Category: Stuff

Aaaaaah…..

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That’s just kind of how I feel at the moment. Things in Wang are settling down, I started my new job which is going well (after my 2nd day of having absolutely nothing to do and no internet access at work to do it on). I walk to and from work some days, and other days I ride. Hubs rides to the hospital each day and has set himself the goal to arrive at 8am each day. So far this is going well. I have a cold which is a be-arch. I haven’t been sick in a VERY long time so I’ve been rather whiny about it. Plus, and this is just so typical, I’m on casual hours here which means no sick leave. Not that I would have taken time off necessarily, but ain’t that just the way? I’m at a job for just under 2 years and could count the number of sick days I took on 1 hand. Then I start a new job, and in the 2nd week I come down with something. Anyway, I’m getting over it.

I head down to Melbourne this weekend for my Marriage Celebrant Professional Development which should be good. Then I’ve booked up my Sunday with lots of coffee dates which I’m really looking forward to. Hubs is going to hit the ski fields tomorrow and have another day of snowboarding (which means 4 or 5 days next week of him being sore). And then I’m up in Brisbane the following weekend, so as you can see, the fun never stops!

I know I keep promising it, but I WILL have some photos (before/during/after unpacking) of our new place just as soon as we get our computers all set up. Hubs is working on that in his minimal spare time.

So yeah, just another little update for y’all, so you know I’m still here. I’m doing well, Hubs is good and Littlefoot just won’t stop kicking. Aaaaaah. Life is good.

A numbers game

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6 – the number of times I’ve used our slow cooker since we arrived in Wang (10 days ago!)
6 – the number of times I’ve gone to St Vinnies to look for dresser drawers to no avail
1 – the number of times we went to St Vinnies and there were 2 sets of PERFECT dresser drawers there for $25 each but had just been sold. (Man I need to let that go!!)
2 – the number of weeks til our broadband is connected
150 – the number of GB we will get with our broadband connection each month. Hellllooooo Skype!
5 – the number of Yoga classes Hubs and I have left on our membership
8 – the number of clear, sunny, beautiful days we have had since arriving in Wang
2 – the number of bicycles we bought at a garage sale on Sunday
1 – the number of Uniting Churches we have visited and have decided to attend
3 – the number of coffee shops we had great lunches at last week
4 – the number of times I have visited one coffee shop in particular
24 – the number of weeks Littlefoot has been growing inside of me
2 – the number of weeks he/she has been kicking like crazy

Inconceivable

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I love The Princess Bride. And I LOVE how Vizzini says “inconceivable” all the time. And then Inigo Montoya says “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” My friend recently bought a copy of the DVD because it came with a key ring that says “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father. Prepare to DIE.” when you press a button. (More memorable quotes can be found here.)

Believe it or not, this post is not about my love for The Princess Bride, though I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that. This post is about moving to Wangaratta. Tomorrow. I mean, we’ve known for 8 months (just think about that for a moment – 8 MONTHS!) that this move was coming. In no way should we have been caught unaware. But here we are, with 24 hours to go, our place filled with packed and to-be-packed boxes, our wardrobe has thrown up all over our room, and we pretty much know the kombi needs a push-start each time we want to start the engine. Fun, oui? Well at least we have a home to go to (yay!) and we have a plan. You gotta have a plan my friends.

Exactly 2 years to the day, we moved to college. And exactly 2 years and 1 day after we moved in, we’ll be leaving. I’ve been looking forward to a bit of a change, but leaving here is filling me with sadness. We have met the most incredible people, been shown the most gracious hospitality, and had some of the best times.

But now it’s time for new adventures to begin; for new friends to be made, and for more good times to be had. I know that it was God’s plan for us to be here at Newman for this time, and I thank him for his great idea often. As I sit writing this, Littlefoot is kicking away (the coolest thing I’ve ever felt in my LIFE) and I know he/she is looking forward to what is to come.

Unnecessarily painful, but a satisfactory result

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As my Mama always says “it’s not what you know, but who you know.”

I’m mostly okay with that. Truly. I understand the way things work. What I resent is not being approved for a property on our own merit, with no good reason whatsoever, but as soon as they find out we know the owner of the business (a.k.a. I give-in out of sheer desperation and ring the owner of the business who we dealt with when we were looking to buy, and tell him what’s been going on for the last 2 weeks) we get a phone call within half an hour saying our application has been successful.

But here’s the clincher. She actually says to me:

“I wish you had told me earlier that you knew Gerald*.”

I was ropeable. My response:

“That should not have mattered. We had a good application with everything you needed, and knowing the owner of the business should not have made a difference.”

I just couldn’t believe she said that to me!! I had considered a week ago to ring the owner, but I didn’t want to involve him. I didn’t want to look like I was using him to get a place. Apparently this would have been quite acceptable, nay, MANDATORY if we wanted to be spared this whole rigmarole.

I’m not going to go in to it any further, other than to say we’re very happy it has been resolved in our favour, and that the owner of the business will be receiving a 4 page letter outlining the goings-on over the last 2 weeks. I just think he would want to know.

Oh, and I have an interview for some casual admin work in Wang on Monday. See? I told you everything would work out.

*name has been changed to protect the awesome.

All night movie marathon…

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…and a triple espresso so you can stay awake.” Okay, so it wasn’t an all night movie marathon, and it was an affogato, not a triple espresso, but we did stay awake! Hubs has been complaining whinging noting that we have been having an earlier bed time than usual – actually, the comments were around the fact that he had a bed time – and wanted to stay up later on the weekends. So I went one better and planned a night of movies on Friday night. We had nothing pressing all weekend, so I figured we could sleep all day Saturday after staying up all night.

I was keen to see Avatar, but we couldn’t get it working on the computer, so we started with Back to the Future III. We had watched I and II in the last couple of months so we completed the trilogy. We then watched Kung Fu Panda which we’ve been meaning to watch for ages and it was SO good! It had laughs all the way through and a lovely message at the end that we can all relate to. The third movie took a bit of deciding on, but we ended up going with The Royal Tenenbaums which I had seen AGES ago and liked it and thought Hubs might too (I was right).

By this stage it was 4:40am and we decided to call it a night. We had consumed choc-dipped strawberries, bullets (my FAVOURITE!!), and I made some choc-dipped snakes as well so we were pretty buzzy but very very sleepy indeed. We crashed into bed and slept soundly… until the phone rang at 10am! Should have thought to put them on silent!! We had another nap that afternoon (from 4-6pm!) and got around to watching Avatar that evening. It was pretty good! As Hubs calls it, Fern Gully with guns, but I really rather enjoyed it. It wasn’t in 3D but I still got the general gist.

So that was our movie marathon weekend! Now it’ll take me a few days to catch up on sleeeeeeeep 🙂

This time last year

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We were in America. Clearly that post isn’t about us being in America. This is what we were doing on 1st of July  2009. Aaaaaah. Chilling at the Lake of the Ozarks with Kimberley and BJ. In all honesty, this was one of the best times of my life. It’s my happy place. I can still feel the humidity of the mid-west; taste the pain-in-the-ass that Kimberley made me and the Reuben burger we had for lunch; and smell that sweet sweet waft of being on holiday with not a care in the world.

And what about this time 2 years ago? Well, I was writing this.

As we prepare for the next step of our journey (and as I continue to put off the packing!) it’s fun to reminisce.

Au Naturel

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I remember when it all began. I was 15 years old and I wanted to dye my hair. Mum was a bit reluctant at first, but I convinced her that a Napro Live Colour, retailing at $4.00 at the time, was a semi-permanent, and might not even make a difference. I’m sure Mum then asked “well if it’s not going to make a difference, then why do it at all” and I’m sure I would have responded with “just becaaaaaauuuuusssse okaaaaaaaay?????” (my negotiation skills were a little light-on when I was 15.) I’m sure the real reason was that all my friends were doing it and I didn’t want to be left behind.

So permission was granted. I’m pretty sure I started with the chestnut colour which made my hair nice and shiny and glossy. And then I was hooked. The thing about Napro semi-permanent dyes, is that they’re actually quite permanent. (Aren’t they Ah-dele!?) I mean, the shine and gloss fades after a week or 2, but the colour certainly stays around. So I was hooked. I moved on to the reds and burgundy colours after that and ever since then, I’ve always had a colour in my hair. Mum actually let me experiment with foils at age 17 and I had some wicked stripes happening for my formal. I looked like a tiger! But mostly, I just went with the all-over-hair dye.

Once I turned 18, the freedom was so overwhelming that I moved on to permanent dyes! Woah! (I also got the top of my ear pierced, got a tattoo, and considered a belly button ring. Oh yeah. It was a big turning point in my life!!)

At 26, and during what I’m sure was a bit of a crisis point in my life, I decided I wanted to go blonde. I had found a hairdresser who worked from home who was happy to oblige (at a good rate too!) and suggested that since I had so much red dye in my hair, caked on over the years, that she would just put a whole lot of foils in. And I didn’t so much go blonde, but ginger. Well, kind of orange. The roots (that didn’t have any dye in them) were a lovely blonde, but the rest, well, not so much.

So I decided to start fresh. Wipe the slate clean. It’s been almost a year since I last dyed my hair. And since I’m pregnant, I also decided that I would wait til the bub is born before I embark on anymore dye jobs. So here’s what my hair looks like in it’s natural state:

(Thankfully you can’t see all the greys!!) And another one, in my natural colour, but waved for a 1920s-themed lunch we went to a few weeks ago:

I’m not sure what I’m going to do once I dye again! How about I try blonde again?! Ha ha. Maybe not. Maybe some cute red tips or something. Am I getting to old for such things!?? NEVER!!

Goodbye Woolies

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I had always been a Coles shopper – the closest Coles to where I grew up was always nicer than the Woolworths – which was just across the road – and parking was easier as well. So I got to know the products and was happy to be a Coles shopper. Even when I moved houses, I would always look for the nearest Coles and choose it over Woolies. Then we moved to Melbourne and the closest supermarket was a Woolworths (or “Safeway” as they call it down here!!!!) so I switched. It wasn’t easy to do, but I made the transition and was quite happy about it. I got to know their products and days when things would go on special etc, and was a convert. I started looking for Woolworths/Safeway when I needed to do a shop. And the funny thing is, the Coles and Woolies near my parents house (the ones previously mentioned) did a bit of a switcheroo on me; the Coles is now dodgy and rubbish and the Woolies has been renovated and is totally awesome.

So I figured, that was it. I was a convert. I figured when we moved to Wang I’d find the nearest Woolies and continue being content. Alas, this will not happen. I will no longer be shopping at Woolworths. The reason? Woolworths is no longer accepting our CommSec Credit/Debit card. It has to be a savings account. Our card won’t work. I went to pay for my purchases and they told me I had to press the “savings” button, even though I told them it wouldn’t work. And what happened? It didn’t work. They said it was the bank that had changed, so I called the bank ready to give them a piece of my mind (albeit, a small piece!) but they assured me the change had come from Woolies.

So I went back to Woolies (the dirty, filthy liars) and asked the check-out chick about it and she told me the truth – that the powers that be at Woolies had decided it cost them too much to process the Credit/Debit card as a credit card, and so they had stopped accepting them. She also thought it was ridiculous. I can’t even change our account to a savings account, so now we’re stuck with a card that won’t work at Woolies.

So they’ve lost a customer. I know I know, I can get money out and pay cash, but it’s the principle. Why should I give them my business if they’re not going to make it convenient for me to pay? So now I have to convert back to Coles; I have to get to know their products and specials and the way they operate. And hope that they accept my card.

Actually, I’m hoping to do all my fruit and veg shopping at markets, and getting meat from a local butcher, and just odds and ends from Woolies Coles. Or maybe Aldi. Hee hee!

Has anyone else been inconvenienced by this?

Skype

/ Renae / 2 Comments

Okay, so I’ll be the first to admit, I’m often a little behind the times when it comes to certain things. Sometimes it takes me ages to give something new a go. And then when I try it and love it, I want to tell everyone how amazing it is.

Take Skype for example. Now, I know that Skype has been around since about 2003 (thanks Wiki) and it’s been something I’ve been meaning to set up, but just never got around to it. Calling cards from Australia are always so cheap so I’ve never bothered much about other forms of communication. Until the stupid calling cards, in their infinite wisdom, changed the validity of the card from 12 months to 6 months, and now 3 months! I went to call my dear friend in the States a couple of weeks ago, only to be told the $8 remaining on my $10 card (my last 45 minute phone call had cost a mere $2) had expired a week before.

Enough was enough. I asked Hubs (very nicely of course) if he could please install Skype on our computer (well, one of them). And it was done! A week later (yesterday), I was chatting to my dear friend in the States and it was as if we were in the same room! We were only using the voice function as we don’t have a webcam, but that will change soon, as Hubs is on the case!

So the verdict: Skype is awesome! You should give it a try some time!!!!*

*Expected response to this last statement: “Uh yeah Wifey, we’ve been using Skype for 5 years dude. Weren’t we the ones who told you to try it ages ago?”

Jersey Boys

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We went to see Jersey Boys – the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons – last night, and it was just fabulous! In retrospect, I  realised that we had the understudy for Frankie Valli, but you wouldn’t have known! He was incredible! And to think that there are 2 people out there with Frankie’s voice!?

We sang along (quietly to avoid too much embarrassment) to songs like Sheree, Big Girls Don’t Cry, Walk Like a Man (fave!), You’re just too good to be true, Oh what a night, and more! It really was an entertaining show that I would highly recommend.