On Top of the World

Around 20 minutes before my tafe class finished last night, someone came to the classroom and told us that there had been a stabbing just outside the building, and so the exit to that road was blocked off and there were police all over the place. I was a little nervous because I didn’t know how long ago the stabbing had occurred, and that was the place I wait for M to pick me up.

When tafe finished I headed towards an alternate exit, and called M to let him know that I may not be able to meet him in the usual spot because of the incident and all the police, but that I’d try to wait as close to that point as I could. I walked around to the usual meeting spot, but there was noone around at all, so I don’t know what time the police left. I heard on the news this morning that the incident had taken place at around 6:30, so that was a couple of hours before my class was finished.

At the time I called M, I was a bit surprised that he didn’t say anything about the stabbing, but I found out this morning that it was because he hadn’t heard what I said, and only caught the part about possibly not being able to meet him in the usual spot. When he realised that the stabbing had occurred right outside tafe, he said I had to quit. Awww. I don’t know what the circumstances surrounding the attack were - I heard that a group of 4 guys attacked the victim, but don’t know whether they knew him or if he was a stranger and they were trying to rob him, or something else.

I guess it gives me the willies knowing that nowhere really is safe, but on the other hand, I can’t really quit tafe because of it. I’m just glad that I wasn’t late for class last night.

We got a call the other day saying that the dining chairs we ordered during the Easter weekend are in. Yay! Unfortunately, we have to pick them up from the warehouse, which is only open Monday - Friday fom 9 until 4. What kind of useless hours are they? So that means we’ll have to leave work at around 3 or so to pick them up. It’ll probably be Thursday, unless M wants to go by himself tomorrow to get them. It will be nice (and strange) to walk through the dining room and see chairs there. We’ll have to have a special celebration dinner on Thursday night.

M is planning his business trip to NYC, which means that we’ll have to decide whether or not I’m going, because if I am, we’re going to stay an extra week, but if not then he’ll only be gone for 1 week. Over the last couple of days I’ve been looking at accommodation for the second week. It seems that November is a peak period, because all the hotel prices tripled for the time we’re going to be there. We could only guess that it’s because there are a lot of trade fairs and conferences on at that time. We thought that surely November wouldn’t be so busy, so it would be easier to find somewhere nice to stay but not spend too much, but it seems that it’s not the case after all.

Regardless of the hotel issue, I was leaning towards going - after all, it seemed a bit odd to turn down an overseas trip for which one airfare and half the accommodation is paid by work. But then Jack peed on the laundry floor again yesterday. He’s been on his strict diet and I really thought it was helping because he hadn’t been on the floor for weeks (I was finally able to approach the laundry without being gripped by a feeling of apprehension), but out of the blue he did it again. So I feel bad for thinking about going away, particularly as we’d be asking my mum to take care of the cats while we’re gone and it’s not exactly a nice thing to clean up someone else’s pet’s wee (let alone your own pet’s wee) off the floor, even if that pet does belong to your daughter. I don’t like the idea of putting him in a cattery, either, mostly because I don’t particularly relish the thought of getting him there, given his feeling on going for nice little drives. I don’t know what to do. At the moment I think it would better for me to stay at home.

Just in case I do go, though, I’ll be on my own for a couple of days while M’s doing his work thing, so do any of you have any suggestions on what might be nice to do by myself? I don’t necessarily mean touristy stuff, either. What do you like doing if you’re on your own? I guess it would have to be something fairly straightforward in terms of getting around - of course, I’ll have a map and don’t mind looking like an obvious tourist if I have to, but I’d rather not be sitting on a bench somewhere turning my map in all directions trying to work out how to get back to the hotel!

I’m feeling quite weary at the moment, because M and I spent a few hours this afternoon painting. We have so many things we’d like to do to our house, and one of those is extending the deck out the front. Since the deck upstairs is a bit spongy, we’ll need to get it replaced, and at the moment we want it to be a slate grey colour. So with that in mind, we thought we’d change the balustrade on our balcony from white to a dark grey.

We sanded and painted the first part with rustproof paint towards the end of April, then did the second part towards the end of May, so it has taken us a while to get the top coat done. It was actually a bit cold today, and the paint became tacky quite quickly, but it’s only going to get colder from here so it’s good that we did it today while there was some sun around.

So… here are a couple of ‘before’ photos:

And this is what it looks like now:

And here’s a picture of my cat, just because he’s cute and he was interested in what we were doing.

It took a lot longer than we thought - it was quite fiddly painting the front and under sides of the rails. We’re mostly pleased with it - it looks ok, although the finish isn’t exactly what we wanted. The cold weather didn’t help. But considering we’re going to extend the deck and replace the fencing anyway, it’s only an interim modification. Goodness knows when we’re going to get it done though, so most likely we’ll be looking at our grey balustrade for a while yet.

Studying 3 nights a week means that I don’t really have as much time as I’d like to post. OK, well that might not be quite true because there are still 4 nights in the week, but I always seem to be doing other stuff. I don’t know what, but there’s a lot of it.

Last weekend was a long weekend for the Queen’s birthday. On Saturday, M and I drove to Dublin. Alas, not Dublin, Ireland, but Dublin SA. Not comparable by any stretch of the imagination. The idea was to go there to see whether it was an up and coming area that we could buy cheap real estate in, and then the area would be developed and the value of our investment would skyrocket. That plan was unfortunately laid to rest when we arrived and saw that there really was nothing there, and a good amount of faith and foresight would be required in order to invest. We drove to a nearby beach, but that didn’t look like a worthy investment prospect either. So I think we have to shift our holiday house dreams back to Ardrossan, which is still my idyllic getaway spot after the last time we visited.

On Monday I decided that I needed to get some warmer clothes, so I went shopping at one of those clearance shopping centres - I can’t think of what they’re called now, but you know what I mean. The retail shops that have the same stuff as the normal shops but are a lot cheaper. Anyway, I tried on quite a lot of stuff considering how much I hate clothes shopping, and bought a few things. Not many warm things, but things I can wear to work anyway so it was still productive. The one purchase I was especially pleased with (and the one warm thing I bought) was a Dolce and Gabbana top reduced from $235 to $49. I saw it there and thought it might not fit, but for $49 I was going to give it a shot anyway. And it did fit, so that was even better. So my wardrobe now contains one ‘designer’ item. Just let me think I’m cool even if I’m not, ok? They had lots of other designer stuff, but nothing that met both my criteria of being in my size and not being ridiculously expensive. That’s the problem with outlet stores - even though they’re meant to be cheaper, often they’re not really that much different. Or maybe I’m just a tight-arse who doesn’t want to part with money.

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I downloaded the new version of Google Earth and have been enjoying looking at pictures of places all over the world, and marking spots I’ve been. They’ve got new, high resolution photos now, so you can zoom in enough to see our house, whereas before it wasn’t on the maps. I was looking at various parts of Australia and have decided that I’d like to go to Uluru, Alice Springs and Darwin. I’ve seen virtually nothing of the country I live in. Maybe a trip on the Ghan (the train which goes from Adelaide to Darwin, through Alice Springs) is in order. When I looked up Uluru, I was actually a little surprised because I never knew it looked like that from the top. All the pictures I’ve ever seen of it have been a nice, regular-looking rock shape, so when I saw it I initially thought that it couldn’t be it. But now I realise what part I’ve been seeing in all those photos. I’m actually a bit embarrassed and ashamed that I didn’t know something so basic about such a major Australian landmark.

My mobile phone battery has been flat for the past few days and I haven’t been able to recharge it because I can’t find the charger anywhere. Not that I’ve looked in terribly many places, only the ones it’s usually in. No luck. So I bought a retractable USB charger cable on eBay today for $1.50. Bargain. Postage is $6 from Hong Kong but $7.50 is still pretty cheap. I’ll be able to keep it at work so if I do find my charger, it’s not like I have another one that’s totally unnecessary.

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Jack (my cat) is on a special diet for his possible UTI. This means that we have to feed both cats separately, as he is absolutely not allowed to eat anything other than the diet food, and the vet said it’s not a good idea for our other cat to eat that food unless it’s necessary (which fortunately it’s not because the food costs nearly $30 for a 1.5 kg bag and he has to be on the diet for another 5 weeks). So I’ve got two separate containers with their food in them, and I have to hang around while they eat in the morning, and then put the lids back on the containers so they can’t eat any of the other’s food during the day while we’re out. It makes life rather difficult, particularly because they are used to being able to graze during the day and night whenever they want, so Jack especially is quite vocal when we get home from work. And because they can’t eat anything during the night either, Jack has started the somewhat annoying habit of jumping up on the bed right next to my head and placing his face right up close to mine while I’m asleep, in an attempt to get me out of bed. I’m looking forward to the end of the diet.

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It’s now winter. Apparently this was the coldest May since 18-something-or-other. The past few nights I’ve had to leave my electric blanket on all night (which I virtually never need to do) because by morning, the sheets are feeling a little cold. I don’t exactly feel cold, but I don’t feel all snuggly and warm the way you should during winter.

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M is going to New York for a conference at the end of November, and it’s slightly possible I’ll go with him. The conference goes for 2 days, and we were going to spend a couple of weeks there, but I probably won’t go. Well, I don’t know. On the one hand, of course I’d love to go (duh!), but on the other, it’s going to be pretty expensive for such a short trip, even though M’s flights and some of the accommodation will be paid for, and we thought that maybe we should keep the money so we can do boring stuff like eat, and pay our various bills. But also interesting stuff like possibly go on a holiday to New Zealand sometime. If we can get a cheap flight and find some not-too-outlandishly-expensive accommodation, I may go. We’ll see.

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In other M news, we’re splitting up. In a work sense that is. I’m sure most of you know that we work together; well, there are too many people in our current office, so some of us (including me) are being moved to a different location. It’s pretty close to where we are now, so we’ll still go to work together, but it’s not convenient walking distance away, so we’ll have to be like normal couples and go to work in separate offices and only see each other at the end of the day. It’s going to be really weird. I told a friend of mine at tafe about it and she said that there’s no way she could work with her partner and couldn’t stand seeing him all day every day, and before I met M I was also of the opinion that I’d never get into a relationship with someone I work with, but now that I’m in one it’s actually pretty nice. We don’t work on the same project, and we work in separate rooms in the same building, so we’re not under each other’s noses. But we have lunch together, and smile at each other when I walk past his office to get a coffee, and we occasionally pop in and say hi during the day. I know we’ll get used to being in different locations, but that’s the thing - I don’t want to get used to it.

I wrote a hugely long post about our trip to Clare, but as I was reading it I felt extremely bored, so I thought I’d start again with a slightly abbreviated version. So.

Overall it was very good, despite it being very cold and wet. We paid $22 each for the shuttle bus, which ferried people around to the 15 or so wineries participating in the weekend. The bus did not come at set times, so it was a bit of a tossup as to know when to make a move when you were ready to try out the next place. The bus didn’t actually drop people off at the wineries either, but instead at the side of the road so you had to walk up the long driveway to get to the action. I didn’t think that was terribly good planning; I would much rather wait for a bit longer in between buses and have it drive you right up than have more frequent buses and have to walk a kilometre each way. So on the one hand, at least it meant that we didn’t have to worry about how much we drank, but on the other it wouldn’t have mattered much anyway because I only had 2 glasses all day and M had 3.

We went to 3 wineries - the first was the worst because it was a marquee set up outside on bare dirt, which was actually a huge pool of mud due to the rain. The second was better, because at least the marquee was set up on lawn, so there weren’t as many slushy bits. The third was the best because it was all gravel. Yes, my opinion really did rest on the condition of the ground. But we had a really nice dessert at the 2nd and third ones, so it wasn’t entirely ground-related.

We got back to the hotel at around 4, only to find that the owners weren’t there - they’d gone out to enjoy the Gourmet Weekend. We left a message for them on voicemail, and had to wait around 45 minutes in our car before they came back. When we got to our room, we were freezing and M got the open fire going. Initially a lot of smoke came into the room, so that there was a uniform haze throughout, but eventually it went where it was supposed to. We then thought a spa would be nice. And how nice it was. Aaaaaahhhh.

After the spa we spent the night curled in front of the fire watching tv, eating chocolates and drinking port. This would have been great if our eyes weren’t stinging from the smoke! So, an open fire is great in theory but not so great in practice - from our experience anyway.

In the morning we cooked our breakfast (the breakfast provisions came with the room) - bacon, eggs, tomato and toast. I had a bacon and tomato sandwich - yummy. What was a bummer was having to wash our dishes, which I guess makes sense but still isn’t the ideal end to a nice weekend. After putting some of the cereals in our bag (hey, we paid for it!), we headed off to a winery in Mintaro before driving home. A very nice weekend!

We had pizza for tea tonight. I had 7 pieces. Yes, 7. All together now… OINK! It was really nice though, and a lot of the pieces I had were pretty small. Does that make it better?

I’m really looking forward to Sunday. M and I are going to Clare for their annual Gourmet Weekend. It’s a food and wine thing (for those who might not know, the Clare Valley is a major South Australian wine-making district) that’s being held on the Saturday and Sunday, but we’re going up on Sunday (since Sunday is the day when all the wineries have lots of yummy food on offer), staying the night and coming back on Monday. The place we’re staying at is a self-contained room, with an open fire and provisions for a cooked breakfast. It will be nice to sit in front of the open fire, sipping wine and eating chocolates (I bought some chocolates on Monday for us to take there).

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In other news, I’m starting an Auslan bridging course next week. The aim of the course is to give students more experience with signing to people from a whole range of backgrounds, and learn to adapt their signing according to who they’re talking to, such as different levels of education, or different age groups - much like we automatically do when we’re speaking to different people.

It’s held on Thursdays until the end of the year (with breaks during normal school holidays), which means that I’ll be studying three nights a week now. I’m looking forward to the course - I really hope that I make some improvements this year. I can’t remember whether I mentioned this before (although I’m pretty sure I did), but I decided to make some videos of myself practising my Auslan, in the hope that I’ll be able to watch at the end of the year and see how much I’ve improved. So another reason for doing the bridging course is so I can get some more practice. I need to do them more often though because I don’t think I’m getting enough practice. I’ve only made 8 so far.

In order to do the bridging course, I had to go to an interview. There were 4 people there altogether (not including me) - two hearing people who work at DeafSA, a Deaf man (who I knew already) from DeafSA, and an interpreter for him. The first part of the interview was spoken, and they just wanted to know a bit about my educational background and how much Auslan I’d done. The second part was signed, and they told me to sign a story, just so they could see my signing style and expression. The third part was readback, where I watched two videos, each with a Deaf person talking about growing up, ie their education, job etc. They stopped the video every so often and I had to tell them what was being said.

As soon as I was told about the video part I started stressing. I was so worried I wouldn’t have a clue what they were signing, but it wasn’t too bad. I did miss a couple of things, but they seemed happy enough with me. So I got in, and enrolled last Monday. I’ll know quite a few people in the class, so that will be good.

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My cat is still occasionally peeing on the floor. M got a sample today and took it to the vet after work. They rang a little while ago with the results, and said that there was a lot of blood in his urine She’s going to do some more tests on the blood tomorrow to see whether it is an infection or whether there are crystals in the urine. My poor baby.

I’ve decided to jump on the YouTube bandwagon, inspired by Steph and the videos she made of her cat. Having decided to make videos, I was faced with the dilemma of what to video, and what to use. My digital camera produces ridiculously large (ie tens of Mb for not much time) videos, and my PDA produces good-sized ones but the size of the picture itself is tiny, and the video quality isn’t very good.

Since my PDA was closest at hand, I decided to give it a try, and was then on the hunt for subject material. Well, everyone knows that when you’re trying to use up film in your camera (in the days when you still used film) you take photos of your pets, so Jack was the perfect guinea pig. So I made a video of him playing with his shoelace - click here for the result. Right at the beginning of the video he scratched me - ow! I have several scratches from playing with the shoelace with him. If you view it in its original size, the quality is passable, but it’s so tiny you have to squint to see it. The default size is quite fuzzy but oh well.

So, since that video wasn’t too great, I thought I’d video the goats near my house when I went on my walk, but this time using my digital camera. When I got there, there were two goats at the fence, and the rest were sitting over the other side of the enclosure. Surprisingly they didn’t come over while I was doing the first video: Feeding the goats Part I

Right after I stopped videoing, they started fighting - typical. I caught the last fraction of a second of it in the next one: Feeding the goats Part II

I wanted to feed the smaller one, but he kept running away! The other goat seems to have taken over from the Big Bully Goat, but only because BBG was still over the other side. Feeding the goats Part III

Finally the Big Bully Goat had had enough of being a wallflower and came to join the action: Feeding the goats Part IV

The videos are quite blocky, which they aren’t on my computer, so I don’t know whether it lost quality when it was uploaded. I didn’t know how big they were going to be (and didn’t know what the size limits for YouTube are), so I did it on a lower setting, but I’ll try the higher quality setting next time, to see how much of a difference it makes.

Today was end of month drinks at work. I don’t always drink alcohol at the end of month dos, but today I had a couple of glasses of wine. As usual with me these days, that was enough to get me drunk. Not rip-roaring drunk but certainly tipsy enough to lose some inhibitions.

Anyway, I always thought that I was a Quiet Drunk, since I tend to become even more introverted than I usually am, but today I’ve changed my mind. I think I’m a Nice, Tolerant Drunk. I had a chat to a guy at work I usually avoid as much as possible, and even though I knew his replies were the inane stuff he usually comes out with, it didn’t bother me at all. I became someone I wish I were all the time. I think I should drink more often.

Finally, after nearly three years of marriage, M and I are going to have dining chairs. Yes, we really are! Our dining table came with the house, as the previous owner was a cabinet maker and made the dining table himself, and left it here when they moved out. Unfortunately, they took the chairs and we haven’t got around to replacing them.

Until today!

Well, early next week really. We decided that we should look for some this weekend, so we went down to the Homemaker Centre, which is a big shopping centre with lots of furniture and homewares shops. We went into one shop, but didn’t really find anything we liked. We continued up the strip of shops, when we found one that had chairs similar to the style and colour we wanted.

We talked to the woman there, and asked if it would be possible to get the chairs made in leather, to which she said yes, but that they would cost an extra $150 per chair (I think the chairs were around $300 as they were). So we asked if the chairs that they had were easy to keep clean (they were a white, microfibre fabric). She said it would be fairly easy to clean, and then asked if we wanted white leather. When we said yes, she got a horrified look on her face and said that she would never let anyone wearing jeans sit on them because the colour would run into the leather, which would be impossible to get out.

So we went back to the fabric ones again, with M asking how easy it would be to get cat hair off them. The woman said, “I’ve got a great book - 99 ways to kill your cat.” OK, whatever. She thought she was hilarious of course, as people making cat-hating comments always do. She said that she has a dog and is always vacuuming after him. She then asked how old the cats were. When M said they were around 4, the woman said, “Do they know where the road is?”

Ummm… what?

M and I just looked at each other. Then M said “OK, thankyou” and we walked out. Rude bitch. I couldn’t care less whether or not she likes cats, but to say something like that to a potential customer is not the way to make a sale.

We then went into the furniture shop next door, and within 10 seconds found some nice cream leather chairs that we’ve measured and think will be OK for our table. And they’re on sale and in stock! So now we just have to order them, and we should have them on Tuesday or Wednesday. I’m really looking forward to our first meal at our dining table. It’s only been three years, but we got there in the end!