elementary my dears

whoosh! the amazing disappearing girl is back, a little later than planned i'm afraid!

i've never been extremely fond of january and this one lived up to expectations with a little illness, smothering heat, a lack of inspiration and a general inability to get myself to do anything much. add a dash of modem troubles and you've got a bad recipe for blogging sadly!

but i've decided that now it's nearly febuary and high time i got back to you all... so here's a little summary of what i've been up to this midsummer:

~ rereading sherlock holmes. who else here is a huuge conan doyle fan? all of the sherlock holmes stories are up there with my absolute favorites (i'm especially fond of the hound of the baskervilles and a few of the shorter cases). what's your favorite interperatation of sherlock holmes? do you like one of the earlier movies/tv series? perhaps you prefer the robert downy jnr movie? or maybe, like me, you're more partial to the modern-times appropriated tv series the bbc aired last year? yes, much as i love the more traditional movies (and much as i can't wait to see stephen fry as mycroft in the sequel movie!) i can't get enough of the bbc sherlock. i love watching it and picking out all the little details that are in the books. also i think it's so well put together, i tip my metaphorical hat to mark gatiss and stephen moffat. and of course the actors, benedict cumberbatch and martin freeman are my favorite holmes-watson pairing ever.

i could ramble about holmes for days but i'll spare you all and carry on!

~ christmas! we had christmas up with my grandparents, a six-hour drive from our little corner of the world. it was a wonderful day, so lovely to see all the family i don't often get to, full of delicious food, music-listening and scrabble playing. i was given such wonderful things; penguin books and opera cds, teacups and notebooks and dvds and, joy of joys, the complete works of shakespeare, even! and, possibly the most precious of all: a little china alice to sit and keep my ballerina company... i'll send you a picture soon, she is absolutely beautiful and precious.

~ new year's eve the extended family and i walked out to watch fireworks and dance around in the dark with sparklers... i wore my gypsy skirt and tried to read the future (unsuccessfully to be truthful, something tells me i wouldn't be an idea divination student). it'll be chinese new year soon, year of the bunny! if anything makes a year sound promising, it would have to be that. in china you're not supposed to get your haircut for a month after new years; to do so brings catastrophic luck on your mother's brothers.

~ i have been on a few out-of-town trips, day trips into sydney to art galleries and macaron shops, a week long trip to canberra, too, to visit my god-brother who is eight weeks old and a darling.

so apart from a lot of reading and some morning bike rides to the markets, it's been quite a lazy summer of long evenings and days spent drifting about. it's funny, summer has always made me feel a lot more wistful and out-of-touch than winter ever will. i'm a bit of a reverse-flower; bloom in winter and wilt in summer.

school starts tomorrow; looking forward to seeing everyone again. how have your winter/summers been, hoots?