rainbowtatt

This is why I love living in Sydney’s inner-west:

So the sprayers have repainted a wall so they have a blank canvas. But they haven’t had time to come back to finish the job.

Promise to show you the finished product (whenever that may happen!).

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When Dan put my ring on my finger, my brain immediately went into Bridezilla-mode:

• Who do we have to invite?
• How long have I got to lose the fat?
• How the hell are we going to pay for this?
• Etc, etc etc – thoughts that occupied my brain to the extent that I had trouble sleeping for at least two weeks. I was even incapable of napping while we were on our beloved holiday!

Not long after that, my brain went into nerdBridezilla mode:

• I need a new Gmail account!
• I need a new domain for my blog!
• I need a new domain for my business!
• I need a new Twitter handle!

It turns out that my married name* is more common than Kane, so it’s limited my options when choosing a new Gmail account name. Gmail is the centre of my online universe, so picking an appropriate account name ranked pretty highly on my list.

Do I go with my nickname for a Gmail account? Maybe the new business name**? Do I spell everything backwards?

I ended up grabbing 2 Gmail accounts, one featuring my full name including my middle name and one featuring my nickname. At least I have 18 months to work out which one I’ll use :)

Now I just need to work on my colour-coded wedding invite list. It’s colour-coded based on importance of particular groups being invited (i.e. red = must invite, yellow = if we can afford it, etc.)

* Yes, I’m going to be all traditional and take on Dan’s surname. Is that considered old-fashioned these days? Meh, whatever. Being a Kane girl has been a hard slog for the last 31 years and I think I’ve earned the chance to graduate to a new surname.

** New business name yet to be thought-of. Suggestions welcome!

This week I got to have dinner at NSW Parliament House as part of a function I went to in The Stranger Room.

I’ve been there a couple of times now, and I always love how all their crockery and cutlery is monogrammed. Even the butter dish!

Here’s my dessert coffee:

And yes, I really did see Bob Carr stack it on the stairs out the front of NSW Parliament House. Admittedly there were a lot of us in his way on the stairs and he was very polite and humble in his stack.

Why can’t he be premier instead of Rees???

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

So how does the interwebs see little ol’ me?

There’s a bit of balance across a heap of topics (how very Gemini of me) and the big red bit makes sense considering I used my (waiting-to-be-renamed) online moniker. I also tried out my REAL name, but it was right off the mark — a large chunk was dedicated to sport. Excuse me? Ummmm, no. Interestingly, Stilgherrian had a similar experience.

You should go and try it out, if only to watch it look you up. I was mesmerised.

Have I mentioned how much I hate the word diet? DIET. Yuck. Normally I say something like “lifestyle change” or “healthy eating habits”. But—dare I say it—diet is easier for my mouth to spit out.

So “The Bride Diet” it is. The “be less fat for the wedding” diet.

Today marks the beginning of Week 3 of The Bride Diet and while I haven’t lost weight, I’ve improved my eating and exercise habits and I think any improvement is worth celebrating. YAY ME!

In terms of my eating habits, I’m trying to follow the low-gi and CSIRO’s Total Wellbeing Diet systems. Input versus output—y’know, the basics of eating well.

My exercise regime has been pretty much non-existent for the last year, so there’s definitely room for improvement there.

Baby steps. Credit where credit’s due. Patting myself on the back for progress, as small as it might be. Like the block of white chocolate that is staring at me as I type. I still haven’t touched it. YAY ME!

It’s funny how people have methods and theories on weightloss and how willingly they share this information when they hear of someone else attempting to shift the fat. I heard a doozy today that I’ve actually found is working quite well; I’ll have to see if it works again tomorrow!

I’m going to attempt to share my process with you; the food, the exercise, the whacky tips and tricks I pick up along the way.

Should be interesting!

Yesterday I got to hang out with a bunch of cool blogger chicks at the Blog Chicks lunch. It’s so nice to spend time with people who understand terms like ‘analytics’, ‘plugins’ and ‘wordpress versus blogger’.

It was fun!

I got to meet:

• Liz from Savvy Cat
• Lucy from Chief Bridesmaid
• Jennifer from Jenius
• Sheryl from One Bite More
• Marilyn from Live first, write later
• Trish from My Little Drummer Boys
• Suze from Chocolatesuze
• Helen from Grab Your Fork

And it was nice to see Emma from Reality Ravings who I met at the last meet.

Leigh very bravely let me do a lap of honour in the Renault Koleos (and discovered I’ve been mispronouncing Renault for all these years) and I didn’t even crash it! Damn that thing drives like a charm, though it’s about 3 times bigger than my little Mazda, hehe.

The highlight for me was watching foodbloggers take photos of my lunch:

Classic!

Suze also got an action shot of everyone mid-conversation and mid-nomming.

Was lovely to spend the afternoon with you, ladies; let’s do it again soon!

If you wanted proof of just how awesome I am, here it is:

Half a dozen hen’s eggs given to me because I’m such a lovely and helpful person. The chooks live in a backyard in downtown Rockdale and were hand-picked especially for me.

Noice!

I’m told the best way to enjoy their home-grown flavour is to poach them, which I’m doing for brekkie tomorrow morning. I need a high-protein breakfast before the Blog Chicks lunch tomorrow.

Now I need to decide which Threadless tee to wear tomorrow!

My socks offend people.

Specifically, this pair of socks:

Funny how the toe separation freaks out some people beyond belief. I have been known to taunt people who are anti-toe socks, hehe…

Yesterday I was given a display of magnolia flowers, hand-picked from a garden. BECAUSE I’M ENGAGED.

I’m sorry, I’m still getting used to the phrases “engaged”, “fiancé”, “getting married”, etc.

We’ve been given a gazillion congratulations cards, something I wasn’t expecting since we’re of the generation that doesn’t seem to do cards anymore (myself included). I’ve decided to keep the cards on our sideboard for a long time since there’s still a good 18 months before the wedding.

I’ve also decided to put a ban on thinking about arrangements for the wedding until at least next year. Otherwise I’ll turn into a total Bridezilla. In reality I should be spending time catching up on normal things like housework (zomg I’m so far behind) and the new clients I have on the horizon.

But it’s so hard to turn my brain off. I’m now waking up at about 5.30am on weekdays and 6am on the weekends. I can’t think of anything decent to tweet about. My brain is about 23 steps ahead in organising the wedding that hasn’t even been organised yet. I don’t want to become the person who only talks about wedding preparations but I think I’m already halfway there.

Can you please tell me to shut up if I start talking about weddings too much? Be prepared to slap me across the face occasionally. Otherwise I’ll have to slap myself, and that could be interesting.

I attempted this last year with Leigh (and she whipped my arse, hehe) and I’m willing to give it a go again as part of Blog Chicks Australia.

I have a new level of motivation now and even though I considered last week to be a complete write-off, I somehow managed to still lose a kilo (yay me! Let’s have a cupcake to celebrate).

As a general rule I try to follow the methods of the CSIRO well-being eating guide and get the fat jiggling on the cross-trainer that collects dust in the loungeroom.

It doesn’t help with all the chocolates sitting on the dining table that were gifts from very excitable work friends as well as the chocolate I won from Jen (!). Oh, and the fundraiser Freddo Frogs in the kitchen at work.

Those Freddo Frogs are evil. But also a bargain for $1.20, and the proceeds go to a good cause. NOM.

So last week I was 93.5kg and this week I’m 92.1kg and my goal is to 90kg by September. Slow and steady, yeah?

Ideally, my first real goal will be to get to 85kg in… I don’t know when. Maybe before the wedding I’m going to in November. We’ll see, right?