I'm the worst.

A couple of years ago before an overseas trip, I was whining about my crappy iPod earphones and Dan offered to lend me his brand-new expensive earbud things. Walking down the street in Paris a few weeks later and one of them just stopped working. Absolutely and completely, and refused ever to work again. I think it was because he'd been winding them tightly around his iPod for weeks prior, breaking the little wire inside, but I still felt terrible that it had happened on my watch.

Early last year, he got a Kindle (his sister got it for free, but that's beside the point). He lent it to me on a sort of extended loan earlier this year, and I was planning on taking it to Canada in four weeks.

That is, until I sat on it ten minutes ago and now that fancy pancy screen has a bleed. I am the absolute worst person ever. I have already bought him a new Kindle online (I didn't replace the earphones, but this..), but I feel completely dreadful. He made me a roast chicken and some leek soup for lunch today, and what did I do? I sat my fat ass down on his Kindle.

Adventures in DIY

So, more or less because I couldn't find something that I liked at the negligible price I wanted to pay, I have made myself a camera bag. Being a girl, I carry a handbag constantly. It's usually a massive one too, so the last thing I wanted was one of those twerpy black, faux leather camera bags. Apart from the fact that they look dreadful, the last thing I want is yet another bag (in a perfect leave-it-in-the-restrooms size) to carry while traveling.

So I made myself something in a minimal size with no bells, whistles, zips or extra pouches that I can slip into whatever bag I'm already carrying. I don't know that I necessarily would have known how to make something with bells, whistles, etc. either, but let's pretend it was an option.

So, here are the results of my attempt!

Velcro close, with down padding inside. I did not make the down padding. That is a level of skill I dare not approach. It actually comes from a couple of old dolls' pillows and a doll blanket that my Mother made for me when I was about seven. It had all been gathering dust so I decided to put it to good use. The covering fabric was stuff I had at home, meant for a (increasingly ill-fated) DIY chair re-upholstering that I keep planning to do.

Best of all, I didn't even spend a cent.

The plunge. I have taken it.

After numerous rounds of negotiations involving most camera retailers this side of Hong Kong, I have bought myself a brand-new camera.

I had been looking for a reason to justify the purchase of a new toy for a little while, because my gutsy little point-and-shoot just ain't cutting it anymore. The justification came perfectly packaged in the form of a suggestion from my Cello teacher that I visit her home state of Vermont during the Fall, while I'm in Montreal. A couple of quiet days at work gave me the opportunity to do some research (See, eg.) and I quickly decided that this was a side-trip I needed to make. Not only that, but the leaves! They needed to be PHOTOGRAPHED! Lest, I dunno, the seventy billion photographs that already exist on Flickr vanish somehow.

And so I spent the following set of quiet days at work telephoning camera retailers, trying to make them all undercut each other in the hopes that eventually I would end up with a free camera.

Needless to say that didn't happen. But I did get the Canon 1100D with 18-55 IS lens from Paxtons in Chatswood for $639.

Mostly I just want to take the Tax Invoice to Bing Lee, who were sizzling the obsolete 1000D for $800 and I want to wave it in their faces.

Reddit user arbores, on ads for The Olive Garden:

I particularly hate the ones that feature the group of young, upwardly mobile, improbably-racially-diverse friends playfully thrusting their forks at one another's plates and happily sharing food. They bear very little resemblance to the mouth-breathing hominids you'd actually find within the stuccoed confines of such a craptastic eatery.

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Things I have been doing.

One of the lawyers has a hearing at the Supreme Court this week, so last week was lost to feverish preparations. In what I believe is my personal best, I photocopied approximately 10,000 pages over the course of the week.

Ah, such is the glamorous life of a paralegal.

Friday evening I bailed as quickly as my hot little legs could carry me and took myself, along with a group of friends, to Stitch, Since I Left You and The Foxhole. These are all bars, apparently. I am full of nothing but praise, though, because after dealing with horrendous Sydney nightlife, the change in licensing laws and the increased availability of cheap liquor licenses means that small places like those I just listed have been able to open.

The following morning Dan and I caught a train back into the city and walked down westwards from Wynyard to near the KPMG and Macquarie buildings, meandering past the maligned Barangaroo site over to Walsh Bay. We had lunch at Cafe Sopra before pawing through the didgeridoos and boomerangs at the Rocks market back towards Wynyard. I had never walked around to Walsh Bay from the western side before and I was taken aback at how beautiful it was, with big sandstone cliff-faces drilled right down into the side of the city.

Saturday evening we watched the rugby at the Coopers in Newtown, and Sunday I spent with my Grandmother, Dad and Sister, walking from North Curl Curl Beach to Dee Why over the headland.

A lovely weekend.

A list of people and entities with which I have battled in the last 24 hours.

• Canon IR2520I multifunction printer
• LEAP Documents 2003
• Mental arithmetic
• Nadi from Virgin Mobile
• Two-ring binder
• Olympus DSS Transcription Module
• My ankles

I declared victory over a few (Virgin Mobile, the printer) and conceded defeat to others (my ankles).

It's over, O-V-A-H.

On Tuesday 14 June 2011 I finished law school.*

And then I promptly joined the rest of my classmates over the road at the pub where we all got absolutely, fabulously, horrifyingly drunk. I feel we deserved it for the most part.

I had a couple of days of sweet freedom, and now I'm back at work at the lawjob, full-time until I go overseas. I quit the lawjob last week (in anticipation of travels and the new Big4 job), but the boss didn't actually tell anyone else, so it was left to me to have awkward conversations behind awkward closed doors with individual co-workers. The number of them who didn't seem at all surprised alarmed me a little, because while the suburban law firm was never hugely part of my long-term life plan, I honestly do love it there.

Six weeks to go! Also I bought this today:

It is a scarf with zebras all over it and I'm kind of in love with it. I've been sporting it as a turban all afternoon, for better or worse.

*Unless I failed something, like Intellectual Property, which is entirely likely since we have received exactly zero feedback on the assessment units for the subject and thus I have no idea how I went over the entire semester. Dear Jesus and Tom Cruise please don't let me have failed.