Lykke Li – I’m Good, I’m Gone from Lykke Li on Vimeo.

I adored this song last year but for some reason I didn’t get her album until recently, so I’m having a re-love affair with it.

Four of the eight free range hens and one rooster that reside on my family’s farm. They are free to go wherever they please, whenever they please and put themselves to bed as they choose. There are a few who are particularly fond of human company and they visit the house often.

The chickens’ house up on the hill behind our house. My dad designed and built it himself so that it’s would impossible for rats and stotes to get into it.

The cobweb covered wheel of the house-bus on our property.

My delightful room that looks like a giant freezer.

The front of the barn/our house.

Wasp nest behind some old railings.

Does anyone else experience trouble when using the ‘Share this’ feature on Flickr? I can click on the link and it opens up the box with the sharing options, but 95% of the time it doesn’t work properly and I can’t click on any of the options! It’s driving me thoroughly mad and I know I’m not the only one because there are a few posts about it on the Flickr help forums. I hope they fix the problem soon because it is driving me mad! I’ve been trying to write this post for an hour whereas normally I would have had it done in about 15 minutes.

Holy jizz-in-my-pants, last night was amazing, epic, brilliant, beautiful, magnificent and marvellous, among other things! My nephew and I had such a great time singing along, dancing, screaming, clapping, jumping and all that one should do a concert of such high calibre.

Kings of Leon are a truly brilliant band who are what I consider to be one of the best live acts of my generation. They appeal to a vast range of people and, as last night’s crowd attested, everyone had an awesome time. I have not been a part of a crowd as enthusiastic and who sung as much, since I saw Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2002, and even then the Chili Pepper’s crowd wasn’t quite like the Kings’ one. There were not many songs last night that the audience didn’t participate in, and even for the songs that are less familiar there were still those hardcore fans everywhere (like myself) who knew every damn word and made sure to scream it like we meant it, ’cause we did.

It is needless to say that during ‘Sex On Fire’ it was difficult to hear the band singing over the chorus from the crowd. I think almost every single person at Vector Arena was singing it, and even then anyone who wasn’t screaming it was singing under their breath. I don’t think I have ever experienced that at a concert before. When we all sung along to the more well known songs, especially the latest singles, I got goosebumps from the shear passion everyone was exuding. It still gives me goosebumps thinking about it and I feel so lucky to have been there and been a part of a show I will, without a doubt, remember forever.

The band themselves were in great form and Caleb, the singer/guitarist, was chatty with the crowd. I love it when there is interaction with the crowd. He kept saying how great an audience we were, which, I suppose, he says at all shows, however I choose to believe that he meant it when he said it was one of the best shows they’ve done all tour. We were a fucking great crowd and we lapped everything up like cult followers but in a less weird, we’ll-be-back-to-normal-after way.

I was very impressed with the setlist (thought I can’t find it listed anywhere online yet): they played songs from all the albums, and they played ‘Closer’ and ‘Molly’s Chambers’ which are two of my all-time favourite tracks. No ‘Arizona’ but that’s ok because at the end of the day there isn’t one Kings of Leon song I don’t, at the very least, like, so whatever was given to us was fine with me.

The opening band was The Stills and they’re from Montreal, Canada. I had no idea who was opening before I went to the show so it was a surprise, and a pretty nice one, too. Although I am not familiar with their music they were quite enjoyable and there was this one song with the most epic drumming in it. I want to find their setlist so I can find that song!

The only thing about the entire night that I was not so pleased with was our seating. We were on the back bleachers, though at a nice medium height, but I would have preferred being closer to the stage. It was extremely difficult to get any decent camera footage with being that far back, but it’s not a big deal and once they came on stage I couldn’t care less where I was as long as I could dance and sing and dance some more, which I did. I’ve never danced like that at a concert before; I’ve either been too squashed or too shy to, but last night, after about three songs, I said to myself, Fuck it, this is Kings of fucking Leon, self, stop with the bobbing and throw yourself around!! So I did.

I wish like hell I can see them again before they leave the country but all their other shows are sold out, and rightly so. I hope that if you’re going to see them, you enjoy yourself as much as I did!

Anyway, here’s a photo I took. See, bad quality.

The rest of the photos are here, with video to come later.

Twenty-one. Two one. 21. The traditional New Zealand twenty-first birthday celebration is a large party where everyone gets very drunk, embarrassed terribly and the birthday girl or guy goes home having seen a whole new side to Aunt Jane/Uncle John. Or something to that effect, it would seem.*

I’m doing the smart thing and having two separate celebrations: a nice, sophisticated dinner at a restaurant with my family and then drinks with my friends. I don’t have that many friends here, yet, so it’s not going to be a big thing, but hopefully it will be fun and enjoyable. I have a deep-set fear that I am boring and it will be boring and uncool and all those sorts of things; I hope to prove myself very wrong!

I am currently looking at hotels in Auckland’s inner city area because my parent’s are shouting me a room for the night of the drinks. Some of us have to travel a way to get into the city so it’ll be nice have a place to go back to that’s not too far away, etc. It’s making me excited! Before my 20^th birthday I dreaded all my birthdays immensely but now I’m not so terrified of them which is a good thing. They should be fun events where you can be a bit outwardly selfish. Oh, and a bit bossy, too.

Anyway, I have just over a month to organise these two events, send out invites and so on. This past year has gone so unbelievably fast.

*Actually, that’s not entirely true. I haven’t really heard of anyone having a 21^st that was that bad.

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

1. Grab your current read.
2. Let the book fall open to a random page.
3. Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
4. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!Please avoid spoilers!

The two wedding parties met constantly in each other’s apartments. After two or three night the gentlemen of an evening had a little piquet, as their wives sate and chatted apart.
Vanity Fair by W. M. Thackeray

I am going to see Kings of Leon this Wednesday, so here is one of my absolute favourite songs of theirs and I hope they play it when I see them. I’ll probably cry if they do. I’m so excited!

Yesterday I took a day off from studying and I also took a day off from being anxious about school-related things. I probably should have tried to take the day off being anxious about everything but that didn’t quite pan out. Nevertheless, it was a good day in terms of not feeling guilty and terrible for not doing any course work. I beat myself up terribly on a fairly regular basis and I have got to learn to stop it before my head explodes.

Anyway, aside from that I spent a few hours with my eldest sister and her two kids: my three-year-old nephew and seven-month-old niece. We all went to The Warehouse for a spot of shopping—plants for my sister and underwear for me, plus a bonus The Devil Wears Prada DVD as it was on sale. Afterwards, before leaving the shopping centre, we has a browse in a store called Bramptons; it’s a specialty shop for products from the UK. Mostly it’s food items like breakfast cereals and spreads, junk food and sweets, and drinks, but they also sell some cleaning products, too. I find it fascinating because 99% of what they stock you can’t find anywhere else here.*

I bought a cherry flavoured Tango soft drink that tasted more like real cherries than that weird fake-cherry taste you always get, and a dark chocolate bar with fondant center that tasted like dark chocolate with plain icing/frosting in the middle! Ew to the latter; I wish I hadn’t bothered at all or chosen something else, though being vegan my selection was limited anyway. Usually when I go there I get a Ben Shaw cream soda which is the best cream soda in the whole wide world, ever, ever, but they were out of stock. Sad face!

One funny thing I’d like to note is that the UK packaging of Marmite is very old-fashioned looking! I don’t think it’s changed at all from the old photos of Marmite jars that I’ve seen. How quaint!

*The 1% is the Patak’s Indian food line of curry sauces and such. We can buy those in our supermarkets so I don’t really know why they sell them at Bramptons.

My week has been ok; not great, but ok. Today was the third day in a row of incorporating exercise into my morning, eating better than I have been and meditating. I’m hoping that these changes will help fix my weird fatigue problem, or whatever it is. So far the last couple of days have been more productive in terms of studying, so maybe it’s already working? I’m still feeling on the sluggish side, but I think that may be more psychological than anything else as I haven’t been very “pro-self” lately which does have an obvious impact.

Anyway, have I mentioned recently how dreadfully irritating it is not having a bath? Because it really is, you know. I would pay a significant sum right now to have a giant bath all to myself where I can read W. M. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair in peace, quiet, candle-light and in the middle of a foamy mountain.

What’s the point in buying a bubble bar from Lush if you don’t have a bath? I suppose there is always the option of “borrowing” someone else’s bath, but that would require me going somewhere else with my Lush bubble bar, book, flannel pyjamas to change into afterwards and my fluffy robe to drape around myself as if it’s the middle of winter already. On top of all that, I would also have to take my bed (or my whole bedroom, since it’s not attached to anything and is actually movable) so that I can get into it straight after said bath and fall into a dreamy sleep whereby I wake up having had a long, lusty, fabulous relationship with one of the following men—doesn’t matter which as I’m really not that picky right now: Trent Reznor, Bill from True Blood or Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

I mean, even a giant tin tub in the middle of a paddock is sounding pretty decent right now…

One of my favourites at the moment. Makes me want to dance! Featuring Kanye West, Lykke Li and Santogold.

ETA: There isn’t an official video for this, so that is why you are looking at pictures.

Tomorrow I’m going to the optometrist for a check up. I used to wear glasses for eye strain while on the computer and reading, but haven’t needed them for years. Now I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps some of my headaches and tiredness are related to a problem I may have with my eyes. I would actually be quite glad if that is the case because then the problem would be fix and I could carry on as usual.

Anyway, here are a couple of links to websites I’ve been enjoying lately. Maybe you’ll like them too!

• Shorpy Photo Archive. “Shorpy is an online archive of thousands of high-resolution photos from the 1850s to 1950s.” Very interesting if you’re an oldophile¹ such as myself, or just looking at photos.
• Saucy Swellings is a mostly public (which means you can view the posts even if you don’t have an account) LiveJournal community dedicated to bringing you photos of gorgeous, saucy interior design. It ranges from that which is not affordable to most people, to that which is cheap-but-not-nasty. I love looking through the archives as they’re great for inspiration; however, be warned that you may feel pangs of envy!

¹ By that I mean someone who likes old things, not the Urban Dictionary description of a young person who is attracted to older people. Although I wouldn’t mind Liam Neeson, but that’s a whole other story…