On Top of the World

I think it’s kind of depressing that it was pitch black at 7:00 tonight. It felt like I should be going to bed or something. Sigh. The good side is that when October comes round, I’ll be all happy and say “How cool is it that it’s still broad daylight at 7 pm?”. Only 7 months to go.

On a happier note, it’s my Nanna’s birthday on Wednesday, so Matthew, my parents and I went to visit her at Wallaroo. The air conditioning isn’t working in my dad’s car, so the trip up wasn’t very pleasant. Plus it was dusty, and having the windows open made it really noisy, and blew my hair everywhere, so I wasn’t in a very good mood. It was good to get to my Nanna’s place and stand in front of the fan.

The visit was good - we had lunch, then spent the afternoon watching the football. I played a bit of Scrabble too…

By the time we left, it had cooled down a lot, and the car was quite pleasant to be in, which meant I was in an excellent mood. The trip back always seems so much shorter than the trip there. I wonder why that is?

I have a new addiction.

If you like Scrabble, and you have a PDA, then give Handmark’s Scrabble a go - it’s great fun! I’m totally hooked. I have officially replaced my Yahdice addiction with a Scrabble addiction.

I am currently in the process of checking out their other offerings… I tried to put Monopoly on there, but it crashed all the time, so I had to take it off

I went down to Semaphore with Matthew today because he had a hair appointment. While he was having his hair cut, I went for a walk down near the beach. It just so happened that there was a kite-flying thing on today, so I got to see lots of people flying their cool-looking kites.

There were some rides there (mostly for kids), and they had hot cinnamon donuts too and dagwood dogs etc - just like the show! I love hot cinnamon donuts, and had to restrain myself from buying a couple.

It’s a shame that it was so hot today, and that I didn’t have a hat or any sunscreen on, or I would have taken more of a look around.

After the haircut, we had lunch at Cafe Primo. It was nice enough, but the back part opens into the gaming area of the Semaphore Hotel, so that area was quite smoky-smelling. No wonder noone was sitting down there. So we sat outside and watched people walk past while we ate our lunch. All in all a very nice time!

Every so often (and it seems to get more and more often these days) I go through phases. These phases are almost invariably to do with cool things that I cannot afford, but I convince myself that if I read enough about them, somehow they will be that much closer to me.

I’m now back to my PDA search. I’m spending ridiculous amounts of time on eBay looking at different models, seeing how much they all are, and kidding myself that if something is cheap with 3 days to go, it will still be cheap at the end of the auction. Right. But I keep looking, just in case something turns up.

I’m also looking at all sorts of accessories for the PDAs, and which ones I’d get. It’s quite fun looking at all these things, but bummeriffic at the same time that I can’t just say “I’ll have one of these, and one of those… oh, that looks good! I’ll have one of those too…”

On a happier eBay note, I’ve got all the things I bought on eBay, and I’m very happy with them! I went to my PO Box today because I thought I had 1 parcel there (a card had been left for me saying that there was something to be picked up), and there were 4 things! When I got them home and started opening them, I felt as though it were my birthday! Except I knew what all the presents were, and I bought them all myself. But still. Getting parcels in the mail rocks!

I watched World’s Strongest Man today… what an excellent show! I saw the women’s version last weekend, and like that time, I just came across it by fluke. Cooooool!

In one of the events, they had to carry two 120kg weights a specified distance, and then drag an enormous anchor (can’t remember how much that weighed) to the end of the course, within 60 seconds. With the exception of one or two, the guys were fairly level with the weights, but when it came to the anchor, while most of the guys were struggling with it, falling over backwards while trying to pull it across the line, one guy did a quick jog backwards with it, making it look as though he was dragging a novelty styrofoam anchor instead of the real thing.

I’m hoping they’ll show the conclusion tomorrow - they had the events, and said who was in the finals, but then the show ended!

I’ve decided to write about something that I’ve been wondering on and off for a while now. I think I feel comfortable enough with you all to pose this question, but if you’re new to this site, or don’t really want to know the sort of things I think about, then maybe you’d better stop reading this post now…

Auslan was really good last night - we did a session on Deaf culture. I find it fascinating; I could do a separate course on that alone. I thought it was going to be about Deaf culture in general, but our teacher told us a little about her own experiences as well, which was really interesting.

There was also an interpreter there for the class. Whenever I see an interpreter working, it always makes me feel so strongly that this is something I really want to know how to do. It also emphasises how far I’ve got to go - I have learnt an incredible amount in the short time I’ve been studying this year, but when it comes to actually having a proper conversation with a Deaf person, all the vocabulary I know is useless if I can’t put it together.

Hopefully one day I’ll be trying to imagine what it was like when I didn’t know Auslan, instead of the other way around.

I hope you all had fun at the meetup - if it had been on the 22nd, as it said on the Adelaide Blogs site, I would have been able to make it, but today is my sister’s birthday, so we did the give-presents-and-eat-dinner thing at my parents’ place. I’ll definitely be at the next one though!

I won another item on eBay, and got outbid on another item Oh well, another day, another new thing! I should really stop bidding. Hopefully I’ll sort out the stuff I want to sell soon.

My page is stuffed. Links don’t open where I want them to, my (oh so stylish) banner is gone and my continuation thingie isn’t working. Waaa! I didn’t even think I’d changed anything! Time to go back to the drawing board and attempt to fix it.

If anyone can see what I’ve done wrong, please tell me!

I just tried putting the default mainindex file in there, but it didn’t fix the problem - comments are still not being opened in a new window, and all the other stuff isn’t working either. Bugger.

I’ve been consumed by the Ebay monster.

It’s all Dida’s fault!! She happened to mention in passing about some stuff she’s looking at on Ebay, and that’s when it all started. Everything I thought I could possibly ever want, I started looking up; there are a hell of a lot of cheap things there! So I’ve gone nuts, bidding on all sorts of things :/ It’s not healthy, but I can’t stop!

So I am now the proud owner of my first 2 items! I registered with Ebay last year sometime, when I was going through a mobile phone phase, but never won anything. Now I’m addicted. I even got up at 8:35 (yes that’s right - 8:35 on a Sunday!) this morning to catch the last few minutes of an item that I was bidding on, since I wanted to be ready to put in a last-second bid if someone outbid me (which someone did yesterday… grrr). But it wasn’t necessary, because I won it. If it looks all right, then I’ll be quite pleased with it!

Now Matthew and I are going to do a round up of stuff here that we might be able to sell. I need money to feed my new habit!