On Top of the World

I’ve added something I think is really cool. As some of you may remember, I’m studying Auslan (Australian Sign Language), and I found a fingerspelling font! So what I’ve done is put the day of the week above each post in the new font. I also changed it so that the day of the post is written there, so you don’t have to look at a calendar to see which day is being spelled out. Anyway, I thought it was kind of cool!

Banks suck! I deposited some change (around $60 worth) into my credit card account last weekend, and I found out today that I got charged a $5 ‘coin handling’ fee! I was NOT impressed, since M had bagged it all up in those little bank bags, so all they had to do was weigh it and empty the money out later. So I wrote them an email complaining about it, since the teller didn’t tell me that I was going to be charged almost 10% of the amount I deposited, just for them to empty a couple of bags. I didn’t really expect anything to be done, but later on, a woman rang me and said that they were going to refund the fee. Yeah! See, it pays to complain if you’re pissed off.

Oh, and for some reason I’m not sure of, I can’t seem to be able to post comments on some blogs with Haloscan. I don’t know whether it’s me or not (probably is), but the window doesn’t pop up! But I will be back to try again!

We went for another walk today and took some lettuce to feed the goats. I wanted to get some pictures of M feeding the goats, so I took my camera along as well.

I got quite a few good pictures, and here are some of them (click to enlarge).

The first two are of the babies - they are so cute! I was pleased that they came up to the fence this time, instead of staying over the other side like they were before. I love the 3rd picture. In the middle is the Big Bastard Bully Goat (BBBG), who headbutts all the other goats out of the way to get the food. To his left and rear are two cute smiley goats, who always have such cute expressions on their faces. Then there are the two little babies on the right, doing something to the tree stump. And what’s up with the goat on the left, looking up into the sky? He was doing that a few times while we were there - there was obviously something pretty interesting going on, but I don’t know what it was. The last one is of M feeding the goats. In order for any of the other goats to get any food, we had to distract the BBBG with food in one hand, and feed the other goats with the other.

One of the goats that lives near me (as I live in a veritable sanctuary of wildlife) gave birth to a couple of kids - at the left of the photo - a few days ago. When I went on my walk yesterday I took some photos. Naturally, they were sitting as far away from me as they could get, and not even my encouraging calls of “Goats!” could get them to come over. So the photos aren’t as good as I’d have hoped, but maybe I’ll be able to get a better one another time. The ones I took with the flash on were pretty cool, since it reflected off the eyes of some of them and made them look possessed. Goats have weird eyes anyway, with their oblong pupils, but this was just a cool Psycho Goat look.

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There’s a guy at work who’s really pissing me off at the moment. Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons with Frank Grimes? I feel like the guy at work is Homer and I’m Grimey, and that one day I’m going to go totally lose it and end up electrocuting myself.

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I watched the final episode of Grumpy Old Women last night. What a great show! It’s a British show where a bunch of women aged in their 40s and up say what irritates them (usually about ‘young people’, but also about being ‘older’). Most of them I’ve never heard of, except for Jilly Cooper and Germaine Greer. I found myself agreeing with a lot of the things they said, which I guess makes me a Grump Old Woman myself, but they honestly did raise some valid points! I wish I’d seen the whole series - I only saw the final two episodes. I hate it when that happens.

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My final thought is a little indelicate - I’ve been wondering about it for a while, but didn’t really know how to put it. So, just in case you’d rather not read about bodily functions (but why wouldn’t you want to, really?!) I’ll hide it…

From the lovely Yaya…

1. How many books do you own?

I have no idea! We have a couple of bookcases full, so however much that amounts to! There are more text books than novels though, left over from my and M’s uni days.

2. Last book read?

I was reading “Nights of Rain and Stars” by Maeve Binchy, but I can’t find the book at the moment! Yes I know it sounds stupid, but we were tidying up, and I can’t remember where I put it. D’oh.

3. Last book purchased?

Probably the Dr Who book I bought M for his birthday.

4. Name five books that mean a lot to you.

I can only think of 4…

“Light a Penny Candle” by Maeve Binchy - It’s the first book of hers that I read and it will always be my favourite. Her books are the reason I want to go to Ireland.

The Milly-Molly-Mandy books - ok so they’re for kids, but I love them anyway. They just make me feel warm and fuzzy when I read them, like there used to be a perfect little world where children were carefree and always doing nice things for everyone around them.

The Richard Scarry books. Yes more kids books, but I don’t live in the past, honest! And these books are just cool. I love Lowly Worm

An old hymn book I have that belonged to my grandma.

5. Tag five more people

I tag you all! Mwahahaha! Nah, if you feel like doing it, do it, but let me know so I can read your answers!

I’m writing this on my PDA. Ha, I’m way too sophistocated for email posting - pfft! Straight from the source, baby. WiFi rocks! Except it’s taking ages to write & I’m tired. Goodnight.

The only place we’re going that there are touristy things I definitely want to do, is London, even though I did most of them the last time. It’ll be different this time, though, because it was a long time ago and there is so much that I have forgotten. And the London Eye wasn’t there last time - I think that will be pretty cool.

All the other places (particularly Ireland and New York), I don’t really care what I do, I just want to be there. I’ve been dying to go to Ireland for years, and I am so excited about finally being able to go to Dublin, and drive around the beautiful Irish countryside. Sigh.

Have you heard of those ‘Day in the Life’ books? If not, it’s where a whole team of photographers go to different parts of a country on the same day, take lots of photos of the people, surroundings etc, and then they collate all the photos and make a book out of it as a snapshot of what was happening in that country on that day. My mum has ‘A Day in the Life of Ireland’ and the pictures in there are just magnificent. I might have to steal her book and look at it a few times before we go. I’ve never had such a strong desire to go anywhere as I do to go to Ireland.

We have a dishwasher! It was finally installed today, after it sitting in the kitchen for 3 days. Ever since we moved in here we wanted to get the Fisher and Paykel double drawers. So we went out a couple of weekends ago, and got a price somewhere, and then went to another place to see if they could do better.

The guy there was an absolute tosser. We asked what their best cash price would be, and he asked what the best price was that we’d got so far. We didn’t want to tell him, because we didn’t want to give him any hints. He then just stood there grinning at us, not making a move to give us a price. We just looked back at him, and M said that he didn’t think it was very ethical to give him the price of the other place, and he just wanted to hear what price they could do it for. This continued for a few minutes of the guy trying to get our best price out of us, and us saying that we weren’t going to tell him.

I was getting really pissed off, and I came this close to saying that if he didn’t want to give us a price then that was fine, we’d just go back to the other place, but I chickened out because I wasn’t sure whether M would follow me out the door. I would have looked a bit of a twit if I’d flounced off in a huff, only to have M still be standing there waiting for a price! He said afterwards that he would have come with me, but at the time I didn’t want to take the risk.

When he finally realised that we weren’t going to do his job for him, he went off and got a price, which wasn’t as good as another place we’d been to. So we said that it wasn’t as low, and he tried to get the other price out of us again. Grrr. Anyway, the guy said that the F&P drawers weren’t very good, as they had them in the kitchen at the store, and there had been a lot of times he’d open the drawers to see cockroaches swimming around in the bottom of the machine, as they could get through the gaps.

Great, not only was this guy a dickhead, but he was saying that the dishwasher we’d had our hearts set on for two years was crap! So we left there feeling very frustrated and disappointed. When we got home M looked up the drawers on the net to see what people thought of them, and found bad review after bad review, with people saying that they were unreliable and often broke down etc. So we ended up abandoning the F&P dishdrawer idea, and got a Miele instead.

We’re very pleased with it (at least, for the hour that it’s been installed), but we didn’t get any dishwashing tablets/powder with it - ripped off! But we finally have our dishwasher and it’s so quiet! The installation guy did a test run when he’d installed it to make sure everything was ok, and we could hardly hear it. Eeeexcellent.

The other thing I am yay about at the moment is that our holiday is booked! Well, M’s flights are booked (we’re using frequent flyer points for his tickets). OK, most of his flights are booked Once we have confirmation of his booking we’ll send the details to the travel agent who will book my tickets and our accommodation.

We’re going to London, Dublin (and hiring a car to drive around Ireland), Paris, New York, New Orleans, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY! I’m so excited! What’s weird is that my boss is going to be in London at the same time we are. D’oh - we just can’t get away!