The Bear Necessities

Izzie was a bad serpent yesterday. She pops by her favorite teddybear shop to pay a few more silver sickles off her Dragon on layby and once again looks longingly at an utterly adorable cute beige bear with a green nose and silly little face. She certainly looks like a stringy mohair bear and would be well beyond the means of a lowly little house elf such as the ickle Izzie. But curiosity got the better of Iz and we asks for a peek. Was most shocked and amazed and very pleasantly surprised to discover that this green girl is not some yuppie mohair designer bear and therefore costs only 40 silver sickles and not the 200-300 or so which would have been the case if the Izzie suspicions had been correct. So off she goes upstairs to keep the Izzie dragon company.

Well. Izzie is getting back to bad habits again. Today passed by the very same shop on the way to the bus and what does the Iz see but pink and black hair ribbons and ties, a frilly pink chintz dress and horror of horrors - a pink CARDIGAN - all worn by a snow white bear with a pretty pink nose to match her dress. Of course she is way way too gorgeous to be a Dolores but her dress sense is remarkably similar. She belongs to the same family as her green friend and is only 30 silver sickles. Bad bad Iz. She has two more weeks of her old roster and then loses about 6 hours a week - and there she is looking at decadent luxuries such as Potter bears.
Actually - Iz still has piles and piles of mohair, glass eyes and other ursine accessories but sort of lost interest in making the dears some years ago when the goblins got in the way. But a Snape bear - is worth thinking about.
On the subject of cuddly and adorable Potter critters with cardigans - Izzie has been lurking and found the cutest icons

Funny - it was adopting a bear at this very same shop on layby - she cost about two thirds of Izzie's weekly wages - this was way back in 1995 that got Iz into some interesting habits. Noticing how even a big purchase can be slowly paid off on lay-by bit by bit and you don't have to worry about it being gone when you finally get the silver sickles together because it has been kept for you - Iz started applying the same principles to saving. It had never worked in the past because Iz had nothing in particular to save for. But once I'd set my mind on a house - it became much much easier to save and also to resist the soulful eyes of some lost forlorn furry beary creatures just begging to be adopted.
So Izzie owes a lot to this particular bear who she calls Rosie Blumenzweig.

The Lazy Snoozie Serpent sipping and slurping

Izzie is rather enjoying her four days off from work. But Iz was a bad serpent and has been spending way way too much time in Cyberia instead of at home dusting out the broomcupboards, chatting with the potplants and hugging the trees or even reading boring Goblin Porn.
Did not go to bed until 2am this morning. Was lurking online until 1am and then got back to the lair and sat outside under the stars until 1.30 or so. Then decided to take a quick peek at the grand Izzie assignment due for 24 September. Until yesterday, everytime I tried to access it on Blackboard - either Blackboard was offline or malfunctioning or the stupid thing would close down every time I'd try save the Word document.
Izzie hasn't paid too much attention to the details only that it concerns a coffee company. There's bits of background about the coffee trade in general. They did not mention that the poor growers get totally screwed and are often locked into contracts or getting prices that are lest than their costs of growing. It's an existence infinitely worse than being a house elf. But what stuck up Izzie's scales was seeing the mention of that very very nasty stinking disgusting company Philip Morris. Izzie had NO idea that they had anything to do with Maxwell House which is disgusting muck anyway. Iz used to buy Fairtrade coffee when she lived in D'land and Dublin but have never found the decent Nicaraguan instant stuff here. The Tanzanian coffee is poisonous muck and Iz will not touch it with a barge pole.
In spite of having bought that gorgeous Italian Pavone art work of a coffee machine from the pa last year, still have not got around to trying it. (Scared of blowing the house up I guess)

Well - in spite of it being a gorgeous sunny day, the Iz did not wake up until midday. Lazy lazy serpent. What a waste. After doing the shopping and general pottering around - looked unlikely to be catching a bus anywhere before 3pm.
There was so many possibilities of places to go but being such a snoozie serpent had eliminated rather many of them.
Decided to go for sunset at the beach with the usual picnic. It's strange how little the Iz is worried about the soon to be shrinking sack of silver sickles. Tuesday afternoon after the meeting was actually an enjoyable day for the Iz. Got lots of interesting things done and did not feel grumpy and irritable at all like I have been for so long lately. Either the Iz is finally getting over all the doom and gloom or else there was the element of worrying about the return to the goblins. But it turns out not to be a problem. Both subjects seem not only interesting but also fun and there is none of this weekly typing and random collection stuff that was such a burden last time. Also the fact that there is only two and not the three that the Iz usually does makes a very big difference. So all this dread of returning turns out to be needless after all.
But Iz suspects the main thing is that Tuesday's meeting is bringing back memories of a similar meeting back in March 2002 and they were extremely good memories indeed. The boss expected us all to be grovelling and miserable and was relishing every minute of it and Iz never gave her the satisfaction then and will not do it now. In that case it was a choice of staying or taking redundancy and Iz grabbed the money and ran and had an extremely enjoyable final four weeks there along with the other 3 of us who chose to leave. It was the ones who were staying who were all worried and flustered and worried about what more nasty surprises were in store.
This time Iz still has her job just a bit less of it than she was used to.Simply lowering the fortnightly repayments on the Lair will probably compensate for losing all those silver sickles in the pay packet. Since the Iz has been paying way above what was necessary for a good few years now, it is not a problem at all.

Well. Izzie got the two buses to the beach but first went to acquire some liquid refreshment for her picnic. Was ever so amused to find a Leeuwin Estate tasting in the bottle shop. Izzie has always wanted to slip her slinky forked tongue around a glass of Art Series Chardonnay to see what all the fuss was about. Turned out - surprise surprise that it was not the Art Series chardonnay on tasting but the second label - Prelude. Very very nice actually and relatively reasonable value at $$25 but Izzie is just as happy with her Lindemanns bin 65 thank you very much. If it costs two hours of your wages before tax for a bottle of booze - sorry it will just have to be a LOT better than that.
They only had 3 wines on tasting and the third one was from the Art Series. Izzie did not know they even did Shiraz. Apparently it's a new thing and not too impressive at all. Oh the snobs would love it as it's typical wishy washy Froggie wannabee Margaret River stuff but while Iz would buy it at $$10 a bottle (it would have to have fallen off the back of a broomstick to get it at that price) it was just nothing like the old Coonawarra inkpots that the Iz much prefers. Yesss. Horror of horrors. Got on special today - a bottle of Jacobs Creek 2002 shiraz and it was much more Izzies' cup of tea at about one third the price of the posh snob stuff.

So we had a lovely sunset on the beach with the usual supply of cheese, crackers and red and the resident rat in attendance. One day Izzie dearly hopes to have some of her serpentine associates as company.