Recipes, frugality and lack of tv, or, we go further into weird-hippy-land.

(Is there a name for it when your fingers seem to be dyslexic? I know what I want to type and how I want to spell it, but my fingers sometimes come down in the wrong order and I seem to be unable to stop them.)

I've had a pleasantly quiet few days this week, unfortunately slightly marred by a throat infection. On Tuesday I visited my grandparents for lunch and a read through of my Grandma's cook book. This book is amazing, it was in her glory box growing up, so it's at least 55 years old if not older. I copied out some of the jam and marmalade recipes and a few of the desserts too. Then I went through her own recipe book, which has things she's written down, recipes from friends and recipes she's cut from magazines. I found the magazine recipes fascinating, if only because of the advertisments around them, apparently Fletcher Jones' new season coats were $15 once. She's also promised me the recipe for pickled cucumber soup (I know it sounds revolting, but it's a Lithuanian dish I grew up eating and it tastes like childhood and is actually quite yummy.) The very best thing was getting Grandad's tomato sauce recipe, another thing I grew up with which he hasn't made in years, I'm looking forward to recreating it come tomato season.

On the frugal front I'm trying to train my hair to need less washing. Right now I've gotten down to once every five days. It looks pretty bad by the last day but it's getting better. I'm hoping to get myself down to once a week and then hopefully after that only doing it once a month or so and whenever it's actually dirty. We have giant bottles of shampoo and conditioner at the minute which we bought from the natural soap place in Castlemaine, but once they run out I'm going to try the bi-carb soda and apple vinegar route.

Another lifestyle change we're trying at the moment is no more veging in front of the television. We've put a throw over the tv to hide it from view. The idea isn't to never watch tv again, but instead to be unable to watch it mindlessly. I actually have to have something in particular to watch in order to go to the effort of pulling the throw off and loading up the dvd player. So far this is actually going amazingly well. I've cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, re-organised the laundry cupboard (which was in desperate need of organisation) made mulled-wine jelly (with partial success), hemmed new work trousers, gone for a walk, read several interesting books, had a nice relaxing bath and have been in bed at a very reasonable hour, all this in the evening hours I usually spend zoned out in front of the television. Now if only I could convince Seamus to get off the laptop as well ;-)

Hmm, what else? I have lemons! One of the Flight Coordinators at work brought me a bag of them, so sometime over the next few days I'll have to make some marmalade. It will have to be done before Tuesday, because on Tuesday I'm flying to Adelaide! Hmm, actually I'll re-state that, I have a ticket to fly to Adelaide on Tuesday with Tiger Air, so I hope I'll be getting to Adelaide on Tuesday!

Oh, one last thing, I'm reducing my medication at the moment, so if there are disruptions to your regularley scheduled Chris I do apologise for the inconveniance and will hopefully be up and running again soon.

Rape and Sexual assault in Australian Culture

I've been trying to avoid this topic in the news since it makes me feel so helplessly angry, but it's built up to the point that it is impossible.

For the non-Victorians on my list, after the 2010 AFL Grand Final party for the Collingwood Football Club (The premiers) a woman has come forward alleging she was sexually assaulted.

This has produced the predictable media circus with all the usual suspects mouthing off. As previously stated, I've been trying to avoid it, but one particular comment by ex-footballer "Spida" Everett really got to me: "Girls!! When will you learn! At 3am when you are blind drunk & you decide to go home with a guy ITS NOT FOR A CUP OF MILO!"

OK, this upsets me on many levels. The non-obvious level that really gets to me is this; Where is the scope for friendship between men and women? I know that I personally in my early 20s have been blind drunk at 3am and have taken a guy back to my place (usually it was my place because I was the one who lived in the inner suburbs)and guess what? IT WAS FOR A CUP OF MILO! Or possibly another beer while we sat on my bedroom floor and discussed vast philosophical topics such as Life, Love and whether that spot on my bedroom wall looked more like a flower or a cloud. We watched television, we sat outside and looked at the stars, we decided to load up my music player with songs from the early 90s and sung embarrassingly until my housemate(s) told us to shut up or joined in. And after all that guess what? When I went to bed, they either stretched out on the floor of my bedroom or if still able to they stumbled onto the couch in the lounge. Very occasionally they would make a move, and when rebuffed would take it with good grace, if a little embarrassed, and would trundle off to said floor or couch. If they didn't accept the rebuff with good grace I never invited them back again or dropped the acquaintance entirely, depending on the circumstances.

What shits me is, if ever I made a huge mistake in judgment and one of these encounters had gone very very wrong according to the media beat up it would be my fault for having them in my house. The fact I'd done the same dozens of times with other guys with nothing happening would not prove that this one guy out of many was a dickhead, instead it would prove that I'd let myself in for danger time and time again, and I was just lucky it had only happened this once. Cue side rant about rape protection always being the onus of women and women getting grief for both assuming every man will rape her and for not assuming every man will rape her.

And to all you guys who ever came back to my place for the equivalent of "a cup of milo" thanks for being awesome and being a massive part of my early 20s, and for not making me consider it any more dangerous to invite you back than one of our female friends.