It’s hard rubbish collection time in our street. Here’s the crapola we managed to throw away.

But all is not always as it seems on hard rubbish piles. For example, there were a few items on our pile that were hidden from my camera lens.

I can’t help but get emotional around hard rubbish collection time.

It has started again. This week I have kicked into gear making notes, drawing up plans and ‘brainstorming’ ideas for book number next. I put ‘brainstorming’ into quote marks because whenever I try to ‘brainstorm’ all I can think about is a flurry of brains raining down from the sky and how it’s really not a helpful thing at all – a full-sized human brain dropping from even just 20 metres above would kill anyone it lands on. Kill! So I avoid the term ‘brainstorm’.

Plus I think you need to be a mathematical genius who writes on intra-office windows in black texta to really perfect the art of ‘brainstorming’.

Instead I just think a lot and take notes in my little notebook and occasionally blurt at my housemates:

Me: Omigod, I just realised I don’t even have to let the fire hurt anyone if I give Balthazar tightrope-walking skills.
Housemate (over bowl of cereal, bits of sleep falling my eyes): Huh?

This part is possibly my favourite part of ‘the writing process’. I put ‘the writing process’ in quote marks because whenever I try to use a process to write I end up with a time management plan, a house full of tea leaves and, for some reason, the laundry done and hung out on the line.

It’s a little tricky to read but April 20 says:

Today Jenny Stoot (real name Stott) took herself, Andrew Stoot, Alisa Stoot, Deanne and I to the movies to see Homeward Bound The Incredible Journey.

What’s Homeward Bound, you ask? Well, allow me to embed:

So despite thinking that blogging every day of April would be a fun and easy thing to do, turn’s out, it is not. I didn’t blog yesterday and I don’t have two posts in my head today to make up for it. But that’s not to say I’ve got nothing left to say. And I will definitely not let the content on my blog wear thin. Anyways, today’s post is a photo of the giant jar of oil that we keep in our kitchen for when we use our deep fryer. It looks like urine don’t you think?

Record Store Day is a good thing. It gets lotsa people into little record shops when lotsa people swing in and out of JB Hi-Fi too often these days. So it is with bemusement that I see  www.recordstoreday.com.au featuring in-store apperances at JB Hi-Fis, Virgin Megastores, Sanitys and HMV. Surely this is not the point of Record Store Day? So what’s the story?

It turns out that AMRA (who represent those big music chains) was told it couldn’t participate in Record Store Day because the day is supposed to be an excercise in promoting independent shops. But of course AMRA and the big chains pushed on anyway and are promoting their ‘unofficial’ involvement in Record Store Day. And guess who owns and runs www.recordstoreday.com.au? Yep, AMRA. Sticky Carpet in the Age touched on this today but continued to promote both the indie shop events and the AMRA shop events (#AMRAfail, #HMVfail, #JBHiFifail, #VirginMegaStorefail, #Sanityfail, #TheAgefail).

So please visit www.recordstoreday.com/Australia for the complete, authentic list of independent record stores to support tomorrow. After all, the little guys only get one day. The chains get Christmas.