On Top of the World

I have taken full advantage of the post-Christmas sales over the past couple of days, which is bizarre because I absolutely hate shopping. If I’m buying clothes, that is. If I’m buying gadgets, that’s a totally different story.

But M and I are going out for New Years, and I really wanted a new dress, just so I’d feel all snazzy and not have to wear any of the boring old clothes I currently have in my wardrobe. I think the last time I went clothes shopping was for my honeymoon, which was almost a year and a half ago. I’ve bought bits and pieces since then, but that was the last time I did any significant shopping. So I set out with a mission today to find something to wear tomorrow night, and also some shoes and a bag. God, how girly is that. Don’t worry, it’s only an aberration - I’ll be back to normal after the New Year.

So M and I went into town, and after having some lunch in the most kick-arse Indian place in any food court I’ve been to (even by restaurant standards, I think it’s pretty good), we had a look at a couple of digital cameras, and then went our separate ways so I could do my shopping. I don’t feel comfortable trying on stuff when M is around, only because I see so many women walking through shops, and their partner lagging behind them, and I feel so sorry for the poor guys who obviously want to be anywhere except there. At least on my own, I can take as long as I want and not worry that M’s about to gnaw his arm off from boredom.

I found a dress surprisingly quickly. It wasn’t what I envisioned wearing tomorrow, but it was half price, so how could I say no? It actually didn’t look too bad on me, either, which is a bonus. I hate trying stuff on.

So I was pleased with the dress, and I got some shoes without much bother either. It was really bizarre - usually it takes me ages to find one thing, but once in a blue moon I’ll be on a roll and get a few things all at once. The bag was no problem either. Then I got some more stuff to wear for when I go walking (I’m trying to go every day, and all the stuff I have is really old and boring), and some new walking shoes, since the ones I had were about 15 years old and had major holes. I broke my new shoes in a bit when I got home and went for my walk.

I discovered one of the reasons that I don’t like clothes shopping - I feel like such a fossil going into some of the clothes shops now. I went into Sportsgirl, which is a women’s clothes shop that I used to go to a lot when I was in high school and university, and it seems that the clientele hasn’t changed much - I felt like the oldest one there. The place has been done up, and it looks totally different from the shop I used to know *sigh* I felt like such a grandma because I was wondering how ‘kids these days’ can possibly want to wear clothes like those in that shop. I’m ooolllldddd

We’re FINALLY having our Christmas sales, starting at one minute past midnight tonight. All the other states have started, but we’ve had to wait until tonight.

I think it would be cool to go shopping in the middle of the night. I don’t know why, but I just want to try it. It’s such a foreign concept to me that I could be walking around Rundle Mall at 2am, with all the shops open. There’s a 24-hour café around the corner from the house that I’m renting out, and there were a few times when I was living there that I wanted to get up at, say, 3:00 in the morning and go there for a cake and coffee. Just because I could. I meet a friend of mine there every week, and I was surprised by the steady flow of people. It was a Wednesday night, and when we left at around midnight, there were heaps of people there. I just would have thought that not many people would go in the middle of the night, but I guess I was wrong!

Maybe I can convince M to let me go into town tonight. I don’t need anything, but I’m sure I can find something to buy anyway!

Well, Christmas is over for another year. It’s sort of an anticlimax, isn’t it? But I got lots of cool stuff, so I’ve been playing with that

I had a very slight hangover on Christmas day, because of drinks with the neighbours the night before, but once I started eating (and kept eating… and kept eating), I felt a lot better. Some family came over on Christmas night, and after they left M and I went to see the Southwark lights, which is a display put on by the Southwark Brewery every year. It’s the same display every year, but I still like going to see it.

Yesterday, we all went to Wallaroo (around 160km north west of Adelaide) to visit more family. It was a beautiful day, but just a fraction too sunny to walk on the beach. Yeah I know - I’m a wuss. I burn easily, ok!!

It’s been a nice few days, and now there’s nothing to look forward to… except my birthday in a couple of weeks But then that’s it for the whole year Sometimes I think it sucks being born at the beginning of the year, because once it’s mid-January, there’s nothing until Christmas!

I’m really pissed. M and I had Christmas drinks with the neighbours at 8:00 tonight, and initially we were planning on staying around an hour and a half, but we ended up staying until 1:00. If I’d finished the rest of my wine I would have thrown up. I had an excellent night though. I just used M’s alcohol test thingy, and I blew 0.16, which is over twice the legal limit here. Hee hee.

It was a great night. Another neighbour from across the street came as well, and I think we all got thoroughly drunk. She was telling us lots of stories about the people in our street, and honestly - if you paid me I couldn’t tell you what she told us. Something about some guy who was one of three Keiths in our street, and who ended up buying a house. The end. Huh? I don’t know, but it was funny at the time. Fuck, anything’s funny when you’re that drunk.

Anyway, I still haven’t finished wrapping presents, so I’d better do that before I go to bed. They are going to look extremely dodgy, but whatever.

Merry Christmas everybody!

First off, the most important part - happy birthday to my love, M - I love you babe *mwah!*

M and I have been watching a lot of Pimp My Ride lately. I love that show! If I still had my crappy Pulsar, maybe I could have got Xzibit and co. to pimp my ride. Ah well. One thing I was wondering, though, was how the hell would they get insurance for those cars? Most of the people whose cars are ‘pimped’ are under 25, and one of the standard questions that insurance companies ask when you’re looking for insurance is whether you’ve made any mods to the car. “Umm… yeah… my Ford Escort has been converted to look more like a BMW, and it’s got 3 Xboxes, 6 TV monitors, a coffee machine, a water fountain and a chandelier. Is that going to make my premium higher?” How the hell could you afford to insure all that! I know, I know - I’m such a party pooper

We watched the Iron Chef episode that we taped over the weekend. That is such a funny and gross show. For those of you who may not have seen it before, each week they have a theme ingredient, and a challenger competes with an ‘Iron Chef’ to make the best meal, as judged by a panel of tasters. Just after they announce the theme ingredient, they have a little segment about it, with a guy (although not the same guy that used to do it, unfortunately) saying a bit about how it’s used, and they always have a little ’saying’ to go along with the ingredient.

Usually these sayings are pretty weird. In this episode, the theme ingredient was quail, and the ’saying’ was, “Quail is the virgin; duck is the mature woman.” What the…? It was in reference to chefs needing experience to prepare duck meat properly, and that a lot of them start out with quail first, and then move on to duck. But really - how do they come up with this stuff?

So they were making their dishes, and they showed the Iron Chef cutting off the quail heads and putting them aside. I jokingly said to M that he could stew them later… and later on, the IC deep fries them! Eeewww. They looked like little Freddy Kruegger heads when they came out of the frier. The delightful presentation of the quail heads involved cutting them lengthways in half so that the tasters could eat the brains. Now that may sound normal to some of you, but I don’t think that there is ANY way in which the presentation of halved, deep-fried quail heads can be made attractive. It just looked awful. I know that Japanese food is all about the presentation, but I really could not get into this one! Give me the pagoda carved out of a carrot any day.

We borrowed the digital camera from work to take pictures of my house before my tenant moved in, and M took this really nice picture of the view from our lounge room. I like the look of the tree on the right - the way the light is falling on it makes it look painted on or something.

There have been a couple of fatal shark attacks in the last week in Australian waters, the most recent one being off the coast of Adelaide. The victim was 300 metres offshore, and was taken by two white pointers. The hunt is now on for these two sharks, which will be killed if found, and permission has been granted to kill any shark posing a threat to swimmers.

I think that this is ridiculous.

For one thing, how are they going to know they’ve got the right sharks? And another thing, if it’s known that sharks are around, then rather than a chopper circling around waiting to kill them to protect the swimmers, why don’t you do the smart thing and STAY THE HELL OUT OF THE WATER? Sharks have been around a lot longer than we have, and although humans like to think that they’re the rulers of everything, I think it’s fairly safe to say that once you enter the water, you’re entering the sharks’ domain.

I don’t know how they can justify killing a shark because it killed a person - no matter whether you are an animal or a human, the fact of life is that you eat or you die. What happened here is that there was a human (who looked remarkably like a seal) in the water, the shark was hungry, so it went for the food, and because of that, it could possibly be killed by people who can’t bear to think that humans aren’t always at the top of the food chain.

I just think it’s sad that when a shark attack occurs (which really isn’t that often), they are automatically pegged for extermination. When a person deliberately kills another person (not in self-defence), they don’t necessarily get the death penalty. Why not? Something to do with ‘inhumanity’ I assume. There are plenty of premeditated murderers in prison who have less right to life (in my opinion) than a shark who was merely doing what it has to do to live. If the same penalty applied to sharks were applied to these people, we’d get rid of a lot of the trash in our prisons, and maybe our taxes could go towards something more useful than keeping them alive.

What is up with the scary-looking Festive mood (you’ll probably have to scroll down a bit to see it)? Ugh. That’s just creepy. Every now and then I want to put a mood that there’s no way I’ll be feeling, just because it’s there and I’m sick of using the same three moods all the time. For example, I know I’m never going to be feeling Knitty, since my only attempt to knit was over 20 years ago, but hey - it’s an available mood so why not.

I had the glass panel replaced at my house. The match was pretty good, considering that it’s ancient glass that isn’t made any more, so I’m happy. I’m handing over the keys tomorrow after work, so I have to remember to take lots of pictures of stuff before the tenants move in, just for my records. Heh, I love saying that - ‘for my records’. It sounds so self-important and wanky, doesn’t it

M and I did some more Christmas shopping on Sunday. We have almost everyone’s present now I think. We’ll have to do some more next weekend, but this year will be one of the better ones for shop visit frequency.

A lot of yesterday was spent dealing with tenanty stuff. My tenants moved out on Sunday, and we had the final inspection yesterday. It all seemed fine, so we said goodbye and they went on their way. Later on, when we were doing the initial inspection with the agent for the new tenant, we saw that there was a crack in a glass panel in one of the doors, which I’m sure wasn’t there before; there was no mention of that in the initial inspection. I also forgot to tell them that they hadn’t paid rent for the last 3 days of their lease. So that’s some stuff to take out of the bond.

After leaving 3 messages about various things because I forgot to mention something each time and had to call back, it seems that the glass is sorted. I’m really pleased about that - I was worried they were going to give me grief over it. I’m having it fixed tomorrow, and I’ll take the cost out of their bond. Aaah the power. They know the cost, and have agreed to it, so there won’t be any more incidents like the plumber one. I can’t remember whether I mentioned what happened with that, but there was apparently some ‘mixup’ and it was just a huge pain in the arse. So this time I’m being more careful.

I’m thinking of having a PuraTap (a filtered water tap) installed before, or soon after, the new tenant moves in. Now, I have no problems with Adelaide water (despite popular opinion), but the water in that area really is unpleasant, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want decent drinking water without having to buy it if you don’t want to. I think it sucks a bit that I’m doing all these improvements after I move out, when it would have been nice to have had them while I was there!