Snoskred - Life in the Country

I love Mother of Pearl. I also have a great fondness for the TV Shopping Network. For those of you not familiar with TVSN, it is a channel on pay tv which runs 24/7 (though shows are usually repeated overnight) with all kinds of products. They have massive amounts of jewelery and I like to watch. Usually not because I want to buy anything, but just to see all the pretty sparkly.

Quite a few weeks ago I saw a show called Mosaic Kingdom which is jewelery that has mosaics of Mother of Pearl. The show stuck in my mind for quite a while. Then on Sunday night I was flicking around and I saw a great special on the shopping channel for shampoo, conditioner and body wash of a brand I had wanted to try for a while $14.50 and no postage, so I thought I would grab that on the website. While there I ended up looking at the Mosaic Kingdom stuff again and that was exactly the same price with free shipping so I grabbed a pendant. It arrived today - very quick! And here’s a photo -

Of course the photo does not do it justice but you can see some of the beauty - every single piece of mosaic has different colors in it - yellows, greens, blues and the pinks. It is almost like opal but without the enormous price tag. I always take loads of pictures of the inside of shells at the beach because they are so beautiful. And the fascinating part is they can look so different depending on how the light hits them.

TVSN still has some of the Mosaic Kingdom pieces on clearance starting at just under $10 which is *crazy* time. Get in quick if you want one. I’m tempted to pick up a couple more pieces myself now that I’ve seen them live, they are beautiful and so reasonably priced. But let me warn you, their website is like a trap of doom for anyone who likes a bit of sparkly.. there are pages and pages of jewellery and some of it looks really expensive but has nowhere near the price tag you would expect.

Of course, they have some insanely expensive - and sometimes oddly ugly things there too.. Me personally I never buy jewelery that costs more than $30 or so. But to each their own..

Popularity: 10% [?]

So the last couple of weeks I’ve been on a bit of an upside down schedule. I’ve been doing a lot of work and staying up later than usual. I’m typing this at 12:49am on Thursday morning and as I am typing it, I have these little headphones on.

This is the Blueant bluetooth wireless headset. I am completely wireless. The little transmitter is plugged into the home stereo amplifier and I am able to go pretty much anywhere in the house and still hear the sound. In fact you can also plug in a microphone and use it with Skype if you want to. I can put on a dvd, the radio, cds, music, tv, whatever I like. Mostly I watch.. err.. listen to tv. Right now it is Law and Order.

What I’ve learnt is there is a lot more to the sound of most shows than you usually pick up just listening to it through speakers. You can hear so much more with the headset.

This way I don’t miss any of the show - I can go to the kitchen and make a snack (or cookies!) - grab a glass of water - go to the bathroom - if I need to run back to the computer to do something I can, plus the other half isn’t kept awake with my “noisy” shows. Yep, by that he means The View. Cos he doesn’t like all those women talking over each other.

I recommend everyone gets a bluetooth headset thingy.

Popularity: 13% [?]

People.

If you see naked children in the driveway of their home, this is not a usual or normal thing. It’s not ok. It means that someone isn’t paying attention to those kids, or that someone doesn’t care enough to make sure they have clothes on.

Why do I mention this? 18 month old twins were found dead in a house in Brisbane this week. And in the story linked to back there appears this comment -

Although two of the boys had appeared naked in his driveway from time to time, Mr Zammit said they looked quite healthy and he never suspected their parents might have been neglecting them.

“They’re kids, they run around and do these things,” he said.

In this day and age, no kids run around naked. Unless you’re living in some kind of nudist camp, if you see this in your neighbourhood, get on the telephone. Even if they “appear healthy”. You might not know who to call, but the police would probably be a good start. There’s also usually some kind of child protective services.

Popularity: 12% [?]

This is a question I ask myself fairly regularly, but it has been a while since I checked up on the famously gorgeous Norwegian - things have been busy here. Lucky I checked, though - in just 6 days his new album becomes available on Amazon.com. It has been a long 12 years since Vogts Villa (Norwegian, not English) in 1996 - and Wild Seed (English) in 1995, but just having a quick cruise through clips on you tube the wait has been worth it.

Here’s a sneak peek - Darkspace, the first track from the album. He still has an amazing voice.

Popularity: 11% [?]