Autumn morning

I woke up at 5am this morning, tried to sleep for a while then gave up and got out of bed at the unheard of time of 5.30. I productively used my time to make a dress out of some scraps of fabric, drank copious amounts of tea (current favourite Chai 2 - Glenborg tea - it has corriander seeds in it) then by 8ish discovered I was out of novel things to do around the house. Rather than clean the house - which has gone ferrel recently - I headed off to the markets.

It was a stunning Canberra Autumn morning, the kind that makes me feel all fresh and new and goodwill to mankind and way to chilled to get shitty with the speeding tailgating roadrage fuckwit in the new ute. I love it when - after being harrassed by a dork who has tried to drive over the top of me, sped round me and raced off - I end up right next to them at the lights on the other side of town. I particularly love it when I'm in that crisp Autumn morning happy frame of mind that enables me to turn to the other driver and give them a big cheesy grin and a cheery wave.

Happy day

And why is it a happy day? Well because there were many hot air balloons suspended in the still sky over Canberra, and that always makes me happy.

After the hail storm

I spent pretty much all of last week in bed with a rather boring virus and then returned to work yesterday to an enormous pile of work and millions of emails and phone messages. It was almost enough to inspire me to turn around and head straight back home again. I stuck it out knowing I'd have to face it sooner or later then headed over to the Art School to see the postgrad exhibition that was open to the public for a few hours. Due to the freak storm the other week (the damage and aftermath faithfully captured by Ampersandduck who works there and is involved in the clean up operations) the school is in a sad state of disrepair and the two poor students due to have their final exhibition only got to show it to the public for a few hours after their postponed examinations had occurred. I really enjoyed Pamela Lofts crisp images of outback/rural environments littered with rusting metal and decaying houses. The way the light played over the man-made elements in the close cropped views of interior spaces, and the contrast between this and the external spaces in the images was what I found most engaging.

I then popped upstairs - with a hard hat on - to the clocktower, where I worked for a couple of years for Art Monthly. The room has been completely cleared, the festy carpet removed and the plaster coming away from the ceiling was being held up by long beams of quite fragile looking timber. It was amazing to see what once had been a cave filled with piles, stacks, shelves and many many intrays of paper - completely empty. The editrix is optimistically planning a new minimalist look for the room which I'm looking forward to seeing.