On Top of the World

The problem with doing excerpts of songs as your post/sidebar titles is that you then have those songs stuck in your head for ages. So now I’ve got that Sesame Street song “Who are the people in your neighbourhood?” stuck in my head. Was it Bob who used to sing that? I used to love Sesame Street.

So… what’s the weather like in October where you are? I’m not sure what level of warmth to pack. Knowing me I’ll pack completely inappropriate things and be either boiling or freezing.

In the last few days I have seen a dramatic increase (from the former number of zero) in the instances of sneakers being hung from powerlines in my area. On our way to work today, we saw 4 pairs of shoes hung up in various spots, and when I went to the supermarket yesterday, there was another pair hung up nearby.

I remember reading ages ago on the Urban Legends page that sneakers hung on a power line supposedly had something to do with gangs marking their territory, but I couldn’t remember whether it said that that was true, so I had another look. It doesn’t say whether it’s true, but did give a few more possible reasons for putting the shoes up there (taken from the above-mentioned page):

* It’s the work of gangs marking the boundaries of their territory.
* Bullies take them off defenceless kids, then sling them up out of reach as the ultimate taunt.
* Gang members create an informal memorial at the spot where a friend lost his life.
* Crack dealers festoon wires to advertise their presence in the neighborhood.
* The shoes increase wire visibility for low-flying aircraft.
* Overly puffed-up boys who have just lost their virginity or otherwise passed a sexual milestone look to signal the event to others.
* Graduating seniors mark this transition in their lives by leaving something of themselves behind; namely, their shoes.
* Kids do it just because it’s fun. And besides, what else are you going to do with a worn-out pair of sneakers other than tie the laces together and toss them high?

So, it looks like I live in a neighbourhood of gangs or bullies or blind pilots who fly way too low or crack dealers or pubescent boys who just got laid.

Today my boss and his wife came over for afternoon tea, aka drinking two bottles of wine and eating lots of cheese and nuts and chocolate and stuff. It was quite nice, and now I’m feeling quite happy, so if there are any typos, that’s why.

As you probably know, they’re going overseas at around the same time as we are, so we spent a lot of time talking about what we’re doing and things we want to see. It’s good to be able to talk about holidays with someone who’s going on one as well, since people who aren’t going anywhere probably don’t give a rats and don’t want to know. So it’s made me even more excited about going. HOLY JETLAG BATMAN, IN TWO WEEKS WE’LL BE IN LONDON!

So it was a nice visit. We’ve been living in this place for 2 years and our boss still hadn’t seen it, so we thought we should probably invite them over.

After they left, we finished off the remaining wine and watched a video of Las Vegas that M bought when he was there around 5 years ago. It was pretty cool, although a lot of the video seemed to be taken up with buildings imploding to make way for newer buildings. Not that I mind imploding buildings - cool. I hope we get to see one when we’re there.

Other than that, today was pretty uneventful. Oh, I went shopping before the boss came, to buy stuff to have for afternoon tea, and I wanted to get a cake or something to have with coffee. I went to the supermarket, then went to the bakery, only to find that it was closed due to holdup. Lovely. Oh well, the cheese and stuff we had was very nice indeed.

*****

The new season of Survivor started here on Friday night. We missed the first 20 minutes because we forgot it was on, and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant on the way home (mmm Mexican). I was surprised to see Bobby Jon there, thinking that if anyone deserved a second chance, it was Stephenie. And then, there she was! I’m so glad she’s in it again, I thought she was so cool.

I’m sure I had other stuff to say, but I can’t quite remember what it was, so I’ll leave it there for now. Mmm wine.

Oh, I bought a totally cool birthday present for M about a month ago. His birthday’s not until December, but I saw it in August and thought it would be good so I got it. I can’t say here what it is because he reads my blog, but it is cool, and he thought he found it today when he was tidying up, but he actually didn’t. Heh heh. It’s really hard when you buy a really excellent present for someone but then have to keep it a secret. Only 4 months of secrecy to go.

Today we picked up our itinerary and other holiday stuff from the travel agent. We’re actually going, and we have a whole wad of paper to prove it! We also went into the city and I bought a bag to take on the plane with me. See left for a picture of the sexy item. Yes, it’s orange. The bright yellow tag was something I added afterwards - it’s all about distinctive baggage! At least I know that if I see someone walking around with an orange case with a bright yellow tag on it, it’s probably mine!

When I first saw it I didn’t really like the colour, but it’s started to grow on me. And now I actually quite like it. It also helped that it was over 60% off the price. And since it’s a Qantas-brand bag, maybe the people at the airport will think that I work for them and will treat me better. Or not. Or maybe they’ll think I’m rich (since the bags are quite overpriced unless you can get them for 60% off), and treat me better because of that. Or maybe they’ll just mug me. Bummer, I knew I should have bought a bag from Target.

We also got a couple of travel pillows, which we promptly tried out when we got home. We found them pretty difficult to inflate, until we read the instructions, which said to squeeze the valve when blowing into it. Aaaah - it was much easier after we did that!

All I have to get now is some TSA-approved locks, since any other lock is likely to be broken in American airports if they decide to look through my stuff. The cool thing about them is that they have an indicator to tell you whether it’s been unlocked and locked again, so that will be handy. I’ll see just how nosy those Americans are

We found some in the shops, but I saw some cheaper ones on eBay (the same locks), so I’ll get those instead. Even though it says it will be posted express post, I’m still worried about getting them on time (see previous post for an explanation of my paranoia), but I’m sure it will work out. I just have to learn to chiiiilll.

As it turns out, we’re not going to be meeting up with our boss in England - he gets in on the day we fly out. Dang. Not that I wouldn’t have wanted to meet up with him, but making a special trip to Oxford would have been out of the question.

One of the things we’re going to do in England is see Stonehenge. I’ve been there before, but M really wants to go, and particularly to go inside the inner circle (which I didn’t get to do when I was there). The tour we wanted to go on doesn’t operate in October, but there is one operated by the English Heritage people that goes inside the circle. The only problem is, they are held at 8am, and it takes over 3 hours to get there from London, so we’ll have to work out how best to get there. Probably the best thing would be to hire a car and drive ourselves, so most likely we’ll do that.

There’s an application form you have to fill out before you go, and on it you have to tell them what sort of cameras you’re taking, and whether you want to publish the pictures on a website, and if so you have to provide an accompanying letter detailing what you want to do with the pictures. I’m happy not to publish the pictures on my blog if they don’t want me to, but I wouldn’t want them to turn around and say that I couldn’t take a camera at all, just in case I did post them.

*****

And because Mandy told me to, here’s the delightful cowbell picture I’ve been tagged with…

The rules are that I have to display the picture on my blog, and then tag someone else with it who then has to display it on theirs… so, I’m going to handball it on to Steph - come on, you know you want to play! It’s certainly a lot easier than answering questions.

I had a bad dream a couple of nights ago where I had to leave for my holiday, but I’d ordered memory cards and spare batteries online for my camera, but they hadn’t arrived, so I had to go without them. And then when I was overseas I realised that I didn’t have my camera’s battery charger, so I was stuck with one memory card and one battery, so I was paranoid about taking photos because I didn’t want to drain my battery or run out of room on the card. And I also forgot to take the Sudoku books I bought to amuse me on the plane!

Man, I was pleased to wake up.

But then I got worried that I’d really would forget to take something critical, so I made a list of things that I should have in my carry-on luggage. I think I’ve got everything on there that I need - camera accessories were the first thing I added. I have actually ordered some spare batteries, but hopefully they’ll be waiting for me when I get home today. I need to get some more memory cards, but my dream has made me too paranoid to get them online, even if they are cheaper. It would suck if my dream came true and I didn’t have my memory cards with me overseas. Of course, I could buy some overseas, but I want to have them with me when I go.

Today I thought I’d go and look for a notebook to take with me so I can keep a diary. I have the grand total of $2.95 on me at the moment, so I went to the cheapie shop near work to see if they had anything good. They didn’t. I then went to the newsagent and found a pretty good notebook, which even has pockets in it so I can put receipts and admission tickets and other souvenirs in there. Unfortunately it cost $4.10, and I asked half-heartedly if I could put it on credit. Nope. How embarrassing. If they’d had the price on it I would have been able to just walk out, but noooo - I had to ask. I thought shops had to display the prices of things?

I came back to work and asked M if he had any money, to which he said that he’d given it all (about $5) to me yesterday. What, ALL of it? You don’t even have any coins (usually he does)? No, he didn’t even have any coins. So the two of us are worth $2.95, and I couldn’t even buy a notebook. Maybe I’ll put an IOU in work’s junk food till. That’s a cool notebook, with the little pockets!

Update: I ended up getting my notebook since M had to buy something else from there, so we put it on the credit card. Mmmm plastic gold.

Another update: Rereading that, it looks a bit sad to have an update saying that I got the book - like it actually matters. Heh heh. Oh well, everyone loves a happy ending, right?

Last night after tafe I gave a lift to one of the girls in my class, as I often do, since she lives on my way home. She must have a rather weak immune system, because she’s often sick, and she came to class last night looking absolutely terrible. Still, I gave her a lift anyway because who wants to wait around for a bus when you’re feeling crap?

I didn’t know what was making her sick, until she was complaining on the way home about the virus she has that just keeps hanging around, and how her nose was all blocked up. I was listening to all that, thinking ‘greeeeat’. Just breathe out the window, ok?

When I woke up this morning my throat was feeling a little dodgy. I’ve broken out the echinacea in the hopes of knocking whatever it is on the head fairly quickly - I do not need to get sick now, 2 weeks away from my holiday!

That’s the second time I’ve caught something from someone at tafe - the other time was from a woman who came in because we had an assessment that day, and then proceeded to breathe her germs all over me for the duration of her stay in class. Grrr… if people are sick, why can’t they just stay home? I think it’s really inconsiderate to go out if you know you’re not well, and particularly if you can pass whatever you have onto someone else. You don’t get any medals for going to work or school or whatever if you’re sick - you just piss the people around you off because you give them whatever you’ve got.

A guy at work is like that - he’ll brag about how sick he is, and how he still hasn’t had to take a day off work, but around him everyone is dropping like flies because they’re catching his illness. Stay home if you’re not well!

On my walk to tafe from the car park today, I passed this sign:

I wonder, if the sky ever does fall in, if Chicken Little is going to paint another sign saying, “I told you so”?

Yesterday there was a dog that escaped from its yard, and decided to run all over our property. Unfortunately, our cats were outside at the time. Frisky shot straight up a tree, and I found Jack cowering in a spot where the dog wouldn’t have been able to get to him. Poor babies. Since Frisky was so high up in the tree, she couldn’t get down, so M climbed up to get her out.

Easier said than done, especially when the cat is still traumatised from the dog, as well as being scared at being so high up. So M picked her up to try to get her out, and she turned into a wildcat, flailing around trying to grab onto something. While he was trying to lift her out, the trunk was nearby, and she grabbed on with all four paws, similar to the way Maggie grabbed onto the doorframe on that episode of the Simpsons where she didn’t want to be babysat by Patty and Selma. Poor girl.

I had to get some towels to wrap her in because she was clawing everything, as evidenced below:

We got both of them inside, and while they were a little subdued for a while, they’re ok now. The stupid dog owner didn’t come by to get his dog, and it’s probably lucky he didn’t because M was getting ready to give him a piece of his mind. My poor babies.

*****

On a happier note, we got something cool in the letterbox yesterday. Very occasionally, instead of the boring old junk we usually get (although I do actually enjoy reading through junk mail), we get samples for various things. Check this out for cool mail! It’s even creatively packaged, which I always appreciate.

When you turn it side-on, you can see that it’s…

Yay! Play doh! Even I’m too old for it, though, so we ended up giving it to some friends who came around last night for a party pie party (which is held when South Australia’s two AFL football teams play against each other). They have a young son, but they didn’t seem too appreciative. Made me want to grab it back! But alas I couldn’t. Still, play doh in the letterbox is pretty cool!

*****

Last Sunday was Fathers’ Day in Australia, but since my dad was interstate, we had Fathers’ Day today. M and I put on afternoon tea at our place, and I think it went quite well. I managed to find the perfect coffee cup to go with his USB mug warmer, so I was really pleased.

As you may or may not know, I’ll be going on holiday soon - only three weeks to go! YEAH! Since I’ll be gone for around 5 weeks, I’ve asked some cool bloggers I know to guest post while I’m away. And, wouldn’t you know it, they said yes!

So, starting in 3 weeks, you will be able to read posts by fellow bloggers Fashmagslag, Steph, Nicole and Yayaempress, and incognito - a dear friend of mine who doesn’t have her own blog at the moment (maybe this will make her change her mind) but has kindly agreed to help keep mine warm for me.

Thankyou so much guys! If I get the chance to post while I’m away I will, but if I can’t then I’ll travel happy, knowing that I’ve left my blog in such capable hands

Oh, and if any of you are going to be in London, New York, Los Angeles or Las Vegas in the next month or so and want to meet up, let me know and hopefully we’ll be able to work something out.

I’m drunk again - I had a glass of wine with dinner. Mmmm cheap drunk.

Anyway, instead of having separate pages for photos, I’ve finally got around to setting up a gallery - the link is in the sidebar, or you can click here. I haven’t put captions for everything yet, but I’ve done a couple of the albums, and a lot of it doesn’t really need explaining anyway. I’ll try to do the rest sometime soon, but for now, I hope you enjoy the pics!