Chris and I have signed up to foster dogs for our local pound/shelter. We got a call a few days after, and they had a dog for us. Apparently some douche-bag in our town decided to murder his step-brother on boxing day...and consequently, he was headed to jail. Because he didn't have anyone else to look after her, she was picked up by the RSPCA. She was incredibly malnourished, underweight by about 10 lbs, and had 150-200 ticks on her! :( I can't seem to understand why, when owning a pet is optional, people choose to get one-and then mistreat it. Breaks my heart.
This little creature is absolutely adorable. She is placid, and cute and always minds me. Here are some pictures when we first got her.
Love her profile and the furhawk between the eyes!!!
I think she looks much happier now. Now to work on that socialisation...and to teach her how to play....
She was spayed this weekend so she is one step closer to adoption. Apparently there are a lot of interested families. I will be SAD to see her go, I love her!!!
Apparently we are getting a 2nd dog here sometime this week...another guy that needs a loving home. :)
Our filing cabinet has a specific folder labeled "newspaper articles". For two athletes, being in the newspaper is often a luxury of the job that we've been lucky enough to be privvy to. Although, here's to always hoping the photographer does NOT get that shot of you waling on a ball, while in the background, your face looks like some kind of crazed, cross-eyed lunatic with lemon juice being squeezed in one eye and lips curled back like a wolf ready to attack.
Because my husband has been finished rugby for a few months, I thought this newspaper shrine might actually die down a little. I was wrong. Since he has started with the firefighters, he has had the following articles, including this one on his very first day on the job! Some people get all the luck:
That's Chris on the right.
At firefigter school (on the left). At his first fire on his first day (on the right).
It felt like every second i turned around, there was another critter! Chris' brother Brendan loves animals and was always catching geckos and frogs. I tried to have a legend on some of them, because this country breeds freakishly large insects!! Here are some of our findings:
baby gecko
A green tree frog, who when Brendan turned his head...launched towards me and Rosmary!
There he goes!
The "Christmas Beetle". This thing is HUGE and normally has a crazy looking horn on the front. No thanks!!
Christmas this year was great especially since we could factor in the unusual presence of family! Chris' family came up from the 23rd-30th and we have a lot of fun with them. From the moment they got off the plane, we pretty much had then harnessed into some manual labor so they could earn their keep. I had a piano to move, and I needed them to help.
First of all, let me get a photo on here of this little BEAUT!
We have a local classified publication, and I found her advertised for $75!!! I called the lady and was inquiring about it over the phone as she lived at the beach (about 30 mins from us). The lady selling the piano was named Greta, and she was adorable. I asked her to play a few notes just to hear the quality of the sound, and the next thing I know I was practically settling in with a blankie and a hot cup of tea for a musical masterpiece!! It was funny and endearing. I pretty much committed to buying it over the phone, and then had the HUGE task of figuring out how the heck we were going to move the thing. This is where Chris' family came in. Let me just say that 6 adults later, and everyone using their full strength, it was still bloody hard to move it!! Nonetheless, we got it home and have already enjoyed many duets and tunes on her. I have missed having a piano in my life, thanks to my mom who has woken me up to this fact!
Christmas Eve was spent getting things ready for the holiday and in the evening spending time making sugar cookies, and making/decorating our homemade candy houses. I was going to call them 'gingerbread houses', but that ends up implying that I actually baked gingerbread-and that would be a total lie! We used the budget/large family approach and built our houses with cookies.
I think it's clear to see who's is the best here....
Here is a picture of our tree. I was proud that we finally did a somewhat life sized version of a Christmas tree this year. Total cost=$34 (including decorations!!). I also find it weird here that they use evergreen trees since they don't grow them here.
For Christmas meal we went to our friends' Luke and Sarah's, and then everyone came to ours the next day for a BBQ and a swim. I was pretty bad at taking pictures though:
Usually Christmas crackers have a plastic mustache, or maybe a toy car. Luke's had an electronic book light?!?
It was so HOT! Our crowns were sweating to our heads!!
It was a good holiday, and it was fun to have Chris' family up to Rockhampton!
University life circa 2001...essay due=hammer it out in the last 2 hrs, slap your student ID number on plus and an unusually high amount of intelligent sounding synonyms for simple words intersected by a plethora of direct quotes hoping to fool the profs into thinking you might have actually read the textbook.
University life now=I am up to my ears in papers. I know that we used to complain about the sneakiness of multiple choice exams..."which is the most correct" garbage, but seriously, at least that method is quick and painless! I am in constant disbelief about how long it has takes to write assignments these days. Weeks! I write, then re-write, then re-evaluate, and the vicious cycle continues...all the while the institutions have gotten smarter. They no longer count essay length in 'pages' and now refer to it in 'word count'. We are then allowed 1-2 direct quotes allowed per 1000-3000 word essay. Direct quotes-that was my bread and butter! Then, when you've read and re-read it so many times that your eyeballs are almost permanently cross-eyes (shout out to "One Crazy Summer" for those who've seen it), you hastily hop online to submit it. At which stage the powers that be, up the ante one more time as your paper is digitally scanned into a database called "turnitin", a plagiarism wizard. This database scans your document into the database for future comparisons, while searching for similarities between yours and the last 19394893 students who wrote a paper on the 'progressive movement of nursing studies in the tertiary sector'. GAH! At the end of the ten minute scan, you are presented with a percentage that you are supposed to be remaining calm about. As if the assignment was not enough stress! Gone were the easy days of perfecting my "BS Artist" degree with my writing...
Weird because I suck at writing this blog, until I've got a writing assignment hanging over my head. Then to procrastinate, the ideas start flow like the salmon of Capistrano. If you want to get a sucky thing done, pull an even suckier thing over your head...not that this blog is sucky-but...ok yep, this is rock bottom.
There are a few home improvements that I have wanted to get done for a while here. Today we had our fence put up, which is a far cry from the chicken-wire concoction we had there before.
I understand that you are probably bored to tears at the above pictures, but to us it's more than a defense of our property line....it means we can get pooches again!!! We will be looking to foster 2 dogs from the pound asap! yesssssss.
We have also recently purchased a BBQ, and Chris' parents gave us an outdoor setting for Christmas!!! I will get to feel like an honorary aussie this "Chrissy" but throwing a 'shrimp on the barbie'. Don't worry, it will be documented, and it will be magical.
'Tis the season to be jolly, and our local crossing guard aka "lollipop lady" is surely not letting this festive season pass her by without jazzing up the daily uniform with this cheerful chapeau.
They say that in Australia, there are more ways to die by an animal than any other country. It is easy to see why when you take a quick gander onto this site. You can probably guess how I have become so jumpy! I have seen my fair share of cane toads, green tree frogs, cockroaches, spiders, lizards and geckos...but this next animal has caught me COMPLETELY by surprise.
Pretty sure this pest belongs on the list!
I can see you rolling your eyes, especially you Canadians who are used to this little fella:
This jovial and simple bird has a joyful song and at times gets confused thinking that it has found its life partner in a piece of tin foil gleaming in the sun. Silly magpie.
Well the other day I got up early to go for a walk before work. It was early, and I was tired, but it was a beautifully sunny day. No more than 50 metres from my house I suddenly felt a breeze as I heard a "flap flap flap" and the gnashing of a beak in my ear.
Don't be fooled, I did NOT look like the girl in the above photo. I probably sounded like a cross between a cat being swung around by its tail and a tone deaf opera singer. These 'sounds' (we'll call them for lack of a better word), were coming out my mouth at the exact time I was karate chopping the air. I think I even got a high kick up in that routine. It was the kind of fear where the subconscious took over, and probably made for one impeccable show should someone be peering out their window at that exact moment.
Well what better than pure adrenaline to get your heart pumping, and that's exactly what it did. For the rest of the walk I felt like I'd eaten a year's worth of halloween candy and a bottle of caffeine tablets. The entire time I was on BIRD WATCH, and not the pleasurable kind. I hate those birds!
See informational clip below, and note the look in this little bastard's eye at mark 1:29....and Edgar Allan Poe was worried about a raven...
Quite frankly, I don't care where that instinct comes from...it's no excuse for him to start dive bombing my head when I'm trying my darnedest to stay active.
Some people around town who ride their bike a lot find solace in the the"hedgehog-let"-a bike helmet with strategically placed zip ties to act as a variable 'bed of nails' for the swooping mongrel.
They also say that a magpie won't swoop if you are looking at it, which I beg to differ, but in any case you could paste these to the back of your helmet:
I also like the homeade, eco-friendly version
So what happens if none of these 'conventional' methods will stave off the angry beast. I guess matters will have to be taken into mine own hands. Here are a few of my brainstorming ideas:
Anyway, I think you get the point.
It didn't take a genius to harness the inspiration for this fascinator....
