Paragraphs? No, not here…

This post is going to be in bullet form here and there, because I don’t have the brainpower to string together lots of coherent sentences.

# It just took me three goes to spell “Sentences” correctly…
# I’ve been going flat out for 12 solid hours, and now that I’ve stopped, I just want to sleep. And possibly eat ice cream. On a stick. Too lazy to put it in a bowl.
# Today, work consisted of data entry, filing, and a 5 hour period of HAND-WRITING cheques.
# I have ink smears up my hand from said writing. Left-handed, see? Smudges.
# The general manager of the company I’m temping at is fishing for all the information he can get on me. Today he basically interviewed me while I was sitting at my desk, asking what work I’d done previously and why I’d left. Weird things to ask a temp, dontcha think?
# No birds flew at me today. I saw a wasp though.

Oh yeah, I had a job interview this afternoon, but I’m not sure what to think about it. It was very informal, they didn’t even have my resume, and they couldn’t even confirm the salary figure I’d been given by the agency. Bodes well, no?
I find out on Monday if I got it or not. If I get it, I hope they’ve got things sorted out by the time I start work. If not, I still have options. I’m not fussed.

# I haven’t told you, but a week ago my cable internet got speed-limited, so for the last week of NaBloPoMo I’ve been stuck with trying to use the internet at dial-up speed.
# I’m not as patient as I used to be with regards to my internet. I want the site, and I want it NOW!
# I am very headachey and want lots of hugs. And no, it’s not PMS. I don’t get that anymore!
# I get my hair cut tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to.
# Sometimes I get a bit sick of having such high-maintenance hair… but I look like a total twit if I try and grow it out, so it’s staying like this. I’ll get over it.

Today was the last day of NaBloPoMo - and I survived! I want a badge saying I finished it… hopefully they have some on the site. I’ll do a full November wrap-up tomorrow, and recap what I’ve been blabbing about for the past 30 days. It’s been quite a month!

Bird brained

I got quite a fright this afternoon!

At the office I’m temping at, the front wall of the building has large windows that span the length of the wall. There’s a little brick ledge on both sides, outside and in.

With about 15 minutes left in the day, I just happened to look out the window and see a bird flying straight at me! It pulled up just in time and landed on the ledge. I just about jumped out of my seat… luckily nobody else saw me.

The bird then had the gall to stare at me through the tinted glass, like it was taunting me for getting a fright!

I am wanted!

I went to work again today, and cleared up more of the backlog… just keeping to myself, and trying to get as much done as I could. The other temp and I have taken to chatting to each other during our breaks, and after work by our cars, and discussing the possibility of being offered permanent positions. Yesterday the client said that they were looking to fill some permanent roles, and if they were pleased with us at the end of the temp period, that we could be offered the permanent positions.

The agency called me about 40 minutes ago, and said that they’d done a check - which they always do when temps start a job with a client. Apparently the clients couldn’t be happier with me and my work… and my consultant hinted that I might be offered a permanent job there.

But wait…

About a week and a half ago, the agency asked me if I wanted to apply for a permanent accounts position about 25 minutes away. I wasn’t really thinking about it too much, and basically said ’whatever, why not?’
Well now, this other client has heard about how happy the people I’m currently working with are, and they want to meet me for an interview!

I feel like I’m in hot demand! This has been the confidence booster I needed. Yesterday, all I had was a two-week contract job, and now it’s quite possible that I could be offered two permanent jobs!

Makes me want to write a letter of thanks to my old boss… considering both these people are offering to pay at least 1.5 times what he was!

New job. Not witty.

I tried to think of something witty for my title to tell you that I started my contract job today, but I couldn’t think of anything. Eight hours of staring at invoices and a computer screen will do that to you, I guess.

I’m very proud of myself. I got on the highway by myself, and drove down in 15 minutes, and drove home on the highway by myself… not bad, considering I’ve only done it about 5 times. Three of those in the past two days! My poor little car is not used to doing over 70kmph, so I think it’s in shock at having to do 100 twice a day!

As for the 8 1/2 hours in the middle, it went very well. The place is only 15 minutes away, and another temp started today, so I wasn’t alone. The people in the office were very nice, showing me how to use their computer system… very helpful and nice to talk to. There’s a lot of work for me to do for the next two weeks, a whole month’s worth of creditor invoices need to be put into the system, and more to do after that. We get three breaks during the day (unheard of in administration!) - 30 minutes for lunch, and morning and afternoon tea, 10 minutes each.

My first day went very well. The only downside was the headache I got from sitting in front of the computer all day. Which I guess will take a little while to subside, since I haven’t worked for a few weeks.

So there you have it. I’m working! Money! Yay!

Give peas a chance!

I hate peas. It’s a well-known fact. I would rather starve than eat peas, I hate them that much. Apparently I loved them when I was a baby… but I can’t picture it.

Much to Mum’s chargrin, to this day I refuse to eat peas - unless they’re served with mashed potato and I can bury them in starchy goodness. And lots of tomato sauce. Most meals, she serves peas to everyone, and gives me a tiny pile on the side, in hope that I’ll eat them. Other meals, she doesn’t bother giving me any at all. I’m usually picked on at teatime by everyone else by flat out refusing to put them near my mouth.

This obsession with the little green balls of ickiness in our household has led to some unusual table banter. If someone drops a pea on the floor or on the dining table, they have “pea’d on the floor” or “pea’d on the table”. One flew off Matt’s plate last night (and near me, to my horror) and he said “look, there’s an esca-pea!”

A couple of months ago, Mum was looking at a clothing catalogue, and saw a t-shirt. It was green, and in darker green it said across the front “Give peas a chance!”
She couldn’t help but point it out to me. I would have bought it, except it was a kids shirt. I was disappointed, because I totally would have rocked it!

Lately, our little dog Snuggles has been refusing to eat his wet dog food of a night. We only give him the tiny single serve portions, but he wouldn’t eat them, and then they’d get flyblown and feral. So we stopped giving them to him. Last night, Mum decided that she would give him some vegetables instead. She chopped up two roast potatoes, cabbage, carrots and peas, mashed it all together, and covered it in gravy. He ate it.

Mum went out there to check on him, and then she came in my room and said:
“You can tell he’s your dog - he ate everything except the peas!”

Good dog!

Snuggles is 16 now… he’s lost all his teeth, we’re pretty sure he’s nearly blind, and his hearing comes and goes. But he’s still full of love (especially for Matt) and loves to play around for a few minutes before he gets too tired.

And here’s a cute picture of him I took last month. He’s becoming quite camera shy. He does this thing with his tongue - he used to poke it out a little between his teeth to look cuter. Now his tongue hangs out because he’s got no teeth to keep it in! It’s still cute though.

New set of wheels! (aka Matt’s Mouth #5)

I’m looking at replacing my car next year. Right now I have a tiny 2 door Daihatsu Charade. She’s been a good car… but she needs a new engine soon and she’s very temperamental. I haven’t been driving much since I’ve taken time off work, and whenever I start the car to go somewhere, it runs rough as guts until it gets going.

Matt’s pretty car-savvy, as every man is assumed to be.
(My dad’s not mechanically-minded at all. Give him a bit of wood though, and he’ll make you a masterpiece.)
So, I’ve started perusing cars online, and asking Matt’s opinion on different makes and models, and also the prices and kilometres on the clock. I’ve also been told it’s a good idea to get something a bit bigger than what I’ve got now. That’s a good idea… my little car only takes up half a parking space, and it’s damn-near impossible to see past 4wd’s, small trucks, and even utes.

Matt told me this evening that I need “a car with some balls”.

So far, I’ve deduced the following:

- Toyota = excellent, but they hold their value so they’re usually a bit pricey. Corollas are best. I want an Echo though.
- Holden = pretty good, if I go for a Barina, which is a small hatchback. I could pick one of these up relatively cheap, and parts are easy to find.
- Ford = I’m not a fan of Fords. But I could always get a little Festiva. They’re pretty good, and they come in purple!
- I don’t want another Daihatsu. I’ve had some trouble finding parts for my car. One time, it broke down on the way to work, and the cause was a worn-out rotor button. That is, a tiny bit of plastic. I went to get a new one at Autobarn, but it turns out, it was the wrong one. I had to get a genuine part from Toyota. (Yeah, Daihatsu is a subsidiary of Toyota.) A 30 minute drive and $22 later, I had my bit of plastic. Something that I would have rather paid $6 for…
- Hyundai = I’ve been officially banned from buying one of these, any model. Matt reckons they’re absolute crap. I’m not going to argue.
- Nissan = Another ban. To quote Matt’s opinion: “You’ve gotta have something missin’ if you own a Nissan.” Okay then.

And with that, let the hunt begin!

Australia decides

I’m very late with my post today, it’s not quite 11pm, and had it not been for NaBloPoMo, I probably wouldn’t have bothered.

But, I have just been a part of, and just witnessed, history taking place.

The Australian federal election was held today - the first federal election that I have been able to vote in.

Then I got to sit back and watch as the Howard government was kicked out of office. I watched the outgoing Prime Minister concede defeat, and the new Prime Minister make his victory speech.

Politics is something that I have never really been interested in, until now. Maybe because this time around, I actually got to have a say. And I liked it.

Prime Minister John Howard has had to make way for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who not only won, but totally kicked ass.

Tomorrow’s papers will be declaring it a “Ruddslide”. Which it was.

So now the question is, what will tomorrow - and the new government - bring? Time to find out.

HAPPY Friday!

I got some great news today - I have a job! WOOHOO!

I’m still waiting to get the address and the specific details, but it’s in a suburb about 10 minutes away, and I’ll be there for two weeks doing data entry, creditor queries and writing cheques. Two weeks isn’t very long, I know, but I wasn’t expecting something to come up that would run over into the new year.

The best part? I’ll be getting $18 an hour, yo. Nearly double what I was on at the old place.

Well, I feel better now knowing that I can afford to buy Christmas presents for people!

The tale of Chicken

I forget the main thing I was going to write about today… so I guess it can’t have been that important!

We got some good news though, as we had expected. The infection on Dad’s hand is either a fungal infection, or a germ. Still gross, but a lot better than the c-word.

I was hoping to find out whether or not I’d gotten a job through the recruitment agency, but I haven’t heard from them since yesterday morning. They said they would call yesterday afternoon, because the main job I wanted was supposed to be an immediate start. I’m going to give it until lunch tomorrow, and if I haven’t heard, then I’ll drop them a line to see what’s going on. I was hoping that I’d have a job to go to on Monday. I’m getting bored…

Although, for the past 10 days, I have been amusing myself with a Christmas cross-stitch kit. I’ve been stitching a very cuddly Santa, who is hugging a teddy bear. It’s a lot of work, but I’m nearly finished! I just have to stitch Santa’s face, his hat, and finish off the curls in his beard, and then I can do the outlining. Then I’ll take a photo for you! I’m going to be very proud of it when it’s done.

We had a chicken crisis in the house this evening. Mum had bought some chicken breasts on shopping day and froze them. She defrosted them today, and when she went to put them in the oven bag, she smelled something that wasn’t quite right. She enlisted Dad’s super-sensitive sniffing skills (yes, he really does have them, this is a man who complains if you even wave an uncut union near the frypan his steak is cooking in) and they deduced that the chicken was bad, so they threw it. We’re all lucky that Mum picked up on it, otherwise all four of us might have been fighting for access to the Porcelain Express. What was dodgy though, is that the chicken was inside it’s use-by date. I ended up doing a take-out run - which always means going to at least two places. Dad will only eat McDonalds chicken nuggets and chips, and Matt, Mum and I got Red Rooster (kind of like KFC, but they pretend they’re healthier). So we all ended up eating chicken anyway!

The Australian Federal Election is being held on Saturday, and in all honesty, I will be very glad when it’s over. Six solid weeks of “official” campaigning, and unofficial campaigning since February. I’m sick of it! I know the process is even more drawn out in the US, so I feel for you folks, seriously.

For the record, I hate Howard, okay? And I hate the whole government. They promised no GST. We got slapped with it in 2000. We were promised that a lot of other taxes would be removed once the GST was in effect. No removal. Oh, and then there’s the whole stripping workers of their rights, award wages, holidays and penalty rates. And unfair dismissal? Gone. Hopefully Howard will be gone, too.

The Opposition leader has been pimping his “Education Revolution” (and a lot of other things I agree with) for quite some time now. And we need it, because…

I told the kid at Maccas that I wanted half a dozen chicken nuggets tonight, and he said “err, how many is that?”

This is quite a predicament, people! Australians, vote wisely. And remember, you’ll cop a $75 fine if you don’t vote. Because even though we are a democracy, it’s compulsory to vote.

Go figure.

Gym happy!

I finished my 12 week gym challenge last week. I’d had my final weight recorded, but not my measurements.

I got measured tonight, and… *drumroll*
in 12 weeks, I lost 22.7cm - that’s 8.9 inches. I’ve already forgotten the exact measurements for all body parts, but I can tell you that I lost 6cm off both my chest AND hips, and 2.5cm off my waist. Wahoo!

This makes me mega happy, especially considering I wasn’t 100% committed to the challenge. Imagine what I can do when the next one comes up!

I should also take the opportunity to brag mention that since January, I’ve lost close to 10kg (22lb) in weight, and dropped two dress sizes. Go me!