Floaters... yes floaters

I know that I'm getting a bit out there with the subject of this post, but there are some things in life that you just have to bring up in a public forum to confirm if these things are an issue for others or if potentially I am alone in my sad, disgusting floater world.

For those of you who don’t know I work in an office building, it’s quite a normal office building and there is a communal toilet in the landing on my floor. I, as does any other person in the world, occasionally use the communal toilet during the average working day, and I don’t know if this is weird or not but I have a preferred toilet, first on the left I prefer to use that one. I’m not precious about it or anything, if someone is in there I am quite happy to use another toilet, all I am saying is that given the choice of 4 empty cubicles I will choose that one on the left.

Recently though I have begun to suspect that someone else also favors this cubicle and that perhaps they have begun some sick kind of vendetta to force me to change my preferred cubicle. On many separate situations I have entered my favored cubicle only to visibly recoil at the sight of a floater, yep that’s right a floater. It’s bad enough having to share an office with other people but to be visibly exposed to their fecal matter takes everything to another level. To be totally honest this whole experienced has really taken the joy away from my favored cubicle on the left, now I dart into the cubicle with a bit of fear hoping that when I look into the bowl that there is no floater. I don’t know about other people but I can’t go in a floater situation and I move onto another cubicle. Perhaps I should make some attempt to flush the floater so another fellow worker is not exposed to this horrible situation but once I’ve seen that floater I’m out of there and there is no going back. I think the only solution is to move to another cubicle, however I am in fear, what if I move to this cubicle and then the floater attack begins again – will I spend my entire life being attacked by floaters… who knows…I hope not that’s for sure!

It this the end of customer service?

During the last few days I have been exposed to numerous situations in which extremely poor customer service has been displayed. Initially I thought that maybe I was sending out vibes that caused others to respond to me rudely, however, others have now mentioned that they are also noticing an uprising among the customer service folk.

I'm interested to know when people suddenly decided that purchasing something from their store no longer meant that they had to treat you politely - I'm not being over the top here, I'm not talking about situations when I'm paying for a packet of gum with 5c pieces, I've noticed rude customer service across the board!

From the rude mattress lady at Forty Winks responding to my question of the exact depth of our new mattress with 'how would I know how high it is', to the insolent girl at the Caltex looking at the EFTPOS card I placed on the bench and responding with 'the card goes in there (please picture deadpan you are a stupid head face, as this is how she looked at me). As you can see rude customer service is spreading, I'm now living in fear that it will take over and beginning to wonder when precisely I can begin responding to my clients questions with 'how would I know, work it out yourself'!

It's a nice day for a white wedding...

On Saturday my Mum got married, how awesome is that, getting to see your own Mum meander down the aisle and get married! It was also a fantastic time because the whole family was there which hasn’t happened in a very long time so that was pretty cool. You can see a picture of the beautiful bride getting into the car to go to the wedding - doesn't she look fantastic!

As with any wedding there were a few moments of stress but we managed to pull through and a wonderful wedding occurred. It also made me realise that weddings are pretty full on and there are reasons why people are full time wedding planners, there is just so much stuff you have to think of…crazy. But my hat goes off to my Mum for pulling everything together without loosing it – something that probably only Mum’s can do!

So apart from not being able to locate the car upon our arrival back in Melbourne (must teach Bevan that I and J are two separate letters) a great time was had by all!

Forby Borby Bevan

Monday (Queen's Birthday public holiday) marked our first ever Jeep Club adventure. We met up with our fellow Jeep owners at Rowville McDonald's and set off into the Bunyip State Forest in search of adventure.

Bevan was the driver on this particular journey which was fraught with peril due to the rainy day and muddy conditions (stay tuned for more adventures filled with donuts which will indicate a switch in driver).

All in all we were probably a bit nervous given that this was our first Jeep Club trip and we weren't 100% ohfay with the use of technology such as the walkie talkie - which is really a fun device, I suggest all people living in built up urban areas get one, some of the conversations you can pick up from our house are really quite amazing, anyway I digress...

Basically, as you can see from the picture above while going down a extremely muddy steep hill we fishtailed out and the Jeep spun round and suddenly we were stuck. Because of the way the track sloped up on either side we were unable to turn around - either front ways or back ways and therefore had to 'crab' our way to the bottom.

At one point during the we came across a F400 ute precariously bogged on the side of a deep pond. The ute owners mate were trying to get him out but didn't have the right recovery gear so borrowed a snatch strap off us which they hooked on the ute's tow ball (very bad thing to do apparently) and tried to snatch strap the ute out. The snatch strap slipped off the tow ball and the front end of the ute slipped into the pond, which was really funny. Anyway all the blokes then got excited and started talking strategy and to sum up a fairly non-exciting time for me and they had to tie another 4WD to a tree and winch the ute out.

We then slipped and slided up and down a few more hills before half the convoy went down this hill into a big mud hole that was meant to be the road out of the forest and turned out not to be so everyone had to recover everyone else which was good for awhile until it got dark and we were stuck in the forest.

Anyway, all in all we had a really good day, Bevan got to do some really good 4WDriving and has since bought me a Jeep jumper to wear to prove my Jeep excitment to others!

Vale Mattress

Sadly the common sense side has reared its ugly head and the super duper mattress is no longer a go. Due to the fact that we could upgrade my car to something much, much better, or use the money for our overseas holiday we are planning for next year we have decided to be sensible people and look for a cheaper mattress, so back to the drawing board.

Perhaps you can feel my sorrow being slowly tapped into the keyboard, unless you have experienced the wonder of NASA inspired memory foam you potentially would not understand my pain...sob...sob.

Sleeping Easy

The search is over... we have finally found a mattress - now we just enter the waiting game and in two lovely weeks our mattress will be here. The bed dramas have been compounding for a few months now, and we finally reached a point where we would suffer no more so we went to one of those places that has heaps of bedding shops and declare upon our entrance that we would not leave without a bed. After a mild tantrum on my behalf we reduced our aim and declared that we wouldn't leave without a mattress - one thing out of the two would have to do.

So we have now spent the equilivant of Micronesia's debt and have purchased ourselves the world's most super duper mattress - we have no base but we have two weeks to get something sorted!

After my day of mattress dramas there is nothing else to do but sit back and have a beer in honour of Dad - happy birthday!

Unrequited Anger

I believe that by nature I am not a particular angry person (ok keep your comments to yourself) but today I found myself in a situation that left me feeling totally and completely ripped off.

The girl I work with turned to me this afternoon and asked my advice, she had just received a phone call from one of our sub-contractors and they informed her that they needed 96 $2 scratchies by tomorrow and that we had to get them. Ok things sound ok, but suddenly I felt my anger flare, who do these people think I am, someone who sits around all day just waiting for the phone call to send me out on my way to purchase stupid amounts of $2 scratchies, why can't these stupid people go down to the newsagents themselves and purchase their own bloody scratchies. My anger intensified when the girl that works with us told me that it was our sub-contractors responsibility to purchase the scratchies... I picked up the phone in the heat of the moment and called the sub-contractor to vent my anger... perhaps he was privy to ESP as he was 'away from his desk' and unable to take my call, I left a message.

I then proceeded to storm around the office for a bit firing up others in my fit of anger, using phrases like who do these people think they are... my boss rang... apparently it is our responsibility to purchase the stupid amounts of scratchies. Sub-contractor guy rings back, all I can say is well I'll go and get the scratchies and courier them over to you but you know I don't sit at my desk all day just waiting for people to call and ask me to do things, you should have given more notice - his response, oh sorry! That was it. With my anger still rife I had to take the lift downstairs cross into the next building and make my mammoth scratchie purchase.

In the end, I've purchased $148 worth of scratchies on my credit card and am left with nothing but anger and no where to vent it... but here at my lovely blog. I must end my rant with a tribute to my sister Sarah who showed me that when no one is really interested in hearing you crap on about going into a newsagents to buy scratchies you can type it all up, post it on a blog and people will read it! Thanks Sarah!

Specy Spin

Well the results are in, I managed to come second in the spin challange set by my gym! For those of you who are not familiar with the spin challange, it basically involved going to as many spin classes in one month as possible as was called 'Tour De Sainters'.

Early on in the month I had grand visions of coming first, then once I heard rumors that the girl I was up against was putting in 12 spin classes a month I readjusted and decided I'd be happy with a place - hence my joy at coming second. This is even more exciting for me due to the fact that a year ago when I went to my first spin class I had serious visions of death, my face was hotter than hot, my legs like jelly and my self esteem so, so low as I looked around and saw 31 other people in the class seemingly effortlessly spinning away. So it's taken a year, almost half of which has been without the ciggies, and I think I've now reached a point where I'm fitter than I've ever been before! Anyway, sorry, I've gotten a bit excited.

So that's my achievement for the year, I'm now off to work in search of a caramel latte and a triple choc chip cookie!

Tis now Sunday

Suddenly the weekend has clocked over into Sunday without getting the chance to do have the things I wanted...

Saturday was great as we decided to go to the footy at the MCG and sadly watched Collingwood thrash the Lions but all in all it was a great match. After the match we headed off to the pub then to a party in Albert Park then faced the issue of having 5 people and only seeing cabs that take 4. Firstly, we stood on the side of the road on the coldest night I think I've ever experienced in Melbourne hoping that suddenly a cab would appear. Given that the road was so quiet that I was half expecting a tumbleweed to roll slowly from left frame convientent cabbage was not on the adgenda. After much deliberation we ended up making the slow walk of shame down to Fitzroy street then interacting with Melbourne's friendliness cabbie who finally took us home, at this point Adam (my brother) split from the pack with Bevan's brother and they went and had their own adventure, which potentially from the timber of Adam's snoring seemed to be quite enjoyable.

Today heralds the excitment of talking about my best mate's wedding and having a quasi baby shower for my good mate Marce who is anti baby shower but is going to get presents anyway. It should be a fantastic chick session and will top off the weekend perfectly.

I'll leave the weekend adventures there...

The Blog Begins

This happens to be my first ever blog, which spurned from my little sister mentioning that she had set up a blog and she was going to send me the link to look at it! Therefore, I decided to create my own blog and check out what it's all about...

So today - luckily happens to be a Friday and thank goodness the weekend is not so far away. Yesterday was spent trying to get tickets to the cricket (an extremely frustrating experience) but in the end successful, and today will be spent catching up on all the work I was meant to do yesterday but didn't.

So friendly blog we'll have to leave it there for now, until I can come back once I've finished my work and engage with you again which given that it's Friday and there is every chance that copious quanities of beer will be involved could be some time...