On Top of the World

When I was doing some Christmas shopping in town the other day, I walked into Target and in the entrance there was a kid who travelled in a neat little circle, and then kept on walking into the store. I didn’t think of anything of it at first, but then thought ‘hang on a sec, that kid didn’t walk just then, how did he do that?’ I looked at his shoes when he was walking off, thinking that he must have had roller blades on or something, but he didn’t. Then after a step or two, I noticed that there were two wheels in the sole of his shoes, in the heel part. Cool man! They would have been particularly handy when I was on my walk today, and I got to the downhill part - it’d be brilliant fun to cruise down the hill with those cool shoes! In reality, however, I probably would have travelled a metre or so, then landed flat on my arse. Damn gimmicks!

1. What was your biggest accomplishment this year?
Marrying my best friend and true soul mate.

2. What was your biggest disappointment?
I don’t think I can think of anything for this one!

3. What do you hope the new year brings?
Happiness, health and lots of love

4. Will you be making any New Year’s resolutions? If yes, what will they be?
I’ve made so many New Year’s resolutions I haven’t kept that I’ve stopped making them. But I would like to go walking a bit more regularly.

5. What are your plans for New Year’s Eve?
Matthew and I are planning to head into the city and see what’s around. I was determined to go out and do something this year, because last New Year’s Eve was spent watching 4 hours of Red Dwarf on UKTV! Now, I’m a big fan of RD, but 4 hours was just a wee bit too much for me on that day of the year.

I hope you all had a great day yesterday. I had lunch at my parents’ place, then later in the day went to see Matthew’s side of the family. Ate way too much, so the day was pretty good!

Today was spent sleeping in, painting the floor at Matthew’s house, and then going to hospital to visit friends who had a baby on Christmas Eve. She’s so cute and tiny!

We might check out some sales tomorrow, but other than that, it’ll be just another day on holidays! Only a week to go… this first week has gone so fast

I am so buggered. I spent 5 hours today walking around town. For the first hour or so I was in there, it wasn’t too bad in terms of crowds, but from around lunch time on, it was packed. I got stuck behind numerous slow people who would amble along, and then just suddenly stop and start thinking about something. Grrr. But I am now finished shopping, and can relax.

I went for a walk with Matthew a little while ago, which was good, apart from my already-aching legs. The fact that there are precious few pieces of flat land around here meant that I felt like stopping for a rest way too soon. But it was nice outside, and I like going for walks. It was bloody hard walking up the stairs to get to the computer after we got home, though!

…here’s this week’s Friday Five!

1. List your five favourite beverages
i) water
ii) cocoa
iii) Cooper’s Pale Ale
iv) Mexican Punch at Cha-Chi’s
v) Wine

2. List your five favourite websites
i) Flip Flop Flyin’
ii) The Gadgeteer - you might like this one, Dida!
iii) Survivor
iv) Freeware Palm
v) Le Tour de France/Tour Down Under

3. List your five favourite snack foods
i) Chocolate - only if it’s Cadbury though
ii) Potato chips
iii) Pizza
iv) Mangoes
v) Butter cookies

4. List your five favourite board and/or card games
i) Hearts
ii) Scumbags (a card game I used to play a lot at uni - I’m not sure if I can remember all the rules now!)
iii) Tri-ominos
iv) Scrabble
v) Upwords

5. List your five favourite computer and/or game system games
i) Solitaire - not because it’s my favourite, purely because I play it all the time
ii) Minesweeper - ditto above
iii) Theme Hospital
iv) Donald Duck - a game I used to play when I was little and my dad brought home the C64 from work… I got a C64 emulator and play it occasionally… it’s just so cute!
v) Any car racing game

On holidays at last. Wheeeee! Today wasn’t productive work-wise, since we had a staff meeting in the morning, then a lunch/piss up in the afternoon. So now I’m free for two weeks, and have to work out what I’m going to do with myself!

I had an excellent time at the blog meetup on Wednesday, it was good meeting up with Dida and Helen. I got there fairly early, and walked up and down Melbourne St a bit, then thought I’d get a coffee and cake before I went in. I was actually a bit nervous. I wasn’t sure how I was going to know who was there for the meetup; I was expecting to have to walk around the whole hotel a couple of times and hope that I saw something that gave me a hint. Thank goodness Dida was reading her Auslan dictionary, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been game enough to go up to her! But the three of us had a great chat, and I’m looking forward to the next one. Maybe a bit of a meal next time?

Not really much else to report. More Christmas shopping on the weekend, and then enjoying sleeping in during the week. Yay holidays!

I’m finally getting around to writing about a subject dear to my heart Of course I was glued to the television on Sunday and yesterday, watching the final two eps of Survivor. I was so glad that Jon didn’t win - yippeeee!!! I am glad that Sandra won, although surely Lill knew that she made a big mistake taking Sandra to the final two with her and not Jon? She must have known that she was as good as signing Sandra’s cheque. But anyway. If it were me, I would have had to weigh up the different scenarios, like if I were going to lose, would I rather see Jon win the money, or Sandra? No question there. And also, I’d gain some satisfaction knowing that Jon would have to give the $1 million to someone by being on the jury and having to vote, rather than be in the final two and just seeing what happened. I don’t know whether that final point would be worth the $900,000 difference in prizemoney if things didn’t go the right way, since there’d be no way of being absolutely sure that you’d win against Jon. I mean, you’d probably be pretty sure, but there’d still be this niggling question of “what if they voted for him instead?” So I probably would have gone with Sandra too. I mean, what if I’d gone with Jon and he’d ended up winning? That would just be too much to bear.

I just had a midnight snack - reminds me of the days when I used to sleep over at friends’ places in primary school…

My tenants move in tomorrow, so tonight after work was spent getting a trailer and loading the dregs of my possessions still at the house into it and somewhere else. I’m just so glad that there won’t be any more weekends of going there to ‘get things ready for the tenants’, and to try to make the house more attractive to renters. All done! I can look forward to my weekends again.

They ‘officially’ move in tomorrow, but I gave one of them the keys yesterday, and when I got there tonight, they had already moved some stuff in. It was weird seeing someone else’s stuff in my house, well, their house now I guess. And the house smelled different, which was also weird. Sigh. I was a bit sad at the thought that I’ll never live there again, and there’ll always be someone else there, making it their home. Welcome to the world of landlordiness. But on the other hand, it greatly helps the financial situation

Today started off ok, then got crap, then improved a little. I was all ready to get into work, and make some significant progress on the program that has to be finished by Wednesday next week so that it can be installed before the Christmas break starts. But instead, I spent a good part of the day debugging access violations. I was getting so frustrated, and was certain that I wouldn’t be able to meet the deadline. But towards the end of day I changed my approach (thanks to some advice from someone, which I initially thought would be a pain to change everything around for, but didn’t turn out to be so bad), and that seems to have fixed things. On the one hand, that’s good, because now I don’t have exceptions and violations coming out of everywhere, but on the other, it’s annoying because I still don’t know what caused them in the first place. But at this point, I’m happy to just have the regular bugs to fix. So maybe I’ll finish in time after all.

Survivor tonight wasn’t much in the way of “I can’t believe he (usually Jon) did that”, but was still ok. After watching the show, I look forward to Fridays so I can get updated on what’s just been shown in the US. Sad I know Poor Darrah looks as though she weighs less than the immunity sword she was wearing - she seemed to have a hard time taking it off before the challenge. I’ll be a bit miffed if she wins, she’s been such a non-entity so far. I think the first time I remember seeing her talking one-on-one with the camera like everyone else does was last week. Before then she hardly said a word. I don’t know who I want to win. There isn’t really anyone I suppose. At this stage, it seems that Burton has everything going in his favour, and if he gets into the final two with Jon as he’s planning, I can’t see Jon winning it. But maybe the women will turn on the guys and vote them off, although strategically it’s probably best to keep Jon around. I’ll have to wait until Sunday and Monday (wooow, 2 days in a row!!) to find out what happens in the end. But I’m pretty lukewarm on everyone, so it probably won’t be a case of “I’m glad he/she won”.