I'm going to hell in a hand basket.

Ok, not really. I just wanted to say that. Really, the state of things is that I put on my new shoes and went for a forty minute fast-paced walk with my aunt this evening before dinner. It felt great. I intend to try for another walk tomorrow .... but this depends on my conscience wrestling (and winning) against my laziness.

Also, my mother - in a moment of sheer generosity and beloved motherliness (yes, I realise I complain about her a lot ... sometimes unfairly) purchased me a cotton knit top for work and will buy a dress for me tomorrow that we found today (but I have to go to Bondi Junction to purchase the right size in!) Awesome. Both things I will be able to wear to work, and the top is neutral enough while the dress allows enough "fun" in their respective styles to be worn outside the office.

(I badly wanted to say ex-office. Do you, wordies, think I can say that?)

It is cold and grey outside =( It is officially "go back to bed" weather. No such luck though, I am unfortunately stuck at work! And (although, this part is not unfortunate at all) after work there are drinks at the Firehouse with ph8.

Drinks with ph8 are sounding almost like a set up in a bad romance novel starting with a blind date. All cliches - "I'll be wearing this, or that" (in my case a green dress which I shall tell you more about later) and no romance! Hehe. Fortunately, we're not meeting for romance ;)

About that green dress. Did I ever mention shopping for the weddings that I'm attending in Adelaide in November? Well, anyway, I wanted to buy a new dress. And I bought one. A nice green halterneck. I'm wearing that today - giving it a trial run you might say.

Sorry guys, I totally forgot to bring my camera so ... no pictures of me, my dress, or me with ph8.

Anyway, I've never been to the Firehouse before. I had to ask a co-worker where it is. Fortunately it's less than a stone's throw away from my office (especially if I threw the stone from the 11th floor - where the office actually is - although, that might cause some carnage on ground level so I refrain from actually doing so*).

Mmm, drinks before food *giggle* ... I might have to taxi home. Ok, not seriously. One drink will not do me in. I might get something to nibble on with the drink too. And I don't want to keep ph8 too late. But goodness it will be nice and fun =) Yay!

* Not like the time I threw disposed of a saturated roll of toilet paper out the window of my fourth storey hotel room and clocked some poor sod on the head with it!

I treated myself today.

You may or may not be aware that Apple have released new generation iPods (I refer specifically to the Nano here though) with wide screens and new interfaces.

After a year of dithering, I decided to purchase a new iPod that had a smaller capacity than my previous 20G iPod (which shall hence forth live in my car, again).

It had completely not occurred to me that the new iPods had been released or how this would affect my purchase.

Anyway, I made my mind up to at least get a wall charger for the 20G iPod because the battery ran flat from using it (out of the car) yesterday.

I had previously donated my wall charger to my brother (as his smaller capacity and cheaper iPod didn't come with one) because my 20G iPod was living in my car and charging off the car battery ...

Anyway, the whole point is, I bought the charger because I will need it either way. But I also went and bought a 4G Nano but of the old variety (i.e. not wide screen video with new interface). This is because I find the older style more attractive (tall, narrow, slim as opposed to short, wide, slim). I also don't feel the need for wide screen video capability.

It was cheaper, reduced due to the arrival on the market of the new generation iPods and is being phased out. Unfortunately I couldn't find an 8G black iPod ... but 4G and white iPod is nice enough. Also, it's probably more than enough capacity for a day to day, week to week use =D

Plus my car can hold the 20G iPod which will hold all of my music - I can take it out and use it if I need to.

So, I spoiled myself, a little bit. Yay =D Gosh, retail therapy can feel so nice sometimes.

I've misplaced my access card for work. Bleah. I 'm pretty sure it's in one of the boxes in the spare bedroom, but as we haven't unpacked in there yet ...

In the meantime, last night Luke and I did a big shop. Over $230 of food - so much fruit and general "set up" base ingredients for the food cupboard. I was super naughty and we got a 24 box of Drumstick ice creams that have been stuck in the freezer. I should work out some sort of schedule for eating those so that I don't just eat them all in one sitting! :X

After that, Luke announced he is never leaving me alone in a supermarket again. I retorted that he hadn't left my side the whole time, he just hadn't supervised me enough. He was distracted by a phone call to his mother for first the ingredients to her potato and leek soup, and then to catch up and talk arrangements for her visit in May.

However, an upshot of doing this shopping without "No! Unhealthy!" or "No! Not necessary!" means that I picked up chilli and garlic pastes and made a super yum pasta dish of cooked pasta pan-fried with chilli and garlic and then served mixed in with lamb and baby spinach. VERY YUM. I am thinking about a re-make tonight. Hehe ... Actually, apart from a few moments where I strayed from the "healthy" into the "easy"/"not requiring thought" side, I was actually pretty good. In fact, the first thing I loaded up on were the vegetables and fruits.

Also, I have been in a super bakey mood this week, just wanting to bakebakebake. After miss__scarlet mentioned making cupcakes with lime icing a little while ago ... I got a bee in my bonnet about trying that. My mouth was watering at the thought of the combination of the light and plain cupcakes and the sugary but tangy lime icing. The urge to bake (not limited to cupcakes, also including mudcake, apple crumble, biscuits) was so overwhelming that I tried to find plain cupcake mix in the supermarket before I left the city on Tuesday night but failed (supermarket was too small to carry a broad range of packet mixes) and then later sent Luke and I on a wild goose chase to the supermarket near our house, only to rock up at the back carpark and think it was shut because most lights were out. Apparently, it's open until midnight every week night. Then we tried the Coles Express petrol station near our house ... also no luck. Again too small. So we gave up. All I wanted was a packet mix to make it easier though - I didn't have access to a plain or vanilla cupcake/muffin recipe or the base ingredients (because we hadn't done the big "basics" shop).

Anyway ... we have cupcakes now and they are super yum. Acknowledgement must go to miss__scarlet for the original idea!

On impulse, I bought one umbrella this morning. Oh the luxury, lol.

It was raining heavily, and I wasn't confident of making it from the bus stop to work via both post boxes without ending resembling a drowned rat.

Of course, I would make an awfully cute drowned rat ;)

I have new eyes! I can seeeeeeeeee :X

Monday saw (more visual speak! ha!) me going to the optometrist to get tested. I came out with new contacts (30 day, sleep-in), new frames ordered, and new sunglasses. The end result is that apart from adjusting to the new strength and type of contacts, I'm going well. I can see!

Also, I've never spent more than $20 on sunglasses before, and I now have $340 Versace sunglasses. I had better not drop these or sit on them :X I'll take a picture sometime - they're kinda cute.

I guess this is the beginning of my descent into hell as a spoiled and privileged rich, private school girl 0.0 lol

In other news, I went shopping on the weekend. I bought a sweet black dress, a refill of moisturiser, some necessary house stuff (tissues and the like), and picked up a beautiful amber necklace that I'd had on hold. I also bought a webcam. So, expect to be further bombarded with pictures of myself or anything else I find handy to take pictures of (like Oscar - "HERECAT-SNAPFLASH-ARGH" - ... or whatever seems appropriate at the time).

I bought a shiny new phone! On a shiny new (and capped - thank gods) plan!

It's a Samsung SGH-A701 on some new network that my carrier is bringing out that will have the reeption of the network that I was on, plus that of the CDMA network. Soon, apparently (they have just rolled it out). I've never had anything other than a Nokia before ... :|

I think I'll be playing with it tonight to see what it does and what I can change things to.

My new plan is a $79 cap that allows me up to $450 worth of calls, texts, media messaging/calling. S'good. I doubt I'd reach $450 anyway. $150 maybe but not $450.

Hooray!

I bought new bathers recently. The official excuse was that it was in preparation for summer. The truth is, I lost my last pair (I honestly have no idea where they are).

They're cute.

I wore them in the water for the first time on Sunday and discovered a fatal flaw in the cuteness of the bottom part. The fold of fabric that makes them cute would flip up around my stomach when I got in the water. It's attached to the actual bikini only at the two seams on either hip.

So, I spent this morning stitching it down. I only stabbed myself in the thumb once, at the end, after I'd also managed to already bend the needle out of shape. Should I tell you all that I don't sew very much at all? :P

Tonight I'm going swimming again. I guess that will be the true test of my sewing skills ... heh.

I have just spent a really enjoyable weekend in Melbourne with D. But first, I owe kathsonno a big apology, as we'd made rough plans to meet up on Saturday afternoon - I realised as I was getting on the plane that I hadn't confirmed with you or given you my mobile number to contact me on, so when I got to Melbourne I rang directory assistance looking for you in the Mornington area ... no luck. No one with your initials came up. And I just never got to an internet cafe. Maybe next time I'm in Melbourne and am more organised?

In the meantime, we left on Friday evening. The new Adelaide airport complex is quite shiny, and reminiscent of the small bit of Fumicino Da Vinci in Rome that I remember. The flight passed quickly - in fact, I felt like it consisted of take off, a trip to the toilet, and landing. D informed me that I was in the toilet for a long time, and that as we'd scoffed dinner due to lack of time, he had worried that I'd eaten too quickly and ended up vomiting. Fortunately this was not the case as my dinner remained firmly (yay!) in my stomach.

We were collected by my friend V and her partner who were putting us up for the weekend. It turned out, when we arrived, that she had vacated her bed for us and was sleeping on the single fold out bed in the lounge. Very sweet. We paid for her groceries that weekend, and took both her and her partner out to dinner on the Sunday night before we left.

Saturday morning was spent on Bridge St, starting with a very yummy breakfast at the Groove Train cafe. D decided it would be a good place to try as it was both reasonably priced, and frequented by cyclists (the sort that dress like they're in Tour De France and drink espresso before hopping back on their bikes to go ... wherever it is road cyclists go, lol). It was a good choice, as the food was excellent, and the orange juice was served in very tall glasses! From there we wandered back up Bridge St and did a little shopping - I bought a cute dark plum/maroon sun dress with a cream, pink and white print, and a green t shirt for D. Then we looked in a few other shops - United Colors of Benetton, for example, which brought back a lot of memories of shopping in Italy - before I had the bright idea to walk to Chapel St from there. Haha. It's not like Adelaide where you can actually manage to walk from one end of the city to the other fairly quickly ... although in my defence, I did ask a shop assistant who told me it was 1.5 km away. Ha. More like 3 km. Never mind, we made it as far as Richmond East (another ten to fifteen minutes from Chapel St) before giving up and catching the train to the city in time to meet D's friend K.

K took us to lunch at the Blue Train where I had a most delicious lamb cutlet salad with roasted pine nuts. K paid for lunch as we had hosted her last time she was in Adelaide and driven her around a lot. We all went to the National Gallery Victoria and saw an exhibition of one of the first impressionists, Pissarro. It was interesting to see the development of his style, and the experimentation that ultimately blended with his initial style to produce paintings that more and more looked like photographs if you stood at either an angle to the image or a few metres back. After the gallery, D and I headed back to Chapel St with the agreement to catch up with K for dinner that night to celebrate her birthday. We arrived right on Chapel St (by tram) instead of trying to walk a ridiculous distance - I bought a pair of sandals (which later broke when someone stepped on the back of the shoe in a crowd as I was lifting my foot up to take a step), and then headed back to V's place to prepare for the night.

V had study to do, so we got information from her on which tram to catch and which street to find the little bar/restaurant at which we would meet K. Unfortunately, despite relatively clear instructions from K earlier in the day, V before we left, another random girl on the tram, and a police officer ... we still got lost. However, the group still were waiting to order by the time we found the place, so we weren't holding anyone up. We ate at the Kitten Club - very tasty, and expensive. D and I shared a plate. Has anyone else noticed that the more you pay for a meal, the less food you actually get? The top floor of the Kitten Club was actually a jazz lounge, so we headed up there after dinner and relaxed to a live band consisting of a piano, bass, electric guitar, two saxophones (alto and tenor) and a drum kit. No vocals. I had a glass of wine (white) with dinner, and an Absinthe and apple based cocktail in the jazz lounge. We had a fairly early night, leaving at about 11pm to catch a tram back to Flemingon where V's apartment was. While we were waiting for the tram to leave, we had some random crazy people provide entertainment as they set up their portable cd player and amp and did the chicken dance and then sang along to "Voodoo Child".

D cooked breakfast for all of us, including V, on Sunday morning - bacon, eggs, toast, tomatoes, and hash browns. Mmmmmmm. After that he went to a Lithuanian event (folk dancing) at the Lithuanian Community Centre (or, "Lithuanian House"), and V and I went to Chapel St. Or intended to. We ended up detouring to Bridge St, and we never quite left it. Never mind, I can do the rest of Chapel St next time, lol. I bought a $600 silk Cooper St dress that had been marked down to $89 from a shop called Green With Envy, a singlet top from Esprit, a satin dress from a shop called Mazi, and an Oroton handbag marked down from $500 to $200 and which I got another 10% off as there was a pen mark on it. Then we headed back to V's apartment and recovered from shopping while we waited for her partner to get back from work, and D to get back from his outing to Lithuanian House.

At V's suggestion, we went to dinner at the Leveson. Unfortunately a guy from the first series of Australian Idol, Millsy, was playing there (obviously still milking his "Final Five" fame for all it's worth, from a show that aired four years ago). We sat as far as we could from the music. but then unfortunately the set finished and Millsy sat down on the table smack bang next to us. So ... naughty Sari has a bright idea. I stood up and moved over to where he was sitting and held my camera out in front of me. He looked up and grinned, ready to let me take a picture with him, and then I said "sorry, could you take a photo of me and my friends, please? The camera has auto-focus, so just press down once". He got up and took the shot for us, and then handed the camera back. I thanked him, and then we turned out backs to him and proceeded to pay him no attention whatsoever. lol. That took him down a peg a little, and rightly so as he is an arrogant idiot who thinks the sun shines out of ... hmm, yes, well anyway. D and I finished the evening by watching some of the free entertainment available due to the Commonwealth Games being on. We watched a light show on the Yarra river with music and fountains made from metal sculptures of fish, and then a few different percussion ensembles in the Sidney Myer Music Bowl (an open air performance venue in the botanic gardens) before we headed home for the night.

Monday was our last day in Melbourne, and we started it with another of D's tasty breakfasts (as good as the one from the Groove Train cafe) followed by a bit of cleaning in V's place (she had gone early to university). We locked up and threw the keys back in through the bathroom window, lol, before heading into the city and checking out the Melbourne Aquarium for a few hours, and then catching the bus to the airport. And then? Home again. Hooray! But I look forward to heading to Melbourne again sometime soon! :)