Tips for a safe summer - how to prevent shark attacks

I got the following email from my boss this morning - it is excellent!!

Tips for a safe summer - how to prevent shark attacks

1. Don't swim in the sea.

More than 99% of all shark attacks happen in large water masses,
also known as oceans. The way to establish if you're in an ocean
is to taste the water. It should taste salty.


2. Don't go in the water without a knife.

That's to stab the nearest swimmer when you see a shark. As soon
as he/she bleeds profusely, swim as fast as you can to the shore
and claim you tried your best to save him/her. You might end up
getting an award for bravery.


3. Listen intently.

All sharks have a 'theme song' - If you hear the following, swim
for your life :
   da-dam, da-dam, da-dam
If it sounds like this:
   dadam, dadam, dadam
you're already gone.


4. Don't panic.

Stay calm when a shark bites you. Its over, you're gone and
it doesn't help you to try to survive. The people on the shore
will appreciate it, they don't want to hear your mad yelling and
screaming, it's not nice. It's not all about you.

Thank god it's caturday

A guy at work often sends out these "caturday" pictures and they're always good for a bit of giggle. I thought I'd share todays with you as they're a pretty good bunch :-)

Mum's car

Well it has to be said people - my mum is cooler than your mum. Case and point is mum;s new car that she bought recently - AWESOME! It's a gold 1999 Mazda mx5! See - I told you mum was cool! Mum has always talked about wanting a sporty little car one day so I'm very glad that she finally got to have it :-)

Enjoy it mum!

Empathic listening

I went to a couple of sessions at work listening to a guy who had recently been on a 3 day course on the 7 habits of highly effective people. It was really interesting and hopefully I can implement some of the principles mentioned. One thing that really struct me though was about empathic listening - something that most people are really bad at but which is so important.

It said the following:

Listen Empathically
Empathic listening is reflecting what a person feels and says in your own words. It is not listening to advise, counsel, reply, refute, solve, fix, change, judge, agree, disagree, question, analyse, or figure out.

So if you want to try something different today then try practising empathic listening - at home with your kids, parther, with your friends and even at work with your colleagues. It's definitely worth it!!

Bounce Bounce

Yay I am very excited at the moment because Paul, Theresa and I are planning on going camping finally this weekend. Yay!!! The current plan is to go to Binna Burra which I guess is in the Gold Coast hinterland (very pretty) near Lamington National Park. Very exciting!! It's just under 2 hours drive from the city so we'll be leaving about 4pm on Friday to hopefully get there and be able to pitch our tent before it's too dark. Yay!! We have lots of new camping stuff that we will be using for the first time like our new gas stove, our grunty camping lamp and our little camping table :-)

http://www.binnaburralodge.com.au/index.php

We'll probably do a walk or 2 while we're up there as well so I can start walking off my winter butt ;-) lol
http://www.binnaburralodge.com.au/exploring/index.php

Happiness Enhancing Activities

I just read an interesting article this morning about thekey to happiness. Part of the article had the following 12 happiness enhancing activitiesn - I have included an exert from the article. Very interesting!!

12 happiness-enhancing activities - things happy people do naturally. They may sound corny but they're scientifically proven. You don't have to do them all - decide which fit you best.

1. express gratitude.
   
2. cultivate optimism: visualise a future in which everything has turned out the way you want it, then write it down.
   
3. avoid obsessing over things or paying too much attention to what others are doing.
   
4. practise acts of kindness - more than you're used to.
   
5. make time for friends; be supportive and loyal.
   
6. develop coping strategies: write down your feelings when you're feeling upset and try to see that traumatic events often make us stronger.
   
7. learn to forgive.
   
8. immerse yourself in activities and be open to new ones.
   
9. savour life's joys - linger over a pastry rather than mindlessly consuming it.
   
10. work towards meaningful goals.
    
11. practise religion and spirituality.
    
12. exercise.
    

You won't see the results from these activities right away: like anything important, you have to work at it

If you want to read more then you can find the article here: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/key-to-happiness-be-kind-exercise-20090909-fhnc.html

I like the sound of this. One of the things I have been trying to work on this year is positivity - I think that I will be a much happier person if I stop being so negative all the time and try to be positive. And that's what another part of the article talks about - so I'm not so silly afterall aye ;-)

Be Positive: Positivity makes you more attractive and resilient, with lower blood pressure, less pain, fewer colds, better sleep. Increase the number of positive emotions in your day, however fleeting. One can lead to another and so on, until we're in an upward spiral of positivity. Take a moment to find the good in a situation. Don't over-generalise ('I can never hold down a relationship'), jump to conclusions ('I'll never finish this job') or ruminate endlessly. Any healthy distraction - a run, a swim - that lifts your mood is good

Acupuncture

Well after talking to Marea and thinking about it for a while I finally decided to try having acupuncture. I've actually had acupuncture before to help with OOS stuff when I was at uni and I really liked it :-) If anyone in Wellington is thinking about getting acupuncture then let me know and I'll pass on the guys details. It was at a place in the city end of Karori and he used traditional Chinese acupuncture which is much better than the sort you get at the local physio :-)

[edited because grumpy husband doesn't like me putting personal info on the internet]

Right... back to Brisbane and not random ranting! So I went along yesterday in my lunch break, had a big long chat to the chick there - ticked way too many boxes on her sheet of symptoms, and lay down on the table. Her theory is that a lot of my problems stem from liver and spleen issues, so that is what she is treating. I had needles put in the top of my right foot, side of the right ankle, my right albow area (the squissy bit when you fold your arms), my right wrist, in my frown lines (between the eyes ;-) ), and one in either side of my neck :-) I don't know if last night is anything to go by but Paul reckons that I barely moved all night - so I'm taking that as a good sign :-) Fingers crossed aye :-)

Righto - back to work now :-)

Killer Cows

Ha ha - Shanan just sent me the funniest stuff article. The title is "Warning after fatal cow attacks" :-) SEEEEEEEE - I told you all the cows are scary!!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/2802208/Warning-after-fatal-cow-attacks

Mum arrives tomorrow

Yay - mum arrives in Brisbane tomorrow. I'm finally really excited about it too :-) Mum has now left London for good and is stopping off in Brissy for 5 days on her way back to NZ. So she'll have a nice, restful and warm 5 days here before freezing back in NZ ;-) lol :-)

The scary thing (as with most international travel) is that mum is currently on a plane flying from London to Hong Kong and doesn't arrive in Brissy until 10:10am tomorrow morning. So while I go about my normal day - work, eat, lunchtime run (new 'normal' thing), go home, eat dinner, clean the house in preparation for mum (reluctant 'normal' thing), sleep, get up, eat breakfast, shower, work and drive to the airport - during that whole time my poor mum will be on planes or in airports - yuk!! Oh well hopefully she can relax in Hong Kong though as Paul and I bought her a 5 hour pass to one of the premium lounges there :-)

Consumer power works

I was very happy to read on the stuff website this morning that Cadbury have given in the consumer pressure and are stopping using palm oil in their chocolate (http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2758975/Cadbury-stops-using-palm-oil-in-chocolate). While I realise that the palm oil will probably just get used in bio fuel or something similar, at least one industry is being forced the make a stand :-) Plus now I can stop my boycott of cadbury - phew ;-) Mmmmm - chocolate :-)

Poor kitty

A very sad thing happened on the way to work this morning. I was a bit late leaving home (due to having lain in bed for a good 10-15 mins listening to Paul get ready as I was too lazy to get up ... and it was cold :-) ). Anyway so I had to run half the way to the train to make sure I didn't miss it as the next one didn't go till 25 mins later. Half way down our street I glanced onto the side of the road and there was a poor dead kitty cat :-( Someone had killed it with their car :-( So sad!! Poor kitty kitty. At least they put it on the side of the road though as some people just leave them. So Paul rang up the council this morning and they are going to go out and pick it up and return it to its owner (cats are microchipped here).

I don't think I want a kitty cat anymore - they get run over to much! I'm definitely keen to get a doggy though. If anyone wants to build me a fence then feel free as we can't get a dog until we get a higher fence at the front and on one side and that is way down the list of priorities at the moment. The top of the list at the moment is:
Paint the house (getting quotes at the moment - ouch!!)
Re stain the deck
Finish off the vege garden
Buy another citris tree for the gap
Buy a workshop/shed
Redo the manky bathroom
Fence the front of the section

And way more importantly we have to sort out our stuff that is stored at the Browns as my 2 years is up now!

Trying the email thing

Right so I haven't been very good at updating my blog recently. I heard from Marea ages ago that you could update your blog by emailing it. I thought that sounded pretty cool and would a good way to update my blog on the fly without having to log onto blogger - something that isn't a good idea in a lot of places :-) So here is my first attempt :-)

Just to see what it looks like if you include pictures I am including a picture in this email too.

Our resident possum

It appears we have a possum that has taken quite a liking to our house :-) I was telling Ben about it when he was here visiting recently and went outside to show it where it likes to hang out. And can you believe it the possum was currently "at home". It hangs out in the guttering under and overhang. Paul is very naughty and likes to feed it apples! Ben thought that possum was pretty cool and managed to get a couple of pretty cool pictures of the possum :-)

The vege garden

Right so our vege garden has come a long way since we planted out the seeds on Easter Sunday. It's very exciting seeing it all growing :-) I've never really grown anything before so this is a first for me :-)

Here are a few photos that I have taken recently.

A long time between posts

Well it's been a very long time since I've posted on this blog. It's not because I haven't been up to anything interesting, quite the opposite, I just am useless sometimes. Sorry :-(

I will try to add in some posts with what I have been up to recently. But this is just a shorter one for now to (a) break the bad habit and (b) let you know I'm still alive :-)

So Paul and I are currently printing out our thank you cards for the wedding. Being that it's almost 6 months since the wedding these are long overdue. Unfortunately me losing my job didn't help on that front at all as money was very tight for a while. But a couple of weeks ago Paul and I finally were able to afford a new printer - yay :-) It is an HP Photosmart C5380 All-in-One, so it is a printer, scanner, copier. So far we are pretty happy with it. I scanned in a few of the wedding photos that aren't in the wedding album and reprinted them on 6x4 photo paper and the quality was really good. Phew :-) Now I just need to order some reprints of all the photos in the wedding album from the photographer, and then I can scan in all those photos too.

Anyway so here is a photo of our new printer :-)

The Buffalo Theory

I got this in a email today - it amused me so I thought I'd share it with you all.

The Buffalo Theory

'Well ya see, it's like this ... a herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.'

Soil arrives for the vege garden

Today we had the soil for our vege garden delivered. We have really awful soil in Brisbane and half our section has clay for soil - not the best for growing awesome veges! So we bought 4 cubic metres of premium garden soil for .... $68 a cubic metre plus $30 delivery. Expensive it may be but totally worth it! So I've included some photos of the days efforts! And what an effort it was!!

Paul getting started on moving the soil to into the garden beds on the other side of the water tank

The empty garden beds ready for soil

And we finally made a dent in the pile. Paul was digging and I was spreading it in the beds. We shared moving the wheel barrow loads from one location to the other.

Whoops - the tree got stuck in the truck as he lowered the back. So as he drove out he took part of the tree with him. But it was ok after Paul gave all the ripped branches a trim.

Paul finishing off the final 2 boards for the garden beds

Another one of Paul's master pieces. We finally realised that gravity wasn't going to be enough to get water out of our tank. So we bought an automatic water pump for $150 from Bunnings (yay for Bunnings). Then he bought a bunch of boy toys (tools, piping, "elbows" etc etc) and set up a tap linked to the tank via the pump (the pump is situated just under the house). Very clever!!

The first two beds are filled - now we need to clear the junk out of the 3rd bed.

All the dirt has been moved to the garden beds - now it's clean up time. Stink! And guess who got to clean up! Good husband!! Well trained!!
Since we're still in a drought we still have fairly tight water restrictions. So Paul was using the tank water to clean the drive way.

Almost done! Just cleaning the wheel barrow.

All done!
We need to wait for the soil to settle in the first 2 beds for a few weeks. So the extra soil is stored in the 3rd bed. Eventually we will clear the grass out of the paths between the garden beds and put in some stone paths :-) But that's for another day.

We had a little extra soil so we put some around our citrus trees as they have pretty bad soil around them - the guy who planted them had NO idea! He planted 2 of the trees straight into clay! We also gave 2 wheel barrow loads to Maureen across the road. She's really lovely :-) She popped her head across while we were moving the dirt and offered us some of her tools. So we borrowed her wheel barrow so both of us could move the soil and got it done much quicker. She also gave us some of her old garden tools to keep - nice aye! Her husband died a couple of months ago which was really sad, so her heavy garden work is done by others who have their own tools.

By the end of the day I was so knackered! It has been a long time since I didn't something so hard! I put in my fair share of digging etc - I even went solo for a while when Paul's mum rang up for a chat :-) I am not looking forward to waking up tomorrow and feeling some new muscles that haven't been used for a while - ha ha!

The next task is the best one! Now we get to plan what we're going to plant :-) Since it's heading towards winter we are a little restricted - but there is still lots we can plant. I can't wait!! I just need to get a job now so we can afford to continue our projects.

Banana Loaf

This might also be called the return of the housewife :-)
Towards the end of last week, over the weekend and on Monday, I was flat out writing job applications for a couple of jobs that were due on Monday night. Fingers crossed I get some bites on those :-) Because I was so busy I didn't really have time to do any baking or even much cooking. Fortunately Paul and I bought a slow cooker on Thursday with some of our wedding vouchers, so Paul used that to cook an awesome mince stew thing on Sunday (also did for Paul's lunch on Monday and dinner again last night - mmmmm). The recipe came from a slow cooker cook book we got for the wedding as well.

Anyway, so now that I'm not madly busy for a few days (unless some more great jobs come up), I've decided to do some more baking :-) On last night's list was a banana loaf. It turned out way better than the last one I did and is very yummy. I used proper self raising flour instead of guessing the combination of standard flour + baking power (put in too much baking powder last time). Plus I dropped the cooking time back by 5 mins as our oven cooks at the lesser end of the time scale (edmonds book says 45-55 mins - ours takes 45 mins :-) ).

Below are a couple of pics of the left overs of my creation. I started putting on some butter and then thought I'd take a pic for my blog :-) Actually the photos of the loaf don't look very appetising. But it's very yummy - you'll have to take my word for it. I modified the recipe a little bit by adding lots of cinnamon and a bit of vanilla essence to the banana when I was mashing it. Makes the taste a bit more interesting.



If you're thinking that I make a lot of banana somethings it's because my naughty husband has been forgetting to take bananas for lunch, so I end up using them for baking instead :-) Mmmmmm, what a shame ;-) ha ha

Random Purchases

Well in the spirit of updating my blog more often I thought I'd show you some random purchases Paul and I have made recently. [side note: recently is a pretty broad time frame and may consist of many months ;-) ]

BBQ cover:
This was a very well spent $12 or whatever it cost us. It gets very dusty out on the deck and the possums like climbing all over it at night. So now we don't have to clean the bbq before and after we use it - just after now :-)

New Fridge:
I love our new fridge! It has made life so much easier! This was bought with our wedding present money just before I lost my job, phew! Thanks guys! Our old one had a total volume of something like 220 litres - including the freezer. Our new one has about 520 litres - it's AWESOME! And can you believe that we have managed to fill it up. At least we have room for storing the top layer of the wedding cake. Ha ha! If you want some then you'll have to visit us around Dec 6th this year as we are going to cut it for out 1st anniversary.

Stovetop Espresso:
This is one of the best purchases we have ever made in my opinion! It was bought some David Jones vouchers we got for the wedding. Thanks guys! I'm sure mum will be much happier next she comes to visit as well because she can have some "real" coffee. With me currently at home it is getting a daily workout so is very well used :-) Thanks Janell and Alex for the idea!!

Cutlery Set:
Another item we bought with wedding money before I lost my job :-) We got it on sale too!!
We haven't broken it out yet as the cutlery needs to be hand washed. Well it says you can put it in the dishwasher, just not with aluminum etc. So we may as well hand wash them!

Knife Block:
Yet another item bought with wedding money, and on sale. I have waited a very long time to have decent knives. Paul and I only had one knife for cooking with before we got the block - very frustrating. The block is cool as it swivels around :-)

Photo Box:
This is a new purchase :-) We bought it on Thursday night with some vouchers Paul and I got from work. Paul got a $100 voucher for Christmas and I got the same when work got rid of me. The photo box contains all the "extra" official wedding photos.

I added a photo into the front of the box and took another pic of it :-)
Can you believe it only cost us $12.95 on special! Cheap aye! Now I just need to get a job so we rearrange our lounge and get a nice coffee table to put it on.

This is what the inside of the box looks like :-)
Now we just need to turn the photos into decent sized digital versions so we can do our own reprints and play around with the photos :-)

Photo Frame:
We also bought this on Thursday with out vouchers. I'm going to put some wedding photos in this once I get some reprints :-)

Making progess on the vege garden

Well after a long hot and busy summer, Paul has gotten back to work getting our vege garden into working order. Unfortunately as we left it so long, the weeds and grass grew back in the "beds". So Paul bought a garden hoe (I think that's what its called) a couple of weekends ago and is digging them out. Last weekend he cleared the first garden bed, and today he has been clearing the second.

Next we have the decide what type of soil we buy and when we get it delivered. The "good quality" soil suitable for planting veges etc costs about $68 a cubic metre plus delivery ($30 - $50). And we will probably need at least 4 cubic metres for the first 2 garden beds. Ouch - expensive!! But I can't wait till we can grown our own veges :-) That's when I can start contributing to the process again as I'm a little fragile to be doing heavy digging work. Very annoying really as I feel bad leaving it all to Paul.

Anyway here are a few pics I have taken of Paul's good work :-)

The dreaded semicolon

This entry will remind some people of another entry I wrote a while ago about the use of the apostrophe.

I am puzzled at the moment as MS Word keeps wanting to add semicolons into my sentences. I'm writing selection criteria statements as part of my job applications and I really don't see why Word needs to add semicolons. What purpose do they serve?! It made me think about it a bit more and I suddenly realised something - I have no idea when to use a semicolon! Shocking aye!!

Anyway, I should get back to my selection criteria statements as I have 2 due on Monday *sigh*

Official wedding photo albums

I was very excited when I went to the mailbox yesterday after to discover that the CD containing our official wedding photos had arrived. Now the photos are good enough quality to print out - but they're definitely good enough for putting up on Facebook etc :-)

If you would like to have a look then click on the following links to my Facebook albums. You don't need a Facebook account to view the albums using the links below :-)

Official Wedding Photos – Before
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=5WD236T54XVM5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos - St Marys
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=36DZ2YVRP4WM5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos - Group Photos
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=SZLYZ45YR3VM5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos - Wedding Party at the Botanic Gardens
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=5WLTPZS3U66M5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos - Wedding Party at Parliament
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=3ZFU2365QWVM5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos – Reception
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=3Z124WV5S45M5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos - Black & White
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=5X1X3YURRXWM5GBEX135XR


Here are some of the official wedding photos - the rest can be seen by clicking on the links above and then opening each of the albums in facebook :-)

If anyone would like physical prints of the photos then let me know which ones, how many of each etc and I will organise them for you. From memory it will cost you $1 for standard 6x4 prints ranging up to $9 for enlargements.

Enjoy xoxo