On Top of the World

I mentioned in passing in a previous post that in the last year or so, someone has been coming onto our property and adjusting the settings on the sensor light in the carport, and also leaving our outside taps on. Whoever it was came infrequently, and just when we’d think they weren’t coming back, we’d come home to find the sensor light off, and our taps left on full. We initially thought that it might be one of the neighbours’ kids adjusting the light, since her bedroom window is right next to our carport and we thought that maybe the light was turning on during the night and disturbing her. But we didn’t really think it was her, because we assumed that whoever it was who was turning off the light, was also turning on the taps, and what possible reason could she have for doing that? And besides, they don’t seem like the people to just walk onto someone else’s property and do it themselves, I assume they’d come and say something if the light were a problem.

He also thought it might be the kid next door (but on the other side), because he just seems a little weird. It’s hard to put a finger on what it is, but he’s just a bit creepy.

We were getting pretty pissed off, so M got some surveillance cameras to keep an eye on things, particularly seeing as we were going to be away on holiday for a month and wanted to protect the house somehow.

Well, they’ve paid off, because M well and truly busted the culprit yesterday. He was driving down our street, and was about to turn into the driveway when he saw someone, holding a pole of some kind, hanging around in the carport. The guy saw/heard M’s car, and ran around the side of the house. M got out of his car and chased the guy around the back of the house, and found the weird kid from next door. M asked what the problem was, and the kid said that he was chasing his dogs (he’s got 2 chihuahuas). This might have been believable, because apparently they have been on our property before (although I’ve never seen them there - they’ve always stopped at the boundary of the neighbour’s house whenever I’ve seen them), so M let it go, and the kid apologised for being on our property, and left.

M went inside and checked the surveillance videos, and what did he see but clear footage of the kid from next door walking up to our sensor light, adjusting the sensor, and turning the light off, just before M got home. Busted. I think M was fuming at that stage, and he called me at work to let me know that he caught the person turning the light off.

I asked what he was going to do, and he said he was going to call the police, and go and see the kid’s mother about it. I didn’t want him to do anything too rash, just in case the kid snapped and did something worse to our place, but M assured me he wouldn’t. So he called the police, but they said they couldn’t file a report without having to follow it up (ie send out a patrol to talk to the kid about it), and since M wanted to try to sort it out with the mother first, he didn’t end up making a report.

So he waited for the mother to get home, and went around to see her. He’d printed out photos of the kid in our carport, and took them around with him just in case the mother didn’t believe him. The kid answered the door, and M asked to see his mother. The kid asked what it was about (like he didn’t know), and M just said that he’d like to speak to her. The kid went inside, and a minute later came out again, again asking what it was about. M changed the subject, asking whether the dogs get out often, and the mother came out.

In a nutshell, M said that there had been previous cases of someone turning our light off, so we’d bought surveillance cameras, and had caught her son doing it. He offered to show the photos, but the mother said she didn’t need to see them. She sent her son inside and talked to M for a while, apologising and saying that she understood how he felt and would talk to her son to find out what the story was. M played it down, saying that it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but we did feel unsafe knowing that someone had been trespassing. He also mentioned that he had called the police, but not made anything official. She said to let her know if it happened again.

So she said all the right things to M, but who knows whether she actually said anything to her son. Hopefully that will be the end of it, but we’ll just have to wait and see. I hope that he was sufficiently scared by being caught that he won’t come back, but I am a little worried that he will, and maybe do something worse. At least he knows now that we have the cameras, and even if he damages one we’ll still have evidence of him damaging it, so there’s not really much point doing anything. But if he does do anything again, we’re calling the police.

The one thing M didn’t ask was why he did it - I can’t imagine what reason he would have, unless he just doesn’t like us for some reason and was doing it out of spite.

Yesterday I was looking through the catalogues that came in the newspaper, trying to find some ideas for Christmas presents for people. I love looking through junk mail, particularly the ones for the department stores. Catalogues for supermarkets are dead boring and I don’t even bother. I’m sure there are people who comb those catalogues, squealing with glee that they can save $1.50 per kilo on some skinless chicken breast, but I don’t really care - I can wait until I get to the shop to find that kind of stuff out.

What I want to know is, what cool homewares/gadgets/other stuff I don’t really need can I buy at a discounted price? Not that I usually go out and buy any of it, but it’s fun looking. You see, I hate shopping, but I love looking at stuff I could buy.

So I was looking through the catalogue for one of the department stores, and I found some cutlery for $99, a saving of $200. Bargain. I thought it looked pretty cool, and M liked it as well, so we thought we may as well get a set since the cutlery we have is pretty old. We looked to see when the sale was meant to start, and it said the 28th, so that was cool because it meant we hadn’t missed out on the start of the sale (it’s happened before that this shop has had sales, and we’ve gone to get something, only to find that it was sold out).

We came to work today, and I was wondering when I’d be able to get the cutlery set. I really didn’t want to wait until the weekend, because I had the niggling feeling that they’d be gone by then, and I started getting quite edgy and obsessive, because once I decide I want something, I have to have it RIGHT AWAY in case it’s gone and then I regret not getting it.

So then I thought that I could call into the city after work because I was meeting a friend in town anyway, and I could just go before that. But then I thought, “what if there’s a huge rush on the one set of cutlery I want, and it’s all gone by the end of the day?” So I decided bugger it, I’m going to go now (it was 9:45 am). I told M I was going to go in and get it, and he suggested that I call up first to make sure they have it, and get them to put one aside for me, since it would be a pain if I left work only to find that there weren’t any. That made sense, so I rang to check, but everyone was busy so I got put on hold. I was stressing while I was waiting, thinking that while I was waiting for someone to pick up the phone, people were buying my cutlery.

I hung up and decided to just go into the city anyway. So I caught the bus in, and walked briskly towards the store. I walked in, expecting to see a sea of people all buying their cheap stuff (hey, the sale started TODAY!), but there was practically noone there except for staff. Still, I went to the cutlery section, hoping that the set I wanted was still there, only to find around 20 sets or so, all neatly stacked up. Yes, well. I guess there wasn’t the need to get all stressed, but I just know that if I’d waited until the end of the day, they’d all have been sold. It’s just the way things work.

I bought my cutlery, and lugged it back to work on the bus (why do they make cutlery boxes so huge and difficult to carry?). There hadn’t been an open box in the shop, so I couldn’t see how heavy the individual pieces were, but I figured that for the price, it was still a pretty good buy even if they weren’t fantastic. However, I was pleased to discover that the pieces were quite weighty. When you take into account that I got a 12-person set, with 2 serving spoons, a ladle, a salad spoon and fork and a cake server, all for the bargain price of $99, I think all the stress was worth it.

Now I’m just stressing about all the other stuff in the catalogue that I want to buy (but didn’t get this morning because it would have been too difficult to carry everything). I’m going to go in before I meet my friend today and get it then. It’ll still be there - right? Maybe I should go in now and get it. You know, just to be safe.

Every year, the company I work for has some sort of outing for the employees and their partners. Since it is paid for by the company, the boss gets to choose the outing. In previous years, we have done a ropes course, had lunch at various far-flung wineries, and also been to the opera. This year’s outing was held last Sunday, and we played lawn bowls.

I had never played before, but I was in good company because 95% of the people there had never played before, either. The location was only 5 minutes from our house, which made a nice change because 4 of the first 5 company outings I went to were at least an hour’s drive for everyone to get to. Our boss doesn’t like doing things in central locations.

We arrived at 2:30, and I decided that I was going to be the official photographer, since I wasn’t really too keen on playing. Since we were playing in teams of 4, M found someone else to be on his team, and I settled down to watch, until the boss said that I had to play. Damn.

So I joined my team of 4, which included the boss and a couple that M and I see regularly outside of work. A ‘tournament’ was set up so that each team played 2 ends against every other team. I was nervous about playing, being a total beginner, but it was actually quite a lot of fun. I was hopeless of course, but did manage to contribute to a game or two, so I don’t think I was a total waste of space. Our team won quite a lot of our games, including the one we played against the team that had a member who had been practising for the last couple of months in preparation, which I thought was pretty good given that I don’t think any of us had played before.

We stopped for dinner, and afterwards played a couple more games. We had to be finished by 7, and at 7:15 we had the presentation of prizes. There was a prize for the winning team, and the second-place team, and prizes for the best dressed, best bowling style and shot of the day. The team I was in ended up winning, which everyone thought was pretty coincidental given that the boss was on that team, but I’m sure that all scoring was above board and that we deserved our bottle of wine. Heh.

Update: Check out the pictures here!

I had my last Auslan assessment for the year last night. I didn’t think we were going to be having the assessment since we started off the class doing something entirely different, but after the coffee break the teacher said we were going to do it. The assessment involved us getting up in front of the class and signing a funny story or a joke. We didn’t have time for everyone to do theirs before the end of class, so she suggested 4 people get up and do it. Two people volunteered, and then I figured I may as well do it, to get it over and done with. Noone else volunteered, so it was just the 3 of us.

I ended up doing a search for jokes on the net and found one that I thought wouldn’t be too difficult to sign with my limited skills. I really hate getting up in front of people and having everyone look at me, and even though I’ve known all the people in my class for nearly 2 years, I still got really nervous, and I could feel my heart racing in my chest while I was waiting for my turn. My turn came and it was ok, but I think I could do so much better if I could find a way to calm down and not get so stressed. Anyway, the assessment is done and that’s it for the year. In a couple of weeks we’re going to one of the student training restaurants as and end of year thing, so I’m looking forward to that. I’ve seen the menu and it actually looks quite good. It seems to be a bit hit or miss with the training restaurants here - the one at Regency TAFE is good, the one at some other TAFE (can’t remember which one) isn’t very good, so we’ll see.

*****

Our cats have taken to weeing on the laundry floor, in the vicinity of their litter tray, instead of actually in it. They started doing it in the last week or so that we were away on holiday, and my mum (who was coming every day to check on them) thought it might have been a stress-related thing because they were alone most of the time, and are used to having people around at night time at least. When we got back just over 2 weeks ago they stopped doing it, but in the last few days they’ve started again.

I think we’ve cleaned the floor 4 or 5 times this week because of them peeing on it. They position themselves in the corner of the laundry, do their business, and we come home to find a path of wee running from the corner of the room, under the litter tray to the drain. And when I pick up the tray to clean under it, it’s often pooled there and starts running to the drain. Eeeww. I cleaned the floor last night when I got home from TAFE, and had to clean it again this morning before we went to work. Not impressed.

And it’s not as if the tray is really dirty or anything - the litter in it isn’t that old. We clean it out at least twice every day and it’s been perfectly fine for them up until now. I think we’ll just have to dump what’s in there, give the tray a good clean, and hopefully that will fix it. For today, I’ve left the lid off (the lid has a little flap, like a cat door, for them to get in), to hopefully encourage them to take the extra step over the edge of the tray rather than using the floor. I suspect that we’ll get home to find that they’ve done it on the floor again, so the giant litter tray cleanout will have to occur. Damn cats, they have us wrapped around their little claw.

I’ve suggested to M that we put one of our surveillance cameras in the laundry to see which one is the culprit, but also to see if they go straight to the corner to pee, without even going near the tray, or if they start going to the tray, but then reject it for some reason.

I had dinner last night with a friend of mine that I used to go to school with. I haven’t seen her since January, so it was nice to catch up. She’s getting married in March next year, and this will be the third wedding I have attended in my life (not including my own).

The first wedding I went to was in 1990, and it was great because the bride was a stickler for etiquette (or at least, what she thinks is etiquette), and wanted to make sure that everything was done ‘properly’. As a result there was a formal sit-down dinner, bombonniere, slices of wedding cake etc etc. It was a great reception (the ceremony itself was pretty ordinary), but unfortunately I was only 14 and didn’t get to drink anything. Not that I really wanted to at that age, but now that I’m an adult I’m all too aware of missed opportunities.

The second wedding was a few years later I think, when my godmother got married. My godmother is lovely, but her husband is a tool of the highest order, and while I think cocktail receptions are great and practical, since you don’t have to worry about seating plans and a whole lot of other rubbish you have to deal with for sit-down dinners, this reception sucked because it was severely under-catered. Every time a platter of something was brought out, everyone converged on it like vultures and most people missed out. So it was quite disappointing (because everyone knows that weddings are about the guests, and not the couple getting married), but of course the bride and groom didn’t notice because they were high on wedding-y emotions, as it should be I suppose.

My friend’s wedding will also be a cocktail reception, which I’m relieved about because I had the feeling that if it were going to be a sit-down meal, I’d be seated at a table with someone else from school who I was pretty sure was going to be there (and it turns out that she is). To be honest I’m just really over 95% of the people I went to school with, so I wasn’t looking forward to making conversation with her, so it will work out well because she won’t be stuck talking to me, and vice versa. Cocktail receptions are such a great idea, which is why we had one for our wedding. It’s just easier all round.

You might want to go to the toilet or get a cuppa before you start reading…

Tonight M and I went to a council meeting. This wouldn’t have been necessary if the person living next door to the land that M wants to sell didn’t raise a whole bunch of petty objections to the plans that we submitted to the council for approval. Stupid guy. And the stuff he raised was already clearly covered in the plans anyway, so there was really no reason for him to bring any of it up, other than that he’s an annoying busybody who feels he has to make his presence known. Geez, there’s one in every neighbourhood, isn’t there.

I’d never been to a council meeting before, so I had no idea how they worked or what to expect. We got to the meeting and went into the public gallery, which was just a collection of chairs behind the main Very Important Meeting Table, with a copy of the agenda, which was seriously half an inch thick. We looked at the items for discussion, and fortunately our item was number 3 of 11. We looked up our part of the agenda, and read through the neighbour’s objections, and the builder’s rebuttals. It said at the end that the conclusion was that our proposal be granted subject to some stuff, blah blah (didn’t really read that bit ), so we were hoping for the best.

In case you don’t know how the meetings work, the person/people putting in the objections (if they go to the meeting - they don’t have to go) have a chance to go before the panel and present their case, after which the councillors can ask them questions. After all the party poopers objectors have finished, the applicant (if they go) can then go up and argue their case, followed by more questions, and then the one of the councillors starts off by saying whether he/she thinks the application should be granted or not, someone seconds it, and the other councillors vote.

The first item started, and went for ages because 2 or 3 objectors turned up, and of course all wanted to have their turn in the limelight. One of the objectors was actually a guy I studied Auslan with last year, so I now have his home address and several photos of his (rather barn-like looking) house. There were lengthy questions, and then the applicant got his turn. There were a few questions, then I think the plans were rejected, but I’m not sure since I’m not up with all the council lingo, yo.

The next application was from a hotel owner who wanted to extend the hours of his gaming lounge. Well, the hours were already in place and had been trialled for the last couple of years, and he wanted to make them permanent. There was an objector who lived right next door to the hotel car park, complaining that hotel patrons loiter in the car park after the hotel has closed, and the noise they make affects the ‘amenity’ of their house. They sounded pretty trashy, and we figured that the only reason they could afford to live there was because it was right next to a hotel. Yeah, it’s bitchy but give me a break - you have to find some way to entertain yourself in long, drawn out meetings.

Anyway, if you move in next door to a hotel, don’t you have to expect that you’re going to get noise? I thought that was part of the deal. I didn’t think they were really going to have much ground to stand on, particularly as the people who lived right behind the hotel didn’t see fit to raise any objections or show up to the meeting, and the people who did object lived next door to these people. The councillor starting off the summary took about 5 full minutes to say what any normal person could say in one sentence, but once he finally stopped listening to his own voice the councillors agreed with my wise opinions, and a big Quit Whining in the form of ‘application granted’ was handed down to the objectors.

At this point I was thinking that this was all rather Judge Judy-esque, with each side getting up to tell their story, being asked questions, then being told whether they won or lost and having to walk out with their tails between their legs. Quite funny.

So, we were next - about time! We’d been nervously scanning the gallery to see if the guy who objected to our plans turned up, but he didn’t. Ha - you care enough about your precious neighbourhood to make everyone’s life difficult by putting in petty objections, but NOT enough to actually turn up to the meeting to back them up, do you? Huh? HUH? Again I say - stupid guy.

The builder who submitted our plans was there, and went up to answer any questions that the councillors may have. It was at this stage that I actually wished that the objector had turned up, because when one of the councillors mistakenly took our guy for the objector, and asked him ‘What is your principal objection to this application?’ it was clear that they all thought the objector was a tosser who was just being difficult and had no reasonable claim. After our guy said ‘No objection at all’, he sat back down in the gallery with us, the councillors said that they had no objections to the plans, and that the application was granted subject to something or other. Yeah! So that means that the plans are approved, and after we get that in writing we can advertise the land and hopefully sell it soonish.

It’s taken a year to get to this point, so we’re hoping it won’t take too much longer to find someone interested in buying it. Thank goodness we were number 3 on the list, because I don’t think I could have sat there through the whole thing. What a waste of a Monday night.

*****

After the meeting we called in to see my parents and tell them the good news, and stayed long enough to watch the second Australian new million dollar winner of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It took him 45 minutes to answer the last 2 questions, but I guess when $1m is at stake you don’t want to stuff up. This guy had been studying trivia for the last 5 YEARS in order to prepare himself for getting on the show… just as well he got on, otherwise there’s 5 years of his sons growing up that he missed for nothing.

What I thought was pretty dodgy was what he said after he won. His million-dollar question was, “Which of these men has never been ‘Time’ magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’?”, and the options were Hitler, Stalin, Ayatollah Khomeini and Mao Zedong. He used his last lifeline, and took out two wrong options. He ummed and ahhhed and finally locked in his answer.

Anyway, after he’d won he said that he’d been looking up the Time magazine’s Men of the Year just a few days ago, and so getting that question right was just a matter of remembering what he’d read. Now, I think it’s pretty coincidental that of ALL the trivia he’d been looking up over the last 5 years of his life, he just ‘happened’ to be reading up on that subject just a few days earlier. Hmmm. Ah well, good on him for winning.

*****
Finally, Steph tagged me to come up with 5 things about myself. I could refer you to the list of 100 things in my sidebar, but I guess that’s a bit of a copout. So now I have to try to find 5 things that aren’t there. Ah bugger it, it’s not like you’re all going to check, right? Hehe.

1. As I’ve become older, I’ve developed a very mild fear of heights. I mean, I don’t have any problem going up the Eiffel Tower, or actually being up high, it’s just when I look over the edge of a really tall building and imagine plummeting to my death, I get a bit of a fluttery feeling. I like to consider that healthy though.

2. I’ve been thinking for a long time about opening a coffee shop. It won’t ever happen, but I thought it might be nice.

3. I had a dream last night that I was walking through a national park, and that a koala was my tour guide, walking a few steps in front of me and showing me through. I kept calling it, trying to get it to turn around so that I could take a photo.

4. I haven’t gone to the last two Auslan Only camps (weekends run by the Deaf Society where you spend the whole time using Auslan only - no voices allowed) because I don’t like being away from home. Yeah, I’m a big wuss. I’ll try to go next year though - maybe.

5. I have to have a cup of coffee first thing every morning, otherwise I get a headache.

I’m meant to tag 5 more people, but I’ve never been good at tagging (I was always the one who broke chain letters), so if you do it, let me know.

*****

So ends this enormous post!

The post-holiday blues have hit, particularly since I went back to work today. The bummer about taking a holiday is the anticlimax when you come back and it’s all over. There’s nothing to look forward to, only weeks and weeks of work until I die. Geez, aren’t I a ball of sunshine.

I took a water bottle in to work today because I’m trying to drink as much water as ‘they’ say I should. I drank three 750 mL bottles of water, and I really don’t know how people are expected to drink their required daily amount of water, yet still have a productive day. I was going to the toilet every 15 minutes. I hope my body gets used to it sometime soon because there’s no way I’m going to keep it up if this is the result.

Our national lotto draw last Saturday was worth $19 million, so M and I got a ticket for it. I didn’t check the results until today, but as it turns out we weren’t millionaires without knowing it - we didn’t win anything. I did notice, though, that 23 people won division 1. I mean, winning $800,000 would be fantastic, but thinking that you won $19 million, or a large share of it, only to find that you have to share it with 22 other people? I don’t think I’d be able to help being a bit put out. I guess the moral is, make sure you know how many other people won before you tell your boss to shove it.

Well, I’ve been home for three days already and it feels like I didn’t go anywhere. It’s weird how holidays do that to you. I have all the photos on my computer now, but haven’t yet begun the daunting task of arranging them into albums for people to look at. What I thought I would do is give a brief holiday summary. So, here goes!

London: I loved London, although I knew I would because I’d been there before. The tube is fantastic, with no waiting at all - walk to a station, along comes a train, and you’re off. It’s certainly a nice change from the every-30-minute-at-best bus service I’m used to here. It was expensive though, but probably cheaper than running a car, especially with congestion tax (although I don’t know how much that is). There were stacks of Smart cars around, and before I went overseas I used to hate the look of them, but I saw so many in London that now I think they’re really cool and want one for myself. You can park those things anywhere!

Dublin/Ireland: I’d been dying to go to Ireland for 16 years, so I felt really happy when we landed at the airport. I liked Ireland a lot, even though it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. But when you build up a picture of something in your head, reality rarely lives up to expectations. It would have been nice to see more scenery (I didn’t get to see any cliffs!) instead of driving most of the time, but maybe next time we’ll let someone else drive so we can spend more time with our noses out of maps. The countryside really was beautiful, and the views from Blarney Castle were gorgeous.

Dublin had cool countdown pedestrian crossings at some intersections, where there was a counter next to the red “don’t walk” man, so you knew when you could go. I thought that was pretty cool! I actually saw a similar thing in LA, but it was a counter for how much more time you had to cross, rather than a countdown to how much more time you had until you could cross. The ultimate for people who can’t stand not knowing when the lights are going to change!

Paris: Paris was ridiculously expensive (5 euro for a 250 mL Coke - what the hell?), and people drive like maniacs. They also can’t park to save themselves, or should I say that they are incredibly good at parking? I’ve never seen anyone parallel park in a space only 10cm longer than their car, but we saw someone do it. I couldn’t help but be impressed. Cars are parallel parked with around 10cm between each one, and usually that’s being conservative. We saw several cars where the front of one had dented the bumper of the one in front and was nestled in the dent. How on earth do they get out?

NYC: I was really excited about being able to go to NYC, because it is a city just so different from Adelaide. We stayed near Times Square, as it is compulsory for all tourists to do. The only thing I didn’t like about the US in general was that the prices don’t include tax, so the ticket price wasn’t what you paid at the checkout. I know all you Americans would be used to that, but here tax is included in the price (and it’s illegal not to include it), so sometimes it was easy to forget that the 99c Hershey’s chocolate covered mint balls (which were great - I wish I’d bought more than one packet) weren’t actually 99c. But then again nothing is the price it says because you have to tip, whether the service is good or not. Thank goodness we don’t have to do that here!

LA: We stayed in West Hollywood, but even then it was quite a walk to Hollywood Blvd. We did it, though, and also walked to Sunset Blvd which was strangely empty and disappointing. We were there at 10am on a weekday though, so maybe nothing much happens at that time? We also caught the bus to Rodeo Drive, which was more what I was expecting but of course I couldn’t afford anything there. Except for a great coffee at Brighton Coffee Shop which wasn’t on Rodeo Drive anyway, so maybe that’s why.

Las Vegas: We stayed at the Luxor, which was really cool going up in the ‘inclinator’, the slopey lift/elevator. It was way down the end of the Strip though, so it meant that the bus trips back were loooong because they’d just started a new bus service, and they seriously underestimated the demand. Their ticket validating machines were really slow, so there were often waits of 5 minutes or more at the stops before moving on to the next one, and since it stopped at almost every hotel along the way, you can imagine that it took a while to get from one end to the other. Travelling from our hotel to the Stratosphere took an hour on the bus, when it would only take 5 minutes or so to drive. It was ridiculous.

There were so many men and women along the side of the road giving out cards with naked women on them (although there were stars in appropriate places), advertising call girls and to get your attention they’d slap the cards they were holding out in one hand on the pile of cards they had left in the other, and then flicked them a couple of times. It got so irritating! I didn’t see too many people actually taking the cards, and why would they when the wire fences surrounding various construction sites had a whole lot of cards stuck in them that didn’t have any strategically placed stars.

Adelaide: It was wonderful to come home. By the time the 4 weeks were up, I was ready to come home, sleep in my own bed with a decent pillow (hotel pillows SUCK), and give my cats a huge cuddle. While we were away there were some people on our bus to Disneyland who’d been travelling around the world for 18 MONTHS. They were backpackers, and I don’t know how they could stay in hostels for that long. I know I wouldn’t be able to. I stayed in a hostel once when I went to Sydney, and it was ok but certainly not something I’d want to do for a year and a half. But that’s just me. As it turned out, my cats didn’t really give a stuff that we’d come home, although they have stopped peeing on the laundry floor (so far), something which my mum told me they did a few times towards the end of our absence.

Welcome back Jenny!

It’s great to have you home again, safe and sound, and full of wonderful adventures - I can’t wait to hear all about it!

I’ll leave you all with a fond farewell, thanks for reading, hopefully see you all again sometime, perhaps I’ll be given another go at guestblogfest when things in my life are a little more condusive to conversational blogging!

and,

one more thing before i go…

this…

because i know you all love the Hoffmeister

xxxx Inki

Hello everybody! I’m back home from my holiday and I’ve just had one of the most glorious showers ever - after flying for 16 hours to get home (and totally missing October 31st in the process, not that we do anything for Halloween here anyway) I was feeling rather stale, so it was wonderful to close my eyes and just let the water flow over me.

As for the holiday? Yeah it was ok. Well duh, of course I had a fantastic time, but there’s nothing like a month-long holiday to make you appreciate home. It was so nice to look out of the plane and see Australian soil after 13 or so hours of darkness and water, and better still to see South Australian soil on the last leg home. I must have become used to seeing big cities like London and NYC when landing at the airports, because Adelaide looked so small in comparison (which it is!), and I wondered for a second whether that was really it. But yes, it was really it, and it was so nice to see my home town.

I took around 1000 or so photos on holiday, so that will take ages to get onto my computer, and I’ve got at least 3 loads of washing to do and a heap of sorting out of souvenirs and presents. Oh, and we bought so much chocolate it’s not funny - my carry-on bag had almost solely chocolate in it, and it was quite heavy! Most of it is for other people, but of course we did buy the odd one or two blocks for ourselves

Thankyou so much to my guest posters - I really appreciate you taking the time to write on my blog as well as your own while I was gone.

We discovered something cool when we got home. We got some surveillance cameras for our place before we left because some turd has been trespassing. The cameras record some video whenever motion is detected, but also send an email notification with a still of the scene, so we could check from overseas when something (or someone) was snooping around our place.

Of course, we got a lot of false ones, like next door’s dogs walking around their yard, or our other neighbour’s washing moving on the washing line, but check out this visitor we had:

How cool is that! See, it’s not just a stereotype - Australians really DO have kangaroos in their back yard!

Anyway, off to do more sorting and washing and sleeping and relaxing… how nice it is to be home!