Cat-Shaped Starfish & Champagne

Hi!

Well. Whew. What a week that was. Busy. Quiet. Stressful, in an I-put-myself-in-this-mess kinda way. But otherwise, another fine week for the history books!

Work. Yeah. It's still good. Perhaps the less said (good or bad), the better for my work karma....... Suffice to say I still like it (bonus!), the people are all still really nice, I'm finished proof-reading the entire manual and highlighting key words for the digital search engine, and next week is compiling said keywords into a massive list, meetings with the Project Manager (also very nice) and additional assorted managers, wow, I'll feel somewhat important, for a few minutes anyways!

So the week, tee hee. Monday, fine, innocent enough. Didn't scoot in because "they" threatened rain (yeah, I know the new groovy scooter jacket is waterproof, but think of all that gunk that splashes onto your windshield while following cars in the rain, now picture all that gunk on you and your little scooter with no windshield, on a busy road.... yeah, on second thought, you wouldn't be so hot to try out that waterproof jacket either).

Monday night I get home from work to find a note slipped under my door from the building manager, Geoff (also a very nice guy) that it's that time of year - time to physically inspect and test allllllll the fire/heat/smoke alarms in every apartment. Oooooh, I've been waiting for this day for a year. Ever since adopting Kona, the illegal cat-roommate. Oh dear. So had to tidy and de-cat the house. Tuesday morning, hung around to wait for the inspector guys to show up... stuffed Kona in his box, into the closet (kicking and scratching the whole time)..... So the inspector-guy is standing in my bedroom explaining to me how, because I'm an odd-numbered apartment, on an odd-numbered year, (meanwhile I can hear Kona scratching at his box. I cough to try to hide it and steer the guy to the living room) I get the dubious honor of having them return later that day to physically test the actual heat and smoke sensors/alarms in my apartment. Oh dear. I'd already taken the morning off of work to keep an eye on the events, now I'd have to hang around all day. Maaaan. So fine. I hang around and wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, it happens all at once, I hear the guy coming up the stairs, I grab Kona to stuff him into his box, well, that cat is now wise to this and refuses by becoming a starfish. The guy has the key to my place and I can hear it in the lock. My cell phone rings, it's Glen, and I really need to talk to him but I can't answer it because I have to catch the cat to stuff him back in his box. The door opens just as Kona shoots under the bed. I say "hello!" to the inspector guy, as cool as I thought I sounded as I ducked into my room to throw the cat carrier into the closet and quickly shut the closet door as he comes in. Meanwhile, I'm looking around the apt for a streak of grey. Finally, the guy is finished, but what's this - the loud speaker in my living room doesn't work (what I hear the alarm bells from, just in case I can't hear the deafening ones outside)..... Oh dear, a return visit at a later date....???? Noooo, "That's it!" the guy says happily. "Really?" I ask, totally not believing him. "Yep! See you next year! Thanks!" and poof! - he's gone. So I don't get the deafening alarm bells blaring into my apartment every time some moron leaves toast in their toaster too long, that's perfect by me as they unnecessarily scare the hell out of me anyways. Yeah, I know it's their job, but they all wake me up perfectly sufficiently from outside. And trust me when I say that damn fire alarm goes off at least twice a month. It works fine and I know exactly how it sounds. In fact, just this afternoon it went off. Turns out some guys stove really did catch fire and the fire department actually had to put it out - with a little extinguisher. Smoke and everything. That happened a couple weeks ago too in another apartment near mine - stove on fire. Note to self - make sure stove is off at all times, may even flip the main power if it's that's prone to spontaneous combustion...........

Geez Louise.

So that was Tuesday. Wednesday, well, had to meet Natasha and some friends of hers over at a pub on Caxton Street.... her friends were going to the big rugby game - Queensland vs. New South Wales. Happens every year. It's a big deal apparently. Kinda like when the Mets play the Yankees I guess. So, 50,000 people and only 7 arrests that night. I find that really hard to believe, but that's what they said. Caxton Street and all it's pubs, is only a block long. Teeny tiny. So you can imagine the amount of people. It was crazy. And Caxton St. is only like 2 blocks from the stadium I might add. Crazy crowds. But once the game got under way, it was a ghost town. We hung out for a little bit at the pub, got something to eat, watched a little of the game on the big screen tvs and then I had to call it a night. School night after all.

Thursday, scooted into work. On my way in that a.m., well, long story short - the Merc that decided I wasn't going fast enough for him, passed me and missed me by that much.... the Porsche that decided no one was going fast enough for him yet nearly caused us all to crash, well, the Porsche hit the Merc. I laughed for days after scooting past that. There is justice in the karma world after all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And then the rest of the week was fine and quiet and uneventful.Saturday I got shanghaied into going to (don't laugh) a Tupperware party. I only went because Cindy begged me to. That, and the usual suspects were shanghaied too. Aside from the Tupperware thing (didn't buy a single thing! Am very proud), the rest of the night was lovely. Chance to catch up with the gals, gossip, drink champagne and eat pate, ahhhhh it was nice. Cindy, Patricia and I have half-drunkenly threatened to go on a mini-road trip together down to Byron Bay one of these weekends. It's only like 2 hours away. Me and my not-so-good Australian geography and travel times, I thought it was like 8 hours away....... I hope we go, would be a good time.

And today, groceries, organizing the beads, fire alarm, and that was about it.

WHEW!

Next week "they've" threatened rain, so stories to come, I'm sure, from commuting on public transport......!

So I hope you're all well up there, happy with no fire alarms or gunk! C'mon down! You can stay with me! My place is certified fire alarm compliant and functional!!!!!!!!!

BYE!
J!









(New!) Weekly Movie Quote.....

"I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request."
"What?"
"Means no!"

Geoffrey Rush, Pirates of the Caribbean (1)

Ex-cellent!

Passing... People, Sunsets & Traffic

Hi!

Well. Boy, is it hard to work 5 days in a row after the luxury of only working 4 days..... What a work wuss I am. I love not being at work. I love not having to do anything if I don't want to. Ahhhhhh, but, to have such a nice, harmless, cruisy gig, bliss. Admittedly, it is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but I still love it. I tried my best to win the $30mil lottery last Thursday.... That's ten bucks I won't get back. Other than little hiccup, the week was fine.

But, some sad news to mention, my Uncle Doug passed away last Friday. Complications of a multitude of aliments, mainly after-effects of 2 strokes, diabetes..... Sad. He was young (57) but man, he put up a reallyreally tough fight. The stuff he lived through would've killed most people. But finally, he'd had enough. I mean really, how much more can you and your body take? I like the thought that ultimately, (in some cases) we have control over these things, where we can just take stock and decide, yep, enough, I'm outta here. So, hat's off to you Uncle Doug - you've proved the family come from tough stock! Via con dios (as my Grandad would have me say)!

So yeah. Work was nice, dull, lovely and easy. They're nice people, they all seem to get along quite well, no one is a drama queen/king, they laugh a lot (and no one tells them to stop), they play a lot of solitaire on their computers (and no one yells at them to get back to work or you'll be fired), they talk in quite voices, no one has to holler or talk excitedly, it's probably one of the most chilled-out places I've ever worked. Which is really ironic considering I work at the headquarters for the Queensland Department of Emergency Services. Excellent. I really hope they keep me and doing what I'm doing now. Ahhhhhh, I know good gigs never last, but I hope this one has a few miles left on it yet........!?

And the rest of the week was good. Lovely weather still, which is crazy because winter is due in like a week or two and it's still pool weather! So last week I put on my brave boots (as Jan says) and I rode the little scooter into work 3 days that week. Didn't ride it on Monday because I had to find out where I could park it without it getting towed so an ambulance or fire truck could park there instead. And didn't ride it Friday because the weather folks threatened rain (it didn't, but those clouds sure looked like they weren't messing around). It's excellent getting to work in 10-15 minutes under my own steam rather than the 45 it takes under, well, public transports steam. It's a pretty busy road though, with 3 lanes in either direction, but so far so good! The traffic is really hard to predict here. Some mornings/evenings it's absolute mayhem, and then others it's easyeasy. Weird. And never on the days you expect it. Tee hee, poor little scooter, it's only meant to go at a top speed of like 45mph (70kmh for those of you savvy with the metric system), so for me to be able to keep up with traffic, the poor thing is at top tilt. I get to work and shut it off and the little thing practically hisses with steam. But it goes and it goes well. So if anyone is looking into start in the little scooter market, I can highly recommend this little Yamaha Vino 50cc to start with. It rocks! Or, in the spirit of Ol' Steve Irwin - Scooters Rule!


And this weekend was lovely. I did nothing. Well, I cleaned, read Harry Potter, and then went over to Natasha's for dinner. She can cook. Sent me home with 4 containers of food!

But, sadly, no adventures. Not unless you count standing at the bus stop near Natasha's house for an hour at 11.30 at night waiting for the bus to not arrive, watching drunk teenagers at the house party next door pass out in the middle of a fairly busy sidewalk, and then me getting fed up and hailing a cab home, as an adventure, then yes, a little one was had. It was certainly entertaining. And, there were police cars everywhere and none of them stopped to pick the little teenagers up and put them back in their house! Crazy! But then, these kids can legally drink at 18 here. Hmmmmmm.

So there you go. A nice, quiet week with a hint of sadness. Ahhhhhh, well, none of us lives forever! Might as well see it all while you're here! So hurry up and get down here and see it!

BYE!
J!

Dull Boas (on Scooters)

Hi!

Well. That's that for short weeks for the time being. I guess we don't get another holiday until June 11th, that's the Queen's Birthday (well, not really, I guess they thought it just sounded like a good day to honor it), so that's something to look forward to. Otherwise, the week was nice and short and hassle-free, just the way a week should be!

So, work, yeah, it's good. The project manager was down from Gladstone (somewhere up north a ways) to help get me on the right track and to help with little bits I didn't know how to do. Since it's the government, they love their acronyms (initials for everything under the s.u.n.) and they refer to a lot of them, so he helped me decipher them all. Boy, only two weeks into this gig and if any of you ever need to know how to set up and run a volunteer rural fire brigade - I'm the gal to ask! And, next week, I get to read the entire volunteer manual (the thing I'm editing & etc) to highlight relevant words and phrases so they can go into a digital search engine. Yawn, I know, but hey - I like it! It's not babysitting!!!!!!!!! Hooray!

So what else...... Kinda dull week otherwise. Quiet weekend. The last couple of weekends I ran around so it was nice to just hang around in my clean little apartment and throw crumpled up bus tickets at the cat (it's his favorite thing next to shredding anything with feathers, hence the blue feather boa - cat toy). I'm a dork, but the new/last Harry Potter book is coming out at the end of July (have reserved mine already!) so I've been getting all the others out of the library so that I'm up to speed when the new one comes out. Tee hee. I really like them. Good, fun and easy to read. So spent a bit of the weekend reading those. All I can say is she sure hit gold with that series. Good for her. Pretty clever stuff really.

And what else..... cleaned, grocery store visit, etc. Today it's been raining off and on but I managed to make it down to the Riverside Markets to meet Natasha for her fresh veggie fix. Then we had a wander around Queen Street Mall and that was enough. I got home and decided that I'd take the little scooter out to figure out how to get to work. It's along a pretty busy main road, but man, it only took 10 minutes! What takes me about 45 every morning to walk to the train station, ride the train, then walk from there to work - hell, it only takes 10 minutes on the little scooter! But far more exciting in a busy traffic kinda way. So we'll see how brave I'm feeling this week. That and the weather. I know I got all the cool waterproof gear now (with body armour!), but rain is rain and people are idiots in it no matter what. Maybe once the weather clears up.......

So yeah! That's that! Quiet, dull, no adventures (unless you count figuring out how to scoot to work, which is kind of an adventure), well, like I say, until the job thing.......... blahblahblah..... But I did just realize the other day that I haven't had a vacation in a really long time. I mean vacation vacation, where you sit around drinking fancy drinks with umbrellas in them on a sunny beach and do nothing more strenuous than go for a swim kinda vacation. Hang on, I don't think I've ever been on one of those come to think of it! Oh sure, some of you would say "but being in Australia is a vacation in itself!" Wrong. It's the same grind, just different real estate. So yeah, I'm really hoping the job thing settles down so I can go away and chill out and not worry! Someday!

So there it is! Hope you're all well up there! Let me know if anyone needs a boomerang or a cork hat!

BYE!
J!

(P.S. No, I'm not pulling a Muriel. I just thought this display was way wierd with the skinny, mini-bride. It's kinda creepy, in a Tim Burton kinda way.)

New Gigs, Shrimp & Buddha in a Motorcycle Jacket

Hi!

Well. Nice week. What a difference a decent job makes. And the addition of another 3 day weekend (Labor Day) just made the week even better. So it's been a day off with no pay, I don't mind. Was a busy weekend, which is why I'm checking in on Monday instead of yesterday.

So yeah, decent gig made for a really easy week. I ended up at the Department of Emergency Services, in the Rural Operations branch, which deals with rural fire brigades. And my job is to help proof-read, edit, format, etcetcetc the newly-updated rural fire brigade manual to get it ready to be printed and distributed. So I just sit in a nice, quiet corner with my headphones and stare at this massive document all day and make sure it looks pretty. And keep track of everything on a massive spreadsheet. I love this gig so much I could marry it. It sounds dull I know, but I really like it. I don't have to do anything else, my hours are fairly flexible, no one asks me to do anything, I don't have to babysit anyone... This gig is bliss (compared to the last few). It's only supposed to go until the end of June or whenever the project (manual) is completed. But am hoping they'll find something else (similar) for me to keep doing. Fingers crossed! Maybe they'll even bring me onto their books permanently! Ahhhhhhhh a decent, steady job....... I wouldn't know what to do with myself! Save and plan adventures!!!!!!! Hooray!

So that nice, easy week lead to a nice weekend. Saturday I ran errands, the usual cat food, me food, etc and then decided I'd had enough of being paranoid about riding the little scooter in my little sorry girly pink work jacket and scooted myself over to the Yamaha dealer to buy a proper little scooter/motorcycle jacket. It's awesome! It's light grey with a reflector stripe across the back (but it's not obnoxiously big), it's rain-proof, lots of pockets and zippered vents and it's got removable body armour on the shoulders and elbows! Cooooool. And, bonus, it's not girly or macho and it fits perfectly! And even more bonus, the gal gave me $10 bucks off! Hooray! Then the guy wanted to sell me boots. I laughed and said I would when I bought a big-daddy motorcycle. Which he tried to sell me too. Am not that gung-ho, yet! So am now that much safer! I know, sometimes I feel a little overboard when it takes me longer to put all this gear on just to go not that far. But then I think of the time and money I'd have to spend in the hospital on broken bones and skin grafts and I decide that the 5 minutes it takes to suit up is actually fine.

But Saturday night was excellent - Went through Southbank where they're in the middle of the Buddha Birthday Festival; so went and had a good look around, ate some interesting food, watched a dragon dance and then went to go see Dylan Moran. He's an Irish actor/stand-up comdian. I first saw him on this BBC tv show called "Black Books" where he wrote and acted in it. Man. It was reallyreallyreally funny. Basically it was about this perpetually hung-over guy who ran, but didn't really want to, his own little bookshop. He had a kinda wierd, burned-out hippy named Manny (Bill Bailey, also a really funny guy) help him run the shop and a gal named Fran ran the little gift shop next door. It was excellent, but only ran for about 3 seasons. So then he ended up going into stand-up and he's hilarious. He came and did something like 4 sold-out shows here in town and my friend Linus and I got tickets for the Saturday night. Ahhhhh, man he's so funny. Good show.

And then Sunday I met Natasha and Samantha at the Caxton Street Seafood & Wine Festival. They have this every year. Bands and food and stuff. Russell Crowe and his little band played last year but I missed it. So went this year because Natasha lives down the road and they give residents 4 free tickets (otherwise it's $10 bucks to get in). It was good, but bloody hot and no chairs (I guess so they don't become airborne by the end of the night). But I gotta say, the food & wine were quite expensive for what it was - little tiny plastic glasses, grilled shrimp skewers and an awful lot of fried stuff. Sam had some food and had to throw it out it was so bad. Oh dear. We stuck to the cheapest beer we could find ($5) and wandered around checking things out and listening to the bands. A lot of girl bands which I thought was pretty cool and they weren't half bad. But the funny thing is, for such a big-deal festival, it's only a block long and on for one day! We got there around noon and by 2pm you couldn't move for the crowds. It was crazy crowded. So we left there and headed to the Normanby Hotel, just up the road. That was fine for about an hour and then it got packed-out. So I gave up around 5pm and came home, because I've learned in my old age that I don't do large, crowded, noisy bars anymore. Hate it. So I rented some movies and fell asleep on the couch! Ahhhhhhhh!

And then today is a lovely extra day off, to ponder our labor I guess. The weather isn't as hot, the clouds are out floating around....... The laundry has been done, tho there's vacuuming to do......... Maybe a root beer float can inspire me......So there you are! Hooray for a decent gig! I'm sure you'll all be pleased to hear it and no more whining about rotten gigs! Hooray!

BYE!
J!