now a thirtysomething from Brisbane
Today is Tuesday, this is what I woke up to this morning. A flooded backyard. Due to the local geography, our backyard and the next two backyards over flood in the right rain. Yesterday, it rained and rained and rained and rained some more. Apparently it has been grey skies, drizzly and blah, the entire time I was in Melbourne (we had blue skies in Melbourne). Won’t have to water the plants for a while 🙂
Well, Mum should now be firmly on the ground in South Africa, she flew out on Friday for about month away in Southern Africa (i.e. not just South Africa). She is going to have a wonderful time but it will be strange not been able to pick up the phone and call her when I feel like it. Things are starting to settle down at work which is nice. Last week I switched from looking after the medical side of the applications for all the Navy and Air Force full time general entry candidates to now looking after the Army full time general entry candidates. It means that I am looking after a larger number of candidates and am now faced with enlistments every Monday as opposed to three times a month like I used to have.
I went to see Two Fists, One Heart yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed, especially the strong WA music presence in the soundtrack. With a broad brush it had some similarities to Two Hands, in terms of fighting, cars, bouncers and the not the girl ordinarily expected girl as the romantic interest. I would definitely recommend checking it out. Parts made me laugh and parts made me sigh.
This morning I gave the kitchen an autumn clean, top to bottom, I scrubbed, wiped and shined. This photo was taken two weeks or so ago but it gives you a fair idea of what the kitchen looks like.
I also did the seemingly weekly clean of my room; vacuuming, dusting and tidying. I don’t believe I have shared a picture of what my current room looks like. It is small but I do quite like having everything at an arm’s reach.
Talking of my room, that reminds me, I must share the incident that happened earlier this week. I was getting ready for bed, I had closed the deck door, turned off the lights, started the dishwasher and gone to clean my teeth. As I was brushing my teeth, I heard a tumble. I thought something had dislodged in the dishwasher and thought nothing much of it. I finished cleaning my teeth, looked at the dishwasher and it was fine. Then as I stepped into my room, I saw that some of the things from my bookcase had fallen onto the floor, as I looked up I came face to face with a Possum sitting on top of my bookcase. I was slightly shocked to say the least. Possums on the roof, possums on the power lines or possums in the back yard are fine. A possum on my bookcase is another matter. As you can see from the above picture, my room is narrow and there is only one way in and one way out. As I entered the room further the possum jumped and I ducked, it landed on my bed and scattered up to the desk. I started yelling at it to get out of the my room. Johnno hearing my yelling came to investigate and we managed to get the possum out of my room and into the kitchen, then with some fancy footwork the deck door was opened and the possum was let free. As the light was turned on in the kitchen and I walked back into my room, I discovered something the possum had urinated all over my room; the carpet, my bed, the wall, my desk, my laptop etc. Cleaning up possum urine is not pleasant. It is a tick slightly gelatinous liquid and cleaning it off the laptop is not at all fun. Normally I close my laptop when I switch it off at night. That night though for some strange reason I had left it open… if only I had closed it. Now that that story is off my chest…
Something that would surprise most people would be that I actually scapbooked today! I know! It has been a good handful of months since I last did something but the other week, I packed up a fair amount of stuff from my old room and brought it over here. In the picture below you can see the little chest of Ikea drawers that I have covered. They hold my computer cables in one little drawer and then in the others scrapbookig goodies.
It is now just gone 10pm and means it is time to retire to bed with a book and prepare for tomorrow been Monday.
The last five weeks have been incredibly crazy for me. We changed contract holders at work and that meant for my section a new manager and two new admins, which has meant a lot of training from myself and the other girl who stayed on. It has been hard and there are times when I just want to erect a divider round my desk and close my self off my the rest of the world and get my work done. The reality of that is that I have been working long hours. Which is why this blog has been lacking. Most days I get home from work, have a bite to eat, have a little chill out and then fall asleep waiting for it to repeat all over again the next day. In saying all that though, I still love the outcome of my job and just wish there was more time
A week after the contract changed, I moved house. I am still in the same suburb but moved a few streets over to a house that is owned by a friend of Karl’s. My room is the smallest room I have ever lived in but I love it. For the first time since moving out of home, all my boxes are unpacked and that feels great! Everything has a place and I have also gotten rid of a lot of crap which is great. One of the things or probably the thing I love most about this house and one of the things that sold me on moving in was the deck. I iron on the deck, I eat my meals on the deck, I relax on the deck, I create on the deck. The deck is good. I am currently sitting at the dining table (the deck is the dining room) with my laptop, listening to the bats screech in the trees, the whistles from the basketball stadium across the park and the trains that crescendo and decrescendo past. If I get home and it is still light or on the weekends, I often kick back on the sofa on the lounge and read a book or do some crochet.
On the weekend I went to a BBQ which was organised by one of the ladies I started SES with all those months ago as we are no longer “newbies” but real members. A perfect excuse to make cupcakes 🙂 and SES cupcakes is what I made. Vanilla buttercake for the cake and then fondant icing with lollies on top.
Of course, I decorated the cakes on the deck and here is a photo of my set-up.
It’s just after 9pm and I can feel my eyes starting to close so I am going to curl up in bed with my book and wait for it all to repeat itself tomorrow 😀
A youtube link to close the post – Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy. I thought this was good.
I spent this morning cleaning the windows in my room, they were filthy. First I scrubbed, then I scrubbed again and a rinse and then a polish with the window cleaner. Now I have windows that I can bear to look out of. I also managed to get rid of all the cardboard boxes as well, my room is now looking quite homely. I didn’t get my ironing done though, that will need to be done in the morning I guess nor did I get a chance to tackle the stove in the kitchen. I am slowly cleaning my way through the house.
One downside of new house is that I am now in high possum area and said possums are eating my lettuce (not that I can eat lettuce now anyway but I have been giving Mum and Matthew picked leaves once a week). I have moved the pot so it is now beside the kitchen stairs where there is more light at night so I will see how that goes.
When I was cleaning my windows today the resident Scrub Turkey came for a visit as well (yes my street has a resident Scrub Turkey, I tend to see him/her at least once a day). So cool.
My room has picture rails so when Mum and I went to Bunnings yesterday I picked up some picture hooks and wire. I was so excited then when I got home and tried them they didn’t fit! I was devastated. I was sooo looking forward to using the picture rails. At the moment I have some of my foam core mounted photos and LPs propped up on the picture rails and my framed pieces wrapped up beneath my bed.
Once I had cleaned and cleaned some more it was off to Mum’s and then off to The Farm. We have crumbed fish and veg every time we go to The Farm for dinner but tonight the fish tasted even better than it normally does. We also spent time counting the linen to make sure Grandad has enough to house the NZ contingent as well as other general planning. Man oh man I can’t wait for December! Only nine sleeps to go till the first of the outer towners arrives!
Yesterday and today I have moved into a gorgeous house in Auchenflower for the summer, the room is furnished with the most gorgeous 1920’s furniture with even more gorgeous 12ft ceilings. The kitchen has gas and it is just round the corner from the Auchenflower train station which is one zone closer to work on the train. Another great thing is that it is also close to the bike path which means I can and will ride/walk to work 🙂
I had a bit of flex time up my sleeve so I had a Birthday Eve day off (also because I was taking cake to work for my birthday and I wanted cake on my birthday not on the day before or after). I slept in till 7am!!! I did some washing, took care of the 1.8kg hunk of Pancetta I picked up last week, replied to some emails and then I headed off into the city. First off I collected my ticket for the Brandenburg concert and then I went to GOMA and checked out the Picasso exhibit at last (it closes on Sunday), that was everything I thought it was going to be and more. It was a really well presented exhibit. Getting a chance to see the works of Matisse, Cézanne, Rousseau, Renoir and all the other pieces that Picasso had collected presented alongside his own work was really good. At the GOMA shop I picked up one of the spilt pain teacup sets, it looks so good (I will take a photo of it later)
Then I headed into the city and made a stop at Lush to buy my birthday present to myself and had a wander round the shops and I made the best discovery in Mountain Designs. Keen now makes/sells bags! Oh they had some cool bags. So cool!
After a bit more of a wander and a visit to Blue Cats for some chocolate goodies, I headed out of the city and home and then onto my parents home. On the way I stopped at the flower market and picked up some flowers.
Pabbi cooked skonsur for dinner which was quite enjoyable, it has been sooo sooo long since I have had skonsur. I got to the kitchen table at dinner and there was a package waiting at my place. I was not expecting any presents at all as the deal is after you turn 21 you don’t get birthday presents any more. I opened the package after tea and it was pack of hankies 😀 Nice lady hankies. I had commented to Mum a couple of weeks ago that I hadn’t been able to find nice hankies. Now I have some 🙂 After that I cooked my birthday cake (pretty much this recipe, photo coming soon) for work today as the oven at their place is just a little bit better than the oven we have at the flat.
Then it was home time to watch The Hollowmen(man oh man I love that show) and then bed 😀 so I would be ready for a busy as usual day at work today 😀