Gahhh!!!

Bastards!!!!

Some shitty little punk has gone and keyed our car - all four doors and the bonnet. It’s a sickening feeling when someone randomly messes up your property for no apparent reason. It’s like when our old car got broken into a few years ago.. Except this was 2 metres from our front door while we were sleeping, and it sure as hell is going to be more expensive to fix than that broken window last time!

Bring back the death penalty I say!! Bah.

Lousy end to an okay week. After attending one of the most enjoyable weddings I’d been to on Friday (Matty Rowan got through the day just fine!!!), a fine Saturday catching up with an old mate, Sunday was just going to be a nice lazy one. It was, up until Sunday night. Just about to go to bed when I tripped over the base of the exercise bike en route to the living room from the kitchen.

2 metres of clear, well lit space, and I stumble over a bit of plastic 4cm high. Here’s the result:

I think I may have done a serious bit of damage here. Ah well, tape it up securely, and just call me Limpy Mc Hobble. It wasn’t even a cool injury, suntained on a footy ground, or battlefield, or whatever.

Hence, why exercise is bad for you.

I think interviews for the restructure are this week too, which is another joyful part of my life.

Mowing grass has to be one of the more shitful household tasks ever invented by man. Due to the aformentioned unholy rains that we’ve been having, the grass in the backyard has been growing and growing and taking over the yard at a massive rate of knots. Not having a garage anymore, or a garden shed, it means that we have to drive down the road to my parents’ to borrow their mower and whipper-snipper.

By about the halfway point, I was starting to seriously consider starting a small bushfire to sort it all out, and then paving over the charred remains.

That might even help with our increasingly worrying cockroach problem. The little bastards are coming from everywhere, and nothing can kill, or even slow them down.

Ah well, at least that’s the lawn taken care of for the next few weeks anyway.

Thanks a friggin’ lot, Melbourne! Dragged self onto 7am flight to Melbourne for work. Flight in holding pattern over Melbourne for an hour due to backlog created by unholy rains. Arrived in Melbourne airport 10 minutes before first meeting in Docklands. Spent 30 minutes in cab queue. No cabs due to flooding created by unholy rains. Finally back in Sydney at 5:30. Took longest cab fare back home due to traffic caused by unholy rains. So over it.

Going back to work is a happy little packed lunchbox of fun, when your body and brain aren’t quite ready to go back yet. Yeah well, when are they ever ready? It’s just like the routine every normal monday, except post-holiday monday feels worse, and lasts about a week.

In my uni days, anything more than about 3 weeks of holidays started to get a bit boring, and you’re actually look forward to getting back to it. Of course, with the fewer holidays available to those who work a fulltime job, and the bustle of a visit from our tourists, it never really felt like a rest when that last Sunday night was passing by.

Only a quarter of a year to go until my next holiday.

Have you checked out the photo gallery for the updated holiday snaps below? If not, why not?

… and they still suck. Both my trains today were 10+ minutes late, crept along slowly, and had extra stops.

Well done, all.

This has not been one of my finest hours.

I’ve had the flights to Perth booked for months (since November), and I have checked the flight details a thousand times since then. I use a 24-hour clock every day without errors. I fly 15-20 times a year without incident.

And somehow I’ve managed to be absolutely convinced that 1955 hours means 9pm. Imagine my horror when we rocked up at 7:55pm only to be told that our plane has already left. Combine that with the sinking realisation that I can’t possibly blame anyone else for this (and that hurts, believe me).

Luckily my parents hadn’t gone far, and had a mobile phone with them. They swung around and collected us again (rather earlier than previously thought). They have to make another airport run tomorrow morning anyway, to deliver my cousin to the airport (lucky bugger has a 6 week holiday through Canada and Europe). We’ll be waiting in the terminal for four hours (my cousin needs to be there at 8am, but our flight is not till noon), but there you go. Maybe it’s karma’s way of kicking me in the teeth to even things up again.

Okay, next post guaranteed to be from Perth!! I hope.

Hmm.. Maybe I don’t actually know what I’m doing about those trackbacks…

So far, the arrangements for The Big Move have been going pretty smoothly. The tenant is moving out 2 weeks earlier, so we have a few more days in which to get everything up and running. I’ve organised a phone number, and I’ll get the ADSL application rolling as soon as we’re connected (obviously nothing can be done until Telstra get a phone line on which to wreak their infinitely horrible care)…

Getting the Foxtel moved is proving to be a bit of a nightmare though. I’ve called up 4 times in the last 3 weeks, and each time I’ve been told that someone would call me back soon to organise it. The first time, they called when I wasn’t at home, and never called back. The second time, the call-centre drone closed the call so no one ever called me at all. The third time, I was assured that someone would call me, and so far no one has. When I called tonight, I was told that someone would call me “next week”.

While I do understand that they are getting hammered because of the Foxtel Digital launch, it’s not as if the situation has suddenly been sprung on them - they have had MONTHS to prepare for this. Apparently no one important was around at that time of the night, so I’m going to have to call back tomorrow to get anyone who can help me at all.

Apparently people are now getting install dates of late JUNE - and I’m not even on any queue at all! If I end up having to pay for 2 months of Foxtel that I’m not watching, there will be hell to pay.

As my regulars (or irregulars, as the case may be) may know, I’ve been holding off on updating my blog on account of some other exciting development work on redandwhiteonline.com - and also because I’m going to update this blog too. But I think I have to weigh in with something.

We went to see Jewel at the Opera House on friday night (as I type, it’s 2:45am.. ugh) - see review below - and The Jay parked the car at our usual el cheapo spot behind UTS. If you time it just right, you can feed the meter with parking for 2 hours, then it’s free.

Well, after we walked back to the car from Central (we were parked on Thomas St, parallel to Broadway), we passed a BMW with its window smashed. Poor bugger, I thought. Hope our car’s okay. At first glance, nothing seemed amiss. As The Jay approached the passenger side door, she noticed the contents of the glovebox all over the passenger seat. Then we saw the broken window - it was actually the smallest panel of glass, the rear panel on the left rear door. There was glass all over the back seat, as well as the Jay’s empty iPod case. Her bag was missing too.

After the necessary obscenities and cursing of the culprit’s family unto seventeen generations, I took a closer look at the mess on the passenger side floor. To my amazement and relief, in amongst the junk on the floor was a 20GB iPod. Still working as well as it ever did, and in no worse condition than when we left it. After a thorough search, I came to the conclusion that somewhere in Sydney there was someone wandering around who should be locked up for their safety, so that they won’t hurt themselves with their IMMENSE STUPIDITY.

As a recap, here’s what the thief DIDN’T take:

• 20GB iPod - Value maybe around $400-500 nowadays
• 3 pairs of sunglasses - Value around $500
• The Jay’s school keys
• the spare change in the car, about $2-3 worth
• Toll pass - worth as much in tolls as you wanted to do until we cancelled it
• 2 cassette adapters, worth about $30 each
• Phone charger
• USB/Firewire charger
• Club Lock
• Entire contents of the boot, mostly just clothes

What they took:

• The Jay’s STM backpack - about $120
• The contents of said bag, just teachers workplans etc - worth absolutely nothing to anyone apart from the teacher who owns it, who now has to compile it all again

Congratulations, you are Sydney’s Most Stupid Thief.

We reported it to the police, but I don’t hold out much hope. The bag is probably dumped in a bin somewhere (I scoured the area a block in every direction, but didn’t have any luck despite looking in just about every bin in there). Luckily no one was hurt, and the more expensive items were inexplicably left untouched, but it’s still a major hassle (especially to She Who Must Now Redo Her Entire Term’s Planning And So Is Understandably A Little Snappish Right Now), and a sad reflection on humanity in general. Honestly, is there anything wrong with working to earn your money in a legal way?

I guess it’s a lesson that the area is well dodgy, and we’ll certainly be using parking stations from here on in. People suck.

This may be my last entry. A suspected gas leak has buggered up the rail network in Sydney. Wynyard, Town Hall and the City Circle stations have been shut down while the authorities decide if anything’s going to blow up. Now Central is closed too, which is most excellent. I’m fairly sure I’ll be able to get home tonight, but that’s no given.

If you never hear from me again, I’d just like to say that it’s been real.

Respect.