It might just be a pandemic...

Pandemic... existing in the form of a widespread epidemic that affects people in many different countries.

Hold onto your seats girls and boys, forget about bird flu, there is something far more serious hitting our shores.

Over the last few months I've received phone calls, emails, whispers from friends that yet another acquantance has been affected... yes, I'm sure you've all seen evidence of it as well - it's babies...

A few years ago all you would see in the paper is articles warning us that the birth rate in Australia was dropping so much that our population wasn't sustaining itself. Well, I saw an article last week that said this was no longer an issue - us 'Aussies' have turned this around!

I love babies, I think they are really cute, etc, but the fact that so many people I know are having babies makes me a little bit sad really.

I've realised that people are onto my plan, I worked out that the only way I'll ever be able to get a good 10 years off work is to have babies, and bang all around me other people are taking advantage of this great idea.

I would like to say congrats to everyone out there who is pregant, it's really fantastic, just don't make me too jealous with the 'I've never been so happy in my life' comments, or I'll start making the 'man, I'm so glad I can drink cocktails on the beach in the sun' comments back!

Backpacks!

We bought backpacks on the weekend, I just wanted to share. They are so exciting, we got the same brand but Bevan's is bigger than mine. This way I can pack all my stuff into his bigger pack which he can carry and he can pack lightly into my pack which I'll then carry.

Only kidding, the packs are huge, I don't know how we would manage to fill them, especially since we are planning to spend about 99% of our time in Thailand in our togs or shorts and a t-shirt.

Anyway, it is very exciting to get a pack, I've been playing with mine heaps, opening it up, playing with all the little compartments it has, and thinking about all the cool little travel bits and pieces I can now buy to go into all those compartments.

Mine isn't that colour shown, it's black and dark green, whereas Bevan's is all black. When we were taking them home on the train on the weekend we knocked some people with them so I think that might take some getting used too... bit frightened about packed Thai markets...

Anyway, now all we have to do is wait until it's time to travel.... hurry up Christmas!

Home

We tried to buy a house last weekend, it was all very rushed and we were very excited and thought it would all work out... The process began on a normal Tuesday evening when I was idly flicking though the local paper - we are planning on buying a house once we have our deposit so we look occasionally to get an idea of the market. Anyway, suddenly I saw this place that looked pretty cool, plus the price tag was fairly achievable for us - we got excited. During the next few days we organised to meet with a mortgage broker who agreed to lend us stupid amounts of money, organised a cheque book, viewed the property a few different times, reviewed the contract and discussed auction strategy.

Saturday morning came and we set off to the auction, with a serious thought that within the next couple of hours we would be serious adults with a house (well apartment). The auction began... and bang it went well above the amount we were prepared to pay or could afford to borrow, that was sad. But then the price just kept increasing and increasing, and in the end we just felt a little sorry for the people who bought it, yeah they got a great place, but it needed a lot of work, and they had spent a huge amount of money already.

Anyway, we didn't get the place, so we've decided to take a step back and keep saving till we get back from Thailand then we can buy, but the bestest thing that came out of it is that we now have a cheque book, we haven't written any cheques yet, but we would really like to, and we are really awaiting the opportunity - I've never had a cheque book before, it's like free money! YAY!

Bridesmaid Dress

I'm not sure if I've blogged about one of the most exciting things that is happening in my life, my bestest buddy is getting married. It is all very exciting and it's been super lovely to be involved in some of the wedding preperations. Also, Nic has not displayed any signs of being a bridezilla and to be totally honest we're having such a lovely time.

We went to a bridal show a few months ago and everything was so funny that we couldn't stop ourselves from laughing during the fashion parade, so much so that old ladies frowned at us, like we were at a funeral or something. It is pretty serious to see people looking at ideas for what is meant to be one of the most special days of their lives with glum faces - how depressing!

Anyway, I wanted to come out and say a big hats off to Nic, who has remained cool, calm and collected so far, but most of all has been having a lot of fun! I also need to say a big thanks as we bought the bridesmaid dresses on the weekend and they are just beautiful! Thanks Nic!

I must say I'm really looking forward to the next few months of planning!

Wood, or more specifically pine...

Have you ever found yourself in a situation that makes absolutely no sense... I am still trying to work out how I ended up working on this particular project at work, I'm the one that puts up my hand for the water and electricity conservation projects, and anything else enviro that comes along my way.

Suddenly last week I found myself driving around country Victoria interviewing councils etc about how producer farmers can show themselves to be more environmentally friendly. If that wasn't enough this week I've been driving around suburban Melbourne interviewing timber merchants, builders and architect about pine products... how did that happen.

Honestly, as if walking about with a piece of pine in my handbag isn't enough, now I have to sit around a table with some bloke and talk about pine, more specifically the way in which particular pieces of pine and joined together. This is something that I have never thought of before, yeah I did woodwork at school, I made a breadboard and a table - but how did that set me up for this... I can only think that my now superior knowledge of pine products will come in handy during later life and will be useful for some odd reason, and I guess that's how you go through life anticipating the next dinner table conversation when suddenly you can show off your extensive knowledge and wow everyone away... anyone want to come round for dinner?

An Inconvenient Truth

I went and saw the film 'An Inconvenient Truth' on Sunday as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival. If you go and see one movie this year, you have to see this one. It is basically a doco by Al Gore and it explains climate change in a way that is really easy to understand. The film brought tears to my eyes, and has really inspired me to continue my efforts to reduce my eco-footprint on the planet.

There is really no where for our government to hide anymore, climate change is happening and if we don't take drastic action soon, our planet and our lives will be damaged, and once it's happened there isn't really any going back.

Please go and see it, it's really good, if you think that climate change isn't real then go along and challange your mind, if you haven't really thought about it before, go see it and start understanding why it's so important that we take action now...

Check out the website at... http://www.climatecrisis.net/

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...

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!