24.99726 years

Tomorrow I turn 25. As of tomorrow I am most certainly in my mid 20s. 25 it sounds so much more formal than 24.

For everything that the last 364 days have brought me, from the good, the bad, the ugly, the forgettable, the unforgettable, the amazing, the challenging, the one thing that I think will always be a hallmark of my 24th year is of course Pabbi dying. My 25th year starts to unfold tomorrow and as the year passes it will be interesting to see what it brings. I’ve got a number of things I want to complete/accomplish next year but mostly I’m here to live and to make the most whilst doing just that; living life.

and to move away from birthdays but onto happenings of the last week.

For the past week I’ve been literally overdosing on strawberries.
Strawberries ....

I am very pleased to announce that I got 80% for my accounting exam last week, it put me in the top 9% of the class, I aim to improve on that as the semester continues. The exam was Saturday morning and Saturday evening was Riverfire which we watched from a hill in Wooloowin. Oh sigh, we had 3, yes 3 dump and burns this year from the one plane. Oh the F-111 is one special plane.

Dump and Burn

Tonight after work N and I had “dinner” at the 40 Days and 40 Nights of Chocolate Buffet at the Bistro Allure. Oh I’m just recovering from chocolate and sugar overdose. I’ll go again in a couple of weeks with some of the girls from work and I’ve got a game plan worked out. The plan from which I shall not deviate is to get one piece at a time, eat that piece and then go back for more. mmmm chocolate ….

One of the many cases of goodies
Chocolate Buffet at Bistro Allure

N’s plate
Chocolate Buffet at Bistro Allure

My plate
Chocolate Buffet at Bistro Allure

This is one of the adorable presents I got from one of the girls at work today. A mini tea set. The perfect desk accessory for a tea fanatic like myself. I had received the little sugar pot at Easter and was told that I would get the rest of the present for my birthday. Total gold. The best thing is that the tea pot actually pours πŸ™‚

A mini tea set for my birthday

Riverfire tonight

It’s Riverfire tonight and it is quite windy… We’ll have to see how it pans out but fireworks and the amount of wind we’ve got at the moment tends not to make a good show.

This is the last year for the F-111, well so they say since last year was meant to be the last as well, frankly I’ll believe it when it doesn’t do a flyover next year …. There are no Roulettes this year which is quite a πŸ™ for me. I love seeing them doing all their formations etc instead there’ll be some Black Hawks flying about …

Riverfire from the Beach at Captain Burke Park

I made pizza muffins earlier – basically this recipe but with more veggies in. They’ll be snack food tonight along with some Lebanese pastries I picked up on the way home from uni this morning.

I had my first uni exam this morning, 9am on a Saturday … I was fairly confident going in, going out well, I’m still confident I’ll get a decent mark but not as confident as I was going in.

Some collected links from the last little while which I’ve been meaning to share.

Fireworks, music and photos

One of my favourite pieces of work to play either on Flute or Bassoon at high school was Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks and Water Musicso imagine my delight when I saw an ad in the paper on the weekend saying that the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra was about to start touring this piece! I booked my ticket this morning and thanked my mother for qualifying for the under 30 price πŸ˜€ The tour includes Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne, details here.

On the topic of fireworks, this past Saturday night was Riverfire, the night that Brisbane puts on a firework show just because we are Brisbane and we have a mighty cool river. This year unlike previous years, I watched Riverfire from the hill that I live on.

I loved how they had coordinated the fireworks so well together. There was some song about two hearts and they had the heart shaped fireworks πŸ˜€
Riverfire 2008, fireworks from Wooloowin

sigh fireworks.
Riverfire 2008, fireworks from Wooloowin

The second dump and burn to mark the end of the show.
Dump and Burn 2008

This is the view from my hill and the about a third of the crowd (the rest were behind me)
The view from my hill