InBlogNito

I finally got the new cover on my bed today, only problem is now my curtains look awful! The ones in my spare room are a much better blue colour so I’m going to swap them tomorrow. It’s 350 thread count, all soft and kinda shiny! Here it is:

I also made the most perfect poached eggs for dinner tonight:

Yum! Have a great weekend.

Hope you all take note of the newest edition to my blog roll over there —>

This links to the 52 Weeks of Community project I’ve been a member of since the beginning of the year when it started. I can’t say I’ve taken part in every week’s task, but I have undertaken most! We reached a milestone this week, 26 weeks, halfway through! It’s heaps of fun and you should check it out if you haven’t already.

I’ve always loooooved going to stationery shops and drooling over looking at all the pretty pens, and brand new notebooks and notepads, and the writing sets. Maybe because my grandma worked in one, and we share the same love of those sorts of things? Who knows… Anyway, for the past few years I’ve kept my fetish at bay, I still loved the first week of classes each semester, but I think the novelty wore off a little more each time because I knew that by the end of the semester everything would be a mess and there’d be a ton of late nights trying to get everything finished. Last year I even bought these odd shaped, ugly covered, bad paper notebooks from a dollar store.

However, after a break from study I’m feeling refreshed, I splurged on a pretty notebook (that cost a small fortune!) and one of my favourite pens (for studying only! Also expensive and they don’t last long). Then I read about Kari’s cool freebies from Vista Print, and clicked on over to the site, and found out I was actually eligible! Even though I’m in NZ! I was so excited that I went a little crazy, and even ordered a couple of things that weren’t free (postage can be big $$ from the US, so I made the most of it!), including personalised post-it’s for the flatmate.

Then I found two more sites with cute stationery last night. I was reading Dooce and found a link to Ecojot (it’s a flash site with not-too-annoying bells and whistles), then another blog (sorry, can’t remember whose!) directed me to Smiggle. I couldn’t believe it, three awesome sites in one night, all very randomly! Sadly ecojet and smiggle are overseas sites and I couldn’t see a way of shipping to NZ. I emailed Smiggle in Australia and asked if they ship here and how much it costs. They have so many cute things, like all sorts of shapes of paper clips and erasers, and cool notebooks of course. Ecojot are sold here in one bookstore chain apparently, though I’m guessing the range is limited and they are pricey, but I will check it out next time I’m at the bookstore.

For now at least I get to look forward to delivery in approximately 21 days of all my Vista Print goodies

So it was my birthday yesterday… maybe it will make the lawyer happier when he gets back to know I’m a whole year older now . It was a great day, I didn’t sleep very well or very much the night before, but I woke up to pancakes with banana and maple syrup yum! Great way to start the day, thanks to flatmate K. She also bought me a beautiful set of mugs, which go perfectly with the little theme I’ve got going on with my mugs. I like matching sets for everything else, but my mugs are a random collection of single mugs, with a floral theme going on, and so the ’set’ she bought me are actually 4 different mugs, and all in the kind of floral design that I like.

Here’s the birthday haul (click on image to go to flickr, there are notes there):

I also got the most beautiful picture from a friend: 

It’s gorgeous and totally perfect for me, she knows me well! The butterflys are embroidered on, and the purple is silky fabric with the darker butterflies printed on.

I also went out to dinner with a couple of friends, and had lunch with the butterfly picture friend the day before, so lots of birthday meals and treats. Next weekend my whole family, brother included, are coming to visit me! I’m a little worried about the weather, we’re right in the middle of winter here, and had a massive storm over the weekend, with another one due this week. I’ll have to think hard about all the different things we can do. We’ll take it day by day, doing all the outside activities as soon as we can, and save the indoors ones for rainy days.

Last night, brother H text me and said ‘Happy birthday, hope it’s been good, haven’t bought you a present, any ideas about what you want?’. Only I had NO idea who it was. I have three other numbers for him, but apparently none of them are current. I knew it was family, because he called me by my nickname, and I knew it was close family, cos only my parents/brother/grandparents give me presents. But I just couldn’t think who it was! So in the end I asked, and H’s response was: ‘That’s ok, it’s only your brother’. Oops… I blame him of course, he should give people his new number.

I woke up at 2am this morning with a runny nose… guess who’s got a cold? Lucky me! At least it’s right in between my birthday and my family coming, it should be gone by the weekend, it’s not bad, just that annoying dribbly nose kind of cold.

And, last but not least, I have to shout out to Kari, who’s running an awesome raffle this week for a Flickr Pro account. I would totally love to win, but I’ll keep the game fair and encourage everyone else to link to Kari and let her know so you’re into win

This post is thanks to NotSoBlonde Sometimes meme’s can be sooo laborious, both to write and read, however these ones are quick and fun!

First up: One Word

One Word Meme (tag four more!)

1. Where is your cell phone? coffeetable
2. Your significant other? fb
3. Your hair? blonde-ish
4. Your mother? forgetful
5. Your father? worksalot
6. Your favorite thing? chocolate
7. Your dream last night? work-related :/
8 Your favorite drink? coffee!
9. Your dream/goal? marriedwithkids
10. The room you’re in? lounge
11. Your hobby? crafts
12. Your fear? failure
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? marriedwithkids
14. What you’re not? drunk
15. Muffins? savoury
16. One of your wish list items? macbook
17. Where you grew up? Christchurch
18. The last thing you did? sudoku
19. What are you wearing? pj’s
20. Favorite Gadget? electricblanket
21. Your pets? neighbourscat
22. Your computer? annoying
23. Your mood? meh
24. Missing someone? soon
25. Your car? Nissan
26. Something you’re not wearing? makeup
27. Favorite store? anyjewellrystore
28. Like someone? kinda
29. Your favorite color? pink
30. When was the last time you laughed? today
31. Last time you cried? today

Second: Tell me about your playlist. 

Put your music library in alphabetical order by song, then take the first song for each letter of the alphabet. No repeat artists. Tag five people then let them know they’ve been tagged to do the meme themselves.

A All Your Reasons - Matchbox Twenty
B Big as the Sky - A.M. Sixty (Grey’s music)
C Chasing Pavements - Adele
D Danger - Mystikal (Knocked Up soundtrack)
E Earth to Bella - Incubus
F Fake it - Seether (going to delete this one)
G Grace - Kate Havenik (such a pretty song!)
H Hard Sun - Eddie Vedder (sexiest voice ever)
I If I had Eyes - Jack Johnson
J Jackson - Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon
K Keep Breathing - Ingrid Michaelson
L Lady - Regina Spektor
M Maybe - Op Shop (wicked NZ band)
N Naked as we Came - Iron and Wine (more Grey’s music)
O On Call - Kings of Leon
P Passion Play - William Fitzsimmons (probably Grey’s too)
Q Quicksand - Sleeping at Last (huh? no idea who that is)
R Radio Nowhere - Bruce Springsteen (used to blast Dad’s LP of Born in the USA when I was like 7 haha)
S Smile - Lily Allen (this came out around the same time as Paris’s lame ass song, was sooo scared I liked Paris’s music before I thankfully discovered it was Lily!)
T The Stone - Ashes Divide (Ashes who?)
U Under Pressure - My Chemical Romance/The Used
V Vampire - Antsy Pants (Juno!!! Love that movie soooo much!)
W Whatever it takes - Lifehouse
X No X
Y Younger than Today - Ben Harper
Z No Z

I’ll tag Michele, Vee, Michele, and anyone else who wants to, leave me a comment if you do so I can come check out your answers

So…. have you all been waiting in anticipation of an update on the lawyer? or the asshat flatmate? Well here it is…

The Lawyer

Following on from successful dinner number one, there have been two more. The third one wasn’t entirely planned. We were supposed to have a ‘chat’, which we did. Then he got me drunk and cooked me dinner (in that order!) and I stayed over. On a school night! Monday morning was a little rough to say the least and going to see Cats for a friends birthday on Tuesday didn’t help the fatigue any… it’s been a long week, thank goodness it’s a long weekend and I get Monday off work.

And the chat? Relatively straightforward, it went something like this:

Him "I don’t want a relationship"

Me "I want to get married and have babies, but that ain’t happening anytime soon, so until either of us finds someone more appropriate, what’s wrong with this?"

Him *eventual, though concerned agreement*

He bought up the age thing again. I really can’t understand what the problem is, it’s a total non-issue for me. Oh yea, another conversation:

Him "You’re 26 right?"

Me " um…. ask me again in a couple of months"

Him "oh crap, it’s even worse than I thought!"

tehehe! 

The Asshat

Has continued with the asshat activities. In the weekend she cleaned the windowsill in the bathroom. Just the windowsill. Not the basin or the shower or the stuff we actually use. Just the windowsill. So last night we had a ‘chat’ which was largely me saying ‘you do NOTHING, you’ve never cleaned the toilet, you spend an hour in the bathroom at a time, we never know if you’re even home or not because your bedroom door is always closed’. Her justification? She works nights so it’s hard. And yep, I can agree it’s hard on the social front, but it’s not hard on the cleaning front. Some days she doesn’t start work till 5pm, giving her ALL day to clean something. She was also home for the full two days before our last house inspection and she did nothing in those two days. Oh, and she also cleaned the tap over the basin at the same time as the windowsill. You can just imagine my reaction to that!

Anyway, she asked if I wanted her to move out, and I said it’s up to her, she’s welcome to say but we’d need to see a 100% improvement. She doesn’t feel that’s possible, especially because she is going back to studying this semester. Me and other flatmate think this is crap, I have a full time job and will also be studying this semester, flatmate has two jobs and studys full time. Asshat will still be the one who has the least commitments and will spend the most time at home. She also mentioned money and that it was too expensive for her. I cannot get my head around this, she is paying exactly the same as she has paid for the past 3 years in the hostel. Plus her ‘going back to study’ is only 1-2 papers, so she could still work exactly the same hours, she just needs to stop being so lazy and spend a couple of hours studying each day instead of spending god knows how many hours staring at her computer screen watching dvd’s and movies and playing stupid time-wasting games.

She is signed up till November here, but I said 3 weeks would be a reasonable length of notice to give if she decides to move out (that’s standard if you’re not on a fixed term lease here), we can trade one person on the lease, so long as I’m here till November. So I’m kinda glad that it’s up to her. Obviously it’s far more ideal if she moves out, especially seeing as she doesn’t seem prepared to make any further effort (though she did clean the bathroom today! First time in 6 mths), but I’m leaving it up to her. The only annoying thing is that other flatmate leaves for 3 weeks in Canada in the weekend, so looking for a new flatmate could be problematic. We’ve agreed that I will look for someone and if I find someone who seems good, we will make it conditional on her meeting them and giving the final go ahead when she gets back. I’m the fussier one and know what I want in a flatmate, so it will kinda work out well that I do all the interviewing and stuff.

Other stuff…

So… while things with the lawyer are great, and the flat situation which I was really hating on before yesterday is getting resolved, work still sucks big time. I’m going to spend one of the long weekend days cleaning up my CV and writing job applications. I’m a little worried that I’m not going to be able to find something that will pay well enough, plus I’m up for a pay review this week which will add a few more $$ to the weekly paycheck making the gap even bigger again. But I think it has to be done, I’m just not going where I want to with this role.

So now you’re all caught up I’m going in search of a hot drink, then going to play my own time wasting game

Thanks to Laurie for this awesome idea!

1. Nicolas, 2. coffee and chocolate mousse cake, 3. The Dallington Bridge, 4. vintage tea set with cupcake, 5. Brandon Boyd of Incubus Raleigh, NC, 6. My garden looks better with wine…., 7. Scotland .!Thanks for the scenery……, 8. flickr.com/photos/hawkmonitor/91898675/, 9. Motherhood, 10. Not a good time for photo, I rather have coffee first, 11. Helpful Zef

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

The concept:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste the html into your blog or Flickr stream (the easiest way is to copy the URLs and then head over to the fd’s flickr toys link above and use the mosaic maker).

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Looked up my flickr name and found something someone dedicated to me
**************************************

My Answers:
1. Nicola
2. Chocolate
3. Avonside
4. Pink
5. Brandon Boyd
6. Sauvignon Blance
7. Scotland
8. Banoffie Pie
9. Wife and Mother
10. Coffee!!
11. helpful
12. Nada

This time yesterday I was checked into my room at the hospital and the nurse was running around like a mad-woman, I don’t think she knew what she was doing! Finally got down to surgery at about 2:30pm. They were all waiting and waiting and waiting for me. That nurse? Forgot to take me down to theatre after they rang and told her they were ready. Tells you how great she is… Luckily when I woke up shifts had changed and we had a much better nurse who was very nice and clearly knew a lot more about what she was doing, plus she had a new nurse following her round (new to the hospital, not to nursing!) so I had two of them taking care of me.

Everything is fine, now at least. There was endometriosis in three places and they cut it all out. I have pics if anyone wants to see the before and after of my insides! Ew So I’m feeling fine, they pump you full of some gas to inflate the area, and even though they deflate you, apparently some of that gas likes to travel to your shoulders, so a little sore there. Plus I had to sleep sitting up first last night cos when I lay down I could breathe for the pain under my ribcage. More of that gas apparently. Was wondering why I felt a little sore at the site of the actual surgery just now, then I realised I hadn’t taken meds in about 5-6 hours haha. Silly me. So apart from that, and moving around very slowly, things are good. All sorted now I hope! Thank you for all your support, best wishes and comments, I’m so glad that they found something. No guarantees, but things should get a whole lot better soon and this fatigue that has plagued me for soooo long should go away.

And, of course, some of you are waiting to hear about my Saturday night. It was great! He was the perfect gentlemen (once he finished playing around with his very expensive new speakers that he’d been working on all day. They are cooler than his car apparently. His car is a Porchse!). He had dinner in the oven (roast chicken!) and kept me topped up on wine. He even had cheese and crackers ready, how many guys would think of that?! We watched a couple of movies (would highly recommend Life as a House and Fallen if you haven’t seen them already). It was very lovely and he was very concerned that I was having surgery in two days time. I was very tired and a little distracted so I explained why. Plus he plays a role in the industry so he knows procedures and ailments, and it was good to name drop my surgeon. He hadn’t heard of him, which is a good thing as he deals with the dodgy ones!

It gets even better too. He text me last night to say that he hoped surgery went well and telling me to take care etc. How sweet! I would not have expected that from him at all a couple of months ago. He was the only person to text in fact, most people had sent well-wishes in advance and I said I’d catch up with them today. But still, the one and only text I get on the day was from him. Yes, copious amounts of undeserved swooning… I’ll blame the anaesthetic

Hey! I’m back! At last, it’s been a while, I just haven’t found anything inspiring to write about (not that I’m ever particularly inspiring/inspired!). However, I’ve had a good couple of days. I’ll share once the bitching part of this post has ended. I just arrived home from 3 nights away and found the mail on my bed. Power bill, high, and also included a letter which basically said ‘we advise you to stay on your same plan because we don’t know enough about you’. Thanks for the oh so helpful info. Next up, a new credit card. Issue date: beginning of January. How the heck did it take so long to get to me?! There was no date on the letter (isn’t that like the first rule of letter writing? Write. The. Date.) and the previous card was issued not two weeks before the last one. Plus they said my old card would expire in a couple of weeks. Is that a couple of weeks after the issue date or a couple of weeks from the day the mail arrived?! Cos I’ve been using that card with no problems. WeIrD. I’m ringing them tomoro to say ‘wtf?!’. Then right after that I’m ringing my parents health insurance company. I rang with a simple query, mostly unrelated to my current policy, and gave them my address for some one-off info to be sent. Today I find they have sent me a huge package of information addressed to my Dad. I never said ‘update my details’. I certainly never said ‘update my whole family’s details, even though they live in another city and haven’t moved house in ten years’. *sigh*. How can all three pieces of mail cause me to waste so much time sorting out other people’s BS mistakes?!?! At least it will fill in the morning at work tomorrow!

Now, onto the great weekend. I headed south for work on Friday, turns out it was kind of a waste of time for the organisation because my colleague went early and did almost everything! Nevermind, I got to meet an awesome friend of mine, finally. He’s the one who always sends me stuff and remembers my birthday. You know the one, I sent him some home baking a while back. So N and I went out for dinner and it was like we had met already in the past, cos he was so familiar. We’ve spent heaps of time chatting on msn and the phone, and using webcams, so it was totally cool. Right before he was due to show up I started getting a little nervous and thinking ‘omg, what if I have NOTHING to say?!’. Turns out I couldn’t shut up (thanks to the house sav blanc no doubt!) and I probably told him stuff he’s heard a hundred times before, but he’d listen as if it was the first time. Then he took me to the airport (arrived 15 mins before the plane was due to take off! I was a little panicked lol) and I went to my next destination (home city). Then a little later I was thinking ‘hmm… I’m sure N’s birthday is in March, argh, I hope I haven’t missed it AGAIN!’. Checked on Facebook. Sure enough, 6 March, totally missed it. I’m the worst friend ever! He paid for dinner and everything and I couldn’t even remember to say ‘happy birthday’. I suck. So I emailed him apologising profusely and he said ‘it’s ok, I had some easter eggs in the car that I clean forgot to give you at the airport’. Uh, thanks, but that doesn’t make me feel better!! He bought me dinner AND easter eggs and I didn’t even wish him a late happy birthday…. *sigh*. I’m a disorganised wreck. This is just one example, I also left half of what I needed back here. I had to race out to the gas station first thing Saturday morning (in my mum’s Merc) to buy tampons. See? Disorganised wreck.

Anyhoo, onto home city, and it was so great to catch up with my friend and her kids. I did remember their birthdays and gave one of the girls a cute little handbag (totally regifted from my grandma, it’s cute for 5 yo’s, not 25 yo’s ) and a necklace, then took my friend out to see The Other Boleyn Girl. Was actually pretty well done, with all the costumes and accents and stuff, but not anything to rave about overall. I also bought the kids easter eggs, and when I was passing the lotto kiosk I grabbed a ticket on the way through. Checked it this morning while I was passing by another kiosk with my mum. Turns out I won!!! Not 1st division, I’m far from a millionaire, but a nice little bonus to stash in the bank for a rainy day! Lucky my bank is open on Sunday’s in the mall so I walked 20 metres from the kiosk to the bank and put most of it right into my account. So did a little more shopping than anticipated, and paid for the coffee seeing as I couldn’t very well feign poverty. Made it home tonight, eventually, cursed the mail, wrote this, now I’m off to bed. I’ve got just enough time to get in 8 hours sleep. Night!

Back when I was at primary school I learnt to play the violin for a year, but didn’t really get into that, so I picked up the clarinet instead. I ended up having lessons and playing in orchestra’s for about 6 or 7 years after that, but eventually dropped it half way through high school. I had much more important things to worry about, like who my friends were and how cool I was. Ditching the instrument didn’t help, I was still a geek. Still am in fact, but much prouder of it these days . Anyway, in the past 10 years I’ve picked up my instrument about as many times as there are fingers on one hand. Not many. When I returned home this weekend I decided to dig it out and have a go. I just had a half hour refresher, and even managed to get through the first few lines of Moon River, Unchained Melody, Silent Night and a few other tunes. It was tough starting off, but it was amazing how quickly my instincts kicked in and my fingers just knew what holes to cover and open as I read over the notes. I’ve always wanted to learn piano, and am still determined that I will one day. The local high schools here offer interest classes in the evening, so I might take that up later in the year. I’ll need to invest in a keyboard at the very least, but I’d also like to spend more time with the clarinet, learning the notes again etc., before starting anything new.

What about you? Do you play as well as Bach and Mozart? Or are you tone deaf?
Leave me a comment and let me know whether or not you play/ed and what instrument.

I tried to set up a poll, for the Week 6 challenge, but blogsome doesn’t like the html code I’m trying to insert