On Top of the World

Another day was spent cleaning stuff out of M’s house today. My legs and arms are buggered from walking to and from the skip, piling things into it, and then spending what felt like ages washing walls. The good news is that the skip is pretty much full, and there are only a few things left to put in tomorrow. Unfortunately there’s still a bit of painting to do, but not very much. Oh, except for the trim we’ve decided to do in the other room. Sigh. But it really does need to be done, and will make a big improvement. We’re still hoping to be finished by our previously-estimated due date of next weekend, which is when we planned to go out for dinner to celebrate the renovations and cleaning up being over.

I was covered in dust by the end of the day, so as soon as I got home I had a shower. Isn’t it amazing how much difference a shower can make? I feel so nice and refreshed now.

… is to make sure you have the support of your readers before you have a dig at someone else’s blog.

I just want to thank the people who defended me (there were 4, but only 2 left URLs) - sure, that post isn’t going to win any literature awards, but it’s my blog and I’ll post about whatever the hell I want to post about.

To the people who have nothing better to do than trawl the web looking for posts they can ridicule - people aren’t interested. Quoting someone else’s post and then adding one or two disparaging sentences of your own around it isn’t content. Think of your own subjects - if you can.

I had some wine with dinner, and now I’m a teensy bit tipsy *giggle* How sad is that - I only had about a glass and a half… I guess I really am a Cadbury girl.

M’s listening to a Cure CD downstairs - I can hear it from here. At least, I think that’s what he’s listening to. I went to school with The Cure’s lead singer’s cousin. There’s some trivia that I’ve probably mentioned before. I try to slip it into conversation every now and then - it’s as close to fame as I’m ever going to get, apart from being related to Andrew Gaze. Exactly - Andrew who now? He’s a basketballer. But I’m so distantly related to him that there probably isn’t really any similarity in our DNA at all. Oh, and I saw Billy Connolly when I was in Sydney a couple of times ago. I was just one of those sad people who thought, ‘Hey, there’s Billy Connolly!’. I only thought it because I was there by myself and didn’t have anyone to nudge and point him out to, like everyone else around him was doing. So he probably thought I was really cool and blasé about the whole Him-Being-Famous thing. Either that, or he thought that I was a sad git with no friends to tell about my run-in with fame.

I’m debating whether to have another glass of wine. That’s my problem when I have a few drinks - I start feeling nice and happy-fuzzy, and I want to prolong the feeling, so I drink a bit more, and before I know it I’m crouching over the toilet wondering when exactly the transition from happy-fuzzy to tummy-yucky occurred. Ewww. After my high school reunion, never again. Too humiliating to think about.

What the hell - one more glass of wine won’t kill me.

Aaaaah, that’s better. Okily dokily, off to finish my wine!

Has anyone noticed recently that Kit Kats taste different? I used to really like them, but I had one today and it just didn’t taste quite right. As if they’ve changed the chocolate recipe or something. Very disappointing. I also used to like Freddos more when they weren’t made by Cadbury - is that blasphemy? Even though Cadbury is the best chocolate ever, there was something so yummy about Freddos.

OK, so painting is fun and everything - you get instant results after all - but I am sooo over it now. I think I just have a quota where I enjoy it, and then once the quota has been filled, I want to stop STRAIGHT AWAY. I think one more go with the paintbrush, and that will be it. And I mean it. There were some bits of trim that were really pissing me off, because the paint was soaking in instead of sitting on the surface (we didn’t bother priming that bit since it was a last minute decision to paint it), but hopefully the next coat will be all it needs. I’ll have to start taking some ‘after’ photos so I can compare them with the ‘before’ ones.

Now we just have to hire a skip so we can dump all the crap we’ve been cleaning out. M pulled down two ancient greenhouses, so there’s a lot of junk lying around. I pulled out a couple of poles, which was hard work for my bony girl arms. You know when you’re trying with all your strength to move something, but it’s not moving an inch and your arms feel like jelly? I was like that with the second pole until I wiggled it around in the ground a bit. I was determined to get that sucker out! So now I’ve got jumbo quadriceps from crouching all day, and jumbo biceps from pulling out poles. Why waste money on a gym membership?

All this housey stuff leaves me feeling pretty gypped out of my weekends. We’ve decided to go to a really nice restaurant to celebrate once we’ve finished cleaning out the house. We’ve set the day for Saturday week, so just under a couple of weeks away. I’m looking forward to it - it’s been a while since we went to a fancy restaurant.

And writing the word ‘restaurant’ made me think of this: the word for a person who runs a restaurant is ‘restaurateur’, NOT ‘restauranteur’! Grrr. I saw it on tv recently and it annoys me every time. And just one more gripe - a reporter on the news the other day said ‘nothink’ instead of ‘nothing’ - pardon?? Who are they getting to read the news these days? *shakes head in wonder*

We did some more painting at M’s house today - I was going over the trim that was still a bit patchy, making it look all white and sparkly. It’s looking really good - painting the trim makes all the difference to the room. There are still some bits that will need another coat, so I’m going to do that tomorrow. Hopefully then I’ll be finished with the painting. Even though I do like painting, my knees do get a bit weary of being knelt on all day. Still, I’ve got quadriceps of steel now from all the crouching! Well, not really, but it feels as though there’s something there.

Before we went to M’s house, we went to an auction around the corner from us. We’d had a look at the house a couple of weekends ago, and thought we’d have a stickybeak at the auction to see how much it went for. As it turns out, pretty much everyone was there to have a stickybeak, because noone bid at all. There were two vendors’ bids, and that was it. It seems that selling your house by direct sale is the way to go these days - people just don’t buy at auctions any more. There are so many auction shows on tv at the moment, and it seems more often than not that they are passed in. I think if I were to sell my house, I’d go for a normal sale - an auction would make me too nervous.

I had a really nice risotto for tea tonight - after all our hard work today, we decided to go out for dinner on the way home, so we went to a cafe near our house. I am totally hooked on risotto - it’s fabulous. Well, when it’s done right - I had one recently that wasn’t very nice at all. I think the place I had it at did a bit of a rush job on it; either that, or they have no idea how to make risotto.

I have seen mention of NaNoWriMo on a few people’s blogs recently. I entertained the notion of participating for, oh, around a minute or so. While I think the idea is great, I don’t think I’m cut out for it. I hate writing essays, which is one of the reasons I decided to study the sciences at university. Writing my 1000-word essay (which I know isn’t very long) for Auslan was bad enough, but the thought of writing the equivalent of 50 of those things in a month doesn’t really fill me with enthusiasm. Maybe I could ‘audit’ NaNoWriMo - you know, not actually sign up for it, but participate all the same, so if I fail then I won’t go in the hall of fame for people who tried and sucked.

But to all of you who enjoy writing, and can think of something that you can write 50,000 words about, why not give it a go?

I had the toilet to myself at work today. I’m one of two women at the office, and the other woman works part time, so there are 2-3 days per week that I’m the only woman there. There’s only one women’s toilet, which is also the disabled toilet. Because it’s a disabled toilet, there has to be enough room for a wheelchair to enter and manoeuvre around, so it is quite a decent sized room. Certainly beats the crappy cubicles that the guys have to use. So anyway, it’s like I have my own dedicated toilet there. Pretty neat. And the rail next to the toilet (for disabled people) makes a nice arm rest when you’re doing your business.

Happy 19th birthday to sweet Queen Mo - have a brilliant day! I’ll have a drink (or two) for you at lunch time

We did some more painting today, and before we got started I went for a walk to the shop to get some masking tape. I went into one of the discount variety shops to get some, and of course I had a look around at the other stuff. I love looking in those shops - they’ve got so much cheap, yet strangely attractive, crap. If something crappy costs $2, then it’s not really crappy, because it’s only $2, right? What do you expect for $2?

I’ve noticed quite often that when I’m shopping (especially in supermarkets), and I pay by credit card, the pen the person gives me to sign with is quite cool. Not that it’s made by Cross or anything. It could be a cool-looking design, or it’s nice and chunky (I like chunky pens), or the colours on the barrel are nice. Whatever it is, I find myself wanting one of those cool-looking Supermarket Pens. And then, in this discount variety store, here they were, right in front of me, in a pack of 5 Supermarket Pens for less than $3! Absolute bargain! Sure, I don’t need them, but it’s not like I’m not going to use them - pens are always useful. And because there are 5 of them, I can distribute them amongst my belongings as I see fit. So I’ve got a purple one sitting on my keyboard, a blue one in my bag, a red one in my tafe bag, and the orange and green ones are spares in my drawer. I love stationery!

I also bought a box of orange thins, a bag of mixed lollies and two chocolate bars - they were all cheap, ok! Mmmm cheap. Oh yeah, and the masking tape.