A Whale of a Birthday!

Hi!

Well. Here we are, little late but like they say, better late than dead! No birds to twitter us into the evening tho, it's rainy, cold and miserable and what bird likes that kinda weather (I think it's the one week of winter that we get down here, so that's ok. Is sunny 358 other days of the year), but we do have groovy jazz tunes on the radio and a nice glass of red wine. Hooray for Sunday evenings!

So work. Yep. Apparently this is my last week. I think that's one reason why I wasn't in the mood to check in last week because I'd just found out from A Director that after the 30th of this month they weren't going to need me and by all means I should start looking for new work. Sigh. I tried to wow them with my Mad SkillZ, and I did for a time, but alas, the work has run out. So over the last week I've sent out the APB's, mobilized the troops, alerted the media and rattled the cages of the usual suspects. So we'll see what shakes down over the next couple weeks. Fingers crossed. Otherwise, work has been going well. I have to say, I quite like this editing/proofreading lark I've sort of landed in. Beats a hell of a lot of other grunt office crap! So hopefully will land something similar. Be good if I could really get into this whole web publishing malarkey, that seems to be the way things are going and I don't want to be a dinosaur! Wait for me modern technology! Oh, and I've ordered real, proper business cards for mah little business, and might even go to a talk first week of August at the Queensland Society of Editors and rub shoulders and shake hands and hand out biz cards and maybe get some advice.... Be good to get that up and running and get monies coming in for mahself instead of working for The Man! So things on the job-front should get pretty lively over the next couple weeks. My god fingers crossed it's only for a couple of weeks this time and not 7 months!!!! Gaahhhh!

And then the weekend/s. Last weekend was pretty cool. Woke up early for a Saturday and took myself into Southbank for the French Festival. Glad I got there early-ish cos an hour later the place was sooooo crowded you couldn't see the booths for the people! Lots and lots of food, couldn't get near most of it for the long lines, but I did manage to wrangle a little sausage baguette - was gooooooood. Love French food. And there were booths for translation services and business opportunities, as well as booths selling chateau's in the south of France, just in case you happen to be in the market for a French chateau and going to a booth at a 1 day festival seems like a good place to buy it...... So after having scouted out all the booths, and to avoid being run over by double-barreled strollers pushed by very angry, militant mothers, I hid in the wine corral where you could sit at a table and sip fancy French champagne and listen to music like civilized folk do at 11 in the morning. I will say it was a pretty cool way to spend half a day. I must get myself to France one of these days........

And then this weekend......Birthday! Well. Started off nicely with a half day at work Thursday to go run errands and to head up to Kim's to stay the night so we could get up early Friday/Birthday morning (day off!) to go Whale Watching! Oooooooh, was pretty neat, even if the seas were really choppy, it rained a bit and we couldn't really see any whales, at least nothing like they seem to do in the commercials. Overall it was a neat day out. We did see a baby whale (calf) and it's Mom (cow), tho Baby/Calf tried it's very best to jump out of the water to show us it could do it, while none of the other whales showed nearly as much enthusiasm as the baby did. At least not until we turned the boat around to head back to shore, then they couldn't keep themselves still for all the jumping and splashing, most of which we missed completely because, well, we drove away. Not sure why we didn't hang around, but we didn't. Sigh. Another time perhaps......... But otherwise it was pretty neat.

And then that evening, we quickly raced home to get ready to go out to dinner with a few folks at Tukka. I'd been there before a few years ago for a birthday past and thought that it might be a good place to go again. Meh, the food was really good (I had the crocodile, again, and the buffalo - was all YUM!), but the service just sucked. That's ok, I had my crocodile, and now more restaurants are putting it on their menus, and I hear New Zealand is breeding buffalo, so that's also going to appear on more menus now, so I probably won't have to ever go back. Hooray! And that was pretty much The Big Birthday. Pret-ty quiet considering the big plans I had........ Never mind, will plan a big one for next year, to celebrate my first year being, well, older. Hooray!

And today, was really pretty groovy - spent the day up at Kim's where she and a friend I'd introduced her to (the office manager at my work) had a jam session all day. They were both in bands in New Zealand and had a lot of music and stuff in common. So today was their first jam session. I have to say, it was pretty cool to see these two just work so well together. One sings and the other plays keyboards, but by the end of the day they'd swapped places and found they were just as good at that! So hopefully they'll keep meeting up and jamming! I'll be their band manager once they get themselves up and running and organized!

And that's pretty much that. A Big Birthday has quietly come and gone (don't worry Big Birthday, I'll get you next year!), good French food and tunes were had, a jam session jammed and laundry was washed...... Good weekends all around! So hope you're all well up there. Drop a line just to let me know when you're comin' on down for a visit or if you even read the little blog!? And I notice that tickets are still pretty cheap to get down here, so come on down - it'll be Spring soon!

BYE!
J!

Hot Dogs, Meatballs & Ikea!

Hi!

Well. Sunday evening. The birds are out there doing bird things (hopefully not pooping on all of my clean laundry hanging out on the line), the weather isn't hot and humid, the chores have been done, the groceries stocked up - ahhhhhhh is a good Sunday!

So work. Yep, still there, whew! They "extended" me until (drum roll.........) the end of this month, which is like 2 weeks. Woooooo. I know it beats getting a one-week notice, but why couldn't they just extend me until like next year? Hmmm. Will keep trying. We lose our last temp at the end of this week, then it's just me, so hopefully they'll realize they just can't do all that work without me and my mad editing skillz and want to keep me forever. Well, at least long enough for me to pay off my debt, buy my Big Birthday Present, go on at least one of the Adventures on my list, and maybe even buy a real, brand new car (this year the car I have my heart set on is the Volkswagen Golf Comfortline TSI automatic, won world's safest car last year, they even have knee air-bags, that's what sold me!). So you see, this job just has to keep me on - I have plans!

And then the weekend. Started out a little early on Thursday, met my friend in the City after work for too many mid-week wines, but we did manage to solve all of the problems of the world. Was good to catch up tho. And then Friday I finally got two friends to meet who are/were musicians in different bands in New Zealand, they got along fantastically, so hopefully they'll set up a band here and take the place by storm! I'll be the manager! And after that I darted over to Pizza and Games and a good catch up with those folks, which was very nice, as always. We haven't had Pizza & Games in ages; guess that happens when you have 3 small children and a small business on the side...... So when we can it's always really nice to catch up!

And then there was the real weekend. Saturday Kim came around and we headed out to Ikea. Hooray! I love Ikea no matter what people say. All I know is you get what you pay for and those Swedes sure know design! I now have enough tea lights to last until the next century. Well, when it's storm season here and the power goes out (as it often does), those thousand tea lights sure can come in handy! Plus in winter they can help warm the place up! Bonus! So yes, even tho the place was full of cranky children in strollers, it's still a happy place, so happy I ate 2 hot-dogs, then rapidly regretted it. Then, needing to walk off the 'dogs, and as if wandering around there wasn't enough, we decided to walk along the road from Ikea to the Springwood bus station - quite a hefty walk and back. Then, when we got back to Ikea, we needed to pick up one more thing, which meant walking through the whole place again, then, I decided I had to eat again so we sat in the restaurant where I put away a whole plate of their Swedish meatballs with lingonberry sauce and mashed potatoes! What the?! I have no idea what was going on with my appetite, all I know I was starving. Weird. But all soooooo good! So yes, Saturday was a very good day!

And then today was a blitz on the laundry and chores. Must be all the food I ate yesterday fueling me to do stuff today, because even tho I had a nice big gourmet omelette planned for breakfast, in the midst of running back and forth doing the laundry, I managed to burn it. Was a sad discovery. I ate some of it but it wasn't the gourmet fiesta I'd planned. Sigh. Probably for the best after yesterday's food-fest. Will make a good dinner to make up for the breakfast fail.

And that's about that! Can't believe it's Sunday evening already. Just one more day! That's ok tho, am enjoying the work (and monies) while I can! So I hope you're all well up there. I hear flights to come down here are still pretty cheap, so what are you waiting for - do you need help booking them, I can help! C'mon down!

BYE!
J!

Cutting Hair, Stuff and Ladles

Hi!

Well. Sunday evening (on time for once!) with the chirruping crows, the odd couple of kookaburras, a couple of faraway lorikeets, and not sure what else; there're random Mexican, Reggae & Celtic tunes on the community radio station 4zzz..... all this fun as the sun sets on another weekend! Always at this time I feel like it went far too fast, like I was cheated out of a day........ But never mind - here we are!

So work. Yep. Still there. Whew! There are 3 of us temps from my same agency, even with the same agent/pimp (whom we just found out is knocked up with her first kid..... Sure it's nice and all, but all I could think was "who's going to get me work who knows me and my good history?" Darn babies), anyways, one of us temps has got a better, long-term gig with a better government agency (yes I gave her a copy of my resume to paper her new cubicle with in hopes they hire me too), so her last day was Friday and the other temp is hitting the bricks next week.... Which leaves me - hopefully, to pick up the slack that the previous two had left, and show them that they really can't afford to let me go anytime soon.... That's how I like to think it in my head. Plus, when there were 4 of us helping with editing, there will only be two, and the other gal (real employee, not temp) doesn't work Fridays (must be nice)... But I do! So I waltz in every day, smile pretty and dance when they say "dance monkey, dance!", cos the work that am doing is dead easy, I like it well enough compared to what I could be doing ('you want fries with that?') and the pay is just waaaaaay too good to get cranky about. So I sure can dance when they demand! Hooray!

And then the weekend. Didn't get up to much. Slept a lot (cos my neighbor downstairs is an insomniac who loooooves his machine-gun video game, especially from around 2, 3 in the morning every night of the week, even tho he has a job and a girlfriend. Sad is just one of many words I could use); But in between sleeping-in and napping, I did mange to bust out the Chores, but this time it was above and beyond the garden-variety chores.... Every couple of months someone stuffs pink bags in our mail boxes asking us to donate whatever crap we have lying around. Oooooh boy, just in time! I'd planned on a big spring clean in honor of renewing the lease on this Shitbox Palace anyways, so those bags couldn't have appeared at a more fortuitous time! I managed to fill 2 of them! Man, I had crap from when I first moved here. Why? So out with a lot of stuff - clothes, kitchen utensils (when I have I ever needed a ladle?), shoes, christmas lights, all kinds of stuff. It's good to have a good clean out. I even dumped out all the little drawers in my bathroom and threw out a lot of the stuff that was in them - expired drugs and melted sore throat drops from 2006. I love cleaning out crap! I know that's a pretty sad way to spend a lovely mid-winter weekend down here in sunny Australia, but, well, yeah. Seeing as am still under Bank Arrest, there will be no exciting Adventures for a wee while yet. Soon tho! I have a trip planned to Ikea next Saturday (with a very, very small shopping list I might mention, still no livin' large, no matter how hard it's gonna be), that's semi-adventure........ Well, I like the place anyways...... Cheap meals if nothing else!

And that's pretty much that. I got my hair cut again. Shortshortshort. I like it. I really can't seem to tolerate growing it out no matter how hard I try. I seem to develop a sort of claustrophobia when it reaches a certain length (all of 2-3 inches). Sooooo, aside from the haircut, not a whole lot else to report on. Again, remember, Bank Arrest................ So all I can say is I hope you're all well up there! C'mon down while the weather's nice and flights are cheap! It'll be fun!

Bye!
J!