Archives for July 2009

Cruisin’

July 29, 2009 by Jen

I had a bunch of blog ideas the other night after a couple of drinks and a dose of new season Amazing Race but they’ve all escaped me now. I’ve also tried to escape the goings on at this year’s BlogHer (updated to add – only because I wanted to be there) but it’s a bit hard when all the attendees are bloggers and I read some of them.

I sit here in my kitchen in the middle of winter before doing the last few things to get ready for work. It’s cold and it’s wet. It’s been a really wet winter for us this year which is fabulous for our water supplies and our farmers but not so fabulous when the dog tracks in muddy paws and the ceiling extraction fan leaks water. I can hear it dripping even though it’s not raining at the moment.

After a bit of a social hiatus things are starting to pick up again. Last weekend I had a 50th to go to of an ex-colleague. It was a bit of a distance away, too expensive to get a cab, so I drove which meant I couldn’t drink much and I also didn’t know anyone there except the birthday girl. I got a drink at the bar and thought that I either had to start talking to people or I may as well go home. I went up to a couple of women and introduced myself as the person who didn’t know anyone and as it turned out they were in a similar boat (they’d only just met themselves). I ended up having an okay night with a bit of a dance, talking to more people – including one who turned up who was also an ex colleague.

This weekend I have two lunches to go to, both of which are women only. The first one I have to take a plate to share and the second one, three men (friends) cook for 30 of us. I’m definitely not driving to that one as it will be a raucous afternoon. Even though the blokes cook for us and treat us very well they have just a good a time as we do I think. This will be the third such lunch and hopefully there will be many more.

Back to today. I’m leaving work early to go and see French and Saunders. I think these two women are fabulous and after watching them in various tv shows over many years I can’t wait to see them live.

Just as I was about to mention how great my son and I are getting on at the moment, he walked in and asked what I was doing on the computer. Realising that I only had ten minutes to finish getting ready I saved and am doing this last bit later.

Next time we’re both getting on each others nerves like we were before we went on holidays I’ll remember that a holiday seemed to cure that and we’re in a good patch at the moment. Although last night I went to ukulele practise and took him along. Now that he has a Nintendo DSi to keep him company that came along as well. I’d told him which game was in his DS but when he got it out and realised it wasn’t the correct Pokemon game it was all my fault. Ten minutes later when I went to get something from the table he was sitting at he was still upset that he didn’t have Pokemon Platinum. And then I was doubly in trouble because the battery ran out. Fortunately someone else was there with a DS and lots of knowledge about Pokemon so the game card was transferred and this older kid helped JJ out with his game, so all was well.

It’s over and out from me.

Slideshow

July 27, 2009 by Jen

Did you have to suffer through slideshows when you were a kid? I did and they bored me senseless. I remember going to friends of mum’s and dad’s for slideshows and even a local hall once for a holiday slideshow. Most of the farm neighbourhood were there I think.

Nowadays I like to see others’ photos and will happily sit through them for two reasons. One is that I’ve travelled and I like to see how others’ experienced their travels and what they saw. And two, because I like taking photos myself, I like slideshows from a more technical perspective also.

These days, slideshows are mostly electronic and that’s what I’m sharing with you today- a slideshow of our recent holiday. Not sure if it will be viewable in your feed reader so here’s the link if not.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth

July 25, 2009 by Jen

At work this week a colleague told me that she was cleaning out her clothes cupboard and had a brown cardigan that she thought was too good to put in the op-shop bin, did I want it?

Brown’s not normally a colour I wear but not one to say no to something I haven’t seen yet I said I’d love to have a look at it.

She brought it in the next morning and I pulled a lovely brown jacket out of the bag and tried it on, it fit perfectly – I wouldn’t describe it as a cardigan.

I immediately fell in love with it. Wouldn’t you?

Harry Who brown velvet jacket with trim

I tried it on and it fit perfectly and it felt just right.

Harry Who jacket

Just by chance I had a look at the label and not only is it a gorgeous jacket but it’s a Harry Who jacket (a real designer, not just a Target number) – shown here on my crocheted coat hanger.

I bought her a bunch of roses as a thank you.

I’m going to a 50th tonight, so it will get its first outing. Now, what to wear with it? Do I dress it down with jeans – the party’s at a pub with a band, or do I wear a skirt?

On a completely unrelated note – what’s your first memory of reading? Still Life with Cat wants to know.

The last three days

July 21, 2009 by Jen

This is the last instalment of the holiday posts. Read part 1, part 2 and part 3 if you so desire.

After a busy day at Currumbin and a late night (11pm) seeing the glow worms we got ready to do our last theme park – Movie World. Arriving at Movie World the first thing you see is a scary looking Batman ride where you get sent up in the air very very quickly and come down and then go back up while gradually slowing down. The scariest bit is the first time you come down because you feel like you’re going to leave the seat and it feels a bit unsafe but we did it twice anyway. My tough son JJ informed me that he no longer felt that scary feeling in the tummy.

I wish we’d gone to do some other rides before it got busier. We missed out on the Scooby Doo scary ride and also the Superman roller coaster because of 45+ minute waits.

I did meet Scooby Doo and Shaggy though. JJ didn’t want his photo taken with them so he took this one.

We also managed to see the Hollywood Stunt Drivers show which was quite entertaining but a bit smelly from all that burnt rubber.

We squeezed in a Loony Tunes show – not that entertaining for me but the young kids liked it. Shrek 4D was pretty good and luckily we had the ponchos to wear for the Wild West ride.

Friday night was our last night at the Gold Coast and I went out to dinner with some people I’d met while our kids were in the kids club – yay for the kids club.

Saturday morning we packed up, checked out and walked down the road to the hire car place and drove south to Yamba in northern New South Wales where my aunt lives. She’d said it would take about two hours but by the time we fluffed around a bit and got stuck in the Ballina bypass roadworks it took more like three hours. The last time I drove on the Pacific Highway was 12 years ago on my road trip with three gay boys. I must write about that one day.

Unless I was a surfer which I’m not Yamba probably wouldn’t have been on my radar to visit normally but it’s a beautiful spot and the view from the pub over the ocean is spectacular.

Because we’d spent most of the day in the car I took JJ for a walk and happened upon some fishermen cleaning up fish and throwing what they didn’t want to these pelicans at the Yamba Bay boat ramp. I love pelicans and could just watch them for ages fighting over fish.

Even though I’m not a surfer we went to Angourie – near Yamba – and watched some people surfing.

After spending the weekend at my aunt’s we took our time heading back up to the Gold Coast to catch the plane back to Adelaide. We stopped in Byron Bay for lunch and the other two or three times I was there was obviously not during the school holidays as I’ve never seen the streets so busy.

As I’ve mentioned before, our holiday was really good. JJ and I travel well together and while I enjoyed the Gold Coast bit I also enjoyed the driving component and I would have liked to stop and explore more places for longer. Maybe we’ll hop in the Nissan one day and go driving interstate.

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary

July 19, 2009 by Jen

The main reason I wanted to go to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary was to see all the rainbow lorikeets but we were there too late and had to leave to early for them so I missed out. They come into feed about 8.30-9 in the morning and about 4 in the afternoon.

We did, however, see a heap of other wildlife. I would have liked to hold a koala but it appeared as though you had to buy the accompanying photo for that and there was a queue. Oh well, I’ve held a koala before.

Even though we were there for a few hours we still missed out on various shows that were held around the place that talked about different types of animals. The one show that we did see, which was great, was the bird show.

Here’s some pictures of the birds, and watch out for your head as they fly around.

They are so well trained and the show runs like clockwork, it was a pleasure to see.

We got to pat kangaroos as they lay on the ground, and while we didn’t hold a koala there were plenty of them there.

These crocodiles looked like statues until I saw some of their eyes open.

And I’m glad this fella was behind strong wire, although he was pretty sleepy and quite well fed looking.

The little train that ran around the park had always just left as we arrived at a stop and it was quicker to keep walking than to wait 20 minutes for the next one.

I even went into the reptile bit and watched a snake try to peel his skin off. The photo I took didn’t work out due to poor light conditions and I didn’t want to frighten his skin off with my flash.

I noticed here, and at the glow worms we saw in the evening (a separate trip) that Japanese tourists were wearing masks over their face because of a swine flu threat I presume. I wonder if they were the ones who were brave enough to come to Australia and they left a lot of others at home. Have tourism numbers dropped? I don’t know.

Even though Currumbin was a fair distance from our hotel, we were able to hop on a bus and go straight there. Public transport is quite easy in Surfer’s Paradise and I’d bought a package that included airport and theme park transfers and public transport. We ended up using public transport for the theme parks as it also left almost from our hotel and we weren’t bound by pickup and drop off times.

I’m getting there with the post holiday posts. There’s three days left.

Post holiday post – part 2

July 17, 2009 by Jen

Read post holiday post part 1 for the beginning.

For the holiday to the Gold Coast I’d bought a theme park fun pass to the three Warner Bros theme parks, Seaworld (which we’d just done), Wet’nWild and Movie World. The fun pass lasts for five days from the first day you use it so you can do each park with a rest day inbetween. This is what I’d recommend for sure as these parks are huge and involve a lot of walking.

After a rest day on Tuesday with watching Ice Age 3 in 3D we were up for theme park number two. The weather wasn’t looking that great for the whole week so I just decided to get Wet’nWild out the way. It was a bit cool, about 17 degrees and overcast and fairly windy and I traipsed around the park in my wet bathers – after the first ride anyway. With no firm plan in mind we started off with the Tornado. This ride means you have to lug a large and fairly heavy raft thing up heaps of stairs and it’s hard to do with just one adult and one kid. We were really struggling but luckily someone came to our rescue and helped me carry it up.

JJ got on it and went down. I was in front off JJ as we backed down the last chute before we went into the main tornado bit and the scared look on his face was priceless – I wish I could have captured it on film. That feeling of not being in control of what comes next is what makes these rides so much fun in retrospect.

We went around the park and systematically did most of the rides with a couple of spa visits inbetween to warm up as it was pretty chilly. It’s not really worth taking a towel around with you because it would just get wet and you wouldn’t be that warm with a wet towel either. We hired a locker to put all our stuff in and got the waterproof wristband with a bit of extra money on it to buy food. We ate a lot of chips on our holidays as these theme parks idea of healthy food is pretty non-existent and Wet’nWild had the best hot chips and we hooked into them like there was no tomorrow when we got them. All that climbing up numerous amounts of stairs made for two very hungry people.

The Black Hole was our favourite. It’s pitch black inside these tunnels but it wasn’t too scary and it was warm in there. I imagine in the heat of summer it’s too warm, but in winter it was perfect. We did it twice at the beginning and once or twice before I changed back into warm clothes.

A word of warning if you go down the slide that doesn’t require some sort of raft or mat to use, if you’re just wearing a normal bathing suit you go really fast. This happened to me and my legs and arms ended up flailing all over the place and I bruised both my elbows and wasn’t ready when I landed in the pool at the end and got water up my nose which wasn’t pleasant at all.

I was lucky that JJ is tall enough to go on all these rides – I can’t remember the height requirements but most of the rides need a pair of people as well. Like all the theme parks, there is a younger kids section too which we didn’t visit. Because of the weather though, there weren’t that many brave (stupid?) people there so we didn’t have long waits for the rides we did go on which was a good thing. The cooler weather also meant that some of the rides alternated in their opening times.

After I got changed JJ went into the wave pool.

There were showers in the changeroom but there was no hot water. I couldn’t believe it. I was shivering and cold and couldn’t even warm up under a warm shower. I had to wait until I got back to the hotel for that.

With all this exercise during our days meant I had fairly early nights during our holiday. JJ went to bed about 9pm every night and because we were in the same room I just laid on my bed reading while he went to sleep. I knew that if I put the tv on he’d watch it and never get to sleep, although on the Wednesday night he went to bed at 8.30pm and was still awake at 9pm when The Chaser started. I watched it and had to muffle my laughter to not disturb him as he was going to sleep.

The one thing I liked about our resort was that they provided basic shared facilities for doing your own meals if you wanted. There was a toaster and a microwave so for breakfasts I could have my toast and JJ had his cereal and that was one meal a day we didn’t have to buy. I bought snacks and some fruit from the supermarket, but other than that JJ pretty much lived on fish and chips because that’s his favourite meal which just about every establishment we ate at provided. Oh well, when on holidays….

I think I’ve got two more parts left of this holiday tale. Any questions? Please ask in the comments.

Post holiday post

July 15, 2009 by Jen

Upon some reflection on our holiday, it was a damn good one. There, that’ll do won’t it? No, you want details…..

In summary, we had six days on the Gold Coast and a theme park fun pass to use within five of those days so as you can imagine we were busy. Seaworld was the first port of call because I knew that was the closest and the easiest to get to. I’d booked JJ into the Kids Club at the hotel at 4.30pm that afternoon so we had to leave about 3pm or so to get back but after having been there for five hours I was glad to leave. We traipsed around that park for those five hours and hardly sat down to just relax.

We went on rides through volcanoes and tunnels that involved just a bit more water than I would have liked. We went on the corkscrew rollercoaster twice and the scariest part for me was the corkscrew part that happens twice in very quick succession. The ride is over so quickly you’re not quite sure what happened. We didn’t do the jet rider one. We saw the dolphin show, had a front row seat at the lunchtime water ski comedy 50s act. We rode the monorail twice and the skyrail once. The polar bears were asleep. I shed a tear during the dolphin show from a combination of the music and the gorgeousness of dolphins. I wondered how the dolphin trainers get a job there. Phew, we did a lot and that was just part of day 1.

A couple more photos below.

Rewind to the day before though. We left home at 7.30am to catch the plane after having spent the previous afternoon at an AFL football match. It’s hard work being a footy yobbo but I think we all played the part quite well. The direct flight from Adelaide to the Gold Coast is a good one and I wouldn’t fly there any other way unless I was absolutely desperate. We arrived at the Gold Coast just as the marathon was finishing so when I told the bus transfer desk person where we were going she said because of road closures we’d have to be dropped off at the next suburb and walk a kilometre. At first I thought she was joking but she wasn’t. When I asked the bus driver he said, no problem, he’d drop us off right round the corner and we wouldn’t have to walk a kilometre. Phew! Even with wheely suitcases, they’re quite heavy, and that’s without the hand luggage, including for some reason my laptop. All I used my laptop for was to add photos ready for uploading to Flickr and I hardly managed to do that. Laptop’s staying home next time!

When we got to our room JJ was really excited to inform me that there was a hair dryer in the bathroom and I was glad to see two beds so we didn’t have to sleep together and listen to each other grind their teeth and snore. We stayed at one of those full-on kiddy/family resorts and if you were child-free you would not want to stay there because it was a festival of children. Unfortunately the children took over the spa so there was not even respite from them there. I told one kid that if he kept splashing he’d be out and it wasn’t even my own child.

When I started this post I thought I’d do a quick few sentences and pop in a few photos but it’s turned out longer than I expected and we’re only on day two.

Speaking of photos I took my new camera with me and I wouldn’t have been able to get some of the photos I got with my old camera. I love that I can turn the camera on and it’s ready to go very quickly. I also love the continual shoot. Now, to get off the AV setting and explore a bit more will be the next step.

If you want to see more photos I’m gradually uploading them to Flickr.

There’s so much more that I’ll have to save it for subsequent posts but what I do want to say before I forget is how I felt myself acting when I got back Monday evening. It was action stations and I was barking orders like a sargeant until I realised that I was only acting like that because of the horrible thought of being back in the routine and doing the daily drudge. I’m trying to change my attitude to how I react to each day from a sometimes negative one to a more positive one and to try not to sweat the small stuff. I’ve slightly changed our routine for the rest of this week and the wheels haven’t fallen off but I’m more relaxed than when I got back Monday night. Let’s wait and see what happens when school starts back, and sport, and scouts……..