Sunday nights are my designated hang out night. A night in which to do nothing but watch my shows all comfy like. Usually it involves some form of sugary goodness, a pretty coloured alcoholic something, and hanging out in duvets with my dog and being generally self indulgent.

And oh! The shows I watch! New episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, and Private Practice. Of Dollhouse, and Fringe, Gossip Girl, and Rob Dyrdeks Fantasty Factory. This week also included The end of Pixar’s Up, 500 Days of Summer, and The Ugly Truth.

That is an awful lot of media to self indulge in.

In truth this whole weekend has been filled with self indulgent goodness. With fancy breakfasts at Cafe’s in Parnell. With sleeping in, and then taking naps in the afternoon. With movie watching till the early mornings and lazing about reading back issues of the listner in the sun. There was the dunking of chocolate Oreo’s into chocolate milk, and cakes from a fancy cafe, and if I hadn’t played a game of netball on Sunday afternoon, it would have been an epic weekend of devine nothingness.

It was a good weekend. A brilliant weekend. But all good and brilliant things must come to an end, I guess. But with the end of something, something else this way comes. For example, the other half of The Square returns from Taiwan today. I’m quite excited about seeing them again.

There was much too much gingerbread men eating going on while they were gone.

This is what I looked like early this morning, as I was standing outside waiting for my dog to do his thing.

It’s the third shot of my 365 project, which is something I’ve wanted to do for ages but always found reasons to put off. Things like “I’ve only got a point and click” or “I’m too busy” or “A photo everyday? I’ll never do it”

But then Sibling’s boyfriend let me borrow his old SLR (a pretty sweet Canon 350D) and with things being all messed up lately I’ve decided to take on a new attitude.

The kind where I stop making excuses and actually commit myself to something. The kind where I act on fun impulses and do the spontaneous. The kind where for now? I do what I want to do.

So far this has been quite an interesting way to think, and has produced some pretty awesome results. I drove 20 minutes in the wrong direction to see a cute boy who brought me a hot chocolate and was perfectly charming. I called The Boy on a whim and for ten minutes things felt almost normal. A danced around in pretty heels with a pink cocktail in hand with people I hadn’t met before, and probably won’t meet again, and last night I got taken out to a gorgeous restaurant in the Chancery with two friends who made me happy.

So, no more excuses. I decided to stop just thinking about it, and do it. And I like the 365 project. There are lots of different versions of it out there, but I joined the 365days flickr group.

The idea is that you take one self-portrait a day, with the intention of improving your photo taking skills. You work with the same subject everyday (yourself, so you can’t moan about not having a subject, and it also provides some consistency) and actually? Taking on photo a day isn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.

I do worry about the days where there isn’t a machine with an Internet connection handy, but let’s be honest. Those days a few and far between (me and the Internet are tight, see).

So yes. I’m doing a 365 day project. Fingers crossed I can get to day 365. :)

Are any of you rocking a 365 project?

I celebrated my birthday over the weekend. Not in the way I had expected to spend it but instead making fresh tracks, enjoying the bluebird day riding easy. There was a party at 1600 feet above sea level, with two dozen almost strangers, lots of rum, snow outside and a ridiculous amount of mayhem.

There was holes punched in walls, which I didn’t do but because of the circumstances I was teased mercilessly. As far as birthday presents go it was a little unexpected.

But it’s kind of nice to be wanted, so I’m not going to go into the drama of it all. Shit happens, I guess. It was a good night and passed in a mostly happy daze of drunken dancing, random conversations with almost strangers and standing too close to the fireplace.

I took the camera down, so expect a snow video at some point, with much mayhem. With boys covered in glad wrap and girls who pull many many rubber gloves out of cleavage. With drunk conversations that out of context are quite hilarious, and arm wrestling and stupid drunk competitions where you lift coins up with straws.

There was also much mayhem. Making out behind closed doors, and people sneaking off, or not sneaking off. Some of it was successful, some of it wasn’t.

In other news:

I get I’ve been away for a while. Today marks a month of MIA-ness, tears and “fuck you world”s. And even though things still suck, and I’m still grasping at straws and making out with random boys in badly lit corners I’m doing the best I can to move forward. Even if I’m moving forward badly.

So, expect more blog comments, and more tweets, and a return to regular posting. I started a 365 project today, have a few sites to work on (and make money from) and moved my hosting away from The Boy and towards the awesome CATBytes (seriously, Jesse is awesome. If you need hosting, he’s the way to go).

I’m moving forward. Even if I still hurt, and it still sucks. Sigh.

So, for a while there, Steve would post to a facebook group and the group members would post back photos of themselves doing whatever. In short, it was a challenge that meant that we were outside doing things, instead of hanging out inside, on facebook. It was pretty fun, and I was a keen enough participant. Until alas, third month in, Steve got busy and didn’t post. Nor the next month. Nor the month after.

So five months later I decided I’d just, sort of, acquire Steve’s Orientation Challenge. I mentioned something about to Steve a while back and he didn’t seem to mind. So! The way it works is on the 1st (or around there abouts) I’ll post three things you need to take photos of yourself doing (they’ll be easy enough things, I promise!) and you’ll have three weeks to post the photos and link back to the challenge post!

What you do

Take photos of yourself doing the three assignments, post them to the flickr group and/or on your blog, or a with a link back to here, and leave a comment!

Easy enough, right? The Rules are simple:

1. Don’t use old photos. Steve’s orienteering challenge is all about going outside and doing interesting things, not staying in your parents basement copying and pasting png files from your C:/PICTURES folder (because you’re too hardcore to use “My Documents”)

2. Take your three photos and upload them to the flickr group, post them to your blog, leaving a link to said post in the comments.

3. Be creative. (This is more of a guideline than a rule)

The Assignments for October:

1. Furry Love

Get a photo of yourself getting all up close and personal with a fuzzy mammal.

2. Spreading the Love

Do something nice for someone else, spread the love this October!

3. Educational Imitation

Visit a place of educational amusement (ie your local library, zoo or museum) and imitate an item, animal, person, art or exhibit.

Brilliant! Hope you all have a great October, and have a blast with the October Challenge!