Leakey's Bookshop

Leakey's Bookshop, Church Street, Inverness (Scotland).

"Scotland's largest secondhand bookshop. Antiquarian and First editions kept up where the organ pipes of the old St Mary's Gaelic Church used to be. Old maps and prints, cafe/art gallery on the mezzanine, beautiful furnace fueled only by logs"

via the Guardians Flikr stream of readers' favourite bookshops.

Bonus points for the furnace!

♥,

Lovecats

Frankie the big-cat is becoming fast friends with Penny the lil-cat. It is truly gorgeous. These two make me smile so often.

♥

Next five tracks on my playlist:

♠ Do You Believe In Life After Thugs? - Astronautalis & DJ Fishr Pryce (this track is 3:25 of jaw-dropping, booty-shaking goodness)

♠ My People - Erykah Badu

♠ Sheena's In a Goth Gang - The Cramps

♠ I Don't Mind - Buzzcocks

♠ Sredni Vashtar - Faith & the Muse (this track will forever be associated with Cabaret Nocturne - a goth club in Melbourne - for me, and the NIN after party a handful of years ago. It was the track playing as Lorna, Mark and I walked in and I remember being so goddamn excited to be there; it was an amazing night and part of an epic adventure!)

♥,

Kittentank, NZFF

Kittentank, Terror of the Deep, Gucci Coo @ Happy.
Thursday July 1st, $5 on the door.

This gig is the day of graduation ♥.

I aim to motivate myself to haul ass to this and make it a graduation-celebration.

Then, whenever I see the name 'Kittentank' on a poster around town, not only will I grin and think "AWESOME BAND NAME!" (in caps, just like that) but will also know what the fuck they actually sound like, heh. I've heard good things through the grapevine.

Plus, it will be good for me to go to a random gig!

Also...



The Banksy film Exit Thru the Gift Shop is being screened in Wellington as part of the NZ Film Festival! Yuss! The trailor piqued my interest, I imagine the film will be weird, amusing and irreverent as hell.

I hope I manage to grab a ticket before they disappear. Tickets are on sale via Ticketek and only cost $15 ($12 if you're a student).

The July 17th screening is even at the Penthouse, awesome awesome awesome.

Thanks to Wgtn Wall Street for the heads up!

Up Up Away

The Welcome Parade by Girltripped

Even though the last little while has been rough, there are still lots of good things happening.

♠ Being spoiled rotten by a certain amazing boy on my birthday, who even secretly assembled a candy-choc-whizz icecream cake complete with twenty-six candles!

♠ Even though my party didn't go to plan, I think it was still good to have a Thing for my birthday. Can't win 'em all

♠ We have a new kitten! Her name is Penny, she rules. Frankie the cat is starting to like her, it is the cutest ever

♠ As long as I keep breathing deep and staying focussed, I should still be able to pass my course. Graduation is next week!

♠ The universe sorting things out; positive focus

♠ Eating lots of yummy, warm food

♠ Being in bed reading while rain is pouring down outside

♠ The sun shining so crisp and bright this morning

♠ Arranging more beautiful, interesting pictures on my wall


Forgotten Fairytales by Zhang Jingna

My shoulder bag now contains the bare essentials:
Moleskine notebooks x 2 (one for plotting business, the other for lifestuff)
Wallet
YSL makeup bag (strawberry chapstick, concealer, mascara, Lush's 'helping hands' cream, pencil & pencil sharpener, mini-ruler, comb, lipstick, eyeshadow)
Technological bits & bobs (cellphone, lil' flash drive, mp3 player & spare battery)
Passport
Keys
Glue stick and scissors
Cosmic Corner crew laminate
Little purse with 'My Rosary' in gold letters on the front (from the Catholic shop in central Melbourne, which is fucking awesome; containing trinkets from trips to New Plymouth & Kaikoura (♥) - goldstone, amethyst, beach pebbles and a little twig)
Coin purse (pounamu pendant, change for the bus)
Rubber spiders x 2

Israel bows to pressure and agrees to ease Gaza blockade | Controversial atheism campaign to hit billboards - "The ads - which read "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" - created a storm when they ran on buses in the United Kingdom last year." It'll be awesome to see these around town! | Invisibility cloaks and how to use them | Immortal avatars: Back up your brain and neverdie - "My first step on the road to immortality is to use Lifenaut's website to create a basic visual interface with which others, hopefully including my descendants, can interact." | Scientists to map Ozzy Osbourne's genetic code to find out why he is still alive | What is it with Iceland? - "The WikiLeaks advised proposal to build an international “new media haven” in Iceland, with the world’s strongest press and whistleblower protection laws, and a “Nobel” prize for Freedom of Expression, has unaminously passed the Icelandic Parliament."


The Sun is also a Star by Rad-ix

Right now I am going to make hot chocolate and listen to some sweet tunes.

"Every day the choice is presented to us, to live up to the spirit that is in us, or deny it." - Henry Miller

♥,

Sunday

Psychedelic Eye by Countess Grotesque

Yussss:

♠ Planning my first birthday party in thirteen years! Exciting!

♠ After loving 'The Score' for years, finally hearing the Fugees' 1994 release 'Blunted on Reality'. It is pretty much A to Z amazing

♠ Arriving home to find that my boyfriend has done my laundry (!!!)

♠ Candles every night

♠ Working in a place that is capable of lifting my spirits when I arrive there straight after an intense, frustrating day at Tech. How many people arrive at work and get uplifted? My job is really great

♠ Dans Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip's album 'The Logic of Chance', which makes me want to jump around like a happy mad thing!

♠ Today being a wonderful lazy, rainy Sunday

♠ Reading about Dr. Fred Alan Wolf's yoga-physics

♠ Bright purple wigs

♠ EPs presented vivid-scrawled and wrapped in brown paper, hastily sealed with 'don't crush' warning stickers. Thanks, Tiger's Eye. I'm super-lazy about seeking out new music these days, so it's awesome when it gets plonked on the counter at work

♠ Cadbury hot chocolate

♠ Delicious, soft merino layered over lacy slips (winter is so sexy)

Greens see red over Key - Great to read fighting-words coming from the Greens that are being well-publicised. (See also: Goverment mining plans wound back - Greens) | Obama Wants to Roll Back Oil Tax Breaks and Invest in Clean Energy - "In a speech earlier today at Carnegie Mellon University, US President Barack Obama urged Congress to roll back “billions of dollars in tax breaks” for oil companies and begin to look at ways to significantly increase investment in clean energy alternatives." Woah. | Botticelli's love drug - "A new discovery suggests that Botticelli's masterpiece Venus and Mars shows the effects of a hallucinogenic plant – but is the real drug the painting itself?" | UN talks back conference on nuclear-free Middle East | Heart of the Tuhoe Nation - The final sentence pretty much sums it all up: "I just can't believe they think they can look after the place better than we can." The accompanying photo, of the Whakatane river winding its' way through Te Urewera, is amazing; what a beautiful place. | Sweet success for Kit Kat campaign - "The new policy commits Nestlé to identify and exclude companies from its supply chain that own or manage 'high risk plantations or farms linked to deforestation'."

Despite a few course-related stresses, which I'm working on being down with, everything is great. Today I begun investigating alternate yoga classes - the heat and intense stretching of Bikram will be a little beyond me for a month or two yet, methinks! - since I'm beginning to get some of my flexibility back, it's time to get back into the swing of yoga. Yoga is soul food, I miss it!

At the moment, classes at Gaura Yoga on Vivian Street are looking great (only $14 for a casual class which is followed by a yummy vegan dinner, and all equipment is provided!), though Yoga in Daily Life looks like a beautiful space and has $10 casual classes, and Myoga sounds like it would be an invigorating, spiritual practice. Perhaps I'll check out all three!

Rest of the day:
♠ Wheel of Time, #5
♠ Late lunch of vegan lentil stew and cheesy mashed potatoes, yummm
♠ Make time for sewing
♠ Rumi
♠ Another foot tattoo! This time I'm getting an illustration of Willie Wonka by Quentin Blake on my left foot, to be friends with the Matilda I have on my right
♠ Brownies
♠ Conscious awareness <333


Winter memorie by Eszter Vály