You are invited for all time.

2009-07-05T22:16:00.009+08:00

By the time I got this far with the chest of drawers from Ikea, Valdi came over with Brad to put my new BBQ together. Thanks bro!!

Brad played the very important role of supervising while Valdi did all the work.

He didn't know it at this point, but the legs were on the wrong way around and he only realise when he'd nearly finished putting it together, so he had to take it apart to put them on the right way, then put it all back together again. Doh!

And Brad is still supervising.

And there's the finished product! Just need to wash the hot plates and coat them in olive oil and cook them a bit to cure them or something, then it'll be ready to go! Oh yeah, and we need to get a gas bottle. We'll just get one from the petrol station.

The cover came free with the barbie. Yay!

And here are the finished drawers.

It's four hours until I have to get up to go back to work, so I think I'll be going to bed now!

2009-07-05T11:25:00.003+08:00

Hmmm, didn't end up doing many posts on Melbourne, did I? I've been keeping busy this break. I've been seeing people every day and I think I've gone out to buy something every day as well!

It's the last day of break and I don't have to go anywhere or see anyone. Well, my brother is coming over later to help me put together the BBQ he bought me and Jason yesterday. It's actually a christmas present and last years birthday present wrapped into one, and we finally got around to going out and picking one. Here's the one in the shop:

It's a good quality bbq that should last at least ten years. It's got a wok burner as well. We'll never have to use the kitchen again!

The other day I went to ikea and bought a double chest of drawers that will fit perfectly in our wardrobe. I'm going to make that today. I can't wait to put clothes in the drawers instead of in plastic tubs that are stacked on top of each other! So it's my mission to build that today.

I'm also thinking about sweeping up all the thousands of leaves around the house and doing a little bit of weeding. I love doing stuff around the house.

Jason is at work but sick with a cold so he's staying home for the second day in a row. The medic is thinking about flying him back to Perth tomorrow so that I don't catch it. I fly in to work tomorrow. I'll make sure there's lots of food in the house for JJ to eat, just in case.

So I'd better get started! It's already nearly lunchtime. Have a great Sunday everyone!

A video tour of our house in Drouin

2009-07-01T23:56:00.002+08:00

Yay new post!!!

2009-06-30T21:26:00.003+08:00

I have just flown into Perth tonight from work and I am officially dedicating tonight to computer stuff. Since pretty much every single networking site and any sites that use up a lot of bandwidth or work time are banned at work (they use this annoyingly named thing called Websense), and since I have so much work to do all the time, I can't spend much time doing internet things I like at work.

I'm a freak and I genuinely enjoy cleaning. I'm also houseproud, so I like to spend a lot of my break cleaning, tidying and reorganising my house. And because I'm anal, I take a long time to do everything, so I end up spending the majority of my breaks doing things around the house instead of doing things on the computer (or doing things elsewhere). But tonight, I will do things on the computer. Facebook, blogging, commenting, uploading, that is my priority tonight.

I told mum and dad not to pick me up tonight because they have both had the flu (or really bad colds), and I don't really want to catch anything. I walked home from the airport because I wanted the exercise, and I wanted the fresh air. I spend all my days sitting in the office at work and don't get as much fresh air as I should at work. It wasn't raining tonight and it was a bit cold, but I was dressed warmly, my bag was light, and it's only a twenty minute walk home from the Skippers terminal. It was a bit lonely coming home to a cold empty house, instead of the warm one that smells like dinner with mum and dad in it, but I was resolved not to let that get me down.

Jason bought me the album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga by Spoon recently, so I've got that playing and it's pretty upbeat which makes one automatically feel cheerful. As does a nice glass of bubbly to go with it!

Last night Jason and I slept for the last time on our sagging double bed at work. I said to him last night that we had to ask for a new one because when he was lying on it by himself I could see the mattress lifting from the base at the foot of the bed. Plus when you sit on the end it sinks down about 2 foot.. it was just rubbish! So today Jason asked for a new bed, and when I got to our room this afternoon to shower and get changed for the plane, low and behold we had a new bed! I was on the bus waiting to go to the airport and one of the village maintenance guys got on and said to me as he passed "Yes, you CAN have a new bed!"
It's not brand new, but it's obviously pretty damn new. I didn't have time to test it out, but Jason says it's super, and he knows that when we both lie on it at the same time, it's not going to sink in the middle. Yippee! Funnily enough though, we have had a few really good nights sleep the last few nights. Now we will sleep even better.

As I was walking home tonight I was walking through my neighbourhood and it didn't feel like home. It smelled familiar but not that familiar, and I realised it's because I don't spend all that much time here. The smell at work is more familiar and homey to me these days. You know when you walk into someone's house and it has a particular smell? I don't know if mine feels all that homey to me yet. I guess since I spent all last break in Melbourne I kinda forgot what it was like to be home a bit.

I guess I'm totally adjusted to the fly in fly out lifestyle. You don't just have one home, and sometimes you never get a chance to feel really at home in either place. It's best not to get too fixed on either because it makes it all harder. Better to be detached and easy going about where you belong. Not that I don't feel anxiety about stuff. Life is easy, but it isn't.

Another thing I was noticing on the way home tonight was the lights that were on in all the houses. There were a lot of houses with no lights on, so obviously no one was home. How many houses would have everyone in bed by 7.30pm? Not that many. Many people seemed to still be out, either at work, or dinner, or movies or sports training or whatever. I thought about how it appears to house burglars, and I'm particularly conscious of potential burglars because we are away from home so much, when there are no lights on. We have lights on timers, though this time the kitchen light was left on, which makes it definitely appear someone is home. I don't care about wasting electricity when it comes to security. Or anything for that matter. I love electricity.

Instead of rambling on forever about random things I am going to end this post and write posts about our time in Melbourne instead. Well, I will try, I don't promise anything! xoxo

We'll probably get married here.

2009-06-06T00:34:00.009+08:00

Tell you what, they're pretty fully booked over the next year! There are pretty much no available days until next year. And the first half of the year is pretty full. So many people must be getting married in Perth all the time. Big business.

Building a house in Drouin, Victoria.

2009-06-03T10:32:00.005+08:00

This is the house we've been paying to have built in a town called Drouin about 100km from Melbourne in Victoria.

We signed the contract in December 2007.

In April 2008 the building approval was recieved.

In June 2008 we recieved a letter that said construction would start approximately 32 days from the date we settled on the land, and would take about 180 days to build. Six months.

At the start of August 2008 we recieved a letter saying that they had had to redesign the house because the driveway was too steep.

We recieved several letters over the next six weeks that they needed an extension due to weather.

By mid October 2008 they had poured the base.

It wasn't until 24th February 2009 that they completed the frame stage of the building.

The next two stages were completed quickly (by 31st of March) and we are now waiting on the completion of the property.

This week we got a letter saying:
"As you are aware the worldwide economic downturn has had a significant impact on the building and construction industries over the past 12 months. This in turn has contributed to delays in the performance of your contract and construction and development of your property (amongst other things).

The purpose of this letter is to inform you that CPH Victoria has over this period been working on recapitalising the company to ensure it can navigate its way through these tough economic times and complete your property in accordance with the terms of the contract.

CPH Victoria has obtained funding which has allowed on site works to be accelerated."

This annoys me as all the letters they previously sent for extension stated inclement weather as the reason, or christmas holidays.

I'm very disappointed with the length of time it's taken to build this house and I'm not sure there has been any advantage in having a big financial advice company (WPS) looking after this for us.

WPS have sent us a letter recommending DB realty to provide rental services to investors purchasing at the Development wishing to rent out their property. I've looked them up and they are located in Melbourne, which is 100km from the town of Drouin. There are three real estate agents actually located in Drouin, but apparently it's better to get one in the city of Melbourne. I looked up the DB Realty website and it's been hacked.

We've been told that WPS plans to get tenants in the day after the keys are handed over to the house. I hope so, because so far, building this investment property has saved us NO money. We could have paid off our house sooner with all the money poured into paying to build this one in Drouin.

We're going to Melbourne for a week next break and we're going to drive down to Drouin and take a look at the house and suss things out. They're supposed to be handing over the keys on the 15th of June, which is the day we arrive to Melbourne and it will be interesting to see whether that happens.

Hellooooooooo

2009-06-03T09:46:00.004+08:00

Back in Perth for 5 days of relaxing after a pretty solid 9 days of nothing but work and sleep. I really feel like I've been earning my money at work the last couple of months. I start work at 6am every day and I work until at least 7pm. When Jason is on break I work until 9pm. I'm doing the same sort of work I've been doing for the past year, modelling up geology and gold mineralisation and then estimating the tonnes of dirt and amount of gold in the deposits I model, and I've finally got pretty good at it and I understand what I'm doing and I'm actually kind of enjoying it as well. I don't know if I'm being kind of repetitive in my posts, I've probably said all this in another post already.

Winter has started in Perth and it's a lovely view out the back yard this morning. The grass in the park has started greening up thanks to the rain. Winter in Perth is pretty great. It goes to 20 degrees celcius most days, gets cold at night but as long as you have a heater it's all good. You get lots of lovely sunny days, and even the days when it rains can have their sunny patches. We don't get enough rain in Perth for it not to be a novelty. I like the winter a lot. Up at Jundee it's cold and dry, I guess winter is a bit of a dry season up there. It rains more in summer.

Jason is at school at the moment, getting some stuff looked at for his apprenticeship. February next year is the official finishing date for his apprenticeship and will signal the end of his time at Jundee. By then he will have been there for ten years! Crazy. When you do an apprenticeship somewhere you have to leave when you finish and go work somewhere else. That's the done thing, apparently. He's hoping to get a transfer to another Newmont site, but it depends if there's something available. Once Jason is settled at his new work, then I will think about leaving Jundee, too, but it depends on the situation. If he has a similar roster to me and we can spend all our time off together in Perth then I would stay at Jundee. If we see less of each other than we do now then I will try to get a job that coincides with his.

I've always thought of the end of his apprenticeship as the end of our only having 5 days in Perth together a month, but because of the apparent downturn, it may mean that we spend less time together than we do now. The light at the end of the tunnel has got me through a lot of feeling down about working different rosters but now that there might not be a light at the end of the tunnel quite yet I find that I'm okay with it. One day I will be wishing I had more time to myself to do whatever I want, so I'm determined to appreciate it now. I guess it helps that I'm enjoying my work now, too.

Now I have a sore butt.

2009-05-25T00:07:00.003+08:00

Yay! I went horseriding today. First time since I was in Iceland 3 years ago. So much fun, pretty scenery and good weather. But boy was I stiff when I jumped down off the horse. He's very tall compared to the ponies I'm used to from Iceland.

However I really must get to bed. It's past midnight, and I'm flying back tomorrow morning. Gotta be at the airport by 5.45am. Boo! Jason is there, however, so I don't mind going back too much.

Hello

2009-05-20T22:57:00.002+08:00

Feels like ages since I've posted.

Another swing gone by at work. It was pretty busy. I had a course on regolith ("everything between fresh air and fresh rock") on the second and third days, which involved a lot of lectures I was struggling to keep my eyes open for, but also a little field trip to look at the ground at different places around Jundee and learn to recognise what sort of environment it had been formed in. It was interesting but I'm not gonna teach y'all about it. Winter has arrived to Jundee, the days are cool, though still sunny, and cold wind blows from the east all morning, which resulted in me being very cold as I hadn't brought my jacket, and on Wednesday afternoon my throat started getting very sore and I knew I was coming down with a cold.

It took a couple of days before my head blocked up and I was sneezing and blowing my nose all day. Unfortunately I couldn't afford to take a day off work to rest up, I just didn't have the time to waste. The worst of it only lasted a couple of days and by Tuesday I was feeling a lot better though I still get a sore throat and I have a cough. I managed to nearly finish everything I needed to and I'm almost back on track for the deadlines of the stages of my project, thanks to one of the girls in my office doing most of one of the stages of work for me. And now my boss is going to let me give three other people in the office some of my work to do, so I don't think I'll have to work the 14 hour days anymore. 12 hours will suffice. I'll be able to start running or walking home from work again. Yay!

All I did for my first day of break today was sleep in until 11.30, wash my hair and then read a book in bed all afternoon. I've put a shitload of washing away, and done a couple more loads and spent some time on the computer, and that's it. I don't plan on an action packed break this week. I just want to relax as much as I can. And I think I will be going to bed, very soon! Goodnight.

Helmet

2009-05-08T07:36:00.001+08:00

Haircut

2009-05-06T18:37:00.004+08:00

Finally went for a haircut today. Haven't had one for about 8 months now! I didn't get a colour last time I got a cut and it felt a bit boring so I went for colour again this time. It's all pretty similar to one I got about a year ago.

What a relief to get rid of the daggy hair I had before.

big weekend

2009-04-26T22:24:00.008+08:00

Crikey I've had a huge one. Dylan Moran Friday night, aussie rules football last night followed by food and more drinking, and today I saw at least 10 bands playing live in the pines. Back to work tomorrow morning. Not looking forward to the 5am alarm. I can't believe how many blurry photos I took today and yesterday. Here are some less blurry ones for you:

Took Sharlotte and cousin Runa (from Iceland) to their first ever football game. I was expecting my team (the Dockers) to lose for the 5th time in a row, but they played awesome and they won! The crowd went wild. Sharlotte officially became a Freo supporter. The atmosphere was just great. So much fun.

The video above is boys boys boys playing prawn with a shitload of audience members on stage dancing. They did an awesome set.

In the pines sold out this year, and the somerville auditorium was full to the brim. It looked like they only had about 3 security people in the whole place and they were all at the door, there were very few rules for the day and everyone was happy and considerate, there were no fights, absolutely no aggro, just an awesome day. Fave bands were Boys Boys Boys! Tame Impala, Abbie Mae and the rocking Pneumonia and Pond. It was a real rock n rolly day.

Back stage view.

I've got to get up early tomorrow to go to work, and as you know now I won't be able to post or comment from there (unless I use my phone), so have a great week everyone.

x

2009-04-24T16:17:00.008+08:00

Third day home today. I was planning on shopping, but I couldn't be bothered leaving the house, and I had plenty to do here. Jason went back to work yesterday but we had a nice 40 hours together before he did. He bought me a cd:

Olga's old band, Boys boys boys! And they paid hommage to her on the back cover. Nice. I'm going to see them play at In the Pines on Sunday, should be an awesome day, listening to twenty local bands, drinking with friends.

He also bought Vampire Weekend, which is way cool. Check out their awesome film clips on youtube.

I asked him to cook me this beef bourguignon recipe for dinner, and he did because he is awesome, and it was awesome.

We went and checked out Picasso on Walcott for a wedding venue. We had breakfast there and were the only people in the whole place. Breakfast was delicious, but we're not sure if we want to get married there. Jason thought the place smelled kinda musty, which is kind of to be expected in an old church I suppose. It was smaller than I expected from the photos. We haven't ruled it out, but we want to check out other places.

It's very unique, anyway.

We had dinner at the 150 East restaurant and checked out the function room at Ascot Assured Apartments. The food was nice, but we weren't terribly impressed with the function room. Yep, we're pretty fussy. So we'll check out some other places next break when we're home together again.

I can't access blogger at work anymore, it seems to be on the banned list, so I'll only be posting when I'm at home in the future. Of course, I don't have time for posting at work anyway, I worked 14 hour days for the last 5 days of my stint before I flew out to try to finish one of the stages of my project before the deadline. Didn't make it in the end, there's just too much work for the amount of time I've got. Next swing won't be much different, in fact none of them will be any different until August/September when the project is done. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

Happy birthday Maria

2009-04-12T15:58:00.002+08:00

I've just found out it's Maria's birthday today so I'm having a beer in her honour. I was feeling a bit blah before but reading her blog made me perk up a bit. Thanks for that Maria. And cheers to you!

I dunno why I'm feeling blah. Missing Jason is probably the main reason, this is the break I spend on my own because he's at work the whole time. While I love my me time (as he does), these separations always get a bit long in the tooth.

I've kept pretty busy this week, however. The proper sized mattress got delivered for the daybed.

I've been searching for some european pillows with heavy filling to make the daybed more comfortable, but all that's available is ones with light foamy filling, so I'm going to go back to the cheapest shop to get those. No point paying through the nose for same quality products. I haven't found any pillow cases yet either. I didn't want to buy anything that I wasn't sure Jason would like (his taste is a lot fussier than you'd think). So I bought nothing.

It's been too hot to hang around out there anyway, and it's very dry and windy so all sorts of crap is being blown onto the bed. Dust, dirt, plant bits. I can vacuum it to clean it, but why bother when it's going to get dirty right away again. It's kind of unusual for it to be so warm at this time of year, we're literally in the middle of autumn now, but it's still 30 degrees every day! So anyway, I'm not in too much of a hurry to get extra cushions for lounging out in the heat.

I was at my friend's parents house last night and there was a dog there with a funny looking underbite:

It's hilarious, right?

Mum and Dad came over today to put up a blind Jason and I bought for the little window in our bedroom. My Dad is the handiest man there is.

The blinds aren't quite long enough to touch the sides of the window frame, Jason and I figured it would be good enough, and it looks fine. Getting it custom made would have been so much more expensive.

Mum and Dad also brought around their exercise bike, which I wanted to borrow for a while (I never want to go outside, so I can use it when I'm watching something on tv indoors to get some extra exercise on break), and a spare mountain bike so Jason and I can go on bike rides together (I already had a bike, which I never use... lazy). My parents are so good to me, they're truly wonderful people. I hope to be as good a parent as them one day.

Lately I've been reading a series of books by Charlaine Harris, the Sookie Stackhouse series, and I'm totally addicted. The tv series True Blood is based on the books and after watching the first season I needed more. The books are completely addictive, I'm reading the fourth one in less than two weeks.

Yesterday I bought two albums of a band called Frightened Rabbit. I really like them, but the music is a bit whistful and angsty which is influencing my mood, so I think I'd better bring some variety into my music listening today.

On Friday I watched about eight episodes of Breaking Bad, about a chemistry teacher with a pregnant wife and disabled teenage son, who finds out that he has inoperable lung cancer and decides to start cooking crystal meth to make money for them after he dies. It's very sad with him and his family trying to deal with his cancer and coming death and he's keeping these terrible secrets from them. But I couldn't stop watching it, it's a very good show.

Last weekend I went to my friend Natalie's wedding and she had the most interesting centrepieces on all the tables at the reception:

Goldfish in a big bowl! It was interesting going to her wedding and thinking about what Jason and I will do for ours. We still haven't set a date and we still don't know where we'll have the ceremony and reception but we're thinking about August or September next year now. We're going to start making a concerted effort to check out venues now and try to make a decision.

People say it must be exciting, but I'm honestly not excited about all the work involved in planning the wedding. I've put it off for six months already, but now I'm thinking the sooner it's over with the better. I know that it's going to be a brilliant day, but I feel like it's just a lot of work to organise. And we are both pretty particular about things so we find it hard to make decisions sometimes. And of course, the hardest part is that we only spend 4 days in Perth together a month. It's hard to make decisions together when we're not together most of the time.

And you know what else? We don't even know where we're going to be in August-September next year... will we still be at Jundee, working different rosters, or at another mine? Who knows. I suppose we have to act as if we will still be at Jundee. As soon as we know the date we're getting married, we'll ask for time off around that date. Whether we're going to be there or not.

Blah blah blah. I think I've gone on enough for now. Time to do something else. Shit! I don't know how that happened, but I managed to post this to Jason's blog. Doh! Let's hope the pics post here as well.

Geology Office Humour

2009-04-07T16:22:00.001+08:00

Live from the backyard*

2009-04-04T10:47:00.004+08:00

I came home for the weekend specifically to go to a wedding and I can't believe it, I forgot my camera! It's at work, and so is Jason. I am spewing! I can take photos with my iphone but there's no zoom. What a total bummer. The wedding is on at Lesmurdie Falls in the hills in 2 and a half hours. I'm still in my pyjamas. I was going to wear a black dress.. but I know it's supposed to be a faux pas and all that... so I tried on floral number that I've only worn once and it fits. Just! So I'm going to wear that instead. I really should start getting ready. I've got pits to wax, hair to wash, make up to put on. Plus there's going to be a party after the reception so I've got to get some booze ready for that. It's going to be a huge night.

*Stole your blog name for my post title, jomamma, since I just took the photo of the backyard then.

Work work work.

2009-04-03T09:46:00.004+08:00

I've got so much to do, and boy do the days go by quickly. Jason is flying in tonight but I'm flying back to Perth. One of my best friends is getting married tomorrow, so I got the weekend off to go. It's going to be great fun.

I asked my boss if I could have another couple of days off in June, because JJ and I want to go to Melbourne then and I want to go for 7 days instead of just 5. We're going to look at the house we're building in Drouin (100km southeast of Melbourne) and we've got several people we want to catch up with and we also need time for shopping. Shopping is so much better in Melbourne than Perth. Anyway, I had a feeling he wasn't going to be too amenable to it, and he was actually even less keen on giving them to me than I thought he would be! He's worried I won't finish the stages of my project in time if I take the time off.

I've never wanted to be a person who couldn't take time off work because it was too demanding, but here I am. I'll be putting in extra hours (12 hour days or more instead of 11) every day until this project is done, I think. I guess it's okay seeing as I live at work anyway, but when Jason is here it kind of annoys me to have to spend parts of my evening working overtime because we don't have much time together ever, so even the few hours between finishing work and going to sleep are precious.

Either way, I'm resigned to having to work extra hard this year because it's part of my completing things on time goal for the year, and they pay me well for it, too. And I'm lucky to have well paying job in the current climate.

Better get back to it.

Daybed - check

2009-03-26T17:19:00.003+09:00

So there it is! The mattress is actually too small, because they didn't have the right sized one in the warehouse. They're getting us the correct size for next week, and gave us this one to use in the meantime. Those are all the cushions that came with the bed. I want to get some european sized (big square) pillows that we can really lean back into. At first I thought it was a bit dark for the area, but with all the cushions on it, I think it looks perfect. It's pretty hot today, too hot for me to feel like hanging outside in the sun on the daybed, plus I've got too much to do inside, but I'm very happy with it.

Jason is flying in tonight, we have our six weekly weekend together this break. We're driving down to Margaret River tomorrow and having a big weekend of eating and drinking with some friends. Sharlotte was supposed to come with us but she cancelled on us on Monday night, apparently she HAS to work this weekend. We only gave her two months warning... Jason is disappointed because she's only come away with us once before, and he was looking forward to a family weekend. I guess now it will just be a friendsy weekend. It's going to be lots of fun, either way.

It's about time I write a new post

2009-03-20T09:52:00.000+09:00

Hi. I seem to have lost my blogging mojo for a while there. Things have just been so busy, at work and at home, and I haven't had much motivation to write a post. So I didn't.

Guess what, we bought a daybed last break!

Remember how I liked this one? Well we didn't get it. I took Jason to have a look at it and he liked it as much as I did but we decided to have a look at the original daybed we saw that we loved, before we took the plunge. This one is 2m long by 85cm wide. And it costs $890.

This one is 2.2m long and 1m wide, which means that we can both lie in it at the same time. The mattress on this one is much firmer, and it also comes with two bolsters and three cushions. It's three hundred dollars more than the other one, but better. They also gave us free delivery. I'll get them to bring it over on Wednesday or Thursday this week. It's going to look so awesome on our deck!!!

Have I shown you this? These are all Jason's lightsabres. He's mounted them on the wall in the study where they look pretty awesome.

Jason got all these belt buckles really cheap. I don't think they'll be used as belt buckles, however. They're really big and heavy.

Nice.

Yesterday I took some visitors from Canada down to the old southern pits where I used to work, and we saw some camels. Although they're not native to Australia, we have wild camels roaming all over the countryside in the deserts. They're pretty shy but also curious. These are the first ones I've seen around Jundee.

I've got a huge project to work on this year, the final completion date isn't til the end of September, which seems like a long way away but it really isn't. My boss and I made some dates for different stages to be done and it's actually a very tight schedule. So I've been keeping internet time to a minimum. There will inevitably be overtime needed for this project.

It's also made me realise that I can't afford to take any swings off until after the project is done, or I won't finish it in time. And I made a resolution this year to finish stuff on time, which I want to stick to. I've already managed to complete one thing early this year and that's what I want to keep doing. Pressure is on exploration to discover something soon or to fail faster so we can do some long term planning for the mine. We're depleting the resource a lot faster than we're replacing it. Well, we're not replacing it, that's the problem.

My project is to bring all the models for all the past pits together into two main models and try to delineate more ore down there, or to well and truly sterilise it. There are several other exploration prospects to review as well. I'm a bit disappointed how much detective work I'm having to do to gain information, the reports are few and far between, and in some cases, just cut and paste jobs that haven't actually been completed. So much to do. It's lucky I used to work in the open pits and know where to look for some of the information.

I caught a cold this week. I didn't take my echinacea and zinc vitamins all last break, and came into contact with a lot of people so I could have caught it from anywhere. I haven't had a cold for about a year! Jason wanted me to stay home from work today and rest, but I didn't feel bad enough to stay in bed. I mostly sit around in the office all day anyway. Hopefully I'll be better by the time we head to Margaret River for the weekend on break. I may still take a day off yet.

In the meantime, I've gotta get back to work!

Wiluna

2009-03-07T12:52:00.017+09:00

The minesite I work at, Jundee, is about a half hour drive from the nearest town, which is Wiluna. Wiluna became a thriving town due to the gold rush caused by extremely high gold prices in the 1890's and had a population of 9000 people by 1930. World War II took its toll on the gold price which affected Wiluna, and by 1950 the population was less than 400 people. Nowadays there are about 500 people living there. The company I work for makes a concerted effort to contribute to the local community by employing locally, contributing money towards infrastructure such as the school and the swimming pool and every month they provide all the food and drinks and cook a bbq at the school for the kids.

This year it's part of our KPI's (key performance indicator) in exploration to attend at least one of these bbq's and I took the opportunity to go yesterday. It's been about 7 years since I've been to Wiluna, which is surprising since I've been working here for nearly 2 and a half years now but I've just never found a reason to go. The last time I went to Wiluna was to play netball at night against the locals when I was working at Wiluna Gold Mine.

I'd only ever seen it at night before, but in the day Wiluna doesn't seem as bad a town as most people say it is, it reminds me a lot of Derby and Broome. Weatherboard houses with big verandah's, palm trees and red dirt.

The school is brand new and looks really nice.

The old school wasn't so nice and was located across the road from the pub.

Cooking the barbie.

Dem's a lot of onions. Too many onions. We probably could have sufficed with half that amount.

On the right is the only teacher who helped direct everyone what to do. She was great, telling all the kids to go to the end if they just wanted a sausage in a bun.

It was quite interesting how everyone in town seemed to show up for the "school bbq" and how all the adults were quite happy to rush in and get their food and drinks before the kids even had a chance. There was enough food for everyone, which is the main thing though.

After the bbq Farley took us on a little tour of the town. This is an interesting story you should be able to read if you click on the photo.

On the way home Farley stopped to show us some bush tucker growing by the side of the road. He couldn't tell me what this tree was called but we tasted the fruit. It was really really sweet, like jam, and had a big stone in the middle (more stone than fruit). Aboriginals would eat the stone as well as the fruit, for fibre.

Some pictures from today

2009-02-25T23:04:00.009+09:00

I know I haven't posted anything for ages. It's been pure LETHARGY. No energy for posting for some reason.

I took this pic last break. I want this daybed. I've got to drag Jason to the shop to see it and assess it again before we buy it. It's about 500 dollars cheaper than the original one we saw that we wanted. I like that it has drawers.

This is the biggest spider I've found inside here so far. It's still sitting in it's plastic prison as I type. I just don't have the energy for the fearful chucking it outside using a bit of cardboard slid underneath. It should have stayed outside. I've let smaller ones of this spider stay in the house before, it's probably one of the old ones.

It rained quite a lot in Perth today and it really felt like summer was over. I'm sure it will be warm again by the weekend, but I enjoyed the cool wintery weather today. This is rain on the sunroof of the car.

I hung out with my friend and her baby girl all afternoon. Mackenzie has had a bit of a cold and might be teething now so she was pretty grizzly. She had a big spew of milk all over herself as well, which apparently hasn't happened in a while. She loves this thing, which she can bounce up and down in and it's got all sorts of stuff to keep her entertained while she does it. She was pretty tired and fell asleep after about half an hour of bouncing around. So cute! Cute, yet exhausting.

This dog just makes me laugh. She's so cute, but really naughty. Did you know that beagles are the naughtiest dogs out there? It's a fact. And boy do they love food more than anything else in the world.

I'm off to bed. Nite!

Those fires, hey?

2009-02-11T21:26:00.002+09:00

It's been an eventful week for Australia. 60% of queensland flooded and those horrible fires in Victoria. Everyone's been a bit emotional, particularly about the fires, which have been so devastating. With that, I have to share with you this video... you'll see when you watch it.

For people who don't know, we're in Western Australia, which is about 3000km (4 thousand miles or something) from Victoria, so we're not in danger from those same fires. We're okay here, but you never know when fires are going to happen, so the events in vic have made me think maybe I should clear the leaves from around our house and be a bit more fire conscious from now on. Yesterday I donated some money to the fire appeal, that's how I can do my bit from here. When I spoke to Jason tonight he was collecting donations from everyone at the bar, he reckons he got thousands.

I picked up the car today. We officially own a new(ish) car. It's pretty sweet. And, it's insured. I'm pretty sure this is an important factor in owning possessions.

I have been watching How I met your Mother lately and loving it. Reasons:
- bunch of friends that always hang out together
- They know everything about each other(ok, mostly)
- Star wars jokes
- Awesome jokes
- Lily and Marshall are engaged and planning a wedding (and I can relate to that)
- Doogie Howser = awesome
- They're always drinking, and I don't mean coffee (nice for a change from your usual rubbish sitcom.

Enough of that. I went looking for shorts today and guess what. There is nothing but jeans and pants (and okay, they have skirts and dresses) available because the winter fashion is out here already, despite the fact that we are in the height of summer here. Fucking stupid is what fashion is.

I'm going to watch more How I met your Mother.

David Byrne = AWESOME

2009-02-05T00:50:00.015+09:00

We finished painting the house last night about about 1am. So I have to admit that today even after sleeping in until 9.30 I was tired and quite grumpy. It was a bloody relief to finish the painting last night but I was rooted. We went shopping this morning (out of pure necessity) and then came home and started cleaning up the house and moving the furniture back in. At 4pm we celebrated with a bottle of champagne and by six we were on our way to the David Byrne concert at Perth Zoo, which was the whole purpose of our extra time off we both had this week together.

I only have the photos I took with my phone right now, but Jason took a few of the crowd before the gig started with his camera (I'll add them in later). Jason had been really really excited all day which had annoyed me but at the gig I was just as excited as he was and actually felt a bit teary it was so great.
It was so so so awesome. I will just post the photos I took with my iphone. I posted quite a few to facebook during the concert, I was so excited.

When we arrived there was a huge queue to get in, it moved very quickly, but by the time we got in the whole grassed area seemed full! We managed to find a spot near the front at the side. Jason made friends with everyone he ran across, people in line behind us, people we sat next to, people in the crowd. He did the drink runs, we were only allowed to buy one bottle of wine at a time, which was a bit lame, but that's life. David started before Jason got back from buying the second bottle of wine (which he was very upset by!). I called him when David started, but heard the phone ringing (which happened to be in the bag next to me) so assumed Jason was around somewhere nearby. When the gig started quite a few people went and stood at the front of the stage, and everyone who had blankets there stood, and Jason went and stood there when he got back with the second bottle of wine. He came and got me after the second song, poured a glass of wine for the girl sitting next to us and asked her to watch our stuff. We'd taken bean bags to sit in and cheese and crackers, but we left it all and spent the whole gig dancing up the front.

He has a new album out recently, which was originally released only online but you can now get in hardcopy, which is a collaboration between him and Brian Eno. It's called Everything that happens will happen today. We weren't terribly enamoured by it, but he played a few songs from it tonight and they were pretty great live. He played LOTS of his talking heads hits, which I was a bit worried he wouldn't, but which made the gig totally most awesome. His band and dancers were fabulous, having a good time, doing a bit of contempory dance, but also very reminiscent of the Stop Making Sense movie (if you haven't seen it you should, it's the most awesome concert you have never been to).

It was quite surreal when the lights came on for a song during the second encore and they were all wearing tutus, yet totally awesome.

My only disappointment was that he didn't play Psycho Killer, but he played all my other talking heads favourites so I can't be that disppointed. I'm starting to feel really tired. I couldn't sleep earlier, Jason has been fast asleep for a good hour at least so I think I'll join him now. I'll post pics of the newly painted house tomorrow once we have the furniture all back in.

1st coat on the ceiling is done

2009-01-31T15:50:00.005+09:00

It took us about four hours to cut in and then paint the ceiling. First coat looks good! Tomorrow we'll do the second coat and hopefully do one coat on at least one of the walls.

And here are some photos of our new car...

Did I mention it has a sunroof?

So......

2009-01-30T19:36:00.002+09:00

We bought a car today! Mitsubishi 380 Series III Platinum Sports. 2007 model, only 4000km on the clock. They wanted 22,990, we offered 20,500 and they took it! We ended up paying another 3 grand for extras: tinting, paint protection, rust protection, fabric protection and an extended 3 year warranty, but Jason talked the girl down a fair whack so I don't think we got particularly ripped off with that.

I had told Jason a while ago that we couldn't buy a car until we have our investment property built and rented out, because I wasn't really sure if we could handle the extra loanage and still pay down our mortgage (sufficiently), but it's taking forever for this place to get built, we want to have kids in a couple of years and I want to pay off the car before then!

So anyway, Jason said he would like to look at a Mitsubishi Magna. He thought it was fully imported from Japan and a good reliable station wagon.. he kinda had his heart set on a station wagon for extra boot space. We dropped Sharlotte off at work and noticed a Mitsubishi sign and went there to see what they had. A salesman there told us that they don't make the Magna's anymore, but we saw the 380, and he showed us a couple of lancers (I always liked those cars, too).

Anyway, we went home, checked out 380 reviews on the net, and decided to get the salesman to bring it over to our house to see if it fit in our carport (which is probably the smallest you could get). He brought it over, it fit in, we took it for a test drive, and it drove real nice. I was worried it would feel a bit tinny and the steering wouldn't be nice, but no, it drives great.\

Jason asked if we could have it overnight and they said no worries. We drove it to mum and dad's for dinner, it was great. I love it. It's big, but doesn't drive like it's big. It's front wheel drive, but handling is awesome. It has plenty of power and is apparently great for long country drives, so that will be good for driving to my brother's house, fo sho.

Anyway enough about the car. We haven't started painting yet, still prepping. The car took up a good 3 hours today and I was feeling grumpy/tired so Jason gave me some chill time this afternoon to recover. I read more of The Secret Life of Bees. Might finish it soon, actually I will, before we got to Unnurs on Sunday.

Right, better go and do something else. Just thought I'd let y'all know, cause I've never owned a car before, let alone a nearly new one. This is pretty exciting for me!