On Top of the World

On Saturday I went shopping for clothes. I hate buying clothes, but I really needed some new jeans, so out I went. First I went to the factory outlets in Parkside, but they had absolutely nothing, so on the way home I called into another shopping centre. I tried on some jeans there, and after umming and aahing over which size to get, I decided on the smaller size, thinking that since jeans always give a little after wearing them, they’ll end up being the right size.

More than once have I been caught out when buying jeans - the last time, they were snug, but not too tight, and after wearing them once they were far too big and had a big gaping bit in the small of my back. This time I was determined not to fall into the same trap, so the jeans I got are bordering on indecent. Almost, but not quite. They’re fine on the legs, but my arse has no room whatsoever. I think I have a really disproportionate arse.

I would have got the next size up, but there was a little gap in the small of the back in that size, and I had the niggling feeling that that would just get worse with wear. Having said that, I’m now worried that these are going to be the only jeans in the history of jeans that won’t stretch, and I’ll always have to start getting ready 10 minutes earlier than usual just so I have enough time to get them over my butt and done up.

I was really worried that I’d got the wrong size, so I spent the rest of my day looking at other people’s jeans, seeing how tight they were on them. There are lots of people who wear tight jeans, right? And they’re going to stretch a bit anyway… riiight? I think I’m going to spend the next few weeks wearing them whenever possible to get them to stretch. Either that, or I’ll just eat lettuce leaves so it’s not so hard to get my butt into them. Dammit, I knew I should have got the next size up, even though they weren’t really any looser except for the back-gaping bit.

Why can’t I have the kind of body where jeans just hug it in all the right places? Damn genes. And jeans too.

PS I think comments are fixed (touch wood), so if you were having trouble before, everything should be ok now. As you were.

Why don’t people proofread any more? When I was in the city a few days ago, I saw this sign in the window of a clothes shop:

Sigh.

I left work a bit earlier than usual on Thursday, so there were a lot more cars in the carpark when I went to tafe. Due to the fact that I like to park in a space with noone around my car (to lessen the chance of some idiot opening their door on my car), I ended up going right to the top level to park. It was quite a nice afternoon, and the sun was just setting, so I thought I’d take a photo, even though the view from the carpark isn’t terribly interesting.

The building in roughly the centre of the photo (the one on the far left in the group of three tall buildings) is where M and I stayed on our wedding night.

Oh, and my dad’s mug warmer arrived yesterday! Before tafe last Thursday I thought I’d look for a stainless steel/aluminium mug to go with it, but I couldn’t find one anywhere. You’d think that it wouldn’t be too hard to find one, right? None of the shops I looked in had one! Bah. I didn’t get to look in all the shops I wanted to, because it was closing time when I was in there, but I’ll have another look tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll find one - don’t you hate it when you’ve got a gift all worked out in your head and you’re really pleased with it, and then something goes wrong? Bah again.

Mmm… a custard tart and a cup of coffee - what a nice way to start the day.

Speaking of coffee: last weekend in our pile of junk mail, we got a catalogue for David Jones, which is a department store here. In it they had a picture of a USB mug warmer with a mug, and I thought I’d get one for my dad for Fathers’ Day, which is on Sunday week (I know - how forward thinking of me!). So before tafe last Tuesday, I popped into the store to get one, but they’d sold out The woman there rang another store, but they’d sold out as well.

I was really annoyed, because it’s a very rare occurrence that I have any sort of idea what to buy my father on gift-giving occasions, and it looked like I’d have to think of something else. But then I thought I’d have a look around online to see if I could find one, and I ended up finding a very similar one to the one in David Jones, but without the mug. It was on eBay - I really hope it works. I was just pleased to find one. So now I have the mug warmer sorted, I just have to buy a nice-looking mug to go with it.

I can’t believe that I’ve actually sorted out his Fathers’ Day present without tearing my hair out over what to buy. He is so hard to buy for. I hope he’s not reading this, otherwise he’ll just have to act surprised when I give him his present.

I am so FULL. M and I went out to dinner with some friends tonight, to the Red Ochre in the city. It’s a great restaurant, made better by the fact that we had a Festival of Food brochure. So that meant that we got a 3-course meal for $27.50 each. Excluding, of course, the bottle of wine we got and the side dish of mushrooms. But it still worked out a lot cheaper with the brochure, so it was good. But we didn’t get any bread! So we’re tight-arses using a brochure to get a meal, but surely we’re not so repugnant that we’re not worthy of bread? Having said that, though, I was completely stuffed at the end and was ready to fall asleep on the table.

True to my recent (lack of) alcoholic form, I was feeling quite tipsy after one glass of wine. I don’t know what has happened to me over the last 5-10 years or so, but any tolerance I developed for alchohol during my somewhat restrained university years, has completely vanished. I think I’m turning into a fogey, because I’m not really that interested in drinking any more; I like a glass of wine with dinner, but I don’t like being drunk. Someone get me some knitting needles and a rocking chair. Not that knitting makes you a fogey. Oh whatever, you know what I’m getting at.

I’ve been told by a couple of people (literally) that they’ve been having trouble commenting here. Now, with the small number of comments I get, I appreciate every one of them, so today I found a new way of fighting automated comments. So now you don’t have to enter a code any more, but you will need javascript enabled for the comment to post. Other than that, it should work *fingers and toes crossed* The extent of my testing so far has been to write ‘test’ in the box and click Go, and it has posted successfully, but if it doesn’t work for you, please send me an email and let me know. But I hope it does because if it doesn’t then I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry, I’ve tried to fix it! I’m trying to make you happy! We’ll see whether it does block unwanted comments - hopefully it will. If not, then I guess I’ll have to go back to the other way, or find a different one again.

Not having an internet connection at home means that you get to appreciate the important things in life, such as television. I’ve become hooked on 24 over the last couple of months, and I thought that last night was going to be the last episode, but fortunately it wasn’t. I just figured that once they found the override and saved the world (go Edgar, go Edgar) that would be it, but wait, there’s more! Don’t any of you spoil it for me by telling me what happens - I will NOT be impressed.

I came to the conclusion last night that the reason for my sore back was my fall down the stairs a week and a half ago. I can’t think of what else would have caused it, and I did fall quite hard. It appears that the more than adequate padding I have on my bottom was not enough to cushion me. But think how much worse it could have been if I were actually skinny! See, it pays to eat chocolate.

My back has been hurting quite a lot for the past few days, and I have no idea what I did to it. It’s really sore right between my shoulder blades, so last night I tried sleeping in a ‘hug-the-shoulders’ position to see if I’d feel any better today. I do feel a bit better, but it’s still sore. I’ll try the same position tonight and see how I am tomorrow.

The send-off at the airport on Saturday went well. We had a surprisingly tasty, but hugely overpriced, coffee at the airport, and then we said our goodbyes. When we left the airport, M and I decided to go to the Earl of Leicester for a hugely oversized, but very well-priced, schnitzel. Honestly, they have the best schnitzels in Adelaide. There was a couple sitting behind us, who looked over when we got our food, and I felt like such a pig hauling back a plate whose every square centimetre (and then some) was covered in food, while M had a much more manageable-looking plate of fish and chips. Oink. But I gave him half my schnitzel, so I hope the other people saw that and didn’t think I ate the whole thing by myself. Ah yes, it is very economical going there - we never need to have any dinner.

Sunday was a day of grocery shopping and visiting Cookie (my uncle’s cat), and of M trying to fix our internet connection. It is currently not working, so hopefully someone will fix it soon. I really have no idea what to do with myself without an internet connection at home - there have been several times I’ve thought about heading up to the computer room, only to realise that there wouldn’t be any point. I was so desperate to use my computer on Saturday that I actually played Freecell, Minesweeper and Spider. I think that says it all.

Yee ha! Another weekend is upon us (well, those of us in a similar time zone to me ).

I’m pretty pleased with my hosting company at the moment because my account has been significantly upgraded, at no extra cost! So I now have three times the bandwidth, and over three times the storage space, as well an extra domain, IP address and database for the same price. I don’t know how I’m ever going to fill 5 GB, but I’ll do my best. If you’re thinking of getting a domain, or switching hosts, I highly recommend them.

Tomorrow my uncle and his wife are moving overseas. Or, should I say, moving elsewhere overseas. They’re only in Australia on their way through from Taiwan, because if they come through Australia it’s easier to get their cat, Cookie, back with them. Some quarantine laws or other. I think they have the most well-travelled cat ever; his passport, if he had one, would certainly make far more interesting reading than mine. Cookie has to stay in Australia for 6 months, and then he can go over to them. So my mum has a new son for the next 6 months.

Unfortunately it sounds like it’s going to be a mixed blessing - apparently Cookie throws up a lot when he eats wet food (I’d say the obvious move there would be not to give him wet food, but that doesn’t seem to be an option), so my uncle and his wife have started heating it before they give it to him, which seems to help. Ummm… ok. There’s no way I’d put cat food in my microwave or oven - how gross. I don’t think my mum is going to, either, but given the option of heating wet food or cleaning up cat vomit… hmmm. Tough call. I’d just give him dry food and be done with it. My mum told me that she’s just going to say yes to whatever they say, and then do what she wants. Sounds like a plan to me.

Anyway, M and I are going to help take their luggage to the airport, so we’ll have to get up at 9:00. In the morning. On a Saturday. Sigh. I tell myself that even if we go to bed at midnight, that will still be 9 hours’ sleep, but even so, 9am is early for the weekend! Weekends are made for lounging around at home in your pyjamas all day, not sitting in an international airport for two hours before boarding. Curse you, international flight rules!

The only good thing (if there is a good thing) about getting injured is the bruise. Bruises should be worn like badges of honour - if you don’t have a huge bruise, then you weren’t really hurt so stop your whinging.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I fell down the stairs, and got a bit of a bruise. Well, it is now growing to maturity. On Sunday it looked like this:

And today it looks like this:

Cooool.

I found this meme and liked this week’s topic so I thought I would do it. The topic is ‘10 Things You Love About Your City’. So… here we go!

10 things I love about Adelaide

1. Sitting by the River Torrens on a beautiful day, watching the ducks swimming, joggers running past, and other people on the banks enjoying the day.

2. A 10-minute drive out of the city takes you into the peaceful hills, but you’re by no means isolated.

3. There are so many towns that are within easy driving distance, so there are plenty of places to go for day trips.

4. The beaches. There are some absolutely gorgeous beaches down south. Glenelg is nice because there are people around and it’s nice to get a coffee or an ice cream, but for beautiful, clean beaches with crystal clear water and pristine yellow sand, Moana is the place to go. At least, it was the last time I went there!

5. My house. I love where I live - I can hear the birds singing, koalas making those weird pig-like noises they make, there are great places to go walking (as long as you don’t get lost), and the surrounding suburbs are relatively untouched by daggy fast food chains. I’m still close to everything though!

6. Rundle Mall (the main shopping area in the CBD). It’s small, but familiar. I like walking around there on Sunday afternoons with M, and doing all our regular ‘town stuff’, like looking at the pets and getting a coffee and cake.

7. The traffic (ok, it’s not something I technically love) - it’s getting worse, but it is so much easier to drive around here than it is in bigger cities like Sydney.

8. The number of people - I don’t think I’d be able to handle living in a really densely-populated city. You can wander around here without people constantly underfoot, and I like it that way. And being a not-particularly-touristy city, you don’t have periods where everywhere is swarming with tourists.

9. I love flying back to Adelaide at night, trying to recognise the main roads as I’m coming in to land, and watching all the tiny cars driving along with their lights on.

10. It just feels like home - when I went to Brisbane, which I thought was a lot like Adelaide, it just felt as though I was in a suburb of Adelaide that I didn’t know. And I liked that.

What do you love about your city?

Our house has a spiral staircase up to the second floor. It looks like a rather flimsy structure, and over the past few weeks I’d been wondering if the whole thing would come crashing down if I were to fall down the stairs. Last night I discovered that the staircase is actually a lot more robust than it looks. It does, however, cause rather painful injuries to one’s rear end and shin.

My mum and uncle came around this afternoon, as my uncle hadn’t seen my house, and he wanted to come before he moved back overseas. I wanted to make something to have for afternoon tea, and decided on some Honey and Apricot Tea Cakes, the recipe for which I found on the side of a cereal box. They looked really nice, and thought I’d give them a try.

I entered into the cooking process with some trepidation, as I have the ability to muck up even the most simple of recipes (and had done so the night before - very disheartening), but I thought that if they didn’t work, I had other stuff to put out, so I may as well give it a try. Fortunately, they actually worked, and they tasted good! So much so that I’d even be willing to make them again.

Cooking is so much easier now that we have a dishwasher - all the dishes get chucked in, I wipe down the bench and voila! The kitchen is all clean again.