24th March, 2009

Today was a loooong but generally good day.

The morning was pretty stressful, I had to be in the city by nine am for the forum, so I had to get an 8 o'clock train. But when I got to the station at 7:45, there were no car parks! Nor were there any car parks at the next two stations! As I was running out of time to get the train, I decided to drive to uni and park there to get the train from Caulfield. I was going to drive into the city but I hate driving in the CBD and also parking is really really expensive. So I got to Caulfield (by this time it was about 8:40, massive amounts of traffic) and went to buy a parking ticket thing, put my $4.50 in change in the machine, but no ticket printed out! I was in such a rush and I got so mad, plus I didn't have another $4.50 in coins to buy another ticket with (who carries around $9 in change? not me). So I called the council on the phone number that is written on the ticket machine and explained the situation, not wanting to get a parking fine. They were surprisingly helpful and cool about it, got my details etc and told me to leave a note with the transaction number of the call on it for the parking inspectors. So I quickly left a note and ran to the station. I am never usually late for anything so when I am, it is very stressful for me.

Of course I JUST missed a train, but I got on one soon enough, that luckily was an express train that got me to Flagstaff at about 9:05. Since registration was at 9 o'clock, I ran to the building and ran to make a lift trip up to the fifth floor. When I got there finally, there was hardly anyone there! Turns out registration STARTED at 9 and the actual forum started at 9:20. Oh well, I guess at least I got some exercise? The forum was okay, the first speaker was really dull but the others were quite good, and I understood 99% of what they were talking about, so that felt pretty good. 

After the seminar I met up with le boy for a long walk (I am quite the active one today, I probably spent at least 2 hours of today either walking or running) and some lunch in the park. There were 4 army helicopters that kept flying over us (Dad says they're training or something) that made it feel a bit like downtown Baghdad, but apart from that it was a nice afternoon.

At 4:30 I went to Melbourne University to meet up with one of my best friends who I haven't seen for ages, Stacey. Actually, she is probably my best friend tied with Casey. Anyway, we walked (see?) down to Brunswick street and had a cup of tea in a Russian-ish cafe, then jumped on the tram to go to a Moroccan soup kitchen for dinner. It looked sooo good and smelt amazing, but there were no tables and they estimated a wait of an hour! I don't think so. So we got straight back on a tram going in the opposite direction and went back to Brunswick street. We headed to the ever trusty Vegie Bar for some food. Vegie Bar has the most AMAZING mushroom risotto ever, I have never tasted better anywhere in the world. They also have some damn fine berry cheesecake. Stace and I shared both, for we are ladies and not eating machines. I had planned to head back to Caulfield by around 8 o'clock but that didn't happen, I walked Stacey home via a friends house to deliver a message, then she put some new music on a cd for me, showed me her amazing new boots, and then SHE walked ME to the train station. She lives in this amazing apartment that is so close to everything, you can walk anywhere from her place. Yet again, I missed a train by about 30 seconds, and I was slightly concerned because the train line in question (Frankston) is slightly suss and I've never been on it at night before, certainly not by myself....I told you I am a wuss.

Anyway, I eventually got back to Caulfield (in one piece, the Frankston line is fine) and thank goodness, no parking ticket. I drove home and my mother had put all the crap that was on my bedroom floor on my bed so I couldn't go to sleep without cleaning it up, how very thoughtful of her. Now I am in bed, and I am going to go to sleep.

Today I woke up feeling totally gross, which was a shame considering I was feeling so good when I went to sleep yesterday. So I didn't go to uni, instead I planned a solid day of study and finishing assignments, because this week is going to be a busy one. Of course very little work actually got done, because as I mentioned earlier, my sister dislocated her arm or something on the weekend. So she was at home all day too, distracting me with music videos etc. I did make a substantial dent into the assignment that I thought was due on Wednesday, then I discovered that it is in fact not due until Friday! Horray! So now instead of finishing it while I'm on a roll, I will probably wait until late Thursday night to do it just because I do that kind of thing.

I also broke my spending ban today, but I do believe that the purchase was an investment. I just bought a pair of bright pink patent Doc Martens, which I have wanted for soo long! I'm so excited to get them, I will be wearing them all winter long. Casey won't be happy though, he's a bit anti-me-getting-doc-martens but he will survive. He wears boat shoes (which I was against) so now we will be even.

Another thing that happened today was I made dinner for my family, which seems to be a reoccurring Monday night event. Today I made meat balls with a tomato sauce and pasta. It looked totally gross and I was a bit nervous about eating it but it was actually really good, I am quite pleased with myself. The best thing about me cooking dinner though is that I also get to pick the desert (we hardly ever have desert at my house) so I always get custart tart, because I LOVE IT.

Tomorrow I am going to a forum about physical activity in the workplace, as I have landed myself a volunteer job with Moreland Community Health Service, working on a project that is based on, yes, physical activity in the workplace. I'm a bit nervous because everyone else there will probably be professional health...people, and I am a mere student, but I think it will be good. Assuming I understand what they talk about.

leggings.

I'm a hater. I hate leggings. They look hideous far more often than not, and I am the first one to pull an involuntary repulsed look when I see someone wearing them as pants. Not only do I find them ugly and too revealing, but I think it is disrespectful to the people around you to wear them. Do you not care enough about your company that you even bother to put on some real pants? But today, I am wearing leggings. I am sitting at home doing an assignment (that I thought was due Wednesday but is actually due Friday, horray!) and I am wearing leggings as pants. In my defense, nobody is home except me, and when I went out to get some supplies from Coles I changed into jeans. I still feel a bit guilty though.

A good Sunday.

Today I had a really really excellent day. I woke up at my lovely boyfriend's house, he slightly hung over, me not at all. We slept in and hung out for a bit, discussed some pretty exciting things that may be happening to us in the not-so-distant future, and of course, what we should do with our Sunday off. I got to choose because I just did. And this is how our day went.

We strolled casually to the train station because we had plenty of time. I enjoyed this because the weather was nice and I don't really like running. We caught the train in to Melbourne Central, where we each got a hideously unhealthy brunch/pre-lunch, then we made our way to David Jones on Burke Street. See, there is this handbag that I have wanted for about a year now, and they are currently having a sale on 'selected' handbags by this brand, and I wanted to go and see if 'my' bag was on sale. The regular RRP is $499 and I was willing to pay about $300 at the most. Of course it wasn't on sale, so I was a bit disappointed. We continued on to Genki because Casey was interested in buying a teeshirt, but we soon discovered that they don't make them for boys.

After all that we walked to the AQUARIUM, which is what I had chosen to do on this fine Sunday afternoon. I felt a bit guilty at first for dragging Casey there because I don't think he was that keen on it and entry was really expensive! But oh well, we went anyway, and it was the best. The first exhibit you see is the new penguin antarctica thing. There were four Emperor penguins who were clearly the leaders of the pack, and probably about 15 regular penguins, and they were so amazing. Watching them swim around was so cool, they are so graceful and beautiful in the water which I really didn't expect....they kind of just cruise around. I could have watched them all day. After the penguins we saw all kinds of different sea creatures. Like a million different kinds of fish, some scary giant crab/lobster things, frogs, spiders, star fish, eels, everything. My favourites were the jellyfish because they are so beautiful, and the fish that kind of look like unicorns. 

We timed the trip somehow to coincide with seeing some scuba divers feeding the fish in the main tank thing, which has SHARKS and GIANT RAYS and TURTLES in it. One of the turtles was being annoying and trying to eat all the food from the divers' bucket so he just grabbed it and carried it around under his arm like it were a newspaper or something, and went on feeding the others. The giant rays (seriously they were so huge, like the size of a large floor rug at least) looked like they were hugging him trying to get him to feed him, and at that point I was a bit scared. When we were in Port Douglas about five years ago my uncle stepped on a sting ray and it shot its' barb right into his foot and it was pretty bloody and painful for him, so they scare me a bit. I'm just a total wuss though, I'm scared of most creatures (except penguins). 

Once we had finished with the aquarium, we headed back to the CBD to get some lunch, and again lucky timing, there was a Thai food + culture festival on in Federation Square. I LOVE Thai food!! There were about a billion people around but eventually I got my hands on some green curry and roti bread, Casey got some basil chicken with rice, and we sat on the grass and ate it and were very happy. Then I saw someone with pofertjes (am I spelling it right? those little dutch pancakes?) so of course I had to have some too because I love them. I lined up for ages to get them but they were so worth it, they were delicious. Once I had finished those we headed back to Burke St to go to Myer because I wanted a penguin figurine as a souvenir. I didn't really like any of the ones they had at the aquarium. They didn't have any but we strolled around for a bit, looked at some stuff, but I didn't buy anything because I am trying to save up some money.

On the way home I fell asleep with my head on Casey's shoulder and I woke up with a very sore neck. We strolled back to his house from the station and then I drove back to my house. We had a very Sunday-night-ish dinner that was excellent, as well as leftover pear-upside-down cake from last night (it was my cousins birthday, I don't know how we ended up with the leftover cake, but score, anyhow). My sister hurt her shoulder pretty badly on Saturday so we all sat around feeling sorry for her for a bit, then I went off to do some homework. Of course I didn't do any, now I'm too tired to start it, I think I will go to bed and get a good nights sleep.

Today was one of those days when I just feel like everything is so good. I'm so lucky, and so happy right now.

p.s. right now the possum outside my window sounds like he/she is being tortured, seriously it is making the most awful sounds

Cooper and I, 10th March 2009

Cooper and I, 10th March 2009
Originally uploaded by Sally Grace

I was trying to do this before but it wouldn't work! Let's see how this goes

Tenth of March

Lately I have been talking about that 'Baby Borrowers' show that has been on the Lifestyle channel, and last night was the second installment. Much to my relief, the real parents of the babies used on the show had constant view of their kids via camera and could step in at any time to give advice (although they weren't supposed to if they could avoid it) or to take their children away if they thought their well-being was at risk. Well one of the couples had their baby taken away on the first day after they just left it in the house with the nanny (who was supervising them to make sure they didn't break the baby I guess?) alone. It was a really interesting social study, to see how the kids (all the teenagers involved were roughly 18) handled the situation. Oddly to me, it seemed like most of the boys were doing a lot of the work rather than the girls...I kind of assumed it would be the other way around. Personally, my boyfriend doesn't like babies so I know if we had to look after one I would be doing everything. 

This morning my sister and I got some baby experience of our own! Not actually having to look after one, but we got to play with Cooper for an hour and we had lots of fun. He likes me more than Eliza by the way.

Can't sleep.

I've been in bed for about 4 hours now, and I just can't sleep. I'm not even that tired. I want to sleep, I need to sleep, but I just can't. I have a tute for "Foundations of Health" at 9am tomorrow, and I think I will struggle to remain awake though the whole thing.

I haven't posted for a while, which I'm sure doesn't matter because I'm about 99.99% sure that nobody reads this. Here is a thought. Why do you put a percentage sign after a number and a dollar sign before the number? Is there a reason why it is different?

I started my new course on Monday, and so far it is going quite well. I'm doing Health Science by the way, and in that four subjects. Human Structure and Function is basically Anatomy and Physiology (I don't know why they don't just call it that? University types, pff) is by far the hardest. I knew I would struggle with it though, and in a weird way that is kind of why I chose to do it. After doing arts last year and finding myself very unmotivated thoughout most of it, I thought it might be better to try something more challenging, something that would FORCE me to do some work and try harder to learn. I know that I can't just bullshit my way through this one, so hopefully I will actually do it and not fail the subject all together.

The other subjects I'm doing are called 'Foundations of Health', 'Health Sociology' and 'Introduction to Research in Health Science'. I thought that research one would be really boring but I had the seminar for it on Wednesday (yeah it doesn't have any lectures or tutes, just one 3-hour seminar per week? Odd) and it was really quite enjoyable. I've enjoyed all my subjects so far, and all my teachers have been nice. For the first time I have female university teachers, which is also something. Something else new is that I have managed to make some friends, I think. Well I've had people to talk to at least, which makes things more bearable. I find making friends difficult so I'm really happy on that front.

I think over the last year or so I have become a lot more socially withdrawn than I used to be. I find myself not really wanting to be around many people anymore, just the people closest to me. I don't really like going out partying etc anymore, I get really nervous, anxious and self conscious unless I am confident that I will know everyone there very well. I think that has a lot to do about my shocking social life at uni last year, it fell way short of my expectations and quite simply, people just weren't very nice.

I'm going to try and sleep again, Dad will be mad if I'm not ready to go when I said I would be (7:15! oh no). I think it's kind of funny that my Dad is taking me to uni. Well he's actually taking me to his work and I am getting the train to uni from there, because it is only about 3 or 4 stations away. But still, it is kind of funny and cute. I wonder if we will stop for muffins on the way like we did when I was at school.

Oh and by the way, I bought some really cool jeans the other day. They are soo comfortable and I thought they made my legs look a bit fat but now I don't think they do.

Goodnight, hopefully

The Baby Borrowers

I'm watching this show on the Lifestyle channel where they've got 4 roughly seventeen year old couples from around England and chucked them into a 'real adult' life, with their own house, a low paying job and soon they're going to get babies. Eventually they get toddlers, then kids, then teens etc. It's an interesting show, but for some reason I'm focused on...who would lend their children to this show? I mean for these idiot teenagers to look after?!

I started uni today, it went pretty well. The subject is hard but I really tried to understand everything and eventually I did, and it was really satisfying. We learnt about Homeostasis, the nervous system and the endocrine system. 

It's going to be really hot tomorrow, another high bushfire risk day. Even though we don't live in a bushfire prone area, it's still unnerving and I'm a bit tired of it all. Bring on winter, I say.