More photos

I was chatting to my friend Ana on google talk tonight and she sent me a pic of me with her and and Carl from the wedding. So I thought I'd put it up on my blog so everyone can see it :-)

Paul and I are looking forward to a "lazy" weekend. Lazy meaning no guests and not going away anywhere. We do however have to get some last minute shopping done (well I do - Paul is all done). So we're off to Chermside shopping centre first thing tomorrow. Sunday might just be a day at home I think :-) *sigh* how nice!I'm looking forward to relaxing and reading my book on the deck!

Fly fly away home ...

Well tonight mum is back off home to London. It has been really great having her around for the past week or so. I'm really going to miss her! I think Paul will be glad to not have us gas bagging to each other 24/7 though :-)

We put up the Christmas tree last night. It looks so pretty :-) I took some pics so I'll try to put them up. But that won't happen until after mum goes :-)

I have some extra wedding pics that Mary Brown sent us too. I love wedding pictures - yay! Can't wait to we get the official ones and then I can put them on the walls, make thank you cards etc. Exciting :-)

Right - gotta do some work. Between writing this and chatting to Gina on skype I'm not getting a lot of work done. Te he :-)

BBQ

Well mum has been having a nice and relaxing time in Brisbane so far. It has consisted of lots of resting, reading and the occasional walk to the shops :-) Just what the doctor ordered I think :-) That's probably helped by the fact that it got to about 36 degrees at home yesterday according to our thermometer. When it's that hot you don't really feel like doing much else :-)

Tonight we're having a small family bbq. So Janell and Alex are coming around as is Tanya (and Dan and the kids as well I assume). I invited Ally as well but they're moving over the next few days, so it's probably a bit much to drive all the way up from the Gold Coast. Google maps tells me it's about an hour and a half drive each way - ouch!! Let's just hope the weather holds out. Currently the forecast is "An afternoon shower or thunderstorm. Moderate to fresh NE to NW winds.". Hmmm - hopefully it turns out to be one of those Brisbane thunderstorms that passes over other suburbs and not ours. I'm not really in the mood for more thunderstorms yet :-)

Some "borrowed" wedding photos

Here are some photos I have "borrowed" off friends on facebook :-) Thanks guys :-D

Back to the real world

Well after such a wonderful week or so in NZ, it was back to the real world yesterday. It was definitely a reality check getting up and going to work yesterday morning!! Oh well, 2 more days and then I have another day off. Paul and I are taking mum up the coast to Noosa for the weekend. Paul has to work Friday so mum and I will probably go to Caloundra for the day and hopefully stop in and see Aunty Silvia (my mums Aunty - her husband died not that long ago which was very sad). Paul will then jump on the train after work and meet us somewhere - probably at the end of the train line in the Noosa direction, which is Nambour. The most exciting part is we're going to the Eumundi markets on Saturday morning! Pray for nice weather so I can get in lots of shopping ;-) ha ha.

On the wedding topic, thanks to everyone who was involved in any way. It was the most amazing day - it really couldn't have been any more perfect :-) And didn't Wellington really come to the party with the AMAZING weather we had all weekend! I got confused and thought I was back in Brisbane for a while there ;-) te he. Paul and I had a magical day! And I didn't even cry - I was far too happy for that - well maybe I had a little tear when mum gave her speech.

All you guys probably have more photos of the wedding than I do. So you'll have to look on facebook for photos initially. Once we get our official photos from Shayne then I'll put some up here.

Right - better do some work now :-)

Exciting

Ok - it has finally hit me! I am finally really excited about coming to NZ tomorrow and doing the whole wedding thing. Up until now I've just been looking forward to some time off work! But right now I'm sitting in my chair and I'm almost bouncing! YAY!! Ok that may have a little to do with the coffee I just had - but I'm pretty sure it's got lots to do with the wedding too :-) And it's a vast improvement on yesterday too! About this time yesterday I was having an inner panic! You know the "I know we've done most things but what if there's something really important that we've forgotten rah rah rah rah". You know the drill :-)

Actually, my worst fear at the moment is tripping on my vows! Fr Chris wants us to remember them and I'm really bad at forgetting words just as I need them. So now I'm really worried I'm going to spin out Paul's vows and not mine.
i.e. Ange saying "I Paul take you Angela to be my wife" instead of "I Angela take you Paul to be my husband". I should probably stop jokingly calling Paul my wife and then I might not trip up on the day :-) ha ha ha

RIGHT - back to work Miss Smith :-)

See you all soon!!

p.s. I'm going to the Phoenix home game in Wellington tomorrow night with Shanan and Marea. How cool is that!!!!

embrace your inner geek

Ha ha - I know this is a very geeky "joke" - but it amused me :-) So I thought I'd share it with you. It was in an email I got from Paul - so there you go, my inner geek is catching!

Mwhahahahahahaha

I'm famous

See - told you it got onto the front page :-) Wahoo - go me. It's been up for 50 mins now

A major storm

Yesterday afternoon our area of Brisbane got smashed by a major storm! I've never experienced anything like it in my life! Our rain gauge recorded 76 mm in about half and hour or so! And to top that off there were about 3500 lightening strikes recorded and major winds!!

We had windows flying open on in all the bedrooms and rain pouring in them. They wouldn't stay shut so I was standing there holding them shut while Paul ran around finding things to tie the windows together so they'd hopefully stay shut. Then we went into the back spare room and the curtains were blotchy. I pulled back the curtain and was hit by heaps of water. The rain was literally pouring in through the top of the windows even though they were fully closed!! So we were madly moving all of our storage to the other side of the room out of the way of the rain. I tried holding a towel up to the water pouring in for a bit, but that was pointless as the towel was soon soaked. So there was nothing we could do but put down some towels on the floor and mop it up afterwards.

Further down our street it got all flooded out! I'm glad that we're up higher! Apparently the area that flooded used to be a creek back in the day. The lady on the pother side of the road from us has lived there for about 55 years - so she'd know :-)

This photo (with the car) got on the front page of the Brisbane Times website with my name and everything - I'm famous!!

The power was out all night - so we were using candles for light :-)
Fortunately we have gas so we could still cook dinner

Our new freezer

Last night after work Paul and I went shopping. Our mission was to buy a little chest freezer as the freezer in our fridge is just a joke. We figured with the current financial crisis that shops would be pretty keen to sell a big item, so we should be able to get a pretty good deal.

We had 3 stores in mind to visit - The Good Guys, Retravison and and Clive Anthonys. I jumped on our old bus, the 333 route, and met Paul after work (he drove). We went along to The Good Guys first and to be honest I wasn't that impressed with their selection. They only had 5 and that was for a range from 150 litres to about 700 litres. The prices weren't that great either. The freezers around the 200 litre mark were marked as $419 for a 207 litre Hisense brand (say what?! It's a cheap Chinese model apparently) and $529 for a 220 litre Fisher & Paykel one. We asked what their cash prices were and they would only give us $30 off. Not satisified with that, we decided to move on.

Next on the list was Clive Anthonys. I'd never heard of them before and definitely hadn't been there before so we didn't know what we were in for. The range there was definitely a bit better. They had a range of Fisher & Paykel and Westinghouse freezers. On first glance their prices were more expesive than The Good Guys with the 220 litre F&P one marked as $589 - but of course you NEVER pay full the asking price in Aussie - they're just starting price for bargaining :-) Initially they only offered us the F&P one at $529 - hell no - we could get it much cheaper down the road. So we put on our "hmm - that's not good" faces and Paul said that we could get it from somewhere else for $480 (they only offered it at $499 I think). So in the end they dropped the price to $470 - wahoo :-) Done deal!!!

So there you go - it will be delivered to the store on Monday or Tuesday for Paul to pick up. And we managed to talk to price down from $589 to $470! Not bad aye! When I first moved over here, I wasn't so good at the bargaining thing - it's just not natural for a kiwi (and to be honest, if I get too excited about something then you can just forget bargaining - I'm too obvious). But in general Paul and I are much better at it now :-)

So if you want to have a look at our freezer then it's on the F&P aussie website at: http://www.fisherpaykel.com.au/refrigeration/?productUid=648B748A-055D-29E8-967B7A75FE6BFE88

Also here is a pic of it

One month till the wedding

Wow - it really is November 6th today. Exactly one month until Dec 6th and the wedding. Argh!! There's still so much to do - Looks like I shall have a very busy weekend! At least I finished painting the boards for the vege garden last weekend, so now I can devote my time to wedding planning while Paul continues with creating the garden borders. Although maybe God is on our side at the moment as the weather forecast for the weekend is rain and thunderstorms. That's much more condusive to wedding planning than gardening.

We're also going to set off a few bug bombs in the house tomorrow morning before we go to work. So that should kill off all the bugs before mum arrives. No more spiders or ants or cockroaches etc - YAY :-) I hate bugs!! Although to be honest, I'm a lot better about them now that I used to be - lots of exposure I suppose. However I still hate spdiers, especially the big ones - big ones make me freak out and cry! Very embarrasing ;-) te he

Right - back to work. Oh one last thing. It has to be said after all - how cool is it that Obama got elected president yesterday! What a day to be alive aye!! Let's hope he does a lot great things for the US!!

Crash, Bang, Flash

What a night aye! First I did one of my 'waking up screaming & running across the room because there was a super size spider' nightmare things (on Friday night there were 2 hanging from the light shade - last night one had created a big web between my beside table and the curtain). Fortunately last night I woke up before I turned on the light though. On Friday night I gave Paul a hell of a fright when I turned on the light in the middle of the night - whoops - stupid nightmares!!

Anyway so you'd think that was enough excitement for one night right! Wrong! We got woken up about 3am by a massive storm outside. There was major lightening bolts that were lighting up the whole room (through our "black out" curtains too), followed by lots of loud crashing and banging thunder. Crazy stuff! I forgot to check the rain gauge when I got up this morning to see how much rain we had with it. Some parts got 23mm - but Brisbane gets storm cells so you can be fine while a few suburbs over they're getting hammered.

Anyway - so just thought I'd share that excitement with you. I'm sure when mum's visiting that she'll get to see a storm or 2 :-) They're pretty impressive aye!!

Final RSVP Day

So today is the last day that folks can officially RSVP to the wedding. Of course not everyone has yet - however after today I get to email the remainders and go "nag nag" :-) Te he. As of last night the attendance list is sitting at 83 - so that's a fair whack of people, whether the remainder come or not :-)

Today the temperature here in Brissy is meant to get up to 29 degrees. To enable me to fully enjoy the summer weather, I am wearing my new bright blue ninja earrings that my very clever friend Teresa made. They're hard to see from the pic - but if you click on the image, it will open a larger copy of it :-) I bought 4 pairs of earrings off her a few weeks ago and they're fantastic - I have so much fun wearing them :-) And at $5 a pop you can't go wrong :-)



Ha ha - Ben is going to love me for putting this photo up. Ben & Mike went in to book in some waistcoats for the wedding and I'd asked them to send me a photo of what they looked like (yeah I know, I'm mean making them wear waistcoats :-) but I like them!). But I think Ben got a bit excited as you can see in the photo below. Fortunately the wedding colour is not orange :-) And someone really should buy the man a top hat ;-) te he :-) The photos made me crack up when I saw them :-)


The other exciting news that I have heard through the grapevine is that the first bridesmaid dress is pretty much complete. Very exciting! My lovely friend Kat has been working her butt off to get them made before she goes to her brothers wedding in the states in just over a week. So if anyone sees Kat then you all have to give her great big hug for me :-)
Marea is due in Wellington today sometime so now Kat gets the joy of making a maternity friendly bridesmaid dress. I wonder if we can ask No 1 (the sprog in training) to not grow for the next 5 weeks so that Marea still fits her dress :-) Ha ha - good luck.

Righto - better do some work now. Paul and I are off to vote at 4pm this afternoon so I have to finish early. We are able to vote any time up until the day before the election I think - but we thought we'd get it in early. I hope that you are ALL ENROLLED!!! Anyone is doesn't vote in the election is forbidden from grumbling about anything government related for the next 3 years!

Right right - really going! Have a great weekend! May the sun shine again in Wellington like it did on Labour day on Monday!!

2 days left

Well there are only 2 days left for RSVPing to the wedding. We're doing not too badly at this stage - we have 81 confirmed guests and we're expecting 90 - 100 all up. It'll be good once we have final numbers as then we can move onto tasks like seating plans, confirming how much of things like alcohol, snacks, catering, hired glasses etc we need. We can also organise things that depend on how many tables we'll have (tablecloths etc).

I'm looking forward to this weekend. We're going around to the Hodge's place to watch the rugby with James and whoever else is home. It's been about 6 weeks since we've caught up so this seemed as good a reason as any. It's on at a much better time in Brissy than in NZ - 6:30pm :-)

Righto - busy as so better do some work. It is muggy as today as it rained pretty hard very early this morning (woke Paul and I up). So we'll need to turn the aircon on a colder setting I think.

Have a great day all!!

The Importance of being Earnest

So about a month or so Paul and I reinstated our "date night" policy for Tuesday nights. We figured out that since we moved over to Australia, we were actually doing less together. So far we have been to the movies, been out for dinner, had dinner on our deck, and had a lazy night in drinking a few wines (that week coincided with my birthday).

Last night we were very lucky and had something different to do. Paul had received a couple of tickets from his work to see The Importance of being Earnest at the Playhouse Theatre. I go past the theatre on the way to work every day, so I had seen it advertised for a while and really wanted to go. However I didn't mention it to Paul as I thought he wouldn't be interested. So when he emailed me on Monday and said he had tickets, well I was pretty excited!

It turns out that Paul's work must sponsor the theatre or something so it was a bit of a hob-nob night. But that meant we got free food and drinks before the show, during the interval and after the show. And all we had to do for it was talk to some work related people and their friends/partners for a while. Not too hard now aye ;-) ha ha.

So ... the play. It was fantastic! I totally recommend it! I'd only ever seen the movie with Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon etc in it - and that came across more as a chick flick. But as a play it has much broader appeal - it was very very funny! Paul was chuckling away the whole show too and really enjoyed it - so it wasn't just me :-)

For anyone based in Brisbane I recommend you go along. For anyone elsewhere, if you see it being put on locally, then you must get yourself some tickets.

Right ... so enough of that. Back to work now :-)

Ange

p.s. 6 weeks and 3 days and counting ......

51 days and counting

Hmm - I've not been so good on the updating front lately. Probably because I used to update my blog in the mornings when I got to work, before I actually started working. But these days I'm cycling to work so don't get to my desk till much later - and also need to leave for home a lot sooner. I think I need to start a new habit of updating it at night time :-)

Can you believe that it's only 51 days until the wedding - ARGH!!! *breathe*
Right - no more lazy nights in front of the telly. Time to get working on order of service booklets etc. *sigh*. If only they would create themselves ;-) ha ha. In fact - although the wedding is in 7 weeks and 2 days - I leave for NZ in 6 weeks and 1 day - so that's even less time!!

Janell is coming along with me for a fitting of my dress this weekend - I'm getting the hem taken up as I'm such a short arse ;-) I have to get the hems taken up on almost everything I own! Debz has to look after the kids as Lance is on call so she can't come this time. But it's very cool Janell is coming along. Depending on the weather situation we might go for a cruise on one of the citycats up the river and go for a coffee etc. Should be good :-)

So last night Paul and I got home from work not long before a pretty big storm hit us. It was definitely the best one since we've been in Brissy! We had 50mls of rain in just over an hour (we measured it in Paul's rain gauge). Crazy aye! And there was a hard out lightening and thunder display going on. It went right over the top of our suburb so it was like *flash* *bang* *flash* *bang* really close together. You could see lightening strike hitting the ground in the suburbs around us - it was awesome!! We even lost power for a minute or so before the backup kicked in :-) But we survived with no trees falling on our house so that's good. That's the one thing about storms over here - you worry about your big trees! Heaps of them fell over in storms last summer as they were weakened by the drought! But we use grey water from the washing machine to water the one at the front - so it should be ok. And the mango tree looks ok at the moment - probably because it rained so much last year. But we really should get a pump for our water tank so that we can give the mango tree a good watering sometimes.

Well - enough of my rambling, I have work to do.

Have a great day!!

Last day of 27

Today is my last day of being 27! From tomorrow onwards Paul can officially call me a nanna as for the next 8 months or so, I will be older than him. See - I have me a toy boy ;-) te he he :-)

So it'll probably be the most uneventful birthday day of my life. I don't think I'll get a single present on the actual day of my birthday :-( Ha ha - that's not to say I haven't or won't receive an presents at all - just not on the day.
Paul's mum was very nice and bought me 3 new pairs of thunderpants when we were in Martinborough for my hens do (Martinborough being the home of the Thunderwear store!).
Mum asked me a while ago whether I still wanted her to send my birthday cheque or whether I wanted to wait till I saw her around the wedding. So I said wait until she comes to Aussie and we can get something together then. We're taking her to the Eumundi markets up near Noosa, so I'm pretty excited about being able to buy something there. The Eumundi markets are very cool! If you ever come to the Brisbane area then you have to go there (Eumundi is about 2 hours drive north of us).
And finally, Paul is giving me some money towards buying a new cell phone - I desperately need a new one! My phone is so old that half the time it can't actually receive text messages from newer phones - there must be some encoding in new phones that make my phone have a fit. So I'm very excited about getting a new phone.

I want Paul to come with me to get the new phone so that we can discuss the merits of various models (generally mobile phones are much cheaper here than in NZ - you get way more bang for your buck!). I'm not really that interested in a camera on the phone as I have a good handbag sized digital one that a cell phone will never beat (as in fits in your handbag - not the size of a handbag :-) te he). But I would like something that has a "planner/calendar" type of thing on it that you can sync up with your computer. Also I would like one where you can record more than numbers against people in your address book (my NZ phone is good for that but my current one is useless). Plus, very importantly, it must have an mp3 player and expandable memory so that I can use it as an mp3 player (yes yes I know - it's shocking that I don't have one yet). But phone shopping will have to wait until next weekend as this coming weekend, Paul is away on a St Johns course the entire weekend. The course is being held here in Brisbane, but the hours are so long that they have to stay on site. Apparently it used to be a 2 weekend course that they've now squeezed into one weekend. So on Friday night it goes from like 5 till 10pm. And then on Saturday it goes from about 9am till 9pm I think and similar on Sunday. So if he had to drive the 45 min trip either side of the course then he'd be knackered!

So on a different note, after what I wrote on my blog yesterday, I did actually end up cycling home! The trip into work took me about 1 hour 15 mins - but I did get lost for a few mins on the way in (whoops) and when I got into town, I ended up going through the middle of the city rather than around the edge, so that took a little longer too. But I was very happy when the trip home only took me 1 hour and 10 mins :-) It's a harder trip home for a few reasons really - it's more up hill on the way home and also my legs were pretty tired.
Today I decided to catch the train in to give my body time to recover. But suprisingly my muscles aren't really sore today - they're a bit tired, but not sore. I did do lots of stretches, had a hot shower when I got home and iced my knees and back - so that must have had a good effect. But tomorrow I'm going to cycle in again to see how I go. It's easy to do something once - it's the 2nd & 3rd times that are the hardest.

Right - enough waffling from me. Back to work (well I need to have breakfast too - currently I'm running on coffee - *buzz* *buzz*).

Oh yeah - I saw this website advertised in my 3 news update email today. It's got lots of discount vouchers for around the country. Could be useful if you're interested: http://www.vouchermate.co.nz/public/

Have a great day everybody!!

Cycling to work

That's right people - today I cycled to work. You may remember a post I wrote a while ago where I called Paul mad for doing so and probably swore I'd never do it. Well I've been a bit slack about going to the gym lately so I thought that by cycling to work I would (a) save money on train tickets and (b) get fit at the same time :-)

So I actually quite enjoyed the cycle - I wasn't sure if I would or not. I go about half way with Paul and then he continues on the bikeway out to the airport and I veer off towards the city. Shock horror that not 5 minutes later I managed to get a bit lost - whoops. So I had to give Paul a call and get some directions. In my defence I had only done that ride once and that was back at Christmas last year and following Paul most of the way or having him tell me when to turn. Fortunately though I was only a little off track (3 streets over) so I found my way back.

So we'll see how oftern I do it tomorrow when I see how sore I am :-) te he. I'm not cycling home tonight as it's much harder going home (Keperra is higher than the city so there is more uphill on the way home) and I have book club at 7pm so don't really have time. So instead I shall cycle home after work tomorrow night. I'll prob try and leave work about 4:30pm though as by 6pm it's pretty much dark and I only have a budget light. If I decide that I'm going to commute more often then I'll go out and buy myself a commuting bike light. As a lot of the way is on bike paths which aren't lit, the bike lights that you need cost about $250 - $450!!

Right - lunch is over - back to work :-) Joy of joys (I'm testing at the moment - enough said :-( blah)

Christmas trip planning

Very exciting!! Paul and I have decided that since we have to take off at Christmas, that we may as well use the time wisely. So last night we booked flights up to Cairns! YAY!!
We leave Brisbane on Christmas day (Thursday) at 4:40pm and don't fly back until 12:30pm on (Thursday) Jan 1st. We will spend Christmas with Debz & co until around 3ish and go straight to the airport to catch our flight from there - flying Christmas day is way cheaper. Unfortunately they don't get Jan 2nd off as a public holiday in Australia as otherwise we wouldn't need to come home until the Sunday. Oh well :-) As we're doing our "resort" honeymoon in Sept next year, this will be more a roughing it trip. We want to get in a trip to the barrier reef and go on the rain forest gondola in Cairns - so going cheap on accommodation means we can afford to do those :-)

The planning is half the fun of any trip - so we're in full excited planning mode at the moment :-)
So the plan at the stage is for the following:

• Dec 25th: arrive at 7pm and stay the night in Cairns somewhere
  
• Dec 26th: explore Cairns in the morning and then drive up to Daintree - stay at Crocodylus Village which is a YHA hostel type place in the rainforest - yay (http://www.crocodyluscapetrib.com/default.htm)
• Dec 27th: try for a reef trip - means if the weather is bad then we can try to reschedule for the 28 - we might go on the Rum Runner (http://www.rumrunner.com.au/index.html) - stay at Crocodylus Village
• Dec 28th: try kyaking etc - I might even get some reading in here :-) - stay at Crocodylus Village
• Dec 29th: drive down to and explore Port Douglas - stay at Port O'Call Lodge (http://www.portocall.com.au/default.html)
• Dec 30th: drive down to Cairns and do the Skyrail thing - means if the weather is bad we can reschedule to 31st (http://www.skyrail.com.au/) - stay at Cairns on waterfront somewhere
  
• Dec 31st: explore Cairns - stay at Cairns on waterfront somewhere - new years eve, party party whoop whoop ;-) ha ha
  
• Jan 1st: have coffee in morning (essential for hangover), walk around Cairns waterfront and catch 12:30pm flight home to Brissy

Yay - ok, back to the real world of work now :-)

Ange

A few more things done

One of the most common questions I get asked these days is how are wedding plans coming along. Depending on my current mood, I give one of 2 answers, along the following lines, to this question.
(1) Yeah they're going well
(2) Argh, don't remind me, its getting to crunch time

Ha ha :-)

Well I can now say that plans really are starting to shape up. While we were in NZ I booked the ladies in for our hair & makeup appointments at Balliage (that's me, Marea, Fleur for the works and the 2 mums are getting blow waves). Over the past few days we have booked in the flowers with Bunches on Lambton Quay, bought a cake topper off trademe, ordered my wedding ring, tried on yet more shoes, emailed the organist, emailed the priest who is marrying us, emailed the church where I grew up to see if they can please please send through my baptism details to Wellington (I can't get married without that - we posted a them a form about 4 months ago - Paul's arrived about a week later but mine is MIA) and yes we even thought about sending out wedding invitations (yes yes we'll get there - te he - you all have save the date cards anyway - or if I forgot to send you that then I've verbally invited you, sorry Amz). Email is such a wonderful thing isn't it :-)

Today my wedding task is to organise printers for the invitations we aren't able to email out. Fortunately I have the address of one that my work uses so that makes things easier :-)

Right - back to work. Have a great day and take care :-D

RIP Kelly the dolphin

Very sad - Kelly, the last dolphin at Marineland in Napier has died. It's very sad - the Marineland dophins have been around my entire life :-(

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4689041a26642.html

Back in Brisbane

Well we are now safely back in Brisbane after a very busy week in Wellington. Paul and I got lots done for the wedding and also had fantastic times at our respective hens/stags dos.

Thanks so much to all of our fantastic friends who organised them for us - especially Fleur, Kat, Elo, Ben, Megan & Mike! A big ups to you guys and bear hugs all around!!

Also thanks to all of our friends who came along and shared it with us :-) Definitely a once in a lifetime event :-) Good old Paul didn't get to bed until 6:30am on Sunday! What trooper aye ;-) ha ha :-) Thanks to Maria & Peter for paying for our hire car and the petrol so we could get all the way over to Martinborough :-) I think it's a sign of the times that out of 11 people we could only rummage up 2 cars :-) And it was fantastic that Paul's mates flew down from Auckland for the night just to torment *cough* ... I mean delight Paul ;-) Ha ha. Thanks to Marea and Dan for their "presents" they sent over all the way from Europe (I'm not sure exactly where in Europer they were at the time.)

Also thanks to Mary & Pat for looking after us so well all week :-) We had a lovely time staying with you :-)

So I also finally booked the girls in for our hair and makeup for the wedding. We're going to Balliage Hair Design which is upstairs on Brandon St - conveniently around the other side of the block from where we are staying at the Quest apartments :-)

Another good point - I actually found my watch :-) YAY!!! Even though I had emptied out my handbag multiple times, as I was packing on Monday I found it right in the bottom in an area I never stick my watch! I was very very happy to find it as I was totally convinced it was gone forever! Phew!! See, I told you that St Anthony helps you find things!!

Right - best be doing somework as I have heaps on my to do list :-)

Off on my hens do

Well it's 9:24am in Wellington and it's raining and freezing cold. So I thought it would be the perfect day for my hens party :-) Ha ha! Nah I'm very excited about it. Lets just hope the weather in Martinborough is a bit nicer :-)

Off to NZ today ...

Yay - we're finally off to NZ this afternoon. First I have to get through a full work day though. I'm working till 3:45pm and then I'll walk over to central station, pick up my jeans from the dry cleaners (they're hemming them for me) and jump on the 4:11pm airtrain to the airport where I'll meet Paul. Our flight leaves Brissy at 6:40pm and we get into Wellington just after midnight!! What a long day!

I think Paul and I are going to freeze in NZ though aye! On the weekend we had the most amazing weather here in Brisbane! On Sunday it got up to 29 degrees!! We were in shorts, tshirts & jandals even! And today, even though the high is only going to be about 23, it is very very muggy! So I was walking to work in my short sleeved work shirt only this morning - and sweating even in that!! I think it may take a few weeks to get my body used to the muggy weather again after such a nice winter :-)

So in less than 24 hours I shall be in Wellington. YAY!!! I hope you're ready for the Ange invasion ;-) ha ha

Ten tips for a beautiful day

I just got this in an email from my friend Gavin. I thought it was really nice so wanted to share it with you all.

10 Tips for a Beautiful day

1. Only for today, I will seek to live the livelong day positively without wishing to solve the problems of my life all at once

2. Only for today, I will take the greatest care of my appearance: I will dress modestly; I will not raise my voice; I will be courteous in my behaviour; I will not criticize anyone; I will not claim to improve or to discipline anyone except myself.

3. Only for today, I will be happy on the certainty that I was created to be happy, not only in the other world but also this one.

4. Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances, without requiring circumstances to be adapted to my own wishes.

5. Only for today, I will devote myself to 10 minutes of good reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul

6. Only for today, I will do one good deed and not tell anyone about it

7. Only for today, I will do at least one thing I do not like doing; and if my feelings are hurt, I will make sure no one notices

8. Only for today, I will make a plan for myself: I may not follow it to the letter, but I will make it. And I will guard against two evils: Hastiness and Indecision

9. Only for today, I will firmly believe, despite appearances that the good Providence of God cares for me as no one else who exists in the world

10. Only for today, I will have no fears. In particular, I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful and to believe in goodness. Indeed, for 12hours, I can certainly do what might cause me consternation were I to believe I had to do it all my life

Our vege garden moves along

Our vege garden is moving a few steps closer. Over the past couple of weekends I have been staining the sleepers that will border the 3 garden beds. I've attached a few photos of the process.

A rough layout of the vege patch. Trying to see where all the boards go & whether the area is large enough. Looks like Paul will be doing a little more digging on the left side.
The design is for 3 beds with 2 narrow paths between them. The boards will mostly sit above the ground around the beds and the path end boards will be sunk down.

We have nasty ants in our lawn that really got stuck into me. That's why my posture isn't the best.

So that's the first lot of boards stained. Now I have to do the second set! It takes ages to do them as each side requires 2 coats. And you need to leave each side to dry overnight. So that's 3 days per board!! Guess what I'll be doing this weekend :-)

We have a videographer

Yay - we have someone to video the wedding for us. My little cousin Cameron (well - he's 17 /18 now so not so little anymore) is going to do it for us :-) Yay!! Paul and I are buying ourselves a new toy when we come to NZ next week - so Cameron will use that.

At this stage we're looking at buying a little JVC Everio GZ-M330. It's a hybrid digital video camera with a 30GB hard drive but can also save to a micro SD card. And it only weighs 360g!!! It uses MPEG2 compression and is very small and stylish. Yay! I'm very excited!!!

A review for it can ben seen here: http://www.techradar.com/products/cameras-and-camcorders/camcorders/camcorders/jvc-gz-mg330-258987/review?artc_pg=1

Book Club

Ok so I finally got around to doing something "social" to meet people in Brissy (apart from WYD stuff). A while ago I found this northern suburbs book club on the internet, so after I got back from WYD I emailed the group about joining. The group meets on the last Tuesday of every month at a restaurant in the northern suburbs area. Each month a person in the group is assigned with picking the book and the restaurant for the next month. However in July I ended up being off work sick on the day of the meeting and I also hadn't read the book as my hold hadn't become available at the library. So I didn't go to the July meeting. So in the end last night was my first meeting.

The book for the month was quite interesting. Definitely not something any of us would have picked up in the bookshop ourselves. However, once I got used to the writing style (no speech punctuation, often short paragraps etc) I really enjoyed the book and am very glad I read it. It was one of those books where you're not sure at the start, but by the end of the book you're really glad you stuck it through. It's definitely one to be read slowly! Reading the last page won't make you understand the point of the book - the "journey" of reading the full story is the "reward".

It is called "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. A plot summary can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road - but it does spoil the plot so only read it if you're not interested in the book. I definitely recommend it :-) If you do I would love to know what you thought of it too :-) So feel free to email me your "review" :-)

Next months book is The Lovely Bones which of course Peter Jackson is making into a movie. So I am very excited to read it. You'll have to wait for my summary on it though.

Happy 35th Birthday Becky

Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday dear Becky.......... *breathe*
Happy birthday to you!!

Winter's out and Spring is in ...

Well the weekend definitely proved to us that Winter has gone and Spring is here. Both days were lovely and sunny although Saturday was a little windy for my liking - think Wellington summer. Sunday though was a stunner - just enough breeze to make sure it wasn't too hot! Our themometer showed the outside temp got up to 26.7 degrees! Yes that's right - 26.7 degrees even though it is still officially winter for another week :-) *sigh* gotta love Brissy from Autumn through Spring.

I am starting to wonder about poor old mum coming to stay in December though if it's getting to 26.7 already. Let's hope for her sake that we have a repeat of last year - spring was really hot but then summer seemed to lose it's mojo - phew!! I'm guessing she'll be stuck inside with the fans and/or air con on :-) Although she has said she's wants to just relax while she's in Brissy so maybe she won't have any option. Te he :-)

Right - back to work. Lots to do before I come to NZ next week. Plus Paul is off wiht the flu at the moment so that's not good :-( Fingers crossed I don't pick it up before our NZ trip as I so don't want to be sick for my hens party!!!

and then we found them

Yay - so you see, my prayers to St Anthony worked again :-) He isn't the patron saint of lost things for nothing!!

So Paul found my sunnies down the side of the arm chair. Whoops! They're a little bent but they still do the job.

But even better was Paul finding his own glasses! They were down the side of the drivers seat in the car. I'd checked down the side of the passenger seat but not the drivers seat. I'd forgotten that Paul drove from the supermarket to the bbq - I drove from home to the supy and from the bbq home.

Paul really has to stop putting things in his pockets! He always buys clothes with crappy pockets and then insists on putting things in them - only to lose them all the time!! But at least this time we have found the sunnies - and therefore saved ourselves approx $500! Phew!!

The disappearing sunglasses

Can you believe that on the weekend Paul and I both managed to lose our sunglasses - and on separate occasions as well.

On Saturday we got home from the bbq with my cousin and Paul couldn't find his glasses. This is a big deal as they're prescription sunglasses so will cost us about $500 to replace. And living in Brisbane without sunnies is not really an option! Especially since Paul cycles to and from work into the sun each day :-\ Hmmm!

My situation isn't quite so dire - they are around somewhere - I just can't find them. So on Sunday I had my sunnies while I was outside painting the vege garden edging (I have the sunnies marks to prove it - whoops). So I took them off when I went inside and put them down somewhere - and that was the last time I saw them. So they'll be in the house somewhere - who knows where though as a few through looks haven't found them :-( Maybe if I finally get around to folding the washing tonight I might find them under there. If we're really lucky then maybe Paul's will appear under the washing pile as well. I think there just may be a few prayers to St Anthony going on to find our lost items! (for those that are confused by this comment, mum always had this little prayer to St Anthony that we used to say as kids, to ask for help in finding whatever it was that we'd lost - it works too- I hope again too :-) )

Righto - off to work now.

A busy weekend

Well Paul and I had a busy but very good weekend. On Saturday we met up with my cousin Janell and her husband Alex at Gyatt Park in St Lucia (by the river) for a bbq lunch and a spot of cricket. They had invited friends and work mates along for the afternoon. It was a very Wellington summer day really (ha ha - and it's the middle of winter here) - it was about 22-25 degrees but quite windy (it's always windy at this time of the year in Brissy) which chilled it down a bit. Then on Saturday night we had a leaving party for our mate Joel whois off to the states tomorrow. He will definitely be missed! That's 2 out of 3 of the hodges who have vacated Brisbane in the last month - Sam & Joel are gone, only James remains. It's stink when you make great new friends and then they leave :-( Should we take it as a hint ;-) ha ha :-) I guess they're jus that that age really (Joel is 26 and Sam is 22).

After getting up at 10am and reading my book for a while (life is hard isn't it) on Sunday we had a day around the house getting a few things done. Paul painted up the little platform he has made to put his rain gauge on - he's going to attach it to the post on top of the deck. I started staining the pine sleepers that we're going to use as borders for our vege patch. Even though I stirred the can of stain quite well before I started whit an old knife, I obviously didn't do it well enough because the last two sleepers I stained are a different colour to the ones I started on. Not good! Fortunately that was only a 1 litre tin of stain and it's all finished. So tonight Paul and I are going to stop in at Bunnings on the way home from work and get some more. This time we'll get a decent stirrer and a 2L or 4L tin and give it a really good stir to get everything off the bottom and mix it in. I guess you live and you learn. I've only done one side of the sleepers anyway as you have to leave them todry overnight after you do the second coat. So the side I've done can just go on the inside of the vege patch rather than on the outside/path side :-)
Boy did the bull ants get stuck into me when I was painting! We have a major ant problem in our lawn. Next time it's forecast to rain I'm getting out with the ant powder and putting a lot of it on the lawn (it needs to be watered it but you're not allowed to water your lawns because of the drought - so we have to wait for rain - not so good in the dry season!). A lot of the ants we have are bull ants - they're like 4 times the size of an NZ ant and their bite really really hurts! I had these big red welts on my shin for hours afterwards and the bites ached for about 3 hours! Nuts aye! And they even managed to go through my trousers the rotton little sods! So now I have really sore legs as after they had a go at me I refused to kneel down, so I crouched for the rest of my painting - definitely not something my legs are used to :-) Ha ha - probably did me a lot of good :-)

I'm very excited about the vege patch - it's going to look fantastic when finished. Initially we were going to paint the sleepers green or maroon, but Paul's mum pointed out that they might look silly when the paint peels off. And I'm glad we changed out minds about it as they stain looks way better - especially against the green of the water tank and grass - wahoo :-)

Right - gotta do some work now :-) 2 weeks today and Paul and I come to NZ!! Sweet!!

Stump Grinding

Today Paul and I had a day off work as it's a public holiday in Queensland - for the Ekka (like the A&P show in NZ).

But instead of going and wasting money in big crowds at the Ekka, we took the opportunity to do some stuff around the house.

We had this big old tree stump right by the rear stump of the house - not good considering our neighbour has termites!!! So we had a guy come around today with his big stump grinder and he ground the hell out of the stump. So now it's just a big pile of wood chips. However we will need to get rid of those as well as even wood chips are termite heaven.

So now that that the stump has gone, we can really get going on our vege garden. We couldn't move any further on it as we knew the stump grinding machine would have to use that area to really get stuck into the tree stump :-)

Faith on Tap

Well last night Paul and I went to the launch of Faith on Tap here in Brisbane. It's based on Theology on Tap that has been running in Sydney for about a year now. Apparently they get about 600 turning up each month.

So what is Faith on Tap. Pretty much it's just an opportunity to meet & mingle with other 18-35 year old catholics and hear guest speakers talk. The Brisbane version has been launched as a post world youth day initiative which is fantastic. So after work last night Paul and I walked over the river to the Pineapple Hotel - which didn't look that nice from the front room but the side area is actually really nice & modern. We got ourselves a couple of yummy pizzas for only $10 (special for FoT folks) had a beer and waited for it to start. It's amazing how many people turned up - fantastic for the organisers as they had no idea how many people were going to come. But I reckon there was at least 60 people there! Paul and I met an interesting couple - Brett and Peta (girl) I think were their names. They were down from the sunshine coast for the day as they had been to the Ekka (like big A&P show) in Brissy and decided to come along. They sat at our table because there wasn't any space left and we got talking. Really interesting. The fella was in IT and was just about to start learning how to write web services (which I'm doing at the moment) so I had a big chat to him about that and told him about how I learnt it as I also had to teach myself them last year :-)

The speaker was ok- a good thing they warned us she's not that fond of public speaking. She just talked about her life really - comes from a family where none of them are practising catholics and don't seem to be very supportive at all - she was only baptised etc so that she could get into decent schools. At 16 she decided she wanted to learn more about her faith and started going to church by herself (pretty impressive thing to do at 16!). Then after uni she went overseas and was a nanny for a really really weathly family who lived in Brussels (think private jet, houses all over Europe, chefs etc etc). Did that for 2.5 years and felt like something was missing - so then she joined this group (can't remember what it was called) where she pretty much volunteered for the church for a year. She got sent to Krakow in Poland (she was a bit light on the details about what they actually did unfortunately, even when asked a direct question) but pretty much I think they just helped out lots of people. She got back to Aussie just before WYD so is now deciding what to do with her life. So yeah - she was interesting enough but nothing mind blowing.

However the next two months look like they'll have interesting speakers. A bit boring for some maybe but Paul and I thought they might be interesting :-) The following is what they're written on their facebook group page

8 September: Father Columbra, “A Monks Life”

Father is a monk of the Order of St Paul the First Hermit! Yes they exist! He is also helps run the 'Marian Valley' Monastery and is a Qld & NSW Police Chaplain. Fr was born in Forbes NSW and grew up on a wheat and Sheep station, studying for the Priesthood @ Wagga Wagga. He is also a muso and will be just back from Ireland when he speaks at Faith on Tap! So what will the good monk be wearing to the pub? Only one way to find out, be there!
____________________________________

***** 13 October: Allan Carlson, “Why Marry?”

International speaker out from the USA! Published author, International Secretary of the World Congress of Families and more! Catch Allan before he headlines the Family Association conference in Perth and have your family/marriage questions answered.

Righto - better do some work now :-)

Have a great day!
Ange

The wedding dress

Yes folks - that's right - on Saturday afternoon I met Debbie in the city and I tried on my wedding dress. My actual wedding dress - not just some floor sample (that was literally twice my size - mine is 8 and it was 16). Exciting aye! I can't wait till the wedding when I actually get to wear it!!
Debz and I also found my jewellery that I'm going to wear too :-)
Although now we have to nervous wait on my dress for things like getting the hem taken up (they better not ruin it) and getting it steam pressed when I arrive in NZ (once again they better not ruin it). But still very exciting! All I have to do now is find some shoes - harder than it sounds as a) I hate shoe shopping and b) the fashion seems to be super duper high stilettos. If I wear shoes with too high a heel then we can guarantee that I'll prob put my foot through my dress and probably trip myself up as I walk down the aisle! Now wouldn't that make my wedding day something to remember - te he.
Hmm - why did I pick a church with such a long aisle!! Maye I should come in the side door instead ;-)

Actually there's a really sad story about the dress that I tried on in the store way back at the start of the year. Apparently a girl came in and tried it on, loved it and decided to order one herself. Then apparently she became really sick with the flu, went to hospital and died a couple of days later. So then the family asked the store if they buy the floor sample as her fiance wanted her buried in it. Sad aye! So that the actual dress I tried on is on some dead women :-( So sad! Must say lots of prayers so that it's not a bad omen :-) At least she gets to wear her fabulous wedding dress forever aye :-)

Right - better do some work now :-)

Hair Mission

Ok - so I very recently sent out an email asking for advice on hair dressers in Wellington. For those that weren't on the email list who really want to make sure my hair looks fantastic on my wedding day - here is what the email said. Feel free to help me out :-)

--------------------------------

So ... I have a mission for you all :-) As you all know I am getting married in Wellington at the end of the year. And as you may or may not know, I am paronoid about people cutting my hair and therefore hate going to hairdressers. Unfortunately no-one knows how to cut thick wavy hair into a "low maintenance" hairstyle!

So the mission? When I'm in NZ in a few weeks I have to decide who I'm getting to do my hair for the wedding. This is a big decision for me! To put it in context - more important than picking my shoes - although I hate shoe shopping so that's not really comparing apples with apples is it! Maybe it's as important as making sure we have enough booze - nothing more embarassing than running out of booze at a wedding now aye ;-)

So this means over a couple of days I have to go visiting the potential hairdressers to see if I like them, getting prices and asking them what they'd do etc etc. However I don't know very many hairdressers - so I need your recommendations pretty please (with cherries on top)! Those of you have been married in Wellington (or know someone who did) - who did you go to and did you like what they did? Did they treat you nicely on the day etc etc?

I would like a hairdresser who will also do my makeup so I guess that'll shrink the list a bit.
They also need to be in central city so we can walk there - unless they're so fabulous that it's worth driving there on my wedding day :-)

The big question is; who would you recommend?

Please help me guys? A chocolate fish to the winner ;-) te he

08.08.08

Ok - so on such a day I have to put up a blog posting :-)

However, unlike 07.07.07 last year, I don't have a wedding to go to today :-) But I'm sure there are lots of people out there getting married today :-)

I guess the other reason today is so popular is that it's the start of the olympics. Seriously - could I be any less interested in the olympics! All I think about is that for the duration of the olympics there is nothing on tv here - all the normal programs have gone on holiday! Even Home & Away for crying out loud! Maybe it's because I'm here in Aussie so funnily enough you never hear about kiwi athletes. Or maybe it's because for the past 4 months or so the olympics have been thrown in our faces something chronic! All I can say is the sooner it's over the better. Mean aye ;-)

Well all that muttering aside, I will be proud of any kiwis who do well at the games. Maybe it's a good thing - I'll sure get lots of wedding planning done in the next few weeks :-) Ha ha!

Well hope you all have a good weekend. Debbie and I are going wedding dress organising tomorrow and are then off to see Mamma Mia - sweet :-)

Ange

The slackness continues

Yes yes I know I said I'd update my blog - but things just won't slow down :-) Although I do intend to put up some posts this week about my time at world youth day - its not happening now. I'm still at work and need to finish some work off so I can go home and go to the gym - and it's already 5:40pm! In the past 6 weeks I have turned into a blob due to being busy, sick and away - not good with the wedding coming up!! I must now be good for the next month! If I'm good for the next month then I can eat, drink and be merry and my hens party. If I'm not good before then then I don't get to do that as much :-) See ... bribing oneself always works ;-)

Anyway so what made me suddenly post something was a comment in an email I just got from Rachel, one of my world youth day friends. It totally made me crack up :-) Be warned!!

"Ange, you are like God, you are everywhere, Google mail and now Skype… I better be careful "

See - what did I tell everyone :-) te he he

Have a good one
Ange

The countdown ....

Wow - it's only 138 days until the wedding!! Or 4 months and 15 days! Now that world youth day is pretty much over (just "catch up" stuff to do now) my focus must move onto wedding planning. So much to do - so little time. Argh!

A long wait

Ok so it has been a long time between updates on my blog. However I have a very good reason for that (of course)!
So firstly 2 weeks ago I was sick while Paul and I had visitors staying from East Timor (who spoke very little English!!). Then last week Paul and I were at world youth day in Sydney and only got back on Sunday night at 10:30pm. Unfortuntely I never fully got over my cold before Sydney, so it's still hanging around. And now Paul seems to have picked it up as well. Normally he doesn't really get sick or only gets things mildly. However I think being out in the cold at Randwick really took it out of him. And since his work doesn't giv ehim sick leave until he's been there 3 months, he's currently going to work with a nasty head cold! Stink! I don't think the pregnant lady who sits next to him is very impressed - but what can he do! If he had sick leave then he would have taken a day off work and gotten better! Oh well - thats what you get working in the private sector aye :-)

Anyway so I will get up photos and stories from world youth day soon. This blog was really just to touch base and let you all know that I'm still alive and kicking :-D

So cold ......

Yes yes I know - stop grumbling about the cold as I no longer have any concept of "cold". However you try telling that to my body's temperature sensor. And why am I grumbling about it today anyway you may ask. Well Brisbane is having a nasty cold snap at the moment. Yesterday was a real Wellington day - cold but with a wind chill factor making it 5 degrees! Now that's cold by anyone's thermometer I say!

Now today I get into work just after 7:30 am as usual only to find that ALL the doors in the building are open (I work on the 3rd floor of a really old wooden university building). I have no idea why all the doors are open - but at 10:45am they still are. So there is a direct line between the cold air outside and my poor little fingers trying to type on my keyboard. I have even put on my fingerless mittens (they're very cute) but even they're not warm enough. So then I thought I'd shut the door to our room and at least keep the cold air out. My 2 workmates and I work in a "contractors" room at the university - so there is about 10 others from a company called Oakton. Anyway so the door had been shut for only a few minutes when someone came barging in to talk to someone and shock horror, left the door wide open. Fortunately this lady is nice so I forgave her ;-) But as she left I nicely asked her to shut the door as it was cold. She was nice and did so for me (she also offered me a blanket - te he). Anyway so the door was shut for another few minutes when one of the Oakton guys got up and left the room. And what did he do ... he not only left the door open, but he did it deliberately!! Yes that's right - he opened the door, and then looked behind it on the wall to see if there was a hook that he could "hook the door open" with. What a d*** head! He didn't even look at Nigel and I or ask if it was ok to leave the door open for such and such a reason! No - he wanted the door open so it was going to be open! The other point to note here is that Nigel, Richard and I sit in the open, right by the door. This arogant so and so sits on the other side of the room inside a little cubicle - so he doesn't feel the cold as much.

GRRRR! So obviously I'm peeved off right now! And cold! Grrr! And the fact that I have a head cold that I'm trying to get rid of before I go to world youth day next week doesn't make me like the guy anymore. Is it bad to wish bad things on him? Maybe a really nasty ingrown toenail? Or a rotton tooth? *sigh*

Anyway - off ot have yet another cup of coffee just to keep warm :-(

1 year in Brissy

Can you believe that one year ago today I picked up my 3 bags (thanks Paul), jumped on a plane and moved to Brisbane! Crazy! I can't believe it's been a whole year!!! And so much has happened in that year :-)

Actually this really is an eventful week really!
Monday July 7th: Jo & Tim Daggar's 1st wedding anniversary
Tuesday July 8th: My sisters birthday and the 1 year anniversary of Paul and I getting engaged
Wednesday July 9th: 4 year anniversary of Paul and I going out
Thursday July 10th: 1 year anniversary of me moving to Brisbane

WOW! Lots on aye! And can you believe that on such a week I have developed a yucky head cold! Yep that's right - and in the week before world youth day as well - doh! Hopefully I'm much better before Monday aye!!

4 years today!!!

Well it was 4 years ago today that Paul and I had our first date! And I still think he's a cutie ;-)

So happy anniversary Paul :-)

Happy Birthday big sister!

So today is my big sisters birthday. As I am still under 30 and she is now over 30 I am officially allowed to call her old - mwhahahahahaha! Although she is now 31 so I probably should have gloated about this a year ago! Oh well - better late than never! Actually that makes me realise - I am the only one in my family still under 30. My goodness - we're getting on folks!

It's quite funny actually as I'm the youngest of 6 kids and my brother Liam is 11 years older than me. Paul is the oldest of 5 kids and he is 10 years older than Michael. But my family is cooler as mum managed to go boy (Liam), girl (Rebecca), boy (Shanan), girl (Marea - happy birthday again), boy (James), girl (me :-) ). Paul's family goes boy (Paul), 3 girls (Claire, Anna, Theresa - and I always get the spelling wrong sorry!), boy (Michael). Although considering I see patterns in everything (spot the programmer) that is a nice pattern too.

Ok - I must be really bored if I'm talking about this sort of stuff.

So - the point of this posting was not to mull over family combinations but in fact to sing happy birthday to Marea. So ....

Happy birthday to you
You smell like a poo
You look like a monkey
And you talk like one too!

Te he he! Aren't I lovely :-)

Hope you have a great day Marea! Where ever you are in the world (I think you were in Finland or Sweden on your last blog posting)

Go Queensland!

Well this is the first time since I moved to Australia that I have felt "achievement" by something happening here. You know, like when the All Blacks or the Hurricanes win a game etc. What caused this level of "betrayal" - well Queensland winning the state of origin of course :-) You see it's not me being a traitor as there is no way NZ could have any part in the series - so it's ok to side with "my state" :-) I didn't really pay much attention to the first game to be honest - hadn't even realised it was on really. But Paul was doing St Johns for the 2nd one - so I watched in the the ads for whatever was on the other channel (House I think). Last night though I turned over after Ugly Betty finished (love that show) and watched it while doing some world youth day prep stuff on the laptop (gotta love the wireless broadband). And it was very exciting! We were down 4-8 not long before half time when I started watching and in the end we won 16-10! So Go Queensland :-)

I imagine there are lots of sore heads about town today though! Paul said that he could hear the crowd at the Arana Leagues club around the corner when Queensland scored their try to go 8-8 :-) He said they were even louder than me!

Who said I was the accident prone one ...

So I have been meaning to write about this for a week now but haven't as I wanted to put the pictures up too. But alas, if I don't write about it now then I never will! The photos can follow!

So ... Monday night last week I'm sitting on the train on the way home from work when my phone rings. It's Paul - he says to me that when I get home could I please go and pick up the car and pick him up from the hospital! So understandably I was a bit shaken by this and asked him what had happened. He replies, "I was knocked off my bike ... but I'm ok". We figured out what hospital he was at and how to get me to the hospital (Paul noramlly drives so I'm a little shaky on directons). So I get to the hospital and I'm 50/50 on whether Paul was so relaxed on the phone because (a) he really was ok or (b) he was trying to keep me calm.
By the time I got home, grabbed a few clothes for Paul (we had a meeting for WYD and he asked me to bring him some spare clothes) and drove to the hospital, it was just before 7pm. As I walked in the main door Paul was walking out to meet me - he had just been seen (good timing aye).
So ... as it turns out, Paul had been knocked off his bike .... by another cyclist!! Not a car like I had been thinking since his phone call (and like I had told Joel on the phone when I rang to say we'd be late for the meeting, if we made it at all). Apparently Paul had been cycling home, on the correct side of the bike path, when this idiot came flying around the corner, on the wrong side of the bike path and crashed straight into Paul. So Paul ended up with blood poring out of this little cut above his right eye, scraped knuckles, a scrape on his forearm, and some pretty rattled teeth.

So I'm very glad that he didn't get hit by a car as that may have been a whole other story!! Although it was really funny as after the massive swelling on his eye went down, the black eye came out. It fully looked like he had eye liner and mascara on for all of last week :-) Apparently people were avoiding sitting next to him on the train and everything. Te he - can you imagine lovely Paul being the big scary guy :-) So cute!!!

So that's my story anyway! And now that it's up I'll have to add some photos to the post :-)

A day of change!

Well today is a day of big change. This is Paul's last day working for the Brisbane City Council - and it has been a long time coming. On Monday he starts working for the Brisbane Airport Corporation as an environmental coordinator. Hopefully the new job is a lot more interesting than the council job turned out to me (don't you love it when your job evolves into something that is nothing like your job description!). Apparently it will involve a bit of practical work as well as the necessary project management, paper shuffling type of work.

So ... there will be no more lunches in the gardens. No more lunch time coffees. No more lunch time shopping trips. No more meeting up after work to go and do something. Stink wan! Apart from when we lived in completely different cities and countries, Paul and I have always worked in pretty close vacinity to each other! However if Paul's gets to do a more interesting job then it shall be worth it :-)

So tonight we're off to the leagues club around the corner for a few drinks to celebrate. Because it was Paul's birthday this month, if we're at the club at 7:30pm then he goes in the draw to win $1000 - wouldn't that be nice aye :-) Paul's mate from St Johns, Andrew, is also joining us so it shall be nice to have some company.

Then on Saturday we're off to Bribie Island with Debz, Lance and the kids for Lance's birthday. I'm looking forward to that as not only do I get to see somewhere else in Brisbane that I haven't seen before, but I also get to spend some more time with Debz - yay :-) Oh yeah - and we get to see their new house for the first time (I saw the pics on facebook Debz - very nice :-) )

Sunday we are going for a walk up Mt Cootha as a bit of training for world youth day next month. We were meant to do the walk about a month ago but it ended up raining :-(

Right - better do some work now. My work mate just arrived and every time he has arrived this week he has caught me on the internet - doh!

Hope you all have a great weekend!!

My first snake!!!

yep, that's right, I have now seen my first live snake in Australia (there was a squashed one around the corner not long after we moved in). And guess where it was - yes ... in our garden!! Now that it's a bit cooler during the day we can get stuck into the gardening without sweating like pigs. Although I imagine Paul is currently sweating as he is digging up the grass behind the water tank for our vege garden.

Anyway - back to the snake. So Paul was digging some old dirt from around one of our trees and marveling at all the creatures he was finding (the water tank guy put it there when he was putting in the tank). And the next I hear "Man that's a big worm, come and have a look. Hang on that's not a worm, it's a snake". Funnily enough it disappeared pretty quickly but Paul was very persistent and kept "hunting it out" as he wanted a photo of it - plus he is still a little boy at heart and marvels about all bugs & creatures (and likes to show them to me - kinda like a kitty cat bringing home it's mangled birds that it's half eaten).

Anyway so here are a pictures of the snake.

Can you spot him - he's just to the right of Paul's spade.
He's not very big - fortunately!

This one is even harder to spot - he's just on the edge of the grass about mid photo, about to slither into the ferns (the I will never ever be pulling out - that's definitely a Paul job now - spiders & snakes - yuk!!!)

This is a closeup from the first photo so you can actually see the snake :-)
Creepy aye!

So I did some research on the Queensland governments EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) website to find out what sort of snakes we get in South East Queensland. I think our little friend is a "Red-naped snake". The info from their website says:

Red-naped snake Furina diadema

Red-naped snake. Copyright: EPA

This species has a red or orange nape that is usually enclosed by a black head and neck band. However, in some individuals, the nape is a complete band causing confusion with the orange-naped snake. The red-naped snake is reddish-brown above, the flanks are lighter with most scales bearing a dark brown or black diagonal edging. It is common in coastal and central western Queensland and is nocturnal, feeding on skinks.
Length: Up to 0.4m
VENOMOUS/ NOT CONSIDERED DANGEROUS

Otherwise I thought it might be this:

Blind snakes (family Typhlopidae)

Ramphotyphlops spp.

A blind snake. Copyright: Queensland Museum

The blind snake is a small, smooth, worm-like burrower with glossy, close fitting scales and their tails are bluntly rounded, ending in a short spur. It has small, dark spots for eyes which probably only sense light and dark. The snake feed on termites and the eggs, larvae and pupae of ants and is often encountered foraging on the surface at night following rain. The blind snake is non-venomous and the structure of their mouths makes them incapable of biting humans. However it does have well developed anal glands that secrete a strong smell when disturbed.

Ha ha - so who wants to come and visit Paul and I now :-D Mwhahahahaha!
Na seriously - the snake was tiny (remember Paul thought it was a big worm at first) and more interested in 'running' away. Plus it's taken me almost a year to see one - so they're not around that much!!

So I've attached a few more pics of Paul gardening too :-)