Crazy kiwi's escapade

Tips for a safe summer - how to prevent shark attacks

2009-12-09T09:55:00.001+10:00

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

2009-12-03T11:34:00.001+10:00

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

2009-11-30T09:17:00.001+10:00

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

2009-10-07T14:09:00.001+10:00

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
Slide 37Empathic 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

2009-10-07T09:05:00.001+10:00

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

2009-09-11T08:31:00.001+10:00

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.

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

2009-09-04T08:57:00.002+10:00

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

2009-08-26T09:24:00.001+10:00

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

2009-08-20T11:01:00.002+10:00

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

2009-08-17T08:59:00.001+10:00

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

2009-08-07T09:01:00.001+10:00

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

2009-08-06T12:26:00.002+10:00

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

2009-07-26T12:00:00.002+10:00

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

2009-05-31T18:56:00.003+10:00

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

2009-05-31T11:00:00.004+10:00

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

2009-04-08T08:41:00.001+10:00

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

2009-04-04T17:53:00.010+10:00

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

2009-03-25T13:42:00.004+10:00

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

2009-03-24T10:09:00.006+10:00

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

2009-03-22T15:11:00.002+10:00

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

2009-03-21T17:24:00.003+10:00

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

2009-03-19T08:45:00.006+10:00

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

Rosemary's Tea Biscuits

2009-03-18T10:10:00.005+10:00

Well I don't have a lot going on in my life that's worth blogging about at the moment. However I always enjoy catching up on my friends blogs, even if it is only basic entries. So I thought I'd follow my friend Teresa's example and show you a photo of my latest baking effort.

As a kid I used to love baking and was quite good at it. In fact I was the only one mum would let in the kitchen as Marea had not yet discovered her talent for cooking (aka Marea could burn water) and the boys had no interest. So I remember baking biscuits and slices and telling James to go away when he would steal the uncooked mixture :-) te he

Anyway, I digress. So many years passed where Ange was all "anti girly stuff" and promptly lost interest in things like baking :-( However I am now a good housewife and am so sad that at night I find myself reading through my cookbooks thinking about what I might bake next :-) te he.

Well I'm pretty sure Paul hasn't been that stoked with my efforts so far. I've never been able to bake cakes or muffins and I can never get them to rise. I've made 2 banana cakes and a banana loaf in the past couple of months and while both tasted quite nice, they sure didn't rise very much :-) When I stayed with Shanan & Derilene before the wedding, Derilene suggested I use an electric beater for the whole thing to get more air into the mixture. Unfortuantely due to the whole losing my job thing, I haven't been able to buy one yet.

Next I wanted to bake some chocolate chips biscuits as I love them. However I didn't have some of the ingredients so I made "chocolate" biscuits instead. Well they went down like a cup of sick - they weren't very nice and a bit dry. We didn't even finish eating them!

But I have finally created something nice! Yesterday I went shopping and stocked up on baking essentials. Last night I made some "Rosemary's Tea Biscuits" out of my "Quick 'n' Easy" baking cookbook and they are yummy :-) Yay!! Finally.

Unfortunately it's hard to buy butter here that has measurements on the side. If you do find them then you don't really get them with 50g markings, only 100g. And those ones are more than twice the price of the blocks without markings. So I can't justify that kind of money at the moment. So when I get a job I am going to buy a set of kitchen scales so that I can properly measure my butter. Right now I just guess and that makes for pretty inaccurate butter levels :-) Because of this the biscuits are a bit crumbly - but they still taste good :-)

Anyway, here are the leftover biscuits that I baked. Paul and I had some for dessert last night and he took some for lunch today (oh, and I had one for morning tea too - mmmmm)

The recipe for anyone that cares is:
200g butter
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/2 cup custard powder
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch salt

Melt butter in saucepan large enough to hold all the ingredients. Remove
from heat, add sieved icing sugar and mix in well. Sift custard powder,
flour, baking powder and salt into saucepan. Mix well to combine.
Take tablespoons of mixture and roll into balls, put on greased baking tray. Flatten balls
slightly with a fork. Bake at 190 C for 13 minutes till slightly coloured.
Makes 20

Next up I'm thinking about baking either a carrot cake, because that is my favourite!!!! Or some ginger crunch in honour of my lovely mum, as that's her favourite (and brings back many happy childhood memories - my mum is the best cook in the whole world!!!). Or some tangy lemon slice as it tastes really nice! I just might have to bake something in honour of the browns coming to stay in April too :-)

But for now I am getting back to work as I have heaps to do!!!

Have a fab day!!

My gorgeous new nephew

2009-03-15T09:34:00.007+10:00

So I am a proud aunty once again. My sister Marea had a beautiful baby boy on Wednesday afternoon :-) He was born on the 12th March at 1pm at Waikato Hospital and weighed 8lb 8oz.

Marea and Dan say:
His full name is Cedric James Patrick Verry
- Cedric is a Verry family name
- James is a Smith/Jensen family name
- and he's Patrick for Pat the Van, which was home when he was made :-)" [la la la la - too much info Marea :-)]

"Labour was 11 hours, emergency episiotomy, but Cedric not fazed. He eats sleeps and shits as he is supposed to."

When mum told me about the e word above, it was all a bit much and acted like a natural contraceptive ;-) ha ha. But when I told Paul that I wanted one too after seeing the pictures of Cedric for the first time (sooo cute) , Paul said that I had to get a job first :-) te he he :-)

So here are some photos of Cedric that I borrowed off Facebook.

I have 3 favourite photos so far and this one of Marea and Cedric is one of them.
You look so happy Marea :-) It makes me smile every time I see it!
Who would have thought the words "never again" had popped out of your mouth ;-)

This is my favourite photo - Cedric is very cute. You just want to cuddle him!
Very stink I don't get to cuddle him for 84 more days!!

The first family photo :-)

This is my 3rd favourite photo :-) Father and son.

Our new fence

2009-03-06T10:54:00.008+10:00

Righto - a second blog entry for the day. Those on facebook will already know about our new fence - but this is for those that aren't on facebook. I went and visited Debz out in Caboolture on Wednesday and was able to get some photos off my camera while I was out there. Actually it was really nice going out there as 3 of the kids were at school and Isabelle was a quiet as a mouse, so we could just chat about random stuff :-) I really enjoyed it. Maybe I will get to do it a bit more now that I am an unemployed bum ;-) ha ha

Anyway, the fence! So we have 2 housing commission houses down our left boundary (like State Houses) that had new fences put up recently. Being housing commission it meant that the government paid for the whole new fence - so we got it for free. Yay!! A major bonus for us is that we got the "pretty" side of the fence too. One of the the neighbours has a shed right up no the boundary, so there wasn't enough room to put the boards on their side of the boundary - so we got the boards on our side, for the whole length of the fence. Sweet!! Plus the fence contractors removed all our old trees and shrubs along the boundary as well - for free!! That must have saved us SO much money! We got a stump ground up last year and it cost over a hundred dollars just for that. The contractors removed 2 trees, an old very large tree stump and quite a few hedges - so that is a lot of effort and a lot of grinding up as well :-)

It did take them a LONG time to do the fence (3 weeks) but the benefit of that was I got to see each step of putting the fence up. So now I reckon we could have a good shot at putting up one ourselves :-)

So here are a whole bunch of photos of the new fence.

The old fence:
This photo is at the back of the property and shows some of the trees that got removed.
The only ones we kept along the boundary were our citrus trees

The view along the boundary line from the back of the section looking to the front

Some of the shrubs that we had removed

This is a good comparison photo for when the fence is actually up. I hated the tall tree on the right and am very glad it has gone. It has some weird fruit on it with a sticky pink flesh that tasted awful. Only the birds, bats and possums liked them - and they dropped the sticky flesh and half eaten fruit all over our lawn!! Yuk!

This is at the front of the section and shows the annoying hedges that were removed

Those annoying hedges again. There was a huge tree stump in amongst them too that got removed! Yay!

The new fence process:

So they took down the old fence and left us with this delightful orange one for a whole weekend. It was meant to keep in the little yappy dog that lives next door. You never see if though so I think it is an indoor dog

The hedges and trees still needed to be removed at this point

One week in and finally the old trees and hedges are gone

The old poles being removed - a very hard job apparently. You can see how much section space we have regained from getting rid of those hedges though. Quite a lot!

It was very weird for a few days have absolutely no fence here!

And finally the new poles start going in. The fence is 1.8 metres high - so it required rather large poles. They used metal poles as the termites don't find those very tasty ;-) ha ha

The fence drops to 1.2 metres at the front of the section. It looks a bit strange to be honest.

We're into week 3 now and they finally started putting up the boards

But no boards at the back of the section - just the cross beams (or whatever the technical term is)

The remainder of the big wood pile that sat on our section for a few weeks - poor dead grass

The new fence:

And the final product
Looking towards the back of the section

Looking towards the front of the section.
I want to paint the fence, probably to match in with the house when we get that done this year. Then I want to put some in some nice plants along the fence line.

This is my favourite view of the fence
We need to plant a new citrus tree in the gap now. I'm thinking a lime or mum suggested a mandarin tree. We already have 1 orange (far left), 2 grapefruits (second on left and another out of the photo), a lemon (the one on the right in this photo) and some other one (not sure what it is - 3rd on left)

So there you have it. The saga of our new fence. And it was all for free! Delightful really.

The only downside as we see it is that we no longer get to chat to our neighbours. Plus it doesn't actually give you any privacy in the house since all of our houses are high set. But I like it anyway and once painted, it will make our section look much better. Once I get a job we're going to save up and get a nice front fence put in as well :-) Then maybe we can get a dog - yay!!

A while coming

2009-03-06T10:31:00.005+10:00

Ok - so for the past month I have kept thinking I should update my blog, but I always put it off for a couple of reasons. Apart from just being lazy, I couldn't get any photos off my camera (we've somehow deleted the software off the computer that allows it to recognise my camera as a drive - that's still not fixed either) plus I wanted to have good news to put up on it. I.e. I wanted to be able to say something like 'Yay, I signed the paperwork for a new job today". However yesterday made me realise that if I wait for that then I will never update my blog *sigh*.

So on my last day at IP I was sortof offered a new job. In Australia your word isn't law, so you don't legally have an offer until it is in writing. But Ange was all hopefully and happy with that job offer, until yesterday morning. I emailed my contact on Wednesday to follow up progress on getting the job offer signed off (State Govt so it takes a while). I got a call yesterday morning stating that the offer was stalled on the managing directors desk along with a bunch of other ones. Sounds like a lot of explaining is having to be done as they must be short of money *sigh*. So although I haven't been turned down yet, they have no idea when any progress will be made. So I could be waiting for ages really :-( This is not helped by the fact that the state elections were called about the time they said they wanted to hire me. Stink! So pretty much everything goes into holding pattern until after the elections.

So yesterday was a pretty bad day - I was fairly gutted as I'm sure you can understand. For the first time in my life I am unemployed (excluding the 3 weeks after I quit my job in NZ, moved to Aussie and got a job here). It's such an awful feeling! Fortunately Paul's income is enough to keep us above water else things would be pretty awful indeed. And it definitely does not help knowing that so many others are in either the same or worse positions. To me that just shows how much competition there is for jobs at the moment!

Actually my little grumble for this entry (it wouldn't be a blog entry without a grumble would it) is about employers who are taking advantage of the current climate of fear. Everyone is so worried about losing their jobs at the moment and so many companies are using that. I seriously don't understand how a company thinks that having terrified employees is going to benefit them. It's quite sick really! I don't know what it's like in NZ, but over here there are so many stories about CEO's and management getting big fat pay rises while at the same time sacking large numbers of employees. How on earth can they sleep at night! It really makes me sick! I guess that's why I'm a Labour voter and will never be a National voter (may John Key's term be a short one!!). I think the measure of a person is how they help those less fortunate than themselves!

Anyway - this has been a big long rant really. I bet you're all glad that I haven't updated my blog more now ;-) ha ha :-) I have too much time on my hands to think.

2009-02-11T09:06:00.003+10:00

I got the following in an email from a work mate this morning. It is very cute :-)

In Victoria the temperature has been above 44 degrees all week and they are forecasting another week of 40+ temperatures. Power is failing, trains have stopped running because tracks are buckling under the heat. It’s just scorching. And it seems that the people are not the only ones suffering. Check out these photos of a little Koala which just walked onto a back porch looking for a bit of heat relief. The woman filled up a bucket for it and this is what happened!

Go the blackcaps!

2009-02-02T08:15:00.002+10:00

Well well well! Wasn't it AWESOME how the blackcaps won the cricket yesterday :-) Wahoo! There is nothing better than beating the Aussies at, well ... anything really :-) I missed most of the game as I was filling out a selection criteria statement for a job application due today (they like you to fill out 3-4 page applications on top of your cv here - sigh). But I did get to watch the last 4 overs which were very exciting! I also watched bits and pieces throughout the day whenever I heard shouting coming from the lounge - Paul got a bit excited whenever (a) we got one of the Aussies out (b) the Aussies were cheating or (c) the Kiwis did something awesome

Well - better get back to it. Job applications won't write themselves unfortunately!

The ups and downs of it all

2009-01-27T08:00:00.006+10:00

Well I've had a few people kindly tell me to update my blog recently, so here it is. Do you want to hear all my excuses for not updating it in ages? Go on, I know you all do ;-) te he. Nah, I won't put you through that as pretty much they are just excuses. Well, mostly anyway!

I often used to update my blog when I first got to work. I'd get in around 7:30am, eat breakfast, update my blog and read the news websites before I officially started work. Well this year I decided to turn over a new leaf and be more productive at work. So that started with starting work as soon as I got in each day. The great upside of all that was I got to go home heaps earlier each day! If I started work immediately and only take a 15 - 30 min lunch break, then I could catch the 3:54pm or 4:28pm train home! Yay, that's early as :-)

But as most of you should now know from facebook, I am soon to join the lines of the unemployed! Yes folks - the credit crunch has bitten me! Pretty much my work lost a major contract on Monday, and those of us who weren't on projects got made redundant! I finished a year long project just before Christmas, so me, my project manager and another developer were the first to go :-( But I'm staying positive and have decided that fate has stepped in to help me move onto bigger and better things :-)

I have my notice period to work out, which was 4 weeks, so I have 3 weeks of that left. IP was also good and have offered 4 weeks severance pay (minus the week I owe for the leave in advance I took for the wedding). So I'm sure I shall find something in that time. However a few prayers (for the religious amongst you) and good intentions (for the not so religious) won't go astray and would be very appreciated :-)

Ok - really gotta go and apply for a few more jobs now and do some work (if any comes up). I promise that I'll update this a bit more often from now on. If you're really lucky I may even post a photo or 2 of me with my "new" haircut. Yes Tanz, that's right, I chopped it all off again - YAY :-) Ha ha.

Right - going now, honestly!

Have a great day!!!

Missing Candle Cups from wedding - help please

2009-01-07T18:40:00.005+10:00

Ok - this is a quick posting to ask you all a quick question.

We've just found out that amongst a few missing (assumed broken) beer & wine glasses at the wedding, apparently there was also 1 missing water jug and 15 missing candle cups! They were the little glass bowls that held the tealights on the tables

I thought that maybe some people thought that we'd bought these and therefore we wouldn't mind if a few went missing. The replacement cost is almost $200 so if anyone know where some of these are then we would really appreciate it if we could get them back. Any info on these then that would be really great.

Cheers guys :-)

More photos

2008-12-19T22:19:00.004+10:00

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 ...

2008-12-16T08:28:00.006+10:00

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

2008-12-11T09:13:00.004+10:00

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

2008-12-10T08:45:00.005+10:00

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

Back to the real world

2008-12-10T08:26:00.003+10:00

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

2008-11-27T08:26:00.003+10:00

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

2008-11-26T11:29:00.003+10:00

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

2008-11-17T09:20:00.004+10:00

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

A major storm

2008-11-17T08:42:00.006+10:00

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

2008-11-07T08:32:00.006+10:00

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

2008-11-06T08:13:00.002+10:00

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

2008-11-04T08:25:00.002+10:00

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

2008-10-31T07:54:00.007+10:00

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

2008-10-30T08:17:00.003+10:00

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

2008-10-22T08:00:00.005+10:00

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

2008-10-16T08:49:00.002+10:00

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

2008-10-01T07:52:00.012+10:00

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

2008-09-30T10:57:00.003+10:00

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

2008-09-24T09:24:00.004+10:00

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

2008-09-23T08:20:00.005+10:00

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

2008-09-11T09:36:00.001+10:00

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

2008-09-09T09:17:00.006+10:00

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

2008-09-06T07:23:00.003+10:00

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 ...

2008-09-01T08:38:00.005+10:00

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

2008-08-29T09:34:00.002+10:00

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

2008-08-28T18:00:00.006+10:00

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

2008-08-28T09:36:00.005+10:00

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

2008-08-27T09:00:00.005+10:00

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

2008-08-26T11:07:00.001+10:00

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

Winter's out and Spring is in ...

2008-08-25T13:38:00.003+10:00

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

2008-08-20T11:57:00.003+10:00

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

2008-08-19T08:37:00.005+10:00

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

2008-08-18T08:23:00.003+10:00

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

2008-08-13T15:23:00.004+10:00

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

2008-08-12T08:36:00.002+10:00

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

2008-08-11T11:25:00.005+10:00

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

2008-08-08T14:26:00.002+10:00

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

2008-08-08T08:14:00.002+10:00

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

2008-08-04T17:34:00.002+10:00

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 ....

2008-07-22T11:56:00.001+10:00

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

2008-07-22T08:50:00.002+10:00

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 ......

2008-07-11T10:33:00.002+10:00

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

2008-07-10T15:03:00.003+10:00

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!!!

2008-07-09T17:17:00.002+10:00

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!

2008-07-08T08:08:00.003+10:00

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!

2008-07-03T08:29:00.004+10:00

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 ...

2008-07-01T08:43:00.006+10:00

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!

2008-06-27T08:33:00.006+10:00

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!!!

2008-06-22T12:23:00.003+10:00

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 :-)

An update ... finally

2008-06-20T08:00:00.006+10:00

ok - so I've been pretty slack about updating my blog recently. But here is an update ... finally aye :-)

So what's going on with me at the moment? Well things are certainly starting to ramp up with world youth day next month. Can you believe that we leave for Sydney is just 24 days!! WOW! And that means that days in the diocese starts in just 20 days!

[for those that don't know, world youth day is when 16-35 year old catholics descend upon a city and do "catholic" stuff, go to concerts & festivals etc for a week and it ends with a mass with the pope. In sydney they're expecting about 225,000 registered pilgrims with about 500,000 turning up to the mass with the pope - that makes it much bigger than the olympic games - it's the biggest event Australia has ever held - cool aye! The interesting part is where some twit decided to hold it in Sydney in the middle of winter! We're sleeping out at Randwick Racecourse on the Saturday night before the papal mass and it's going to be very very cold! We all better pray it doesn't rain else we will all be very very cold & wet :-( ]

I'm definitely looking forward to WYD - although it is going to be very tiring. For the most part our group seems to be really good and we're finally starting to get to know each other. There are 16 of us and fortunately we're all over 20 so no kiddies to look after. A couple of people have been slack about coming to our preparation meetings but in the end I think they're going to be the ones to lose out as they will feel left out a bit. It's a shame really but what can you do *shrug*

Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year so I'm looking forward to getting some more daylight at night soon. However the big downside is that we will be working towards our 4am sunrises too :-( Although with the traffic on our road I'm normally awake about that time anyway. There is this big truck that parks around the corner from us and likes to go to work around 4-5:30 in the mornings. SO annoying as it is a BIG truck so makes BIG noises - especially as it's just starting to change gears and speed up as it goes past our house. I'm very tempted to report him as you're not meant to park trucks that size in residential areas. And there is a main road he can park on only 5 minutes walk from his house. Grrr (yes, as you can tell - I'm tired & grumpy this morning - te he he)

Righto - better do some work now.

Have a great day :-D

My long weekend

2008-06-10T13:38:00.002+10:00

Well the weekend just been was a long weekend so I was pretty stoked by that. Thanks to the Queen for having her birthday -> yay!

So I had a bit on actually. Debz and I went to see Sex & the City on Saturday and it was great :-) I totally recommend it! I was sighed, cried, laughed, laughed till I cried and then sighed again - what a journey aye :-) I was a big fan of the series and they seem to have carried (no pun intended) what was great about the tv show into the movie. And I totally love that Carrie's (SJP) hair was frizzy for most of the movie. If the super stylish Carrie can have frizzy hair then so can the rest of us! Like I have any choice on that one though anyway!

So on Sunday Paul and I went to mass in the morning, did the groceries, read the paper and finished putting together our new tv cabinet. The lounge looks much better now as it's more open. Plus we have a few shelves to put books, DVDs, newspapers etc :-) Once this was complete we were off to Janell & Alex's place for dinner (my cousin). They have a cute little apartment in Auchenflower - a suburb near the city that overlooks the river. So we had a roast chicken dinner (cooked on the bbq) and crumble and ice-cream for dessert. Plus Janell has been great and has been letting me pick her brain heaps for wedding ideas (Janell and Alex got married in January).

So Monday was Queens Birthday here in Australia so we had the day off - yay. Although Paul likes to say that the public holiday was actually for his birthday and not the Queens. He's pretty spoilt getting a holiday on his birthday aye ;-) Monday we didn't do a lot really. I slept in till 9:15am *sigh* which was great! Then I cooked Paul bacon, eggs and french toast for his bday (as Paul likes to say - I'm well trained ;-) te he). Then we spent about 2 hours in Bunnings buying some stuff for the house. We're still undecided on what to "boarder" our vege patch with so we'll have to make another trip for that one. I like the idea of treated pine sleepers painted up some bright colour that they're a nice feature. However they cost $11.98 for 2.4m whereas we can get smaller boards at $10.98 for 4.8 metres. And since we need 33m of the stuff it could end up costing a bit.
But anyway, when we got home from Bunnings Paul sat down and read the paper while I decided to pull out this ugly weedy schrub by our washhouse. Man was it a tough thing for it's size. I managed to get about half of the roots out of the ground but the rest of it just wouldnt' budge. So in the end, "attracted" by my grunting and groaning, Paul came out and gave me a hand. I felt better when it actually took him a while too (see, I'm not too weak ;-) ). Then it was off to dinner at the arana leagues club around the corner. They do $8 steak nights on Mondays so $8 each got us steak, chips and salad bar. Plus our drinks; wine for me and schooner of beer for Paul only cost $5.45 together. Cheap aye! The leagues clubs here are kinda like RSA's - big clubrooms that the rugby league clubs run that have cheap as food and drink and have about a million pokie machines etc in them.

Anyway so that was our weekend! Although my "story" has ended up just being a ramble of memories of what we did :-)

Hope you all have a great day!

Friday funny!

2008-06-06T17:18:00.001+10:00

Ha ha - I stumbled across The Flight of the Conchords website this avo. Man they crack me up aye - hilarious! Anyway so check out the following from their website for a bit of a laugh

http://www.flightoftheconchords.com/nzwords.htm

Key Phrases for talking to / understanding a Kiwi

Some of you fellas might be having a hard time understanding some of what Bret, Jemaine & Rhys are saying in Flight of the Conchords (Kiwis have a habit of mumbling, speaking quickly and flattening vowels). So here are a key few phrases which you might hear them say in the TV series, and what they mean amongst fellow Kiwis.

G’day mate
The most common thing you'll ever hear said in New Zealand and by a Kiwi. Simply put it is a friendly 'Hello'.
Choice, bro!
A way of saying that something is excellent. 'Choice' is a very versatile word in NZ meaning anything from OK, cool, I agree, I understand, it's been good... to a million other things, but always positive.
Fush & chups
Actually Kiwis are saying Fish & Chips - a popular and, generally, quite healthy meal, bought in local 'takeaways' and cooked to perfection there and then on the spot. Burgers are great in NZ too, using fresh ingredients, locally bought and generally come in the one size of 'huge' - with pineapple, beetroot, cheese, tomato, onion, as well as, the actual contents of what you ordered i.e. a Bacon & Egg burger.
Hangi
A traditional Maori meal made by slow baking food, over the course of a day (and drinking lots of beer along the way, in informal gatherings), in pits in the earth and results in a very fresh, moist and tasty style of food (typically meat & vegetables, often accompanied by Kumara - a sweet potato).
Pakeha
A phrase initially coined by the Maori to descrbe the European settlers and argument continues to this day as to whether that original usage was intended to describe them as pale skinned or, frankly, 'with a skin surprisingly similar to pigs'. In modern times it is simply used as a cultural reference to Kiwis of European descent (without the piggy bit).
Chilly bin
An icebox that forms an integral part of any summer holiday, sporting event or student piss-up and is used to keep your beer cool, as well as, for sitting on (practical lot us Kiwis).
Jandals
A phrase unique to NZ referring to the beach footware that is like a basic sandal with a thong between the big toe & the next one, which holds the whole thing together (called 'thongs' in Australia - to much amusement globally).
Judder bar
A speed hump in the road i.e. the car 'judders' when it goes over one.
Doing the ton
Getting your car to one hunderd miles an hour.
Fanny
Like Britain, referring to the private parts of a woman, vice your bum.
Good as Gold or Good on ya mate
General phrases used to express happiness or a confirmation that everything is A'OK!
Hard case
A funny or ironic character. Kiwi's would describe the Flight of the Conchords as 'quite hard-cased' (with the 'quite' reflecting the natural Kiwi reticence to go all the way out on a limb).
Knackered, Tit's up, Sucked a kumara
3 phrases all rougly meaning that something is not working i.e. a possible real scenario could be "Yeah, the car's knackered, the whole day has gone completely tit's up - man, it sucks a kumara!".
Thick as shit
You can probably work this one out - somebody who is pretty stupid.
Pack a wobbly or Crack the shits
To lose your cool or become annoyed.
Root
As Kiwi's proudly boast in London bars, they're quite keen to describe the Kiwi, NZ's national bird... and themselves, as one who 'eats roots & leaves'. Although in their case, they are actually talking about having sex vice any nocturnal forest activity (well, not that sort of activity anyway).

Sex & the City

2008-06-04T15:54:00.002+10:00

Yay - Debz and I are off to see the Sex & the City movie on Saturday. I am very excited as I LOVED the tv show (that's not like me, loving a tv show ;-) te he). Debz heard that it's selling out in advance so I went online and bought us 2 tickets to the 6:20pm showing on Saturday at Chermside shopping centre. I can't wait! Yay!

Plus Debz and I have decided that we're going to go into Myer or David Jones (big chain department store over here) and get a make over. I need to decide how I want to wear my makeup for the wedding and since I very rarely wear any make up, I thought this would be a good start. Plus Debz is a good friend and will tell me if it looks awful (just like good friends should aye girls).

Well better get back to work. There's a huge "shower" arriving any minute so I've decided to stay late at work and wait it out. Although I have to work late anyway as Paul and I went to the Myer sale this morning and bought him 4 new work shirts (stocktake sales are on everywhere at the moment as the financial year end on June 30 in Aussie) .

Have a great day!!!!

Houses in our area

2008-05-30T15:15:00.004+10:00

Well it seems people are selling up big time in our area at the moment. I guess it was predicted as one of the top 10 boom areas in Brisbane this year and they want to get in on that in case there is a down turn in the market.

But 2 have come up for sale on the past couple of days in our little area (Grovely is a principality I think it's called - like when I lived in Wellington - my suburb was Khandallah but the principality I lived in was Rangoon Heights) and 3 in the Keperra suburb that are "comparable" to our place (post war, weatherboard, highset etc). And they're all going for more than we paid for our place - yay! It will be very interesting to see how long they are the market for and whether they have to drop their prices at all.

If you're interested they are:

109 Woking St (Grovely, Keperra) - just down the road from us and probably the most comparable out of them all
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=104939188&f=0&p=10&t=res&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=52865816&s=qld&tm=1212024277

27 Glemorgan St (Keperra) - over the other side of a main road through our surrounding suburbs and 1 block back from a very very busy 4 lane main road
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=104941825&emailsource=emailalert

Grovely - Keperra - no address but is in our little area - and this looks a bot more run down than our but it does have a bigger section (it has a 825sqm section and we have 718 sqm). The kitchen is so gross it makes me want to cry - yuk!
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=104942284&emailsource=emailalert

Anyway - just interesting :-) Paul and I like seeing what's available in Keperra still so we can see if our house has gone up in value yet - yay :-)

The myth of dress sizes

2008-05-27T12:36:00.006+10:00

Ok - we all know that dress sizes are crazy. Depending on what type of clothing you're trying on, what brand, what store you're in etc the same size will vary greatly. Plus there is the well known fact that dress sizes go up every year anyway to counter for the fact that the average weight of the population also goes up every year.

But seriously! It's getting crazy now! I currently weigh around 58kg - give or take a few hundred grams depending on what I eat each week ;-). When I was in high school, 58kg was my "fat" weight. As in if I got to 58kg then alarm bells went off and I had to watch what I ate. Now in all my years of high school the smallest size I ever fitted was a size 10 - but usually I was a size 12. Let's face it - I have hips (and that's not a bad thing) and bones just don't shrink! Now let's fast forward 10 years (*shudder* that's way too many years since high school) and add on the fact that I also grew a butt (as women do - also not a bad thing). So can you imagine how shocked I was when I had to buy size 8 clothing when I went shopping on the weekend. Hello - my hips still exist - my bones haven't shrunk - so how can I be a size 8!!

Crazy aye! That pretty much means that in 10-15 years dress sizes have gone up 2 sizes! Stupid things! Now I'll be even more confused when I go into a store and the shop assistants ask me what size I am. Is it 12, 10 or 8!!!

Anyway - that's my rant for the day - te he he :-)

Home Alone!

2008-05-27T09:39:00.003+10:00

Ok - it's official, I'm such a wuss! I'm currently home alone as Paul had to go to NZ suddenly on the weekend as his uncle passed away (very sad). So I have now been home alone for 3 nights with 1 more to go - and I hate it. I seem to hear random noises left, right and centre and I'm sure the bogey man keeps coming to get me! Last night I kept hearing random noises and was too chicken to turn out the light until like 11pm when I finally told myself to stop being pathetic - and so now I'm really tired. Paul, I think it's time you came home and rescued me from the bogeyman - or rescue me from my vivid imagination anyway :-)

Sleep walking

2008-05-14T14:17:00.003+10:00

Well it seems that I am sleep walking again! Hmmm! You know how in Hansel & Gretel they drop bread crumbs to mark their path, well I seem to do the same thing with my ear plugs! Last week I noticed an ear plug in the lounge near the side chair and thought it was mighty odd. Then this morning I noticed an ear plug in the bathroom next to the bath. I asked Paul if he had both of his ear plugs when he woke up and of course the answer was yes. So yes, I obviously went walk about in the night and have no recollection of it. Unfortuntately it means that today I am really tired and have a major case of mid-afternoon doziness. The scary part is that Paul is no longer waking up. In the same way that I usually don't wake up anymore when he goes to the loo in the middle of the night, he no longer wakes up when I decide to go sleep walking!
Let's hope it's just another passing phase aye :-)

Happy Birthday Mum!

2008-05-06T08:08:00.001+10:00

Well I know mum doesn't read this (except when Marea used to show it to her) but I thought I'd wish mum a happy birthday anyway. So ....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!!!!

The long weekend

2008-05-02T14:56:00.004+10:00

Yay we have another long weekend this weekend. I LOVE holidays!! And as much as I loved camping last weekend (photos to come btw) I am quite glad that we don't have to travel anywhere :-) Instead tomorrow will be a lazy day - grocery shopping etc, Sunday Paul has a St John duty and I'm going to the craft expo and then Monday will be another lazy day. I suppose that in there somewhere will be things like house work, budgets, emails etc - but still pretty low key!

Yay for labour day on Monday as not only do we have a long weekend - but next week is a short week :-D Wahoo!!!

We're going to see the All Blacks!!

2008-04-30T09:35:00.003+10:00

YAY!! Paul and I are off to see the All Blacks Bledisloe cup match at Suncorp stadium on September 13th. I'm SO excited!! He had to join the Wallabies fan club (or something like that) in order to get advance tickets but it is totally worth it!! Ha ha - we're actually doing NZ a favour as we've now decreased the number of Aussie supporters at the game by 4 :-) We were able to get 4 tickets so my cousin Janell and her husband Alex are coming with us. I text Lance to see if him and Debz wanted to come but he didn't get his text message until just before the tickets went on sale so I had already offered the tickets to Janell instead. Stink :-( Oh well, hopefully they can get some tickets in the public sale in a few weeks.

Can you believe this will only be the 2nd All Blacks game I've ever been to. The other of course being in Paris when I was there on my Europe tour when the ABs kicked the French by something like 40-6

GO THE ALL BLACKS!!!

Camping soon

2008-04-22T14:12:00.002+10:00

Yay - only a couple more days until Paul and I go camping at Coolum beach. I got an email from my cousin Janell this morning with the list of what food Paul and I need to bring and the menu for the trip. Don't you love it when you find people who are just at pedantic as you are :-D te he he :-)

Anyway so here is our menu for the weekend:
Friday Lunch

Bacon Egg Pie

Tomato Sauce

Friday Dinner

Garlic bread

Garden Salad

BBQ Meat

Saturday Breakie

Muesli

Yogurt

Saturday Lunch

Chippie Sandwiches (salt & vinegar chips, bread, butter, marmite)

Saturday Dinner

Salad

Potato Salad

BBQ Meat

Sunday Breakie

Muesli

Yogurt

Sunday Lunch

Bacon Egg Pie

Snacks

Beverages

Ice

Water

Juice

Booze

So 8am Friday morning we shall be off!! VERY exciting!!!

Go away

2008-04-18T08:41:00.002+10:00

Right - some weirdo keeps commenting on my blog entries with a "See here please" and a link. Obviously I have no idea who you are and you are wanting my readers to go to your dodgy link.
So ... if you (my honest readers) ever see one of these comments before I manage to delete them then please don't click on the link.
However if you are the ANNOYING person who keeps making these comments that I have one thing to say to you. GO AWAY!!!!!

Vege garden - step 1

2008-04-16T19:29:00.005+10:00

Well we've taken the first step to creating our vege garden. On the weekend Paul set up our new compost bin (we won't mention that it sat in its box for 3 weeks first will we now). We decided to put it down the back of the section as eventually we're going to dig all the ferns etc up anyway so why not start now (one day we may put a workshop in down there). Plus down the back it's as far away as possible from our house and our neighbours houses so we shouldn't stink anyone out :-) So here are a few pics I took of Paul setting it up.

Evidence # 1 - some men do read instructions

The freshly cleared spot for the compost bin. All we have to do now is put all our vege scraps in and hey presto we have compost. Yeah right! I think looking after it may end up being Paul's job :-)

Ferns no more. I'm not sure how many bugs Paul found in clearing the space and I don't want to know. Note the neighbours fence on the back left has metal posts instead of wooden ones like the neighbours behind us. That's to stop the termites eating out your fence - nice aye ;-)

Paul about to put in our first lot of scraps. Fortunately we have a little bin with a lid as this stuff had been in it for about 3 weeks. I figured the best way force ourselves to put the compost bin up was to start filling up the scraps bucket :-) It worked :-)

Virgin bin no more :-) Don't ask me what the concrete thing is behind Paul. I'm wondering if it was used in the past for incinerating rubbish. You can tell that there used to be some oldies living here (support rail in bath) so maybe they used to burn their rubbish. But the concrete bricks just sit on each other so it's pretty dodge!

Going camping!

2008-04-13T14:56:00.002+10:00

Well last weekend my cousin Janell and her new husband Alex came around for dinner (yes London branch of the family I remembered to give them the voucher - phew). We had a great night just chatting and catching up. I'm a bad cousin and the last time (and first time) we caught was at Uncle Ralph's funeral last year - whoops. I got to check out their wedding photos (she looked lovely mum :-) ) and pick Janell's brain about how she did things for the wedding.

Anyway so an outcome of the evening was that we're going camping at Coolum with Janell and Alex on Anzac day long weekend. Very exciting! Paul has been wanting to go camping since we moved here so this is our first opportunity! So we went out the next day and bought a lovely tent from Anaconda (my other favourite store - Anaconda and Bunnings rock!) on special. Paul wanted to get a smaller one but for $30 more we could get one where

Paul can stand inside it
We can fit our bags at the end of the "bed" and still have the middle or side to walk around in
It has a decent sized, zipped in awning at the of the tent to store things or hang out in if it rains

Paul starting our "test run" of putting the tent up. Thought it'd be best to find out if there was anything wrong with it at home rather than when we're actually out camping.

The inner part of the tent put up. It has lots of netting on it so that you can let the breeze through during the hot day

The finished product.

The view of the tent from the side. Pretty big aye! But I'm so glad we got the big tent. it also means that if we have some visitors and decide to go camping then they don't have to sleep under the starts unless they want to (apparently the tent sleeps 6 - but I'm sure 4 would be comfy.) Paul now also has his "dog box" ;-) te he

Colourful Walls

2008-04-13T14:09:00.008+10:00

Well Paul and I recently decided that we've been in living in our house long enough that we'd better start making our white walls look a bit more interesting. This was started by the clock and thermometer we bought at the Eumundi markets at Easter. Plus Paul's parents bought us this really cool 3 part picture for our house warming present that we had yet to put up.

Then yesterday it was a nice sunny day so I decided to get started on one of my "projects" I'd been planning for a while - painting!! So I got out with my paints and rollers and paint brushes and just started painting. So I struggle to draw a stick figure and this was the first time in my life I've ever painted. However I was pretty happy with the outcome for a first go (considering I had no idea what the plan was when I started). The painting is "straight line challenged" but I've decided that is totally how it's meant to be ;-) te he. Anyway so I've included a few pictures for your pleasure :-)

The picture Paul's parents gave us. It is very cool! I'm really into pictures where they're separated into multiple parts. It sits in the hallway with the photo taken from the lounge.

The view of the photo from the lounge (at night) showing the view of the pic as you walk into the hallway. You have no idea how hard it was getting the picture hooks into the wall! Brute strength wasn't enough so pre-drilling was the next option - Paul ended up breaking 2 drill bits to get 3 little nails in! It's much easier when there is a beam to drill into as the board doesn't bounce back.

My very first painting. It looks nicer from further away as you can't see the crooked lines so much :-) The peace lily plant we had to move from the hallway into the kitchen/dining area as its going for gold and was taking up the whole hallway.

A close up of my very first painting :-) It was lots of fun! And it adds some great colour to the kitchen :-)

Bounce bounce

2008-04-11T09:20:00.001+10:00

Oh dear - I'm in another of my bounce bounce moods today. I think it's because I'm very excited it's almost the weekend. Not that I'm doing anything exciting this weekend - I just don't have to work. Yay! Poor Paul this morning had to put up with me bouncing around the house giving him hugs and stuff. Gross aye :-) Te he.

Bring on Saturday!!!

Almost the weekend

2008-04-10T08:17:00.002+10:00

N - n - n - nine degrees! That was the apparent current temperature when I just logged onto stuff. And with the time difference that's at 11:15am! That's not even funny! If it got to 9 degrees here then I actually think my toes would fall off when I tried to put on my shoes. Cold! I'm such a wuss that I'm wearing trousers and my ankle boots today :-)

Well it's almost the weekend and I can't wait. Not because I'm doing anything in particular but just because I want this week to be over. Yesterday felt like it was about 3 days in length and I get the feeling that today is going to be the same *sigh* Oh well at least I get to leave early today as I need to go to the doctor to get a flu jab and some asthma inhalers.

So cold!!

2008-04-09T08:02:00.003+10:00

Man is it getting cold at the moment! Outside it's only 16 degrees today and the high is only getting up to 24 *shiver*. I have discovered what the difference between the start and end of Autumn is - it's not necessarily the high for the day as we still get days up around 27 - 29. It's the fact that it takes a lot longer in the day to get there. Instead of it being 25 degrees by 8am it's 16-18 degrees at 8am *shiver*. Although that's not such a bad thing as it's really gross getting to work in summer and being all sweaty! The scary thing is that I suspect I may end up wearing my woolly coat this year - who would have thought aye!

Photos from Noosa

2008-04-07T20:03:00.008+10:00

Here are some photos from our trip to Noosa over Easter weekend. We had a fantasic weekend - especially as it was my first proper holiday since I moved to Aussie in July last year. No my recent trips to NZ don't count as holidays as they have been flat out doing wedding preparation, working and visiting the dentist. We manged to get a great little room on wotif.com in a resort right on the Noosa river for only $99 a night - sweet :-) And since the public transport system had free travel all Easter weekend on the new GO card system (like the oyster cards in London) we travelled all weekend for free as we took the train & bus to Noosa instead of getting stuck in awful traffic like everyone else. Yay!

Enjoying a Copenhagen icecream while waiting out the rain.

Going for a walk in Noosa National Park.
We did the big loop track that went through the bush and then followed the coastline on the way back.

Scary "Paul Monster" in the bush. Apparently this is a grade 4 track - right!!!! We didn't even see any snakes, although Paul freaked me out enough as we were leaving that I was positive I was going to find one.

Half way point. Views out over the nudist beach :-) No there weren't any there that day ;-) Although there was a kite surfer going for gold and a huge rip.

This plane went past overhead and I got this really cool pic - so I had to include it.

Another view out near then nudist beach. It was a bit "breezy" by Wellington standards but it was very refreshing as we'd been walking for about an hour.

Mary Poppins waiting for the bus to go to the Eumundi markets on Saturday morning.

Me at the Eumundi markets on Saturday morning. We arrived nice and early at 6:35 so that we could wander around before the hordes of tourists arrived. It was totally worth it as we got to take our time and see everything. The markets were huge and contained really good stuff. Often you go to markets and they just sell lots of junk. But the stuff they were selling here was great and mostly at pretty good prices too. I am SO going back :-)

Paul at the Eumundi markets. This was the one quiet spot we could find to get a decent pic - right by the rubbish bins (that you can't see - phew).
I love markets - YAY! And going was Paul's idea as he knows how much I love markets. Isn't he lovely :-)

One of our purchases. A very cool thermometer set in wood. It now sits in our lounge so that we really know how hot/cold we are. This may be scary come winter as it's already getting cold in our house at night. I've already started wearing bed socks - hmmm.

Our new clock - picture of the Brisbane river. Was very cheap - only cost about $30. We thought this would be a great memento of our time here should we move away from Brisbane.

Date of hens party

2008-04-07T09:48:00.006+10:00

Well Paul and I booked our flights to come to NZ later in the year. Yay for sales.

We leave after workon Monday September 1st and get into Wellington just after midnight. We're in Wellington for the rest of the week and fly back to Brisbane on the afternoon of Monday 8th September.

So .... My hens party will be September 6th so put that in your diaries ladies :-) More plans will follow! I know it's 3 months early (ha ha funny - to the day even) but the only other option is the weekend before the wedding. And if I drank that close to the wedding then on the day I would have major breakout - yuk!!