Cicadas and Chores on a Bloody Hot Day!

Hi!

Well. Sunday afternoon.... Checking in a little earlier than usual..... not sure why, maybe that I have 2 movies to watch to get them back in the mail before tomorrow morning...... That, and with the borrowed air-con, the kitchen is the coolest room in the little apartment - at nearly 90 degrees; the rest of the place is a little warmer but still cooler than outside. Poor little air-con unit has been going since yesterday....... Hooray that I don't pay for electricity here! But seeing as this air-con unit is so noisy, if the lorikeets and crows (or even my neighbors, come to that) are out there arguing and what-not, I couldn't hear them. Which is actually really nice, my neighbors are noisy morons so to have a break from that is pretty nice..... But I digress. The afternoon is hot as hell, but sunny..... Hopefully this will be summer's last hurrah before leaving it all to autumn......... which should kick in very soon here. Otherwise, here we are!

So work. Yep. Is good. Even better now that my contract has been extended for 12 whole months!!! So now I don't expire until the end of April next year! HOORAY!!! My god, a 12 month contract, that's the longest one I've had here yet! Amazing. And if I can get them to come with me on permanent residency then they'll hire me permanently (I think), and then my god I really wouldn't know what to do with myself and the stability! But am not there yet. I'm just pretty happy I've got a pretty cushy gig (at the moment......) that's going until April next year. Cooooooool! Otherwise, work is fine, still really quiet. We've lost one of our gals to go and have her first baby. One more gal to go to have her first kid in June and then we'll be baby-talk-free!!! We have a new gal starting but I'm not sure when. That'll be nice - I won't be the new kid on the block anymore! So, yes, so far so good!

And then the weekend. Started off quite nicely Friday evening by meeting Talava at Cicada for a quick glass of wine after work. She was visiting from Melbourne for the day. That was most excellent to catch up with her, even if for just an hour. She's getting married in like 4 weeks - pretty exciting! And then our friend Ben (old work-mate from Qld Health) dropped by for a few more glasses of wine and dinner. So, yes, a good night was had by all and the evening was really quite nice!

And Saturday. Chores Pt. I, laundry, surfing the 'net seeing what else I can't live without from the States... so far I've ordered Tide, Bounce dryer sheets and Q-Tips....... and scaring my debit card half to death....... I really just chatted on the phone most of the day catching up with folks........ And then finally sat down to watch "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest"...... not bad, but then I quite dig "foreign" films. All I can say is you'd better read the book first, 'cos if I hadn't read it before watching the film, I wouldn't've know half of what was going on. Just shows how detailed the book is. Not a bad movie tho. Seemed to go by quick for a 2 & 1/2 hour movie. Setting everything up for the last movie in the series......!

And today was Chores Pt. II. I was only able to do them with the help of the a/c, otherwise the place woulda stayed dirty and I woulda spent the day under a cool shower, 'cos today has to be the hottest day of the summer yet. And I know I'm not a wuss because I spent ALL of last summer in here toughing it out with the heat and the humidity, and today is bloody hot. Be curious to see what the top temp was..... because with a day this stinking hot, you don't really have it in you to do more than just sit. So hooray for borrowed air-con enabling me to be productive!!!! Ahhhhh well, autumn soon, which means 8 months or so of glorious weather is just anxiously waiting in the wings! Hooray!

So there you have it. Another fairly quiet episode of my not quite exciting life as an expat down here in Australia. But to hear what all's happening up there, and in light of my having a pretty damn good job, things down here are pretty good if not slightly quiet. Not to worry, slowly but surely am working on fixing that! Just have to save the dough and the vacation time.......!

So yes, with the summer breathing it's last gasps, you're more than welcome to come on down anytime starting around March... and from then it'll beautiful until we do this awful summer business again starting in Nov/Dec. So come on down! Hope you're all well, and I'm serious when I say drop a line so I can hear how you all are up there! Hope you're all well and book that trip down here once and for all goddammit (and if you need help, airline links are over there on the right)!

BYE!
J!

Goats, Laundry & Failed Errands.....

Hi!

Well. Sunday evening has arrived yet again. Happily, the lorrikeets are back hollering at the crows to hit the road (literally or not I can't tell, don't speak 'keet). It's a very warm, muggy evening with big fat rain clouds sitting around up there doing nothing, like Union guys on a stage set. Still tho, I have some borrowed air conditioning (whew!), a very cool glass of Verse 1 semillion sav-blanc (eh, it's just ok. Have to try every one of them before I can decide...), and the usually goofy show-tunes show on the radio before the groovy cool jazz show is featuring music from the career of John Barry - he of the James Bond film music fame (!). Even tho he did tons and tons of other compositions, the James Bond music (including Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Louis Armstrong, etc) has to be the coolest, and ones that will certainly kept his bank account in the black forever; even if he's dead - his kid's'll love it! So that's where we are this Sunday evening. All I can say is bring on autumn and the cool crisp days! Enough with this humidity and muggy heat already!

So work. Yep. Is good. Still without a lot to be doing yet editing-wise, which is a bit of a shame, I quite like editing... Tho the gals I work with are trying to give me stuff to do that they don't want to do. Meh, I don't mind. Helps the day go by and I get to learn how to update the website! Sweeeeet. Learnin' is fun! Otherwise, I'm pretty sure my contract has been extended but I'll know for sure when someone sends me an email or makes me sign something. Hmmm. Hope it's extended...... Otherwise, every day I'm in paid employment and not being yelled at is a good day! Hooooooray!

And then there was the weekend. Started off most excellently Friday evening with pizza and games with the usual suspects and two very rambunctious children too wound up to go to bed. And it was funny, as Sienna was carried off to bed she wailed sleepily "But I'm not tiiiiiiired!". Sigh, memories! A good evening was had by all, as we usually do.

Saturday was fairly productive - I slept in (2 bonus points right there), did 2 loads of laundry, hit the grocery store, watched Magnum PI (hooray for mid-day TV!) and then had a good long nap. Ahhhhhhhhh! Also watched "The Men who Stare at Goats", now that was pretty funny I have to admit. And I think what made it so funny is the fact that parts of it are true. Silly ol' military. If you're in the mood, I can highly recommend it. Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey and George Clooney were all good. I was impressed they could do it all with fairly straight faces (must have been lots of laughs cut out tho!). Now I really want to read the guy's (Jon Ronson) book who's experiences this whole film is based on.

And today was sort of productive. Why I feel the need to be productive on the weekends when I have no Adventures planned is sort of beyond me. Guilt maybe, to not waste a perfectly good weekend. Probably the fact that when Sunday evening comes around and I haven't done anything except nap and watch TV (hey, I only just got my TV back again so I'm allowed) I feel a little like a loser and I want those 2 days back, I dunno................. Hmmmmm. Anyways, today I ran errands, most of them sort of failed in that the shops were either just gone from the face of the earth (uh-erm, Bose.....), or they quit carrying what I wanted over a year and a half ago (umm, Freedom Furniture... tho they do have a very nice leather, 3 seat sofa-bed for $1,600 that I'm really tempted to buy.........), tho I did manage to pick up a neat bamboo shower mat (not from Freedom). And that was most of my Sunday. It's just too bloody hot and humid to get out and about and be fantastically productive. Just wait for when autumn comes around, I promise to get out, and take more photographs especially!

So there you have it. Hey, hooray for dull in a way - at least Mother Nature is taking a break from kicking Australia's ass! Hopefully this means the worst is over, or at least nearly over and the cool weather won't be far....... So hope you're all well up there and defrosting or drying out...... Feel free to come on down any time you think you need a break from crappy cold winters!

BYE!
J!

Aussie B'Day, Beaches & BBQ's!

Hi!

Well. Late, again. Like late. Am sorry. Last weekend I couldn't check in..... well, for now I'll just say I can't party like I used ta could! And this weekend it was just way too bloody hot and humid in the evening to make my poor little computer suffer through that, only a year after the heat killed it the first time! Let alone make me suffer through it! So today am writing from the cool comfort of work - hooray for free air-con!

So. Work. Is good. My boss is going away (to the US actually) for a while and then to an air show outside of Melbourne, and he won't be back until April, which is when my contract expires.... So I hit him up the other day about whether or not he wanted to keep me around..... And so far I still haven't got a real answer, but today he said at the very least he'd extend my contract for another 6 months! Hooooooray! So that's a relief that I won't have to go job hunting in the next couple weeks like I was afraid I might. WHEW! But otherwise, it's still pretty quiet, but again, I don't mind because I'd rather learn a complicated company and its workings while things are quiet than when things are super busy. Apparently there's a big bid/proposal coming but no one will tell me much about it...... So I can only sit here, red pen at the ready!

And then there were the weekends... Last weekend was really really good. A guy I used to work with (Julian) at Southbank (my first job here), he always throws a good Australia Day BBQ, and lots of folks from Southbank that I used to work with always come along, some with little ones. It was a fantastic afternoon that went way too late for me. Not that I drank a lot, it was just a very long day. I got up really early to make my bean dip (which they loooove and I have to bring otherwise they'll revoke my invite) and my guacamole (which I just loooooove), and that kinda magic takes time. So yeah, while it was a good day, it was long. Plus he lives a bit far from me, so public transport is always an adventure, especially on the weekends and carrying food and booze. It was well worth it tho!

And then that Sunday, a gal I work with (Heidi) and her partner (Naomi) picked me up (so nice to come and get me) and we all, pups included, went up to Red Beach, the dog beach on Bribie Island (in the photo on the right - the dark bits on the sand there - those are soldier crabs!) that we went to a couple weekends ago. Thankfully the sun wasn't roasting us and there was a good breeze. It's pretty out there, but I still prefer Peregian Beach, even tho there's not much up there at all, it's quite a nice, swimmable beach. Someday when I get another car I'll head up there for a weekend. So yes, by the time I got home from there, it was getting late in the day, I had a shower and laid down on the couch for a minute to catch my breath and ended up having a 3 hour nap!

So that's why I missed last weekend. And then that week was pretty busy for the first half with errands after work, dinner with Kim at Kookaburra Cafe (the best!), and then I put in my first appearance at a meeting of the Queensland Society of Editors, it was more of an info session about accreditation, which I'm kicking around doing. Is tres expensive tho, at something like $680 a pop...... So will kick it around some more..... So yes, busy weekend with a busy week! And on top of all that - the Thursday 3rd of Feb. was my "Australia Birthday" - the day I arrived here 5 whole years ago! Waahhooo it's gone so fast!

And then there was this weekend. Saturday was good because, again, Heidi & Naomi picked me up and we headed out to the "Tip Shop" - it's a shop the city council has set up, they have a few of them around, where council folks go through stuff folks drop off at the dump (or as it's called here - the "rubbish tip", hence "Tip Shop"), pick out the good usable stuff, dust it off, plug it in and test it and sell it for waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cheap. It's awesome! I picked up a little Ikea wooden (pine) folding table and a matching folding chair for $10 bucks! That sells at Ikea for like $50 bucks at least! And it's in fine shape. Such good shape am thinking of putting a coat of sealant on it because it'll live outside. Coooool. Then we wandered into the DFO (a mall of outlet shops) at the Airport because the girls needed new shorts and I bought two little dresses and a cover/wrap thing for work 'cos our office is so freezing cold. And then we went over to their place to pick up their portable air conditioning unit (the kind where the hose hangs out the window) that they weren't using. They took pity on me living in my toaster oven, so are letting me borrow it for however long. It works pretty well, tho with my place not having insulation it takes aaaaaaaaaaages for it to cool down to bearable. But it's better than no cool, dry breeze! Whew!

And then yesterday was more running around, again with Heidi & Naomi (I think they feel kinda sorry for me not having a car or having seen much of Brisbane in my 5 years, so they take me out and show me stuff. It's fun.), we tried another Tip Shop then drove up near Redcliffe to have a look at the sea and how much crap might be still floating around out there from the floods. Not much stuff floating at all, but it was just nice to be near the sea and to not have it be blisteringly hot. Then we drove around looking for a good place to have lunch. With happy tummy's they dropped me home where I dove right in to get the chores busted out in honor of the real estate idiots doing an "Invasion" on Tuesday. So I have to make the place presentable....... meaning: hide all cat evidence. And by the time I was finished with that I was dying from the heat and the humidity and there was no way my brain, or my computer, would be able to deal with checking in.

So there you have it. A couple of busy weekends compared to how boring I normally keep them! Oh, and we survived the cyclone fine down here in Brisbane, not even any rain. Further north didn't fare so well, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse if it'd hit Cairns. So, overall the state was pretty lucky. And now the outskirts of poor Perth are on fire and South Australia is flooding! Poor Australia is really copping a hell of a lot of crap from cranky ol' Mother Nature! All we did was suffer through 10 years of drought - why all this at once???! So once Mother Nature has finished hammering the country, feel free to come down and have a look at what's left before she strikes again!

BYE!
J!