The Makeover Special

well, here they are, the long awaited before and after pictures of the infamous datto 120y:





...and the datto's not the only one thats had a makeover......

NZ

well, i suppose i should stick to the interesting things, like the fun of our holiday. not the boring things, like how matt and i have to start organising his permanent visa which is complex and expensive... argh!

soooo... the holiday was awesome and i skied like a champ! pity we had poor visibility on some days but the view from the hotel was divine.
we had some excellent snow, and if i'd been able to see 5 feet in front of me, i'm sure i would've have spent all day on the slopes every single day.

matt and i thought we'd get the jump on everyone, and left while it was still dark on the first day. the road was very treacherous and we were sure we had gone up the mountain the wrong way. turns out we were about an hour and a half early for first chair. in fact we arrived before any of the staff did. plus we got to see a beautiful sunrise over the mountain ranges below.

the first day was the only one where we had clear skies for the whole day.

matt had a bit of a stack on the first day, but nothing serious. and the rest of the trip was pretty injury free.

cardrona was my favourite hill, and treble cone could have been fun on a clear day. but knee deep powder is impossible when you cant see where you're going... yes, that was the road up to cardrona -what an adventure!

i ended up not half bad on the slopes. matt was very proud of me. i was very proud of me.


this video was on the last day, and of course i had skied this run perfectly several times already but as soon as matt had the camera on me (and got in my way!) i couldnt do it in one go. matt was skiing backward while filming, hence the shaky camera work.... ok, it didnt load. sorry. it got almost there and then the connection must have dropped out cos it started all over again! grrrr.

so, now life is back to the grind. saving money for our trip at christmas, and the two and a half thousand dollars (at least) that its going to cost to get matt's visa sorted out.

he is away this weekend in macedon, painting his car. it should look pretty hot when its done. midnight blue, with his big spoke wheels...

well, its been nearly 2 weeks, and my hope is dwindling.

oh well, it was worth a shot.

as for the socket, i am mostly drug free, and making a steady recovery. though i did have to go back to the dentist again last week.. (a new dentist as mine went on holiday for a week..... probably all for the best...)

Socket it to me -real good

ouch. really really ouch. i had a wisdom tooth pulled on friday, and then i got a "dry socket". sounds fun huh? yep. google it.

anyway, now i have a wad of clove oil soaked fibre stuffed in my empty socket, that oozes clove everytime i touch it or eat or drink. its really gross.

great excuse not to go to work. i went for half a day today. its all a bit blah. especially when i have just applied for my dream job, but am pretty sure i wont hear back about it, since i called them today and they got like 500 applications. it is for the position of animal educator with wild action. maybe dont google that... you might not get what you're looking for... instead go here.

so, pray for me. fingers crossed. hopefully my enthusiasm and passion will shine through in application letter..... maybe i'll have to change my blog name....

almost a year since last post. dont get excited. no internet at home. just at work, so dont expect any pictures or anything.....

right now getting excited about a skiing holiday in NZ coming up at the end of july.YAY!!!
other than that, not much else to get excited about. just work everyday at subaru...... blah blah blah.....

I'm Back

well, it may only be momentarily.

the little old blog has fallen by the wayside.... there was crazy tokyo for a week, where matty and i rented a car and drove to mount fuji -very cool. and of course partied with louis....

then back to melbourne for an easter sunday arrival and a full on day for my poor little matty boy who got to meet almost the whole family in one sitting - including the 90-something year old great aunty who has quite the eye for young matthew.

after a month or so of welcome home socialisations and meeting friends and going to birthday parties, we decided we needed to pack up and head out if we were going to get anything done before we had to be in sydney for our housesitting gig. so we had another week of farewell socialisations and stocking up on camping gear, and then hit the road. we went kind of the long way. went south through geelong and along the great ocean road, stopping at mount gambier on our first night. we made it through adelaide on day 2 and stopped for the night at mt remarkable national park, just outside of port augusta. coober pedy was our next stop and i can tell you, if i never see another opal in my life it'll be too soon. what a dust bowl.

from coober pedy we made it up to curtin springs -80 k out from uluru and free camping. the next day was spent in uluru national park. matt climbed the rock and then we did the kata tjuta valley of the winds walk. spent a second night at curtin springs and up the next day to get out to kings canyon, walk it, and make it into alice that night.

we treated ourselves in alice and stayed in a hotel/motel place where we had our own little a-frame cabin with kitchenette and bathroom, and a brand new queen size bed. we went out to bo's saloon for dinner -it was the only pub style place still serving dinner at 9pm.... matt had the most enormous ribs i've ever seen, there was enough left over for a beef and beans brekky the next day.

from alice we focussed on getting up to darwin, stopping at tennant creek where we camped next to a mother and son who had just driven 24 hours straight from queensland on their first ever camping trip and then needed two people to help them put up their 9-person "it looked much smaller in the shop" tent..... some people.

next stop katherine. we probably could have made it through to darwin in one go, but we figured we might as well stop off. camped in a lovely caravan park where we got up in the morning and went for a swim in the natural hot springs down the back of the park.

so we arrived in darwin on thursday afternoon, having left melbourne on the previous wednesday. not bad time. now we've been in darwin for a week and a half and i have managed to get a job -starting tomorrow night- waitressing in a very fancy restaurant. we're still trying to find somewhere to live, and are even trying to get jobs in a resort out of town where we can live on site cheaply and not spend too much money on other stuff.

so, hopefully tomorrow will bring us good news - either a house or jobs or both.... fingers crossed!

Well, well.

I know its been a long time since I last blogged. I actually thought I would get it done in the week before I left Canada, but alas, I was too busy cherishing each moment with my most adored matty.

So I guess now I have a lot to catch up on.

Firstly, matt’s granddad died a few weeks back which was pretty sad. He had cancer and went downhill very fast. So I finally got to meet all of his mum’s family. Not exactly under the best circumstances. Though I did witness genius (of course they all thought it was the most obvious and simple of ideas): run outside to get buckets of snow to keep the beer cool in the sink. Who needs to pay for ice!?!

Well, we worked our shitty job for a little while but in the end it was too depressing and we got outta there a week before schedule. It was really nice having that time before I left thought to get everything sorted out and just take it easy. Like go for drives down to the marina in the freezing cold, and slide around on the ice. (yes, I fell and hurt my knees. Ice is a lot harder than snow)

Or our little jaunt to montreal to get matts ipod replaced. Such a beautiful city. I wish we could have had more time there.

Had a last hang out with the boys from the old apartment (I moved in with matt and his parents at the start of march to save some money). That was good fun. I will miss Ty (right). He was my very good friend and confidante, despite his messy grooming habits.

So on Saturday, I had everything packed and matt and I headed off to the airport. His adorable parents waved us off from the front door.

Stupid Ottawa airport makes you go through security as soon as you check in, so I had to quickly say goodbye to matt and take all my bags through US customs and go to my gate right away -2hours before my flight was scheduled. Then it was delayed an hour, so I sat by myself for 3 hours. Luckily I had my new ipod video and I watched all the afro samurai episodes had missed on tv.

So as it turned out all 3 of my flights were delayed at some point, and I got in to Houston at around 10.15.

We went to Austin on Sunday night, but I got some kind of food poisoning that night from pizza on 6^th street, and on Monday it was pouring rain, so we just came back home.

The house I'm staying in is HUGE. Upstairs has a central living space with a foosball table, then 3 bedrooms (one empty), 2 bathrooms and an office (all huge). Downstairs has a pool table room, an empty study, the living room, master bed with en suite, kitchen, toilet, laundry. And then there’s the huge backyard that is completely empty except for a little bbq. Crazy. Oh and the two cats that live here are not well house trained, so theres huge pee stains all over the carpets…… note to self: keep bedroom door closed.

Anyway, time is ticking very slowly as I count down to the blessed reunion. Patricia doesn’t exactly live in Houston (sugar land to be exact) so I cant really wander off on my own to do interesting things while shes working. Oh well. I get to catch up on my blogging instead.