We have officially caved!

Stupid not drinking bean eating diet be gone, we will no longer surrender to your attack of beans and pukey carrot juice, it's the hard stuff I crave, and at any cost...

We have officially fallen off the wagon, and luckily landed at the door of the pub. After a month (give or take a few days) we are back at the pub door lining up for a drink. Last night after another evening meal of beans Bev and I were a bit grumpy about work (bad), and excited about having booked our flights to Thailand (good), so in a haze of spontaneous hasty decision making decided to dip into our 'emergency fund' and go the pub. We had such a great time, it's been ages since the two of us have been able to sit down and chat, normally I'm confined to the kitchen cooking up beans while Bev is studying hard. There were some issues associated with not having drunk for awhile, I had two glasses of wine and suddenly regressed back to being 15 and chugging Strongbow in the park (why was that considered fun), as I was quite tipsy and had to grab onto Bev to wonder home.

Tonight, heralds another drinking adventure as one of Bev's friends is visiting we have sent out an official 'we are caving message' to our nearest and dearest pub buddies and are taking her out for a drink...

I will update on the status of my anticipated sore head tomorrow, boy the effect two glasses of wine has!

My new bike...

I bought a new pushbike on the weekend, it's really cool. I've shown a picture of it here so that others can also look at it and go, ohhhh how cool!

I don't really know much about bikes but Bev does, and he helped me pick out this one. It's got loads of stuff that's meant to be really cool, the only two things I know about are the brakes, they are hydraulic so allow you to stop much quicker, plus it has from shock absorbers, so when I run into curbs and stuff it doesn't jar so much.

There is also a lot of other stuff on the bike which I don't really know how to use, so obviously I'll have to learn so I can talk about it with other bikey kind of people.

After getting the bike on Saturday we went for a really nice ride along the bay (for once the sun was shining) and then back around Albert Park lake which was really great. It has to be said that in my family going for a 'first' ride on a bike hasn't always been a good experience, when Dad bought me and my big sister Elissa our big grown up bikes when we were in our early teens we went down to this oval near by for our first ride. This oval was huge, plus I must admit my control on the big person's bike wasn't too steady, however, Elissa and I managed to run directly into each other (our shared stubborn nature may have had something to do with it) and damage was done. Elissa ended up getting stitches in her leg, so as you can see I was pretty relived when my first ride on my new bike went off without a hitch. I think it also has something to do with lovely Bev who manages to put up with my little tanties without loosing his cool!

The only down side to getting this bike is that now I must get rid of my old bike, which I have a strong attachment to. There is something about that bike (my old one) which I really love, it's seen me through a lot of situations, mainly where I thought I could do more than I could, like trying to ride up and down Brisbane's big hills and nothing could beat last year when I decided to do a 50klm partially off road charity bike ride. Sadly, I've outgrown the bike and needed to get something with a bigger frame so that I wasn't putting so much pressure on my wrists, but I'm going to be sad when I really do get rid of it, and I'll remember it dearly.

So vale to Pinky, I'll miss you so!

Flights

I think finding cheap flights is a horrible obsession to get started on. Bev and I want to book our trip to Thailand so we've started looking at flights. After changing my point of view to thinking that it's ok to use the equilivant of a months pay to fly return to Bangkok we started finding some cheaper flights. The only issue is that the cheaper flights seem to be held by absolute stupid heads, I spent 15 mins on the phone with a woman this afternoon spelling my name, how subtle, yes I'm really working here, it's just a client that doesn't know how to spell my name - so my cover's been blown and everyone knows I'm looking for flights.

I think the issue is that we are looking for peak flights, i.e. flying out just after Christmas and back in late Jan... why can't they just fly more planes at this time and make it cheaper?

Anyway, the stupid woman was unable to assist me there and then claiming computer trouble, so then said she'd have to call me back, but was unable to take a mobile phone number... what the? I'm beginning to beleive that if we get this flight we'll be stuffed in next to a couple of chickens and bombs or something. Maybe we should just lay out the extra dosh and get the frequent flyer points...

Any tips would be much appreicated!

The diet...

Last Monday Bevan and I embarked on a 28 day healthy eating plan, for 28 days we are to consume no meat (there are occasional allowances for chicken), no dairy, no bread, and no caffeine. We thought that we were strong and that we could conquer this diet but to tell you the truth it’s been bloody hard! Firstly the eating plan doesn’t really take seasonality into account, so were having to buy fruit and vegetables that are extremely expensive to fit the eating plan, secondly you can only eat beans for so many days in a row before you begin to crack. Ok, so over the time there are many different types of beans, however, beans are beans and there are only so many beans that one can handle. So on Saturday afternoon when we were meant to be soaking our mung beans for yet another bean attack we revolted and decided to take dinner from another day and have fish, hopefully this deviation wont cause an attack from the diet gods…

Apart from that I think the diet is doing things, people keep commenting that my skin looks better, which is pretty cool, plus I’m starting to notice that my pants are a bit looser which is also cool. So all in all the jury is really out, we are now at day 9, with 19 more days to go, we’ll just have to see how long we can last…

Baby Sign Language

For once in my life I have seen something that has made me speachless. This is probably the weirdest thing I've ever seen and I just had to share.

Of course if you are into trying to teach your baby sign language then good on you, but just keep away from me cause it's very weird!

Discover How To Use Simple Baby Sign Language To Communicate with your Pre-verbal Baby..
Using AUSLAN based sign language your baby can tell you what they want, when they want it, reducing frustration for you and your baby!

http://www.australianbabyhands.com/

Is this for real????

Mug Snatching...

A few years ago I trained and kind of looked after a girl that worked on reception at a company I worked for. Anyway, eventually she was moved to another department and we stopped working together - she gave me a mug and matching coaster as a thank you present for being such a great person to work with (her words not mine). I was pretty touched by this present and have used the mug and coaster at all workplaces since.

In previous jobs I would leave the mug on my desk and wash it each morning before making myself a cup of tea, mainly because I worked in an office full of cup vultures and wanted to ensure that my mug remained sacred. In my new workplace a cleaning person comes around every few days and places all the mugs and associated dishes on people's desks into the dishwasher. As I am now working in a smaller office I was ok with this and each morning upon arrival at work would retrieve my mug from the kitchen and have a cup of tea.

This week Bevan and I have started on the world's most disgusting healthy eating plan and hence my morning cup of tea is no more, so yesterday morning I did not retrieve my mug at the normal time. Wouldn't you know it, later in the day when I went to have my cup of peppermint tea the mug was gone! Luckily I handle myself well in stressful situations so I remained calm and returned to my desk.

My fellow pod mates got wind of my issue and one of them started a investigation to recover my mug, and it has just now been returned to my side. The mug is now back but is it really the same, someone else has drunk from its smooth ceramic sides, can we be one again?

I am now drinking from another mug which I have for emergencies until I decide what the best course of action is to take...