Sleep! Who needs sleep!

I had the worst night's sleep last night. And when I did sleep, it was peppered with these weird wedding dreams. One of my dreams was that it was the morning of the wedding and we were all having hair and makeup done and it was the worst weather, pouring rain and slate gray skies, no hope of it clearing. So everyone's having makeup and hair done and I'm sitting there waiting and suddenly it;s like 11.30 and the photographers arrived and I haven't had anything done and he's at home and I'm not.....

I realised I was awake at one stage, awake and sort of tossing around, and my brain was absolutely racing with wedding crap, none of which I remember at all this morning, so I hope I didn't think I was solving the problems of the world at the time. It was like 3.30 or something and I do remember thinking, great, I was trying to get good sleep before the wedding so I don't look like some sort of hung over sleep deprived mess, and I'm lying awake. Bah.

The other dream I had was this bizarre psuedo world and I somehow was in this Coles-type store, except I was just standing there, a customer I think, and this guy asked me to get behind the counter and serve and I was pulling out this weird cigarette type clear drawers, and selling cigarettes and Nurtimetics makeup brushes. And the sky was some sort of weird lilac colour or something. It was all very strange.

Money money money....in a rich man's world

From the Desk of Re. Hehehehe.

Actually though, I had my annual pay review results come through today. Not a huge increase, a little. How much is enough? I'm not really sure.... But I got a bit more, which I guess means they don't think I'm going backwards in my job performance, which is always a good thing! They did tell me that they think my temper needs work. Whoops. Didn't realise I was letting that show to others.....

T-5 and counting

5 days people!

Excitement has started to kick in. Along with Nerves.

Last night we went to mass, Mark particularly asked me to come as it's the last mass before we marry. I have a feeling he was expecting what occured.

Right at the end of the service, when they were doing all the relaxed bits, Father Jim called us up and asked the congregation to pray with him for us. It was nice, and that's when I really had a butterflies in the stomach moment and I realised that in less than a week we'll be standing in that very spot and getting married! Mark had his moment earlier in the day when we were discussing the run of the reception with our MC, Mark's cousin Jab. Also when Jab's wife Bianca was on the phone and she referred to us as "Jab's cousin and his wife" hehehe.

So it's all coming along, the details aren't completely ironed out as yet, but it's happening. I'm excited, I'm possibly more excited about finishing work tomorrow!!! At this stage at least. I think it'll hit home a bit more after I've finished work.

Hope to blog a bit more before the wedding, but we'll see!

Ikea oddities-now I've calmed down

*breathe*

Ok.

The first part of the last post was about how we've furnished our new bedroom in our unit with these cool drawers from Ikea as seen here.

We also got these lovely lamps which look very nice.

The second part of the post was about the crazy world of Swedish candy. Which I won't go into again, but think Kex, Glogg and Malaco for names in the confectionery section. : )

Ikea oddities

stupid fucking blogger it just did it again.
GARARRAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I lost my post.
And it was cool and funny and about funny swedish products.

well the eye's have it

(God so annoying, I wrote this whole post and then somehow it got deleted)

Yesterday at work we had this Health-expo-y thing, it was pretty good, they asked everyone to get into the spirit by dressing up in sports gear. They had stalls like Massages, nutrition, BMI (no calipers thank goodness) and cholesterol. Something I had done which was quite interesting was an Iridology examination. No I didn't have to turn and cough, or get in a chair, Iridology is the study of the iris of the eye (the coloured bit) and then they tell you what's wrong with your body. Each eye has different ramifications, and they use a chart like the one below.

I'm not sure I'm a convert, I spoke particularly to two other girs who had it done, and they were both extreme cases I think (one being Pregnant and one coming off a bout of pneumonia). They seemed to think it was pretty accurate. She only sort of told me things I already knew "Drink More water" "Eat more fruit and vegetables" "take better care of yourself " "Menstruate more often". Yep. That last one's a doozy. She detected problems in my fallopian tube/ovary/uterus area and asked if I ever had difficulty with my menstruation and seemed a little alarmed when I said "oh I only have a few a year, 3-4". She then proceeded to tell me that she thought I should stop skipping it. All this after I'd already told her my doctor had specifically told me that it was fine for me to do it so long as I still had a few a year. There was lots of talking about flushing which wasn't so pleasant. She did admit though that she oculd tell from my expression I wasn't going to do anything she told me. And I'm glad she can own up to that : ) Oh, the other really weird thing she told me was that she reckons my eyes are meant to be blue. I like that they're green though!

Radio Fug

From Fug today, these people are called Esperanza Aguierre and Agatha Ruiz de la Prada (yes one of these fug-sicles is lucky enough to have her name contain Prada).

BUT-I think they look like Maura Tierney

(is she in some sort of popular medical drama now? There are lots of pics with her looking like a Doctor) Here with Dave Foley.

And the woman in red looks like this American woman, but I don't know her name, or anything about her to Google her. Grr.

On another note, doesn't Ms Prada look pleased as punch with herself!

The dog, or the man?

well the weirdness continues. Months ago now, way back in May, I posted about a friend, who I'll call Peg. The post (found here) was about how she is very close with an ex-fiancee and refuses to give him up.
Well I have an update on Peg. She's since married, they're in wedded bliss supposedly.
The weirdness is that Peg has a dog, we'll call him Chick-pea, and Chick-pea has been with the family for a lot of years now. Enough years to remember the first fiancee, and Peg has decided that Chick-pea hates the husband (we'll call him Joe). The reason she gave? "Joe treats Chick-pea like a Dog". Ummm, Chick-pea is a dog. The problem is that Joe doesn't mother Chick-pea and treat him like a little person, which is how the rest of the family treat him.

The ranking in the family? Peg is Mum. Peg's mum is nanna, the ex-fiancee is Dad, and Joe? Joe is just Joe. No ranking. Peg and Joe were fighting the other night-Chick-pea got upset. Peg refused to speak to Joe until Joe apologised to Chick-pea for yelling!

Incredible.

If I was Joe I'd run a mile if a dog ranked higher than me.

I told Peg she needed to have kids so she could differentiate between dogs and people.

Climate change in Australia

I have always payed a bit of interest to reports and issues of climate change in the news and such. We did a case study on the Kyoto Protocol in Legal studies at school and while I have in no way been an avid follower of the stories, I pay more attention that just skimming over the headline.
---At this stage I wish to point out this aided in the duping of me in the near infamous story about the Plant Room now.---
It was with interest then that I read an article in the SMH this morning Finally, the penny drops about the Government's shift of attitude, finally, on the issue. To Summarise, Alexander Downer appeared at an event in Adelaide, an outdoor event;

"It was a bloody hot day, 33 degrees and a north wind - often the Port Elliott show is cold and rainy," recalls Downer.................."It's time,".........

and I was prompted to think about a discussion I had with Jess, just the day before yesterday about the very same issue. My birthday has always been the 7th of October (duh), and it's getting hotter every year. When I was at school, I remember countless birthday party organisational sessions where it was decreed the party would be held at the very end of October (often clashing with my school chum Andie's Bday) so as to facilitate the use of the backyard pool. And even then, it didn't always come off and was still slightly chilly and swimming unlikely.
With all this in mind then, cast your thoughts back to last Saturday's 34 Degree day in which (I at least) sweated in my short short skirt and could not get cool enough! And that my friends, was the 14th of October. This week has been peppered with very hot days, and it's not even technically Summer, in fact we're only half way through Spring.
What does this mean that our extreme summer days will hold for us? Blistering 45 degree days? If this is the case then our school children will be rejoicing and their parents tearing their hair out. The incidence of skin cancers will rise, Coke will make a motza, even though it refuses to hydrate us, and women will wear even less than they currently do (is that possible?).
I do think Climate change is something that is vitally important to our country for consideration, the hole is above us people! Australia is copping it, through drought and the hardships it causes. I don't know anyone on land or anything, I can't imagine how hard it must be for those people.

The Queensland government recently made the decision to flood a rich dairy farming valley for dams for water for Brisbane. It was a shocking story, all this rich fertile farm land that was being destroyed so Brisbane could have water, when Brisbane's rainfall was huge compared to the valley.
It really made me think hard about how in Sydney we should be utilising grey water.

Kill me

I am so over the bullshit and beaurocracy in companies! GARRARAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Seriously! We've got this stupid Barbecque for stupid use by stupid departments and no one can fucking take care of it properly!! I've taken to saying to anyone who wants to use it that we don't provide anything to faciliate BBQ's except the actual BBQ and the gas. We had utensils and stuff, bgut it's like bloody pulling teeth to get the things returned! I had particular trouble a few months ago with a dept who promised they would return them clean by COB the same day. I chased them for a few weeks before I got them back. So when they asked to borrow them again, I was all like "well only if you promise to return them" and that issue got completely missed, he brought the Social Club into it and said they were the Social Club's things to begin with. So in the end the social club have claimed back all their stupid utensils and he can be their problem.
*sigh*

the trees, the trees, the trees are on fire

If you can't read -Hobart (TAS Australia) 12 October 2006.

This would be opposite where we took pics!

Possibly on Mt Wellington!!

Thought for the day

...Friends

...Friends are like butt cheeks.

Crap might separate them,

But they always come back together.

Some hump day funnies

Do these make my bum look big?

......um sorry what were you saying? Something about boobling?

For when you just can't decide how to feel......

Bob! Bob! Look it's Pamela Anderson!!!

Cmabrigde sudty-Cna yuo raed tihs?

If yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too! Cna yuo raed tihs?
Olny 55 plepoe tuo fo 100 anc. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

If you can raed tihs tlel ohetrs to cmoe hree too!

normal weddings

I just want to preface this discussion by saying in no way am I having a go at billylou.

That said, now that she's worried, hehehee, I had a very interesting moment last night with billylou, who is also my MOH and housemate. I was reading through my brother's Order of Service (OOS) and drew bl's attention to a couple of passages I thought were interesting (in their difference to our own) and she made mention she'd never been to a wedding before. While not uncommon, I later clarified with her "so you've never been to a wedding" and she said, "no not a proper one.....I mean my Aunt got married but it was in the mountains and it wasn't proper" (or words to that effect, the intention was not that her aunt had some sort of quasi/commitment ceremony-marriage at all-but that it wasn't in "common" format). But what was taken from it, was that since she didn't get married in a church it wasn't a "proper wedding". And again I will preface this in saying that I mean Proper as in "the norm" not Proper as in "regal and well mannered"
At this point I want to say that billylou is quite welcome to clarify her point, I am simply using this brief interlude as a platform for further discussion.

And my discussion is this-if billylou truly thinks that a "proper wedding" is one involving a church or one involving simply Pomp and Ceremony, then I think that's really interesting! As many girls choose the Garden Ceremony road, or similar, and church weddings are only 60% of weddings or something now. I'm not sure of the specific stats, but they're on the decline now. And (not to say she {the aunt in question} would) but some more sensitive brides would probably be quite offended for someone to think they hadn't had a proper wedding. I mean getting hitched is getting hitched right? And just as much thought and work goes into planning a garden wedding as a church wedding, if not more! Being that you have to consider seating and draping and arches and possibly a carpet aisle and a pretty venue and weather and where the guests will stand etc etc. Me-I've got pew bows and flowers. The rest is pretty much sorted. Not to mention at least with a church wedding I didn't have to think up an interesting arrangement for my ceremony order and think up cool meaningful vows and stuff. {I'm really just lazy actually} But if I had done all those things, they would be just as real as a church wedding. But this is a mindset that is possibly permeating our societal thinking. I'm interested to hear your views on this!

And AGAIN, I reiterate, I am NOT having a go at billylou and all mistakes in tone are my own.

Hen's hilarity

Well tomorrow's my Hen's.
The theme-Pink and Black.
What are we doing? I have no idea. But I'm excited.
I hope it involves copious amounts of drinking, debauchery, and is it wrong to say scantily clad men (and women)? Hehehe. I think so yes actually.
But seriously. I am excited, at least I'm trying to be.
I'm having difficulty getting past all the other "stuff" going on.
Wedding stuff, and domestic stuff.
House stuff, and relationship stuff.
Not neccessarliy with Mark, but with every other person in my life.
Bridezilla anyone? I'm trying really hard not to be.
I may be failing though.
So I hope I wake tomorrow rested, washing done and raring to go.

Only in America...again

October 11, 2006 - 10:00AM -SMH
A would-be bride who earned instant fame when she ran away from her fiance just before their wedding is suing him for half a million dollars for her share of the rights to their story.
Jennifer Wilbanks vanished from her home in Duluth, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, days before she was to marry John Mason in April, 2005, sparking a police hunt that only ended when she turned up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
She said she had been abducted while jogging and sexually assaulted but later changed her story, telling police she ran away because she got cold feet about the wedding.
Wilbanks pleaded no contest to a felony charge of making a false statement to the police but the case earned the "couple" instant tabloid celebrity and they sold their story.
Now she is arguing that Mason failed to turn over her share of the payment, according to a filing on Sept. 13 before the superior court of Gwinnett, Georgia.
"In or about July 2005 Regan Media agreed to pay $500,000 to Mason and Wilbanks to purchase the rights to the story of plaintiff's disappearance ... and subsequent events involved in the 'Runaway Bride' incident," said the complaint.
The filing says Mason was "willful and malicious" and demands $250,000 as her share of the money and the same amount in punitive damages as compensation for his "bad faith." It also describes him as "stubbornly litigious."

Supre fug

I am dedicating a whole post to laughing at Supre's website and what they call clothes. Hahahaha already. Now I will disclaimer this by saying I shop at Supre. BUT I shop at Supre for casual clothes and for good basics. And when I was single they had great clothes for that too.

But Behold- And this is my main beef, Under the heading CORPORATE! AARrrgggghhhhhh!

I am flabbergasted! A breast enhancer!?! Leggings!? Boob Tubes! What kind of work is Supre equipping their customers for? Need I even use the H word? I just cannot believe it, seriously. I may as well go out and become a prostitute, which they bloody well are already-right commuters? *wink*.


The rest of their website is standard Supre fare, but I'll include a few for fun.
The first I don't think I need to say anything do I?
The second-I would have though Supre could afford to hire a model to make their clothes look good. Now no one's looking at her cherries are they? NO. They're looking at the godawful tan line from her Halter Swimsuit! Get a different model! There are girls a dime a dozen who would die to be a Supre Model I bet, and have their friends green with envy looking at them in a catalogue or whatever. It would be the next young twit's break.

I love this

This is a post by Greg at Geese Aplenty which I think is hilarious. Would love to have be in that meeting.....

Blackmail.
A letter to my employer:

Dear Employer!
I want to thank you for recently replacing my cell phone with a Blackberry. I know you did this to increase my efficiency and productivity, ensuring that I’m “plugged in” at all times and can respond to emails with lightning speed. And so I can! I know that this additional efficiency is important to you, so I want to assure you that what happened today will never happen again. It’s just that I was kind of bored in that application demo meeting today. You remember the one, right? There must have been fifteen people in the room! But I didn’t have much to do so I started playing with my Blackberry, which I don’t really know how to use. And I opened up the web browser and went to CNN.com and lo and behold! They had an interview with Daniel Handler about the final Lemony Snicket book coming out this Friday.

So I read it! And it was funny! And I looked up and nothing was going on in the meeting, so I looked back at my screen and saw a link that said “Handler Responds to Rumors about a New Movie.” And then I clicked it. And it took a long time to load, but I figured whatever, it’s a Blackberry, right? But I didn’t realize that 1) it was a
sound file and 2) a Blackberry can actually play a sound file. So imagine my surprise when my Blackberry suddenly screamed “SO WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF A NEW MOVIE, MR. HANDLER?!” into the middle of the meeting room.

Anyway, after everything settled down, I knew that I had learned my lesson! And you can rely on me for efficiency and productivity from now on! Because now I know that it’s very, very bad to surf the web during meetings. Because that’s not what a Blackberry is for.

So instead I spent the rest of the meeting playing “Brickbreaker.”

Imagine that happening! Hahahaha

Little Barbie girls

(you can tell I haven't had much work today can't you?)

I read a very accurate article today about the over sexualising of little girls in today's society. It's an issue I have actually thought a lot about in recent years as little girls went from wearing appropriate clothes to looking like little hookers. If I had a dollar for every time I had a conversation with someone my age when we mourned the death of Supre as a wonderful source of clothing for kids.

Annoyingly, when I went to find a picture of some gross kids clothing, and could I find any? No! Albeit I didn't try very hard.....but I know they're out there! Target particularly is a terrible culprit, they're always stocking awful looking leopard print skirts and little boots and stuff. *shudder* So horrid girls underwear will have to do.The catch I think with this kind of issue, and the one I battle with when I think of having little girls myself in the future, is that while I don't want my girls to be tarting themselves up from as young as 6, I also don't want to ostracize them from friendship groups for being daggy and uncool! I hope I raise girls who are confident enough in themselves not to care, but there's no guarantees, and I think an even worse problem would be being the pushy mum and all like "you don't care-because I'm telling you you shouldn't!" but then they still care. I mean to some degree I guess no matter how confident you are, no matter how old you get you still have some care for the preception of yourself. Actually, excluding old people, they don't seem to give a rats.

Hmmm.... maybe it's the folly of youth I still experience and in 5 years I will truly not care. I care little now, but sometimes I catch myself caring. I look around behind me and it's snuck up on me. Garrr.

More on my insecurities at a later date.....

Laws of Human Communication

As per Hugh Mackay

First Law
It's not what our message does to the listener, but what the listener does with the message, that determines our success as communicators.
Second Law
Listeners generally interpret messages in ways which make them feel comfortable and secure.
Third Law
When peoples attitudes are attacked head-on, they are likely to defend those attitudes and, in the process, to reinforce them.
Fourth Law
People pay most attention to messages which are relevant to their own circumstances and point of view.
Fifth Law
People who feel insecure in a relationship are unlikely to be good listeners.
Sixth Law
People are more likely to listen to us if we listen to them.
Seventh Law
People are more likely to change in reponse to a combination of new experiences and communication than in response to communication alone.
Eighth Law
People are more likely to support a change which affects them if they are consulted before the change is made.
Ninth Law
The message and what is said will be interpreted in the light of 'how', 'when', 'where', and 'by whom' it is said.
Tenth Law
Lack of self knowledge and an unwillingness to resolve our own internal conflicts make it harder for us to communicate to other people.

Our House-is a very very very fine...Unit actually.

There's a chance we'll settle this Friday!

So that would sort of help with getting some things moved in. I should get off my toukus and start putting things in boxes!

This is an outside view of the building, I haven't got the other pics off the camera yet (grr) sorry.

Disaster stikes.

What is wrong with this picture?

The answer?

THIS!!!

And before you jump in and say that I should stop worrying about it, and why the hell am I even looking at the 28 day forecast, the answer is this> I'M A LUNATIC. It's not a pretty answer, but it's all I have and I'm clinging to it. I WISH I wasn't being so crazy, but a girl asked where she could find a good weather site so I directed her to the Weather Channel as I'd been there to check out the weather for Bathurst for the weekend and found it easy to use. So after I'd recommended it I jumped on to check I hadn't led her astray, never expecting THIS to be what greeted me. So now I'm going to worry about it and think about it and stress unneccessarily about somehitng I cannot control.................

GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One month today

How bizarre is that?

On the subject of Blogging...

I decided today to just take a hop around some other blogs. There is a button at the top (right?) corner that says Next Blog, and I don't know how it determines what is next {due to the fact that if you click Back and then Next again it will take you somewhere else entirely} but I've stumbled across some very interesting blogs. One was a lady discussing her battle with Breast Cancer being that it's BC Awareness month for October.
Of which on that topic, I heard that there were Pink Tim Tams available at supermarkets for BC and that they were Strawberry flavoured and I am happy to confirm that this is true! Whee! They are quite yummy and I bought an extra packet so that when Eca gets home (34.5 Hours-Actually she might be on the plane now!) she can try them!!!
But moving on, one blog I stumbled upon appeared to be some sort of real or imagined dialogue with an ex or current girlfriend of a guy in Singapore. I thought I'd drop him a line to let him know that just anyone could actually read his private feelings and rants, which may be his intention, but I caught something about this girl being the only one who knew what was written on the blog or something. Of which, would also be risky, as a blog address can so easily be forwarded (case in point Billylou- that weirdo-blog/teenybopper-worship page that Shaneo was writing. weirdo! *Ahem*cough* what was I saying....
Actually in this strange saga, I has discovered that the female part of this relationship also has a blog, which I may or may not click on.......damn, I clicked and there was no blog. I feel drawn into these peoples turmoil. I think I'll move on....

I also found a blog written by a Texas Priest who had lots to say about how Sin is denigrating our society. He waxed on a bit about how he can't be holy enough and how Sin affects those around us. It was interesting, but I don't think I could read a whole blog on it. It does show however how advanced our age is that our religious figures face difficulty and struggle with their lives and feel the need to blog and share it with others. I don't know who his intended audience is, certainly not little ole me in Sydney. But it's food for thought. There's actually a startling amount of religious blogs out there.

Heheheh and Billylou might be amused to hear I found a whole blog about NeoPets!

And lastly, I found a really interesting blog written by an Indian American guy by the looks of it, all political and thought provoking. I really should pay more attention to the greater world.