks I think are great series

Tori don't compare me with Kate Bush Amos

Anyone who calls their greatest hits Tales of a librarian and catalogues all of the songs under their Dewey number is ace in my book!

I am almost finished reading what has to be the most bizarre, yet totally enjoyable autobiography ever. Piece by piece covers most aspects of her life, along with lots of other random ramblings about religion, spirituality and life in general. But it's great! Kind of lucky I already know a bit about her and have read widely on the stuff she is going on about, because otherwise I would be completely lost!!

I have to admit I haven't kept up with the later few albums of hers, But my favourite of her songs is defiantly Tear in your hand off her first album Little earthquakes.

She's a kooky one, but I love her!!!

Welcome to my nightmare!

I have the perfect nuclear family,

I have a house in the suburbs and a respectable job,

This is not the life I signed up for!!! I want a refund!!!!

Somebody slap me and wake me up from this nightmare!!!

This week I have been watching...

Secret diary of a Call girl with Billie Piper which is apparently based on the Belle De Jour "memoir". Yes although I have atrocious spelling and grammar, I did mean to write "memoir", maybe it should even be "memoir". You see, although it was an OK book, I think it is most definitely fiction and not be at all surprised if I found out it was actually written by a man. despite this, I have requested my library purchase Further adventures of a London Call girl, this may make me a hypocrite... But I do love a good trashy read.

But back to the T.V. show (which I bought on DVD because 10.30 is way past my bedtime at the moment!!!). When it says based on, it could also say "loosely suggested by" as it doesn't bare a lot of resemblance to the book beyond the first episode. But I have to say, I am liking it, I like how it's constructed and how it shows a duality between the character of Belle/Hannah (something you don't get in the book) and well, sometimes it's just plain saucy... It's probably the closest thing for me to replace Sex and the City. And yes you do get to see Billie Pipers tit's, they are quite small...

RSSSSSSSsssssss........

Today I have been working on the webolution task 4, learning about RSS feeds and creating a bloglines account.

I didn't realise I would have to concentrate so much and had to turn the music off and everything! Lucky I picked a child care day to have a go at it!!!

My problem is I am too impatient and don't read the instructions as I go, more just go ahead and do it then go back to the instructions to figure out why it didn't work!

Anyways, so far I have subscribed to Jo and Lea's blogs, another library blog that I accidentally added because it had a similar URL to Jo's. Rolling Stone, The Age, Library Stuff and Readers Club biographies.There were also a couple of others that I tried to subscribe to and it told me I already had but do you think I could find them???!!!

I am not sure if this is something I will use, but I can see how some people might, but I will go back to it and have another look when my headache has subsided.

Elvis Poll

So I put a new poll up but couldn't attach the photo's to it.

Your Choices are...

a) 50's too hot for Ed Sullivan Elvis





b) '68 comeback special all in leather Elvis




c) Pleasantly plump 70's Jumpsuit Elvis

Cruizin in the Library

Yes there is a reason I have called myself the Hot Rod Librarian!

Come along Tuesday 11th November, 7pm at the Altona Library!!

HTML ZZZZ

Looky what I did, I made it go all big!!!

I have been trying to work out for ages how to make my blog go full page instead of a crappy little column in the middle of the screen, and it turns out that having a vague knowledge of what HTML is and does has finally come in handy, it didn't mean I worked it out for myself, just that I didn't find all scary while I was doing it!!

I found the answer on this website:
http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-change-width-of-blog.html
Which other webolutionary types might also find useful

Of course its made that travel post that I took so long arranging go all weird now, but I cant be bothered doing anything about that right now!

I also, thanks to Jo, have created a blog list to make it easier for me to follow other peoples blogs, its under my bookshelf thing on my sidebar.

Now I just need to figure out how to put a counter on it so I can see if anyone is actually looking at it! (or you could just write a comment and say Hi!!!

Librarian weddings

I found this great post on Scott Douglas's blog. Scott wrote Dispatches from a Public Librarian, a fun book about his life and times at the Anaheim Library. But Scott was very heavy on the footnoting which was quite unnecessary if you ask me. I'm being picky now!!!

You have to check this out though:

http://speakquietly.blogspot.com/2008/02/library-themed-wedding.html

Coming out of the chicklit closet

This week I'm reading...

Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger.

Why do I keep doing this to myself? For someone who claims to read mostly non-fiction, I certainly read an exorbitantly high proportion of 'chicklit'. Yet like 95% of the fiction I have read, this one has left me unfulfilled.

I enjoyed The devil wears Prada, probably because, for once it wasn't centred around romantic relationships and was not all rosy and happy. I don't mind the occasional good trashy read, but this one... oh please... the characters are boring and the lifestyles unrealistic, its like she watched one too many episodes of Sex and the city, but forgot about the comedy! (by the way I love S+TC and that was not meant to sound like I was trashing it!)

I even managed to find several mistakes in it, (which for someone with spelling as atrocious as mine is really saying something!) the most offensive of which, "Shirley Basset" oh my god... it makes Shirley Bassey sound like a dog!!!

I don't recommend this book!

Warning... offensive material (if your a complete prude that is!)

Check this out!

I saw them yesterday, the ultimate iPod accessory!!!!

http://www.ohmibod.com/

Yes that's right, it's a vibrator that you plug into your iPod and it vibes in time with the music!!!!

T is for Travel

I have been to 18 countries (not counting Australia!)

Fiji

UK

France

Ireland

Netherlands

USA

New Zealand

Japan

Mexico

Jamaica

Barbados

Turkey

Russia

Belgium

Germany

Czech Republic

Austria

Italy

Photo's all with courtesy of Flickr and the Webolution learning objective #3!

I had this great idea to put these photo's I found into a map, easy enough to do in the Organisr part of Flickr, but I couldn't upload it onto my blog, which was the whole point of this post!
Flickr seems easy enough to use, but trying to arrange multiple photo's in a blog post is not fun! I kept unwittingly deleting and had to constantly rearrange them, They are still not how I really wanted them but I am about to throw the computer out the window so you will have to put up with it!!!

I'm with the Banned!

OK so I find out today it was actually last week, so happy belated Banned Books Week. This link will take you to the The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression site to see how you too can celebrate!

http://www.abffe.com/banned2007.htm

This one is the American Library Association banned books site:

http://ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.cfm

Click this link to view the list of books Sarah Pailin may or may not have tried to have banned from the Wasilla library in Alaska, as well as comments posted on one of my favourite library sites librarian.net (putting the rarin back into librarian!). The views posted are not necessarily those of Jessamyn West, the sites creator.

http://www.librarian.net/stax/2366/sarah-palin-vp-nominee/#comment-119807

I have read 18 of them, how about you?

The Limited Edition HotRodLibrarian Trading Card

trading card
Originally uploaded by hotrodlibrarian

To order simply send me all your money now!

A is for...

Anouk!

Here are some Anouk's of note;

Dutch rock chick Anouk - check out her song 'Nobody's wife'.

Anouk Aimee - Super sexy French actress.

The daughter character in Chocolat and the follow up Lollypop shoes.

And of course the most fabulously gorgeous Anouk of all!

Born: 27/12/2006

AKA: Wibbler

Favourite Foods: Cheese, yogurt, bickies

Favourite song: Twinkle twinkle little star

Favourite animals: Giraffes, Koalas, Doggies

Newest word: Cuddle

Favourite activities: Picking flowers, reading, slides

Greatest achievements: Learning to walk, putting socks on my myself, being so super cute and wonderful that I convinced Mummy and Daddy that it was a good idea to go back for another!

Faithfully yours...

The first in the series of... Chicks I think are great.

Marianne Faithfull

I cant remember when I first learned about her, but I was always on the Stones side when it come to the Beatles vs. Stones question. (5 days left to vote don't you know!) It was probably in the Stones doco I watched a million times, or in the Blown Away book about Altamont that Marianne contributed to, I knew of her music, well probably only Lucy Jordan and As tears go by.

Her Autobiography Faithfull just blew me away (it's one of my top 5 reads by the way.) it was so raw, yet so elegant. I fell in love with her and Imediatly went out and bought Broken English. I think it could have been the first time I heard the C word. I loved it! There is a great doco about her called Dreaming my dreams, and I also recomend the Kissin time album, which contains my absolute favourite of her songs, Sliding through life on charm.

She also has had some great acting gigs, such as playing God on AbFab (to Anita Pallenberg's devil!) or in Marie Antionette (Marianne is actually decended from Austro-Hungarian aristocracy). But her greatest filmatic acheivement would have to be the mega-sexy Girl on a motorcycle... Ohhhh that jumpsuit!

She recently published a second book titled Memories, dreams & reflections which was still great, but certinaly did not have the life changing impact of Faithfull.

I hate the word surviviour so I am not going to use it, but she is fabulous, and to quote Keith Richards, has "a great pair"!

Click here to visit her official website
http://www.mariannefaithfull.org.uk/NEWS.HTML

Shopping

I have just finished placing my order with Cafe Press... if you havn't checked it out have a look at;

www.shop.cafepress.com/librarian

Hilarious!!!

Library stuff

This link will take you to a great article titled "Revenge of the librarians" from a 2004 issue of my favourite magazine BUST.

http://katlong.com/librarians.htm

Ita funny article talking about the image and stereotypes of librarians, a little about the history and mentions some great library websites and blogs that you might find interesting.

B is for...

B is for Buses...

For someone who lives in a city known for its trams, buses certainly have played a significant role in my life... of course neither of these stories takes place in Melbourne.

I met one of my best friends, C, while traveling in Europe with another friend, G. Picture this: G and I were travelling on Bus-a-bout, a sort of hop on hop off backpacker network of buses that travel around Europe. We had been staying with a friend of G's in Paris and were scheduled to leave at 8am on whatever morning it was. We slept in, woke up in a tizzy and rushed to where the buses leave from to see them driving off in the distance. We headed over the road (actually road is an understatement, picture one of those huge wide Parisian boulevards with about five lanes of traffic in each direction!) to grab a coffee and collect our thoughts. After a couple of minutes we see two Bus-a-bout buses pull up again. knowing full well they were not coming back for us, because although we had a booking they do not wait for anyone! G ran across the road to find out what was going on. She called out to me from the other side of the road to come over, so me, laden down with two lots of (girls!) bags ran over and jumped on the bus.

Meanwhile; C and her husband (at the time!) where on their first Bus-a-bout leg, having shown their booking slip to the guide of the first bus (about three buses left from the same place at the same time and for some unbeknown reason did not have a sign showing which was going where.) got themselves comfy. As the bus headed down the road and the guide began talking about their destination, (I cant remember where it was but it can not where C was supposed to be going!) she gingerly put her hand up and said, um, I think there has been a mistake. After much convincing, tanty throwing and whatever other threats where involved, the driver, totally against policy (how many times did we have to hear those words!) contacted the other driver and had both buses return to the original leaving spot.

Suffice to say, we got on the bus and everyone HATED C and her hubby for making the bus so late, but G and I LOVED them because we got to get on. We got talking and it turned out we were all from Melbourne, had all been living in Edinburgh, (just down the road from where I was living in fact) and had heaps in common. We kept running into them throughout our travels and at the end exchanged all the usual email addresses etc. I was heading straight back to Aus, and although you say you will, you never keep in touch. 6 months later, I was coming out of the store room of the Bookshop I was working in and ran straight into this guy who looked so familiar but I just couldn't place him. it was N, C's hubby, they were back, living in Melbourne. After a couple more spooky coincidences, C and I decided there had to be some reason we were meant to be friends so we might as well go with it. that was about 6 years ago, and we've gone through so much together, kids, relationships (starting and ending), complete meltdowns, librarianships. She's cooking me dinner tonight!

The other Bus...

I met my partner (here by known as 'the boy') on the school bus. We used to sit together, well actually he always sat next to me. I had such a crush on him, we kissed once but he reckons he doesn't remember. Anyway, we were pretty good friends, and ran into each other from time to time. This was all about 15 years ago now. About four years ago I found out on the small town rumour mill that he was back and where he was living. I knocked on his door, as you do, not having a clue what to expect. I mean it had been at least four or five years since I had seen him, I could have been greeted at the door by his wife and kids, or his boyfriend for all I knew! Turns out he was also single. I was thinking 'your looking good' and he was thinking 'your looking good' and, well after that I stalked him for a bit. (Well look, it's not really stalking if they like you back is it?) Well anyways we got together. When I told my brother about it he made some comment about running out of guys to chase and having to recycle my old crushes!

Bulging at the seams...

The following 12 books were added to my (already overflowing) list of books to read this week;

Cup with no handles - Carolyn Landon
Singled Out - Virginia Nicholson
When you are engulfed in flames - David Sedaris
The Bolter - Frances Osborne
Flavours of Melbourne - Charmaine O'Brien
Bye Bye Charlie - Corinne Manning
Flightless: Incredible journeys without leaving the ground - Lonely Planet writers
The private lives of Pippa Lee - Rebecca Miller
Leni - Steven Bach
Nightwork - Thomas Glavinic
East of the sun - ... Gregson
Dear Fatty - Dawn French

More technical stuff...

Today ive been messing about with the Labels that you can add to posts, I have created 5 so far; Weboulution, Books, Alphabet, music and Stuff I thought was fun. They make searching the blog easier, if you enjoy certian aspects of what i'm writing about you can just go straight to posts about that subject.

Last night I started reading...

Punk: The whole story introduced by the luscious Debbie Harry. We got it into the library about 6 months ago and I'm surprised it's not been nicked yet!

Ive only read a bit of it, but checked out all the pics, I love the fact that most of the bands considered punk don't actually look like the stereotype of what a punk is considered to be. The only glued up spikes I saw where on Johnny Rotten looking a complete ridiculous parody of himself when they made their 1996 comeback. Well at least they had the balls to say that they were only in it for the money!

I did lean something I never new about Mr. Rotten; When he was 7 he contracted meningitis, he was in a coma for 6 months and the illness caused him to gain his trademark hunch, stare and he had a weak chest which filled with phlegm that needed to be spat out. Charming!

My favourite quote so far is from Malcom McLaren in the afterword "...The music, the fashion, the movement himself, it was all one big artistic statement born out of my life and times at art school." So basically the whole Punk ethos was his idea of an art project!

The book, as usual, concentrates on the London and New York scenes but I have found a couple of references Australian bands to 'the Saints' and 'Radio Birdman'. but not just the music, the book also profiles photographers, clubs, fashion and the cut'n'paste artwork of Jamie Reid.

Reading this book brought back memories of a book I borrowed from the Castlemaine library called The uncyclopedia of punk which was a hilarious parody of the scene, can't find a pic of it but, sorry!

I'm so cleva... and I havent even had my morning coffee yet!

File under technical info that others joing the webolution might find useful!

I just worked something out with this blog stuff all by myself!!!

I had saved a draft that I wanted to come back to later, then when I published it, put it at the date and time I had origionall written it, but if you go to post options (under where you write the text) you can change the date and time! what a revilation!!!

What the...

Look what I found in my latest BUST magazine e-newslettery thingi... man I used to love these things when I was 7...

My Little Pony having a quarter-life crisis?
25 ponies for 25 years at The Chelsea Art MuseumDon't miss this! Hasbro has commissioned popular and influential artists and designers to re-design 18 of the famous My Little Pony toys. The final designs are up for auction too, and part of the proceeds go to Give Kids The World Village. Read up on your forgotten favorite childhood toy!

Early morning coz I couldn't sleep!

A friend told me after reading my last post that she wanted to slap me, hey I wanted to slap me too! That's was kind of the point I was trying to make, hormones do crazy things and having a baby seems to shoot women back into 50's housewife mode faster than you can say "My name is ...blah... and I am a feminist". I think that's been the hardest adjustment of having a kid for me, trying to keep a hold of my feminist identity. I had been an independent woman for so long, and when I did finally move in with my partner, insisted everything be shared out equally. Why did this suddenly change almost overnight??? And it's not like I have a completely useless partner, he will do lots for bubbadoo, and cooks a couple of nights a week, but it's the way I almost have to beg and bargain for these things that makes me feel totally degraded.

Something I realised after my conversation with said friend yesterday is that there will be a lot of people reading this blog who did not know me in my pre-mummy existence... uh oh....

I finished Misconceptions last night, and I was right, the 3rd part went back to that more personal approach I was hoping for. She talked a lot about the effect of babies on relationships and the kinds of stuff I was exploring myself, it's scary how the traditional gender roles become to apparent after becoming a parent, I just hope it's a temporary thing... I said hope, i'm not holding my breath.

She discusses her own struggle with Post-partum (post-natal) depression, the Cesarean she felt she was forced into and friends struggles with feeding. I get a lot more out of memoir's than anything else I read, I like the bravery of someone who's putting their story out there. If this book sounds of interest you might also like Brooke Shields Down came the rain, her own memoir of post-partum depression. (and the one that she copped all the flack from Tom Cruise about!). I've also seen another one in my library, Marie Osmond's Behind my smile, but couldn't bring myself to read that one... find her just way too cheesy and annoying!

Today I am feeling: Headachey

This week I am reading...

Naomi Wolf's Misconceptions. I'm about 2/3 of the way through it, enjoyed the first section which was an extremely personal account of her experience of pregnancy. Ms. Wolf began questioning her own feminist principles and identity, particually in relation to her feelings towards abortion and also gender roles within relationships.

It is with this second point that I most related. The effects of the pregnancy hormones, not just physically but psychologically and emotionally, as women grow they beocome more depended upon their mate as a simple survival instinct, women find themselves becoming more clingy and dependent.

Personally I have been embarassed by much of my domestic behaviour of most of 2007, with the newborn in tow, I became what I never wanted to be... a frickin' housewife can you beleive! I had a friend staying early on in the year and she was in the kitchen with me as I was making my partner his sandwich for work the next day, he came in and made some comment along the lines of "needs more meat/pickel/jam/..." whatever it was. when he left my friend said "man, I would have thrown it at him and told him to make it himself" and all I could think was, 'thats exactly what I would have expected I would say/do.' I was so embarrased! I didn't tell her I was getting up at 5am to make him a Milo before work!

Another point I found very relivant was on the first page. 'I wish someone could have let me know I would lose my self in the process of becoming a mother - and that I would need to mourn that self.' This is something I still struggle with two years on. The rare opportunity that I get to take a walk just on my own feels like freedom, I miss the old me and often have those guilt inducing moments where I wonder if I have made all the right decisions.

The middle section has been a critique of the U.S. hospital system in relation to birthing mothers, not overly relivent here (and don't go getting me started on the U.S. healthcare system or maternaty provisions!) but still many points worth considering. I am hoping the last section will head back to the personal format of the first.

I would recomend this book to anyone who has ever felt a sense of guilt or regret at the extreme changes their lives have taken in becoming a parent, who has struggled, or is still struggling with their new identity. Anyone whose experience of pregnancy, birth and life afterwards is not all as beautiful and rosy as society can sometimes build our expectiations up to beleive it will be.

After too many cups of coffee, today's state of mind can only be described as 'In a flap'!

I recently read Judith Lucy's The Lucy family alphabet, an OK read, not fantastic but entertaining enough and I found many aspects of her life interesting. However the one thing I really loved about the book and that was it's construction. A is for Adoption, Bis for... well I can't remember what B was for but basically each letter became a heading for whatever story she was telling, it made for the book being quite disjointed but I liked the idea and thought it could become a great exersize in writing a memoir without being too overwhelming. I've always had this romantic idea of writing a book, not that I ever though my life was really interesting enough to warrant it, but well, why not!

So I thought I'd give it a go, not that I have yet decided what sort of style of writing this blog will follow, perhaps at this stage I will just consider it 'Eclectic'! This can just become one of many formats used until I , if ever, decide. Hey I'm queen of this blog and I can do whatever I want!!! Also, too predictable to start with A so I will start in the middle!

L is for Libraries...

Of course I used the library as a kid, but I rediscovered it as an adult when I had first moved to Melbourne. I was spending too much of my measly Cafe waitress wage on books, and with my gym being right across the road from the Brunswick library, I one day ventured in (all hot and sweaty and looking really attractive! But back to the story...) every single book on my most wanted list was in the catalogue, I was over the moon, (lucky too coz a few of those books turned out to be quite shite... luckily I hadn't got around to buying them!).

The day I decided to study to become a librarian was at the Sandringham library. I was sick of whatever menial retail job i was in at the time and dropped in a resume. The lady behind the desk handed it back with what can only be described as a look of utter superiority said "it's a four year degree to work in a library" oooohhh I'll show you nasty snooty beeatch!

The desire was satisfied for a couple of years working in what could only be described as a 'Book supermarket', I was happy to be surrounded by so much good stuff, but can pinpoint the exact moment I realised my dissatisfaction with the place, we had a new manager who was proud of the fact that he had only read one book (The BFG, he had got half way through the Twits and given up). Time to get my act together...

Looking into courses I found my long ago studied Arts degree was, finally, going to become useful. I undertook a one year Grad. Dip. and here I am, lots of adventures along the way but finally feel at least a little satisfied with where I am in life...