I will never be as good at ukulele as this guy

...and I'm ok with that.

Sunday 7-up

Reading: Australian Rolling Stone mag
Browsing: Vintage bike poster set on Flickr
Watching: Breaking Bad
Eating: Aussie mangoes
Listening: Theme Time Radio Hour, with your host Bob Dylan
Visiting: Espresso 3121
Wanting: A cure for hayfever

I do love a colourful kitchen gadget...

... almost as much as I love a gadget with a backstory! The lovely mug that I stole from a large Generic Financial Corporation (it was lying sadly neglected at the back of a communal cupboard and I love it to bits. Je ne regrette rien!). The ice-cream scoop given to me by my lovely ex-flatmate when she moved out, in commemoration of my voracious ice-cream devouring habit. The retro orange teapot with wicker handle gifted to me by a friend who spotted it at a garage sale. An old-fashioned egg beater that never fails to remind me of my grandma and her elegant hands.

I love being surrounded by colourful, cute and quirky things. My idea of hell is a beige room with white couches, glass coffee table and a black and white print on the wall. *Shudder*

D:Reamy Prof Cox the Fox rox my world*

Has anyone managed to catch Wonders of the Solar System on BBC2? I can highly recommend it to anyone with a passing interest in astronomy; or those among us who are simply interested in staring at sweet boy-faced men eulogising about something (anything) that they are so excited about that their eyes get all shiny and a sort of glow comes off them.

I mean, I find contemplation of our amazingly complex little solar system and the universe beyond absolutely mind-bottling, but honestly - astronomy's association with ancient, incoherent men who can calculate the elliptical rotation patterns of distant moons but are unable to buy a pair of fitting trousers, heat up a tin of baked beans or replace a pair of spectacles that are clearly beyond repair has made it a no-go zone for many women. Science on that sort of mathematical/astro-physical level just isn't sexy.

Well, get ready to have your preconceptions slapped around the face and covered in glitter:



How d'ya like them space particles?!

Introducing Mr. Brian Cox, formerly of D:Ream (thiiings... can only get better) and latterly passionate crusader for science funding and visitor of schools (sigh!) to raise the profile of the least-cool subject on the curriculum.

Coming from this man, space is cool - literally and pop-culturally. He sprinkled his magic space dust on me and suddenly I am the proud possessor of information about the names of the moons of Jupiter (Io, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, named for the lovers of the Greek god Zeus). The earth would fit inside Jupiter more than a thousand times. Something about volcanos. Shiny, shiny eyes.

*apologies for the tortured wordplay - I just couldn't resist.