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You know how things can lay dormant for ages and then all spark at once? The past couple of weeks have been a case in point, particularly in the hardware realm. My laptop went kaput (again... because I maxed out its hard drive again). Then my external hard drive clapped out (a stupid lightweight mobile one - grrr! Never again!). Luckily I have most of my photos on disc, though I've been too afraid to check them for fear they have somehow lost their contents (this seemed to happen a bit when I've tried to play them on my jury-rigged-for-far-too-long computer). So in the past week, to the exuberant joy and relief of the in-house helpdesk, I've replaced both laptop and hard drive. The new laptop should arrive this week. Maybe I'm living in some sort of naive utopia, but I'm hoping this will be the end of the line for the techno problems which have been sapping my living spirit for some months.
Before my entire world-on-computer unravelled I had decided to treat myself to, and ordered a new lens for my camera. Yesterday I picked it up. It's the second lens I've ever owned and I love it. It's a fixed focal length with a really large aperture and gives wonderfully dreamy shots. Kind of what the world looks like to early morning eyes when you're still waking up! Though I'm not usually eyeballing an empty Green and Black's chocolate wrapper (above) before breakfast. Anyway. I love it. And can't wait to play with it more.
All the helpdesk has to complain about now is my mobile phone from 1983...
Last month I made it to inner circle of recipients who receive a 'pinch and a punch' text message from K's Mum. (I think I also scored points for being the only sibling or partner of sibling to reply... but I digress.) This month, her phone was broken. So the first of the month kind of passed without me really realising it... or its significance. It took me until this morning, on the walk to work, to realise that I'd made it to my goal. 'The' goal. The one that I returned to Brisbane for... long service leave! My leave balance now stands at 64 days... or about three months leave on full pay, or six months on half pay.
Wooooo! I made it!
Now we just have to work out how to use it! Of course there's no shortage of ideas... road trips through Central Australia and Western Australia, reconaissance to Tassie and central coast New South Wales... and a further school of thought (that I'd rather not hear), that says 'save it'. Still, plenty of time to decide... and it's a rather happy decision to be charged with, kind of like the 'how I'd spend a windfall' daydream.
Just back from a beachy weekend at Greenmount, which (if your Gold Coast geography is as negligible as mine), is basically the most southern part of the 'Goldie' before the NSW border. We'd stopped there months ago and had beers on the beach at dusk, the tide crashing about our ankles. It's retro beach chic is still somewhat intact (think vanilla brick low-rise apartment blocks with big sandy lawns).
It was our first chance in ages for saltwater swimming, curtailed somewhat on Saturday by bluebottles. Which meant ... cue the kayak! Our first paddle in many moons, up the Tweed. Woohoo! We also spent some time catching up with some of K's friends. And despite some previous bah-humbug sentiment in this camp about the origins/intent of 14 Feb, had a lovely Sunday at the beach, trawled through a vintage market, and relaxed with beers and fish and chips on the foreshore at Burleigh on dusk (a replay of our first ever dinner - aww!)
Anyway, the sun and salty breeze was much needed tonic. We have been missing its presence. I've been going hard to get the new web project sorted, because it's actually live and scoring hits from Google. Which is great, but also kind of not, since it's incomplete... and probably doesn't make a lot of sense under its current (temporary) domain. And really, I should be keeping this to myself so you don't go and Google it! But it's kind of exciting!
Oh. And stuff happening on the job front. Today was day one in a new job... only a short-term backfilling gig. But in an area I know nothing about, and leading a team... eek! But also nice to have something new to get into.
Life has been speeding along. Nothing new there. A year since the bushfires, and there are downpours here and floods in New South Wales. Work is plenty busy, and there's news on that front just round the corner. I've also been idling away sunny days at the keyboard trying (seemingly fruitlessly) to bend and shape a couple of web projects into being. Lamenting the feeling of another weekend slipping through my fingers, I wondered if maybe I would feel like I'd achieved more if I could finish the sentence, 'a day would not be complete without...'. So. In an effort to check that I'm spending my time where it matters, a day would not be complete without...
cuddles and aimless lovely time with K
yoga, or at least a very quick stretch
a solid walk
making a little bit of art, whether through photography, words, craft-ivity or meddling in the dirt
reading, be it the papers, policy stuff for work, a cookbook or ... lo and behold, that long neglected beast, the book!
and of course, food dreaming, cooking and eating yummy food - accomplished this morning via pancakes with figs, yoghurt and honey... yum!
Feel free to join in...
Have been wanting for a while now to post some photos of recent domestic~crafty activity ... including my wonderful new kitchen shelves (a Christmas gift from K) which go a long way to solving the problems of an impossibly small pantry, and the ex science-lab drawers that QUT (fortuitously for our craft room) piffed out. Late last year I saw some floor-to-ceiling driftwood hanging things in Biome which inspired a small driftwood, paua-shell and stone mobile which now adorns our front door. And then there's the world's most ridiculously-labour-intensive paper crane mobile, which I made as a xmas gift (but ended up giving to myself, given the time frittered away making it) ...
Last weekend I had an epiphany. I returned to see Kaja, the musculoskeletal therapist who I had a small win with last year. She massaged, she cupped. And realigned my hips. Oh the glory! I am a new woman. All this time and effort to rid myself of ongoing back irks has been largely in vain because my right hip was completely out of whack. I have known for a long time that my back problems stem from this hip alignment thing. But I cannot believe I have waited ten years to learn that half my pelvis could be quite easily manipulated back to its correct position. Meanwhile I've been hobbling around for half a year with this bloody thing. No more. Cupping? Holistic therapies? I believe. Sign me up. Now.
Cracking the back thing has been like a floodgate. The last 24 hours have been action stations. Yesterday I spied more covetable chuck-out items at the university I walk through to work (the one demolishing their science block, pool and gym). So off we trundled last night on another furniture heist. We scored a low coffee table for the deck, a gutsy all-weather storage box with handles, a cute little display case and a bizarre water-level monitor from 1975 (puchased in 1975 for $1221.57; salvaged from a skip thirty-five years later, gratis).
Also last night, the Greeks across the road tipped us off that the council had been round that day measuring up the bus, which has been parked across the road (innocuously, til now, beside a retaining wall). We’ve had a good run. She’s been there since November. And her Northern Territory rego has just lapsed. Council bills heavy vehicle owners $500 for the privilege. So. After our late-night furniture heist, we had a late-night tactical planning session, and today, got up way too early to relocate the (unregistered, mechanically tenuous but adorable) bus.
She is now snugly re-housed out in the burbs somewhere next to a paddock with goats. If anyone knows anyone with a bit of land they’d like to pimp, within say a 200km radius of downtown brisvegas, please get in contact.
Oh. Life is full. We are also ankle-deep in what could become a very large and cumbersome (but potentially very profitable) book disposal operation. And I am plotting some fun webby stuff too. More on all that soon. And photos of acquisitions and recent crafty concoctions. But now, to bed.
