Wrapping It Up

On to the next chapter.

Thank you for reading – when I start writing at my new address I will let you know!

Kitchen Rebellion

Via Ffffound

I’ve started a veganish food blog, called Kitchen Rebellion. It’s my new baby, check it out: http://www.thekitchenrebellion.com

Cake or Death?

By Lee Price, via Ffffound

| MINI LOVE LIST |

♠ Sunday Morning; this smorgasboard of awesome is freaking me out; amazing photos, the whole situation makes me smile big

♠ A little obsessed with Filth in the Beauty, also ♥

♠ Plans to visit Sydney later in the year; exciting! I’m gonna start making a To-Do list!

♠ Eating lots of fresh pasta this week; ravioli, gnocchi, pasta spirals with haloumi. Cold weather comfort food. Italian-style rules! It’s one of my favs

♠ Unexpected gifts from Nepal 😀 vanilla tea, mini prayer flags, handmade soap and an amazing deep purple pashmina/silk scarf

♠ Trusting that things will work out

♠ Remembering to drink water. I can’t overstate how much of a MIND BOGGLING DIFFERENCE drinking heaps of water makes to my energy levels. It is such a basic thing that it’s easy to brush off as something that can’t possibly have that much affect, but it does!

From lerenarddenuit.tumblr.com, via Ffffound

Was supposed to be going to Against Me last night. Didn’t do so due to not wanting to turn my achy-bones-swollen-glands-and-cold combo into a ruthless beginning of winter flu-thing. Getting old, eh?

I gave my ticket to a friend from work, so at least I know it got put to good use!

Today is a lazy, get-well, restful Sunday. I am going to go for a stroll, listen to some tunes, take some photos and layby a couple of the new dresses that just landed at Cosmic.

The rest of the afternoon is dedicated to preparing a couple of Pennyroyal orders (my customers are so awesome ♥) and curling up with one of my eleven library books!

♥ ,

2011!

Yesterday I wandered up the road to the War Memorial. Agenda: relax on the steps, take a few photos, appreciate the harbour, drink a cider and write my 2011 Action List.

When my winklepickers died (and by ‘died’ I mean ‘were finally thrashed to the point that even a cobbler can’t fix ’em), I unstitched all of their buckles; now I have coffin-buckle tongued cons ♥ Old goths die hard, what can I say?

Among other things, I plan for 2011 to be the year I stop hating being photographed. A sweet digital camera was one of my Xmas presents from Cam and it will be getting a lot of exercise!

 

More about the Action List later on – I’m off to wander into town and do some girlstuff ♥ ♥ ♥

 

 

Recharged Batteries – Tattoo Fest & Pennyroyal

Via Ffffound

Good times…

♠ The NZ Tattoo & Art Festival! It was a blast; good vibes the whole time. I’m so glad that they’ve decided to make it a biannual event. Next time, maybe: more umbrellas up outside, heaps more food (!), an appropriate DJ (wtf was Mambo #5 doing coming through the speakers at a Tattoo Festival?), bands on mid-afternoon when the max. number of people are milling around

♠ Having a mini-holiday; tattoos, beer, lifesaver sunglasses, cider & catching up with Shel & dancing too much at the after-party, leather roses, Pukekura park, walking over giant sea-smoothed rocks to watch waves crash, the kind of blue-sky sunshine that make you feel in bloom, flowers for new parents, lounging in lush surrounds, two wise cats, homemade sushi & dinner on the deck; it was awesome to get out of town for a handful of days

♠ Sizzling hot early summer days

On their way ♥

♠ Designed a business card for Pennyroyal and ordered a whole bunch. I had no idea what job title to put on my card – “owner/operator” just sounds DULL – so I’ve left it blank, pending inspiration

♠ Sorting out business banking. Initially, I made the mistake of doing zero research and just opened up a couple of new accounts with the same bank I do my personal banking with (ANZ). I ended up with something workable but not at all ideal; today I closed those accounts and tomorrow I’m going to get myself a sweeter deal elsewhere (ASB)

♠ Crafting rings and sourcing stock for the Pennyroyal shop ♥ ♥ ♥ I still have a little while to go but I can almost taste the launch already!

♠ MIA: ‘People forgot what it’s like to be punk’. I love her.

Bowie mugshot, via Ffffound

♥,

Against the Corporate Grindstone

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Didn’t get a second interview with Bendon, thank god!

During my lunch break at Cosmic on Saturday, as I was feasting on Satay Palace vege roti chanai ($6.80 – best deal ever!), I made a list of personal pros and cons about getting a job at a company like Bendon. I had been feeling iffy about it ever since I applied – which is a warning sign that I should have honored; intuition knows best – and the call to come in for an interview was somewhat bittersweet.

The pros went something like:
♠ Recognised brand in Sydney (where I will be moving in 2011)
♠ Full time hours (i.e. full time paycheck)
♠ Rad for CV
♠ Managerial responsibility in a different company

and the cons:
♠ Possible authenticity issues
♠ Full time hours within a rigid structure
♠ Far less freedom
♠ Less diverse customer base
♠ A much more formal working environment

Saturday evening, sitting upstairs in Starbucks on Lambton Quay, waiting for the Store Manager to arrive for an initial interview, I was wondering “now how the fuck is THIS being true to yourself, lady?!”

The temptation was there to just get up and leave, but I chose to stay and see it through. After all, full-time work for a multinational company that has stores in Sydney seemed like a logical, worthwhile goal and I figured I might as well give it a shot. At the very least, maybe I’d learn something from the interview process.

During the interview, as I was asked generic question after generic question by the lovely, well-meaning store manager, my true-self kept knocking in my head asking “Lissa, what the hell are you doing here, trying to convince a blank-eyed corporate that you want to be just like them, all for the sake of a full-time paycheck and a name on a CV? It’s Inland Revenue all over again!”

What the hell indeed. It didn’t work then and it sure as fuck won’t work now.

Aren’t there a bunch of other, non-corporate, ways to gather funds to fuel my goals? Hell yes, there are!

One of the most important things I have learned through working at Cosmic Corner is that Cash vs. Freedom doesn’t necessarily have to be an either/or scenario.

After the interview, fleeing Starbucks and ditching my uncomfortable heels, I flipped open my notebook and jotted down my ‘Ideal Sweetest-Deal’ work-wise, trying to suss out what would enable me to honor all of my financial obligations, while saving a load of cash in the lead-up to moving to Sydney next year:

Keep working at Cosmic, grabbing as many extra hours as I can, all the while…
getting another part-time job in a progressive/alt. business to amp up my income, aaaaand…
giving the set-up of Pennyroyal on Etsy some serious time and energy, fears begone, because I know deep down I can nail it

So that is now my Deal.

I hearby declare that I will not apply for a shite corporate job ever again; not even if it involves hot lingerie.

My soul is thanking me already.

 

Via Ffffound

♥,

Lazy Sunday

Via Ffffound

YESSS:

♠ Days that feel like Summer

♠ The pub down the road having a resident cat; all pubs should have a resident cat!

♠ Suu Kyi too hot for Asia’s most brutal regime to handle – After being under house arrest for almost two decades, Aung San Suu Kyi may be free next week!

♠ Halloween! We had a gathering at home, talked shit and listened to a bunch of cool tunes. It was great. Cider, casual playlist wars, Blondie meowmix, impromptu dancing. It has been ages since I’ve been able to party a little; ♥ my amazing friends & incredible boyfriend; they rule.

♠ Hanging out with my folks; they are cool people

♠ Making lists

♠ Better Off Ted! A series that irreverently takes the piss out of soulless multinational corporations? Yes please! A friend recommended that I check it out, saying it was a rad satire, and indeed. So keen.

♠ Reading a Vivienne Westwood biography with Penny-the-cat curled up on my chest

♠ The Now This Is Gothic Tumblr. (Old goths dye hard)

♠ Catching up with my friend Liz, who took a weekend escape to Wellington recently, over fruit tea and chocolate; I am so proud of an inspired by her! I really do have to get up to Auckland for a visit soon

♠ Being tempted to take the BMX in the spare room for a joyride around Brooklyn

♠ Friday, giving myself a one snakebite limit, I rolled up to Medusa nana-style to see Cripple Mr. Onion, Zerstiren and Elephant of the Ocean. I still can’t bounce around at all, so I set up shop in the booths and let the party come to me! It was a rad night; I left before Cripple played – one of these days I will manage to see those guys! everyone tells me they are fucking rad! – so can’t vouch for their set, but Zerstiren were awesome (with the added sweet layer of being stoked to see a friend kicking ass) and so were Elephant of the Ocean, who I think everyone in Wellington should check out when they play at San Fran next Friday

♠ Fancy face masks that make me feel all glowy; yay Decleor Source D’Eclat

♠ Dessa‘s ‘A Badly Broken Code’. MIND BLOWING. You may very well need this album

♠ The revolution of absorbing simple, soulful truths

♠ Danielle LaPorte; she is an ass-kicking goddess-philosopher and I fucking love her!

♠ Cam gets home from a week livin’ it up in Sydney tomorrow! Can’t wait 😀

Via Ffffound

 

♥,

On The Mend

Mr Cleese by Brian Ewing

One week since surgery! I am starting to move around pretty damn well, even though I still need painkillers to do it. Attempting to stave off cabin fever and take it super slow at the moment.

The night nurse told me that my sleeve is one of two she has ever liked; “beautiful, tasteful & sweet” awww; she even brought another of the nurses into my room and asked whether I minded showing her my arm, it was cool as. I was looked after so fantastically – Southern Cross is great. Their facilities are awesome, rooms super-comfortable and the food is all fancy-like; I had a vege crepe stack for dinner and apple crumble with cream for dessert (I am easy to impress, really: make my belly happy and there you go!). It is a much friendlier space to be in than Wellington Public, but the nurses who looked after me after my public surgery in April were just as attentive, talented and wonderful as the ones who took care of me this time around: note to government – give these people more money! lots of it! immediately!

Happy places:

♠ Healing, slowly but surely

♠ My refashioned bellybutton ♥

♠ Bundling up my first Pennyroyal sales in pretty packaging and sending them out into the world, so exciting!

♠ Mum loving my foot tattoos; she is a cool lady

♠ The smell of old book pages

♠ Heaps of pizza

♠ Sons of Anarchy. Just finished watching season one. OMG! New favourite. Also, the Walking Dead, a brand new series set in our world post zombie-apocalypse. Sold. The first episode doesn’t screen until halloween but, as always, there are torrents around

♠ Charles MacKay, renegade mayor of Whanganui circa 1920

♠ My purple Staedtler fineliner; makes taking notes so much more fun

There is a lot of stuff in the pipeline that I can’t move towards as fast as I would like, at the moment, because my health has to be the priority. Instead of embracing that, and working to my limits, I have been fighting it and getting more and more frustrated at what I can’t do; right now I am make an effort to breathe deep and be content with the bunch of things that I can do…

♠ Read! Lots and often!
♠ Business plans and brainstorms for Pennyroyal
♠ Begin my ‘Loose Ends 2010’ list
♠ Bake treats
♠ Meditate
♠ Get a kick ass CV and a bunch of cover letters ready for when I’m able to launch another attack on the working world

By Ana Bagayan, via Creep Machine

Remember remember remember: You can do anything you put your head and your heart into; dive deep with self-acceptance, self-confidence, vision, motivation, energy.

Every time a negative thought comes up, nix it and visualize your dream life.

♥,

Newsbites

Via Ffffound

Fonterra targeted in spoof Greenpeace ad

Hobbit battles Outrageous start [worst headline ever?] – NZ actors deserve standardised contracts

Evacuation of Chile miners ‘likely to start Wednesday’ – Awesome!

Can lessons be learned from Portugal’s drug laws?

NZ ‘trashing our environment’ – DOC chief:

“The head of the Department Conservation (DOC) is calling for urgent and “radical” change to New Zealand’s approach to economic progress, to take environmental impacts into account, and called on the business world to take on the issue.”

(see also: The free market god doesn’t exist)

Newsbites 28/09/10

Italian sculptor Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘L.O.V.E.’ installation in front of the stock exchange palace in Milan.

Provocative finger sculpture unveiled in Milan – See above. AWESOME.

Kiwi scientists make atomic ‘breakthrough’ – “Dr Andersen said within three weeks of first trapping the atom, new experiments previously not thought possible were under way.” Physics is amazing.

Twin lemurs born at Hamilton Zoo – All together now: LEMURS!!!!

Beyond God and atheism: Why I am a ‘possibilian’: “I don’t think the important goal should be to fight for a particular story in the absence of strong evidence; it should be to explore and celebrate the vast possibilities.”

Titanium foam builds Wolverine bones – “What’s more, the foam is porous, so the bone can grow around and within it, truly integrating the implant with the skeleton.” Cyborg as.

High-Speed Videos: The Hidden World of Insect Flights – This is so cool; I love the ladybug video!

♥,