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really just hello

Mum and I have just spent the last 3 days taking in the some of the not-so classic iconic sights of North-East Tasmania as well as coming home via the Great Lake and Derwent Valley.

Biggest thing to note is that we came across 2 Echidnas in the space of probably 1.5hrs today!!!!! 2 in ONE day!!!

I think I have seen 3 in the wild before in my short 20 year life and Mum has not seen that many more – we are relatively speaking quite lucky in our sightings.

Loving the fields and fields of Opium Poppies with all the signs and fencing as well as the processing plant that looks like a prison.

Having a picnic lunch in the car-park at Lake St Clair whilst batting the giant Mozzie’s away who whilst large were quite slow fliers.

Walking along the northern end of the Bay of Fires Beach on the NE Coast on sand so white it looked like bleached sheets.

Staying the night in the coastal holiday town of St Helens …. and of course taking photos of myself with St Helens sign 🙂

Walking and taking in the sights of the largest Lavender farm in the southern hemisphere at Bridstowe Estate and sampling some Lavender Coconut Ice, Lavender Cheese and Lavender Fudge.

Visiting a Seahorse Farm at Beauty Point – really quite cool to see how they farm them for the aquarium and Chinese Medicine trade.

Heaps of other things and many more from before we went on our jaunt.

Photos will of course have to wait till I get home to have computer time and power to process the RAWs.

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Christmas

tree

My little collection of Christmas presents.
Benni Hemm Hemm Cd from Karl – Can’t decide what I love more the artwork in the CD or the songs – modern Icelandic Folk with some Led Zep/Guns N’ Roses influence.

A Short History of the Twentieth Century by Geoffrey Blainey from Matthew, I have come across Blainey’s works in my studies but have never really read any of his non-fiction works only a couple of his novels.

2005 Swarovski Annual Christmas Ornament 🙂 to add to my collection and a map of Morocco to plan my big trip – from Mum and Pabbi.

It was a very nice night 🙂 and now I am in the final stages of switching over emails etc, before in a couple of minutes Mum and I head off onto the open road on day 1 of our 3 day trip to reach Tasmania. See you sometime 🙂

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the coolest kid

funky shower cap

A week? or who knows how long ago, I had a super fun day with Andrea, where we spent next to nothing on great finds and spent a lot of time laughing, the shower cap on Gertrude to the left is one such find. I am the coolest kid in town because without a doubt I do have the coolest shower cap 🙂

I could bitch and moan about how life is at the moment but I am not going to do that, because we all know we hear enough of that in real life, so why carry it on here? So I’ll have a moan about Christmas instead.

My family all know that I normally full of the Christmas spirit, begging that we get the tree a day earlier this year, when can we start eating all the extra-special Christmas biscuits (coming soon to a blog near you), pouring over the yearly family updates we get from far-flung family and friends, thinking up the perfect presents, going nuttso over *Fine European* ornaments.

This year it hasn’t started happening yet, feeling bit scroogish here, so in an attempt to banish that evil spirit, I am making all sorts of cute yet primitive ornaments (also coming to a blog near your) to adorn the tree when we get it next week. I am going to haul myself down to the shops tomorrow to absorb some cheer and find those presents.

Christmas is in less than ten days.
Eleven days till Mum and I hit the road.
So much to do before then.

ohh and I almost forgot the best thing 🙂
Mum and I went into give blood the other day and I wanted to get the whole 470ml of blood out of me this time unlike the two times before so, you know I drank 4L of water between getting up at 4:25am for work and the appointment at 2:15pm. Well the blood was gushing out of me so fast I almost burst the little holding bag that that get the first dregs in. Seven and a bit minutes later, I had donated the whole 470ml! Go Helen! We won’t go into details about what happened afterwards but to say, Helen gets a bit faint headed after offering herself to the vampire… And GO MUM for having her 50th whole blood donation that day as well!

As I have said before I hate giving blood, the copious amounts of water, the faint-headedness bits and all the rest but just knowing that slight discomfort it gives me is less than that of the up to three other people who need my B+ blood.

That almost puts the Christmas hat on me, so with ten days till Christmas, I challenge no ask you to take a couple of hours out of your time and give the gift of blood to some strangers this season.

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and she hits herself on head x5

greenday

A few of you may have heard of the debacle I had with my Green Day tickets for the concert back in March, to cut a long story short for those who haven’t heard it, I lost my ticket as well as Matthew’s and his girlfriend at the time tickets for the show. I pulled apart my room literally twice looking for them; furniture was pulled from the wall in case they had fallen behind. The searches were futile. All evidence pointed to the fact that I must have thrown them out.

So after many talks with Ticketek, I was told that only I would be able to have my ticket replaced as I was in the seating section, however since Matthew and Daisie were in the standing section, they would just have to loose out. I was devastated, as Matthew was giving Daisie the ticket for her birthday, on the day of the show however, some more tickets came on sale but only for the seated section, so I bought two more tickets so Matthew and Daisie could go. The fact that I lost them also meant that my seat was costing me $188.40 to see them opposed to the $62.80 for everyone else.

Well today, just over a year since I had brought the tickets, I found them, hiding in my jewellery case.I proceeded to hit myself on the head countless times over. I wonder if I could sell them on Ebay???

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Pool Confessions

I went swimming this morning. Big deal, right?

Up until year 7, I went to 2 or 3 times a week in swimming season as well as school PE classes and then club on Friday nights. Once I hit year 8, the training went and I went to club every two weeks or so. Then that stopped in year 9 and all I had left was school carnivals and PE Class. I was not the best swimmer but I still could hold a reasonable pace.

Then I finished school and in all honesty, I don’t think I have done actual lap swimming since the carnival in year 12 that was 2002, it is almost 2006.

Since the summer of 2001/02, I think I have swum at the beach three times? In a pool maybe five times? If I said I lived in Ukhta, Russia, that answer may be quite reasonable but I don’t I live in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, we are on the coast line with glorious beaches up and down the coast line and a public pool 3 mins away, yet I can count on my hands the amount of times I have gone in the water.

Since I have the summer off, I decided it was a great time to stop talking about exercising and actually do something. Since it is too hot to ride a bike and if I go out walking I will just take a camera and not get any exercise, swimming reasoned to be the best idea, so I picked up a pair of speedos on Saturday, all ready to go on Tuesday morning, well I didn’t have a cap and you can’t swim without a cap, so I bought one on Tuesday night before work. Couldn’t go on Wednesday morning as I finished at midnight the night before which meant by the time I got up it would be too hot to go training. Then Matthew said he was to start work at 6am on Thursday, I thought great! That gives me a reason to be up early, I can drop you at work then go the pool!

So I did, I got there, paid my admission, put on my cap and got into the pool along with all the others there already.

I started off with freestyle, trying to go at a reasonable pace, yet I got to the other end of the 25m pool and had to have a breather, I eventually got up to doing 75m sets between breaks. After 15mins of freestyle I switched to breaststroke for another 20mins and then finished off with another 15mins of freestyle.

Back in the day at club, I used to dive in and do freestyle for 18m before I needed a breath and was pretty good at doing 5 strokes between breaths. Yeah well that was a while ago. Today for the most part it was stroke, breath, stroke, breath, however I did after a while get back into doing stroke, stroke, breath, stroke, stroke, breath 🙂 This is going to be a long process but worth it.

Observations on my swimming today.
Increase the kicking power; don’t let the arms do all the work.
Improve breathing.
Your technique is lazy, concentrate on stroke movement.
Get some goggles; chlorine eyes aren’t fun.

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the sweetest day

The 6 5 things that make this day stellar.

1 – My new lens arrived – Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM

2 – a sweet little care package from my second mother, Tracy.

3 – Bought U2 tickets 🙂 Andrea, Matthew and I are going to U2 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

4 – Ben Lee is on Live at the Chapel tonight!

5 – Veronica Mars is on TV tonight, it premiered last week, sure it is slightly pointless but fun.

6 – Now that I have typed this out, I can’t recall the sixth thing 🙁