Sick but happy!

I am sick, again... Boo hoo!

It is totally not fair, there I was doing really well and then suddenly bham, sick...

Bevan and I went to a wedding celebration on Saturday night (i.e. one of Bev's friends got married in Port Douglas but had their reception party at their house in Belgrave), needless to say for some reason it was freezing on Saturday night, I mean it is October, last week we had 36 degrees celcius, and the one night Bev and I head out for a outdoor party it snows in the Dandenong's... For those of you who don't know where Belgrave is, it is very close to the Dandenongs, i.e. foothills, so basically it was extremely cold. Anyway, I think that's what tipped me off as Sunday night I started to get a scratchy throat and am now sitting at my desk surrounded by 10 million tissues.

Anyway, enough about me... yesterday my fantastic, smart, wonderful boyfriend passed his comptuer exam (the Microsoft one). Bev's been working super hard to study, and I think it's really fantastic that he passed, with a score of 91%!!! YAY SMARTY PANTS! So my hat goes off to the super smart one, yay for him! Now he just has another 10 000 other computer exams to do, but this was the first big one so he's well on the road... Congrats baby!

Adventures in Home Improvement

So a few months ago I was shooting around randomly on the internet, after viewing my sister’s blog I clicked on that button at the top which says ‘next blog’, I clicked a few times and came across a blog.. http://ednkeesummers.blogspot.com/

This blog caught my attention because it’s all about two normal people, who have a small child deciding to renovate their own bathroom. I thought it was quite interesting and checked in on them every couple of weeks to update myself on their progress.

Following their last blog on August 15, entitled ‘yes we are still working’, there has been nothing but silence. What am I to do, will I ever find out if they have finished remodelling their bathroom, will I ever again get to see photo’s of little Kenton having the first go in the shiny new bathtub… I just don’t know, and at the moment to be honest I’m not sure how I feel about that. It’s like starting a really good book and then having it cruelly ripped away from you for no reason at all. Should I post a comment and ask then what’s happening with the bathroom, or should I just let it go and always wonder… If I’d known blogging could be this depressing I might never have begun..

Bogan Drinks...

This afternoon at work we are having Bogan drinks...

It all came about when someone sent around the Bogan test and people had to answer a set of questions and get a Bogan percentage score. Needless to say, it was quite fun, everyone had a laugh and we are now having Bogan drinks. What I didn't realise is that while also being the youngest person in my office, I'm now also known as the biggest Bogan, at a seemingly (to me anyway) moderate score of 57%.

Anyway, amazingly people have been ever so interested in the stories of the things we used to get up to in Brisbane during our teenage years to pass the time. I didn't / don't consider those things Bogan, rather just things we used to do to pass the time, because now when I think about it there wasn't really very much else to do when we were growing up in Brisbane, we had no money, well not enough to go out and entertain ourselves at the movies or bowling or something on a regular basis, we had to entertain ourselves.

So I don't know where wheel of goon or milk crate stacking came from but when you're bored and there is a pile of milk crates I'd start mucking around with them, is that the Bogan gene talking or just a bored aussie!

I'll end my day at work today sucking down a VB, with my co-workers looking at me thinking man what a Bogan, but I feel a fraud, I'm no where near as much a Bogan as the majority of people I know from Brisbane (not intentionally bashing Brisbane here, either most of the Bogan's I know just live there, or Brisbanites are just more honest at letting their Boganism shine through). Maybe find the Bogan test, give it a crack, and let that little bit of Bogan that lives within all of us shine through!

What the...?

I've been having a lot of fun recently looking into fun games to play at Nic's hen's night. After some deliberation we've decided to actually have the hen's party at my house, mainly because guys in Melbourne sometimes seem to go a bit funny when they see a bunch of girls dressed up for a hen's party, and we had some other ideas in mind anyway.

So, I've been looking at a couple of games that we will play on the night, funny things that will make us laugh - sometimes things come up and I wonder if I'll be getting a call from the IT guy at work asking what I'm up to visiting some of the sites I've been redirected too, but anyway it's all fun.

I came across this site the other day, it had a few good ideas and then down the bottom things began to go a little strange... Perhaps it's easier just to paste it below so you can have a look!


Hens Party Practical jokes

1) Water Shots- When the Hen is a little buzzed, give her the best placebo of allÂ…a water shot. The psychology of people is very interesting since when one thinks they are receiving alcohol, no matter how weak, they will start acting even more drunk. The best way to disguise the water is to give her a diet coke chaser, telling her the alcohol is really strong and to chase it down with another non-alcoholic drink before she can taste the 100 proof shot!

2) Cling Wrap The Toilet Seat- Afavoritee and very easy to do. Just place some Cling Wrap around the bowl. Make sure it is tight so you canÂ’t see the wrinkles from the plastic. Place the seat down and turn off the lights. Some unexpected girl will get back-splash!

3) Jelly Up Seats and Knobs- One of the easiest tricks to do. Place Lubricant, Toothpaste, Deep Heat or Vaseline under doorknobs and on toilet seats in a nice thin coat so the girls get a surprise on contact.

4) The Buck Has Arrived! One of the best jokes is to place a blow up doll in the HenÂ’s bed and tell her that while she was out, her man came to surprise her. I have seen this happen before and seeing the HenÂ’s reaction is one of the most memorable moments I will ever have about the trip, before and after she realizes its only a man full of hot air!

5) Early Wake Up Calls- Nobody likes early morning wake up calls after a night of partying, which is why this is perfect for the girls staying in other hotel rooms. Just make sure they donÂ’t know it is you!

6) Make ‘Em Change Colours While Sleeping- The great thing about Cool-Aid is when you place it in its powder form on a drunk girl’s bed before she is about to pass out, she will wake up either red (cherry flavour) or purple (grape flavour) since the powder soaks into the pours and temporarily colours the skin for the morning.

7) Drunk and Tattooed – One of the funniest tricks is to place high quality temporary tattoos on passed out girls so in the morning they are surprised by the scorpion or star design on their shoulder, tummy or thigh.

8) Clown Make-up- When a girl passes out, have a ball with the make-up bags everyone has. The most fun way is to paint her fingernails a different colour and lipstick her face in clown attire. Make sure to get a snapshot for the photo album.

9) Hair Full Of Powder- There is nothing like watching a girl turning on her hair dryer and get a cloud full of baby powder. Simply place a small amount of powder in the dryer (be very careful how much you place in there so it does not short out the dryer) and watch her freak when the button goes on.

10) Suds for All- Nothing is like a toilet bubble bath. Place a generous amount of detergent in the back of the toilet (tub). After a few flushes, you are surly to witness something out of the Brady Bunch when Bobby placed too much suds in the washing machine.

11) 2 Sizes 2 Small- When the Hen is not around, place much smaller pairs of undies in her bag and let her become confused on what happened to her own pairs. Watch her try to put the others on. It may even be funny to replace her undies with sexy costume undies that she will have to wear for the rest of the party!

12) Panties and Bras In The Icebox- Wake the Hen up in the morning by having all her bras and panties spend the night in the room freezer. This is the true meaning of fridged!

I don't know about anyone else but suddenly I began to think, am I organising a hen's party or a 'I hate you' party - who are these people. I don't know anyone who would think hey how wonderful my best friend has asked me to be her maid of honour and stand up next to her at her wedding, I know as a thank you I'll put glad wrap on the toilet seat so she gets wee all over herself. Who are these freaks of society.... Where are theyfrightenedrightend that these people exist!

Fruit

I don’t know about other people but for most of my life I’ve had a bit of an issue with fruit – I see other people eating it all the time but it just don’t cut the mustard for me.

I know that you are meant to eat like a zillion pieces of fruit a day but I just don’t know if I can do it. I was ok previously because I didn’t mind bananas but at the moment buying a banana is like making a major life decision… will I fill the car up with overpriced petrol this week or will I buy a banana. Due to my fruit issues we have been buying bananas, just not as many as previously.

I was quite happy for awhile chowing down on tinned fruit till I read that while it’s better than a chocolate bar or something tinned fruit isn’t a substitute for fresh fruit – why did I have to go and read that.

Anyway, this has led me to my new challenge, the eating fruit challenge, my aim is to start easy and eat a fresh piece of fruit everyday. Yep, you might sit back in your seat and gasp at my daring new challenge but believe me this one might be tuff. I am now in day two. My fruit eating experiences so far have included:
Ä Monday, a great day to start any challenge as you know for sure that the rest of the day is going to be shit anyway, I ate a banana, thought I should start off easy.
Ä Tuesday (today) I ate an apple, first thing I ate all day, I even ate it as I was walking to work – must be a total double whammy of health benefits!

Who knows what tomorrow might bring, maybe even a pear – who can tell… Anyway, please send me your best wishes as I continue on my arduous journey… So long!

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!