Gee's it's HOT!!

Today at work it was over 30 degrees Celsius in my office, probably close to 35. It was revolting. Ended up leaving early (only by half an hour) because it was unbearable. It was so hot that getting into the car (which had been parked in the sun all day), the inside temperature of the car was bearable! It was just too hot!

Two exciting things happened today.
- One - my flights are confirmed!! Yippee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Two - at Weight Watchers I lost 1.3kg this week.

Will need to get a countdown thingy like Mandy had on her blog, to countdown how long till i go on my trip. At the moment it's 167 days, or 113 working days. Not very long really. Quite exciting!!

I'm also pretty happy about the -1.3 kg. I wasn't expecting a very good figure, particularly when I ate and drank a bit down at Albany, and had a couple of other semi bad days. But clearly they weren't nearly as bad as I had thought.

So, apart from the heat, today has been a pretty good day.

An inspirational picture of places I'm going to in 167 days time :-)

Auschwitz - Poland - Going there.


The White Cliffs of Dover - England Going there too.


Eiffel Tower - France - going there as well.

What a week it's been!

Gee's what happened to the week. First I write how blogging is addictive, and now it's Saturday already! Wednesday was a really long day. Flew to Albany for work, plane departed at 6.45, had to be at the airport 45 mins before the flight, takes 30 mins to get there, and about a hour for me to wake up and get ready - so it was a 4.30am start for me. I didn't get home until about 9.30pm - was a very long day! So Thursday was busy sorting stuff out and as yesterday was a public holiday (Happy Australia Day!), the week has just managed to dissapear.

Sent an email off this morning confirming my flight and travel insurance requirements. So hopefully it'll all be booked by the end of this month. What a drawn out process it has been. I suppose it would have been easier if I hadn't of done it all by email, but hey, it's more convenient.

Now I need to find some places to stay. We want to rent a place in Spain for a couple of weeks so we can just do day trips and not have to cart everything with us all the time. So that's my next project. Also need to see how much it would be to hire a car.

Here's some views from Albany. Very pretty.

Bloggin's Addictive.

Gee's I never thought that I would enjoy blogging so much. I've never really managed to get into diaries or journals, I've always liked the idea of doing it, but never managed to actually keep it up. But Blogging - hm, seems I quite enjoy. May be because I can type quicker than I can write.

Oh, the semi exciting thing for today is that I've almost got my holiday flights confirmed - Yippee! Just have to read through the travel insurance brochures to decide which insurance I'll be using and then that part will be sorted - Yay!! Then I'll need to get onto the next part of planning - where to go once I'm there. And of course vaccinations & visas will need to be sorted too. At least I don't have to get a backpack.

Anyway, must be off. Have to do some grocery shopping to go with the new WW menu. Be good if they did a vegetarian menu, but I can be creative and swap meat for beans.

I haven't put a photo on here for a while, and I think it needs one, so I've found a picture of Machu Piccu for inspiration.

One small step....

Today I had to do a 100% audit of the grounds. And well, they were pretty poor, but if they throw some resouces at them it they should be ok before transition. The good thing though, is I walked around for 2.5 hours today. Pretty cool, getting paid to exercise.

My "One Small Step" is that I joined Weight Watchers today. I'm not about to tell you how much I weigh or the amount that I need to lose, but it's a step in the right direction, and I'm sure I'll fill you in on the numbers that it decreases by.

And that, was pretty much my day.

Oh What Fun!

Today was the first, of hopefully many, craft days for for 2007. It was at our place today, and it was good fun. Nita, Brody & I scrapbooked. Audrey knitted and did some embroidery stuff, mum watched. Dad even joined in doing his crafty stuff. It was a hoot. I really enjoyed myself.

We went down to the local scrapbooking store to have a look around, and Kevin & Janet where there with Vivienne. Was a real spin to see them there. It was good to catch-up with them. Viv's been away on a holiday for a while, and she only got back last week. She's a good kid.

Other than crafting that was pretty much today. At least I've almost finished my melbourne cup album - one more year to go and it's done. So, hopefully i'll have that finished tonight. Then I can start on the other 101 albums that I have to do.

Anyway, Thanks Nita, Brody, Audrey, Mum & Dad, and Simon for today. I really enjoyed it. It was great to get together.

TGIF

What a day! Spent the majority of the day on the phone trying to sort something out that should have already been resolved. Tell you what it was annoying. If we didn't sort it out we would have been in the poo. But it's all sorted - thank goodness, and it should all hopefully work.

Will by flying down to Albany on Wednesday to check out a couple of things down there. Will be a very busy week, will be doing 100% audits of each service and down to Albany and it's only a 4 day week. Well at least I won't be bored.

Now it's time for the w/end!!

119 Working Days!

I've been back at work for 3 days now, and well, it's been great. There's been a few dramas, but nothing major, and it's just not a stressful place to work. Don't get me wrong, there's heaps of stuff going on and it's going to get busier over the next few months, but the atmosphere is just great. Must be that semi-rural air or something. Anyway, it's the first time in years that I've actually be happy to go back to work after leave. Could have something to do with the fact that my long service leave has been approved. Signed off and faxed away - YIPPEE!!!! (Can you tell I'm a little excited?)

Not bad hey - back at work after a month off and I have my next lot of leave approved. So, in 119 working days, I'm going to have 4 months off of work. WOW! Awesome!! Gees that's not very long at all is it. Aaaaahh, better get on with everything that I need to do.

Gotta go, need to get some sleep and stop Lucy from barking at whatever it is she's barking at.

119 working day!

Evenin' All

Oh, my God!!! Today was HOT!!!!!!!!! Made worse by the fact that we went for a ride. Thinking we would be clever and beat the heat we started early - commenced cycling at about 7.30(ish). Which meant the that on my last day of leave I didn't get to sleep in - how sad :-(

I'm glad we started that early though, because it was hot even then. It was a nice ride, some slopes and some flat bits. We rode about 12.5km, and we averaged about 14 km/hr (we were doing a lot better, but got to a pretty bit and meandered around for a bit). Nita and I want to try and get our average rate speed up to 16-20km per hour, so it wasn't too bad for our first attempt at doing this.

After our ride, we had a picnic breakfast on Kurt & Marcelles front yard. Hope they didn't mind, because we kinda just made ourselves comfortable. It was really nice sitting in the shade, playing with the kids, chatting and laughing and just enjoying the time. I really enjoyed it. And it's definitely something that we need to do more of.

After breakie, we showed Brody how to put photos on his blog - he now has a really cute one on there. So hopefully we'll be seeing a lot of photos and postings now.

When we left there we visited Mum & Dad for a while - but it was soo hot and I just couldn't get cool. I bought Dad a wooden bin to make, so he can get the old guys at work to make them. Dad seemed to think it was good, so he went and copied it so they would have a project for tomorrow (Dad does OT with the old guys in the nursing home that he works at).

We left Mum & Dads place at about 2.30ish, and it was still very hot. When we got home we promptly found cool spots under aircon vents and basically became lumps that didn't move until about 7.30pm-ish - and it's still warm now.

Anyway it's late, and it's back to work for me tomorrow. So I should get some sleep. Also need to get up early and take the puppies for a walk.

Here are some photos from today.

First we have Brody & Nita (recuperating in the shade)

Jorja the SuperStar!

Brody & Meggie Simon & his Girlfriend Jorja & Me - we were singing!

So, now I'm trying to finalise my flights for my trip, and I think I'm almost there. So hopefully the flights will be booked and I can then start trying to work out the other logistics of the trip - ie accommodation, where to go and what to see. But for now, I'm rather content. All I need to do now is get my leave approved.

What a day!

I visited my sister today, which was nice. The excuses (not that one is needed) was that she plans on doing some lead lighting for the front door of their new house, and she wanted to see if the dremel could do some of the etching. So off I trot, dremel in hand -well not literally as it's a long drive to have only one hand on the wheel :-).

I get there and the roof frames are being delivered - very exciting and I'm sure Tony will have to roof built within days (well maybe weeks). He's fantastic at building/making stuff. Anyway, after that excitement, we realise that it's lunchtime. So we have lunch & a cuppa & a chat (well that's what visits are all about you know), we decide that we really should start the window stuff. So she gets out all the coloured glass (man there are some cool colours), and find that her glass cutter is missing (she wasn't happy). So she drives into town to see if she can get one, which there was, but it was a pretty crappy one apparently (I wouldn't know one glass cutter from another personally). So we attempt to cut the glass, and well this became an epic adventure. Straight lines no problems, the curves however where challenging. After a lot of broken glass (and not in the good sense - small fragments flying across the floor) we decided that it was just not meant to happen today and we would attempt this challenge at a later date (tomorrow possibly). So, we played with the dremel for a bit, checking to see if it could do what she wanted - and of course it can because dremels are just fabulous!!

So then we uploaded the programme for her new camera - which by the way is very nice. I like fuji cameras, and downloaded all 187 photos that she had on the camera. Job well done. Then the next problem of the day arose - she wanted to burn all her photos to cd. Easy enough I thought, but the universe decided that this would not be so. So, I do the normal thing and well, the process failed twice! Can you believe it - Twice. So rather than do my nana, which is my normal tactic, I said that I would get Simon to come down and check the computers out (as it had to be the computers fault - couldn't have been mine).

After all this entertainment (oh did I mention it was HOT!). I decided it was time for me to come home. It's an hour and a half's drive, and I didn't get home till 6.30pm. As I hadn't seen Simon all day (and I knew he'd be on the computer for most of the night), and the puppies had been neglected all day (well they would think that, as they didn't get to come with), I decided that we all needed a walk. Again it was still warm. The walk started with our normal things of having arms pulled from sockets as it's just soooo exciting going for a walk. Then we though since it's still ok out, lets go for a bit longer walk - so our half hour walk turned into an hour and a half walk, by which time the puppies where exhausted (no more pulling other than to say slow down!). Both puppies are asleep now, lying under various aircon ducts to ensure they stay cool.

And that was my day!

Here's a photo of Holly the wonderpuppy

& Shona (the miniture Lucy)

I love to ride my Bicycle

Last night Nita and I planned our next riding adventure. Well I use the word adventure in a loose way. It's our weekly cycle where we endeavour to get our heart rates up and increase our fitness. So this Sunday we'll be cycling around Ellenbrook, early as it's goign to be warm and then we'll have a picnic breakfast somewhere. Should be great. I'm really looking forward to it.

Anyway, it's photo time once again and this time I'll give you all some cycling photos. These picutres are from various rides. And sadly (NOT) there are none of me - shame :-)

I should clean.

Well it's the last week of my holiday and I should really clean the house up. But instead I find myself procrastinating and finding other ways to spend my time. Well I've done what my mum used to do, I've set the timer and after that I have to get on with all the household tasks that I should be doing.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon at my folks place and I made 2 picture frames for a couple of pictures that I bought in Vietman. They look ok, now I just need to find a wall to hang them on. Hmm, this room would probably be the best room for that.

Holiday plans are slowly progressing. I need to go to the library today and get a couple of lonely plantes to determine where I want to go. I also need to work out the tour of Macchu Picchu, as this will vary the timings of my flights within South America.

I think the rest of the flights seem to be ok. Hopefully it'll all work out. It's a real bummer that the timing is in peak period, but you get that. I would really like to have the flights booked by the end of this week, so I can organise my leave on my first day back at work.

Lucy the Wonderdog, must have been warm outside, as she's gone for a swim and now she's wet -and has decided that she needs to be near me and is laying under the table. Cute girl - but smelly - yuck wet dog smell.

Photo time - but what shall it be? Ok, so there are some parrots from a trip to Karri Valley Lodge with Nita and Mandy. It was a great weekend and these birds woke us every morning and as we sat on the balcony drinking coffees, the came up to check what we were having.

Then there's a shot of Milford Sound in New Zealand. This was spectacular scenery and bloody cold, and we were there in March!

I've procrastinated long enough. I should be getting on with the many other things I need to do.

Testing Testing One Two Three & Four

Well I'm playing with HTML & the photo stuff and well, basically just playing with the blog stuff. And we'll I'm trying to work out how this all works. So far I at least haven't broken it.

Me, Mac, Simon and Lucy

Mac , Nita & Mandy

Mandy & Mac

Simon & Lucy

By jose, I think it worked. :-)

Another Day Another Tennis Match

Well my life has been full of Hopman Cup lately, as I have spent pretty much every day there this week. It's been really great and I have really enjoyed the tennis, but it's also very painful (particuarly the butt & the legs), and it's amazing how exhausting sitting for 4-5 hours can be. Oh well, I keep thinking that it's training for the flight to London.

I was going to add a photo from Hopman Cup, but the camera is still in the car which Simon has taken to work. Oh well, so much for good ideas. Instead you can have a photo of Lucy the wonder-dog swimming. Absolutely nothing to do with tennis but ain't she cute.

Holiday plans aren't progressing very well at the moment. It's hard trying to work out where I want to go, and how it should all fit together. But half the fun of travel is the planning before.

A New Beginning

Well, it's the beginning of a new year, and the beginning of a new blog. New Years resolutions, I'm sure there should be many, but in reality we all know that they don't stick.

I am in the process of trying to organise my travel, and this blog will be dedicate to that. Be prepared for the ramblings.