A Pick and Mix September

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last blog entry. The plan was the next installment was to be written by Mr S the following weekend so he could tell you all about his very exciting sailing trip out into the Bass Straight, but I'll let him tell you about that...

September has been a real mixed bag. After the Gripper incident I was struck down with a mystery illness (coincidence?) and was confined to my bed for a week. Fortuitously, I had been for a job interview on the day that illness struck and despite being called back for a second interview the following day which involved lots of drugs and dragging myself from my bed, I was somehow offered the job! Woo hoo! I started my new job last Monday working for Coles supermarkets (the Aussie version of Tesco) at their Store Support Centre (Head Office) in a place called Tooronga which is to the east of Melbourne city centre way out in the 'burbs, so it's a bit of a schlepp when it comes to the commute. The place is huge and has the nickname of Battlestar Galactica due to it's size and black glass windows. There are 800 people in the IT department! The more I find out about the company, the more it reminds me of the way Tesco operates in the UK (courtesy of work tales from Sarah and George). It's all worked out rather swimmingly really, as Coles is a household name in Aus and I'm working on their customer loyalty programme (Nectar, ClubCard etc) so it's a pretty high profile thing to be involved in. What an introduction to Australian working life!

Last week our Big Shipment was finally delivered to our apartment. Absolutely brilliant. Bloody hard work. Very emotional. The guys arrived at 8.30am and by 10.30am 71 of the 72 pieces were in the apartment. The 72nd item was the 3-seater settee. I was called to the first floor by the guys to assess the situation of the settee which hadn't fit in the lift and they were attempting to carry up the stairs. The message I'd received was that it was stuck on the roof. How did they miss the 9th floor, I was thinking. Turned out to be Chinese whispers. It was in fact only slightly cosily snug between the floor and the ceiling on the first floor landing. Call themselves removal men?!?! Despite their defeatist attitude "This isn't going anywhere", I insisted that the settee would fit up the stairs and around the corner of each of the nine flights of stairs, so I proceeded to make them carry it back down to the ground floor so it could be turned around to the right angle and begin it's journey upwards again. It is worth mentioning at this point, that Mr S, very conveniently, had a business meeting in the City on Thursday morning, so was no where to be found when the hard work was to be done. Did I mention we live on the ninth floor? After my insistence that the settee was going up to the flat come hell or high water, I thought it only fair to lend a hand with the grunt work, so Brendan, Dylan and I got to work and within what seemed like no time at all *clears throat* the settee was in the flat. There's nothing like a bit of Friends style pivoting to make the floors pass by quickly (David - that one's for you). Just call me the Fairy Spatially Aware Godmother.

After the excitement of Thursday's unboxing extravaganza, "Eee, I'd forgotten we had that", Saturday afternoon was our housewarming drinks. It was planned as late afternoon sunset cocktails, but we couldn't resist waving the British flag (not literally of course) and having Pimms as the welcome drinks (thanks to Kevin's most delicious Pimms recipe from the Hunters BBQ's - happy days). The plan was for a few casual drinks, then sometime around 7pm head out for the evening. As my project management skills were off duty, mainly due to excessive early intake of Pimms, the evening didn't quite follow as planned. The sunset cocktails merged from afternoon to evening, the nibbles morphed into a late night pizza order and the sensible chat degenerated into talking absolute rubbish with fuel added to the fire in the form of a bit of Irish craic. The result was a truly hilarious evening of memory making in our new pad.

This coming weekend will be another busy one. We're booked for an afternoon of learning to kite board on St Kilda Beach, then with a bit of luck the subtle hints will have worked their way into Mr S's psyche and I'll be whisked off for a wonderful evening of yummy food and quaffable wine to celebrate another year of getting older. Happy Days :-)

A Day of Firsts

Well today has officially been a day of firsts for us here in Aus. It’s now September and to the Aussies that means Spring (think Easter Bank Holiday fever). Thankfully the weather got the “Spring is Here” memo as it’s doing us proud. The sky is cloudless blue and the sun is mega bright, so my sunnies have been pretty much permanently stuck to my face – even indoors. Seriously people, I’m struggling to function without them.

The day of firsts started at 8.15am, when Mr S. had his first ride in a real life bona fide Aussie Ute. I say bona fide, because it had a rather large crowbar in the passenger footwell. I didn’t ask. Less than twenty minutes later the Ute Fun Ride was over and we were the proud owners of our first Aussie ebay purchase, a lovely dresser for the bedroom. Well, it will be for the bedroom when I refurbish it into shabby chic heaven. In the meantime, it’s taken pride of place in our living room and is looking rather fetching behind our borrowed sofa, but at least it fills the room out a bit. To use the word sparse to describe our apartment right now would be an understatement.

The Gripper

The second first came in the form of my spring cleaning. When we moved, in the apartment came complete with a couple of breeding pigeons who insisted on cuddling right in front of me on the balcony, and their nest which was tucked away in the far corner of the wrap around balcony outside our bedroom window. The nest was in a bit of a state and the contents of the two eggs had been and gone, probably got sick of the old paint tins which were next to them. So the entire length and width of the balcony is pigeon nest free, has no more cobwebs and beautifully clean decking. If I rudely awoke one spider, I woke up twenty. Some of them were HUGE! Now I will just qualify this when I say that I am not normally bothered at all by creepy crawlies or flying creatures of any kind, however… I was quietly emptying out the bucket when I felt something gripping my thumb. I looked down and saw what I can only describe as a leg - because that’s what it was. Much shrieking, jumping and flicking of my hand later, my thumb was freed and the leg, along with its owner, was nowhere to be found. Maybe it wasn’t a leg after all, I thought. Until I saw it mountaineering up my very special tea cosy (yes, yes, I have a tea cosy, but it’s very trendy I’ll have you know). Anyway, Mr S. dutifully took a picture as my heart was beating so much it was causing the camera shake. If you are an expert in indigenous flying insects of Australia, please identify the said creature and confirm if it is at all venomous (it's approx. 2cm long from head to tail). As my thumb is still the same size as it was before the gripping incident, I would suspect not, but when something has red and black iridescent stripes under its wings you can never be too careful. So after all of this excitement, I decided not to clean the windows and made a plan to look for a suitable subcontractor. Hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day and I wouldn’t want to put anyone out of a job. Plus, there was by now, tea to be drunk.

The third first was my new Flexicar membership which passed user testing today. If you’re reading this and you live in a city and often think it would occasionally be handy to have use of a car, I would strongly recommend looking for a car share scheme. It was easier than an easy thing on an easy day and Lewis (our lovely navy blue Toyota Corolla) was a cracking little drive. We even managed to squeeze into it our new balcony furniture which we’ve just purchased in Bunnings (another first, our trip to Bunnings). The prize of the day goes to the clever people at Bunnings who thought it would be a good idea to offer van hire direct from the Bunnings store, so you can take your oversized items home with you immediately, then bring the van back and drive off in nippy little car. Those clever Aussies have thought of everything.

So, after a very exciting and most productive day, I’m now typing this from the comfort of my new bar stool and table combo, on my very clean spider, pigeon and gripper free balcony, in the late afternoon sunshine. Sunglasses and tea are of course obligatory.

Now We're Starting

In today's world of online, in yer face, instantaneous knowings of goings on, we wouldn't be on the map if we didn't have a blog. So in an attempt to be right on man, here's our bright, shiney, new blog. The idea is that we write regular updates about the small stuff and you don't have to hound us for emails. So, if I can prise myself away from my cuppa, I'll crack on and actually write something that is blog-worthy.

I could be some time...