Tonight was the work Christmas party, I am lucky “working for two companies” as it means I get two parties. I was even luckier with the fact that this year it was held at the Regatta which is oh a 5 minute walk from my new place - can you say perfect? The food was pretty good although there was a lot that I couldn’t eat (seriously if anyone had told me that having braces as an adult was so painful I would have said no). The desert though was fantastic, they had fruit salad, cream, pecan pie, lemon tart (swoon) and Christmas Cake.
I of course took lots of photos but most of them are facebook rated not blog rated. I will share one photo of myself and Jo, one of the girls who brightens my day at work.
It was quite a pleasant night, got to talk to quite a few people that I don’t normally see as they work in different areas, had quite a few laughs and a few drinks - just a great night.
The past weekend the HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Leeuwin have been in town and of course on Saturday they were open for a looksie. We ended up having a Medical Section family afternoon out with three of us from Med and three other family members. We toured the ships, had some good laughs and ate way too much ice cream at Hamilton Portside afterwards.
There was a really impressive turn out of people for the afternoon and both ships put on really good tours. The Melbourne had people stationed at various points where the people accumulated waiting for people to climb stairs ready to have a chat about whatever they were near. On the Leeuwin we had good fun looking through the binoculars with which you could see a fly on a leaf 2km away, ok maybe not quite but they were slightly impressive.
On Monday the main deck of the HMAS Melbourne was the place where the enlistment ceremony took place for this months Navy intake. In addititon to the ceremony been on the Melbourne, it also saw the fourth son of one family enlisting. This meant that the Chief of the Navy was in town to do the honours and the press turned out for the occasion.
On Sunday I did the Bridge to Brisbane with a friend who works in the Maroochydore recruiting office and another one of her friends. We completed the 10km walk/jog in a little under 1hr 20 mins and shortly after we crossed the finish line, we were deciding that our goal for next year was to jog the entire way and hopefully get near the 1hr mark.
It was such a great morning. Everyone was happy,sweaty and content. As we entered the RNA grounds, I picked up my pace and moved into a faster jog, thinking that the finish line was just round the corner, except it wasn’t just round the corner. I rounded corner after corner till I saw the gates to the arena that marked the 200m to go mark. I wanted to stop but I knew that if I stopped or slowed down my pace I wouldn’t get to the finish line, plus there were heaps of people lining the final 200m who had already completed the race and well I didn’t want to look like I had walked the entire race did I? I crossed that finish line and man oh man I was slightly buggered but I felt so good.
Now I am just waiting for midday on Thursday (my birthday!) for the results to come online to see where I placed in the 36000 people who competed.
Last Saturday night I got frocked up for a good cause, the third annual Defence Charity Ball in aid of Legacy and Red Kite and oh what a night it was. There was eleven of us from work plus the other assorted people that people knew from working in the Defence arena. The guys were looking swish in their mess kits and us girls were sparkling in our frocks. It was a night of good food, dancing, chatting, drinking and posing in Iroquois and with Military Working Dog Puppies and Jamie Durie. After the formalities of the ball were over, the rest of the table started on their way home but one of the other girls and I kept on going till the early morning, enjoying a night out all frocked up in our finest.
My dress picked me, I walked into a dress shop at Chermside, had a flick through a few racks, then the manager came over and said hello, asked me what I was looking for and pulled out a few dresses. The dress I wore, was the first one I tried on. I cam back a few days later with Mum, tried it on again and walked out with it 
The dress however meant that I had to wear heels. For those who know me, I don’t really wear heels, luckily I have a great flat mate who has the same size feet as me and wears heels I wore high heels every night round the flat with my track pants getting used to wearing high heels, I looked well like a picture but it was going to be the only way I would be able to last a night in heels. There were quite high heels too, a good 2cm high …. I have to give big thanks to Andrea and Brandi, my flatmate and one of her best mates for doing my hair and make-up. Which meant that one of the persons I work with (though he does work in one of regional offices didn’t recognise me). My hair was so cool, the curls managed to stay curly for a few days more which a lot more fun the the straight slightly wavy hair I have naturally.
The evening before the ball, Andrea and I met up in the city to find the brooch to wear on the dress sash, we went to sooo many shops and looked and discarded sooo many brooches (so many were just plain ugly). Then we came across this little costume jewellery shop in the Myer Centre and there she was, the brooch which was in my budget and had enough vintage style to be very me.
This ball was my first and definitely won’t be my last.
You can check out the rest of the photos here.
Yesterday was the Queen’s birthday public holiday and I spent most of it at my parents sewing, I have finally finished the top of my 21st birthday quilt. I turn 23 in September…… IT looks so good and I can’t wait to see it on my bed.
Today is Tuesday and I flexed the day off to give me a four day weekend 
What a day I had, I started off with a long list of jobs to do this morning and now at 21:40 I can cross most of those jobs off. I have changed the address on my drivers licence, bank account, organised insurance (I’ve only been here a month and a dew days…..), re-arranged my wardrobe, did some shopping, took a bunch of cracked lids back to Tupperware for replacing. The only thing I haven’t done is my ironing which I am about to do and to process the photos from the two most recent gigs I have gone along to.
Tonight for dinner I made a delightful salad. It was fennel, salad leaves, beans, carrot, dried cherry tomatoes, some lightly fried capsicum and toasted walnuts with a lemon and Shiraz vinaigrette and a rasher of bacon. It looked good and tasted good, the only thing I might have added was some apple for a bit of sweetness. Since moving out I have experimented a lot more with my cooking as if is a flop it is only a flop for one person or maybe two if Andrea is eating with me. The pork/ginger rissoles were not the best but the dhal I made last week was soooo good. Andrea commented tonight that I am so good always making dinner and as I said to Andrea, it is just because I am too cheap to buy takeout. Friday night I made a tasty apple and walnut loaf which I will make again in the coming days and tweak the recipe a bit before posting it here.
I am very slowly getting used to having the internet again. It is not weird I just don’t have the desire to check out all the sites that I was checking out before I moved out.
Oh I also should probably mention I got my hair cut two Wednesdays ago, I had about 3″ taken off it, about half my hair or more thinned out and I have a bit of a side fringe. It is so weird, my pony tail is sooo skinny compared to how fat it used to be. I like it just not used to having so much lightness with this sort of length.
My life is in a bit of a weird place at the moment. The internet is still not connected at our flat yet so to use my computer/the net I have to come home and when I do come home I don’t really like using the computer - sort of feels like I am in a Net Cafe with my 30mins of allocated time ticking away. To check my emails - which I can do via the web but I just don’t have the time at work to do so that often, Mum reads me the senders out over the phone. So funny, what an interesting way to check emails. Then I know what is waiting for me to find time to check at work or come home and read.
Last night Andrea and I (and later on a friend of Andrea’s) went down to one of “our (new) locals”, to grab a Pub meal and to enjoy a night of fReTfEST featuring amongst others Rob Longstaff (his website seems to be down at the moment) and Georgia Potter, a post with pictures is coming shortly.
Mum and I went to Chermie this morning and I managed to find not only a cardigan which I was looking for but a jacket and a new work shirt as well. I have been very lacking in the cooler weather gear department of items which have more office style than Polartecs. The jacket and the cardigan are both Australian Merino which is pretty nice. I also picked up a recipe book, to start copying recipes from Mum’s handwritten recipe book to my own.
The 2nd Mountain Goats session is finally up on Daytrotter and oh sigh what a fantastic collection of four recordings it is. San Bernardino is such a delicate recording compared to the version on Heretic Pride. I had forgotten how much I loved There Will Be No Divorce and 02-75, what a sweet song that is and well Raja Vocative is Raja Vocative.
Tonight I am going on a boat cruise of the lovely Brisbane River with a large collection of people from work. Thankfully the sky has cleared and the wind has eased a bit! Yesterday, not many of us was looking forward to today!
And because we always need photos here some photos from the last week or so.
Friday night after I work I met up with Thor and her family and crew at the Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA to watch a selection of Icelandic short films and then Sigur Rós’s concert doco Heima as part of a month long program that GOMA is running called Iceland Waves. Seeing Ísafjörður on the big screen with the local brass band playing down the street was pretty darn cool, so used to seeing Reykjavik on the big screen but seeing Isafjörður was just wow. I am by no means the biggest Sigur Rós fan, I enjoy the music for sure but the most powerful thing in the film for me was seeing Iceland on the big screen, seeing places and going ooh that is that place round the corner from that place or ohh I’ve driven down that road. Just cool stuff.
The short film set that we saw was Cold Hearts 3, some (a large proportion) were a bit too ahhhh eyebrow rising weird for me but I did particularly love one of the short films entitled I Sing I Swim 2007 mainly because I quite dearly love Seabear which provided the soundtrack for the film and you can listen to the song of the same title on their myspace page.
This Friday will see me at GOMA again
I finally got to to Ikea on Saturday! Only 18mths or so after the new one opened! I had made a promise with Mum that I wouldn’t go to Ikea till I was moving out of home. First weekend out of the family home and Andrea and I hit up Ikea for assorted goodies including
A dirty clothes basket - Skubb (in red) and it has a strap so I can can wear it on my back to go to the laundry!
A washing line - Frost, the cool thing, I can lean out my bedroom window and peg my washing up!
A rug to stand on in the kitchen - Bigum because Lino on brick is not the softest.
and of course we had lunch at Ikea
On the way home we popped into Pennisi Cuisine on my favourite street in Woolloongabba, Balaclava street where I picked up a case of tomato passata… and some dried herbs.
So that is my life at the moment.
Though I perhaps should also mention….
….
That I got accepted into the next round of testing for the 2009 Department of Defence Graduate Program!!! Happy slightly
