What I bought in WA.

Gourmet bread and butter pudding on our last night in Perth!

• Presents for Mum and Dad.
• Port.
• Loose leaf teas: peppermint and green chai. These were well priced. Cheaper than T2. I was waiting to buy tea on holidays. http://fremantlemarkets.com.au/node/164
• Tapenade to share at work.
• Shampoo and Conditioner. Natural ingredient ones made in Margaret River, cheaper than the Body Shop.
• A tea towel. This was the most useless thing I bought. It's a typographic map. I could use it, or hang it on the kitchen wall. I just need a wall.
• A second-hand coat. I call it my Country Vet Coat. It looks rather English and 50s, but the buttons tell me it is from the 80s. I might look at changing them. It was $65 which is exy for 2nd hand but cheap for new. I'm replacing an old long cardigan with this long coat. Replacing is my aim these days. In this case, long layer for long layer. I find long things work well over dresses. And I do love dresses.
• Chocolate. I opened the box last night, saw the foil, and closed it up again. I can't eat this chocolate until I have carefully photographed the packaging.
• 2 Postcards. One I posted.

Shopping on holidays is great. Not that I go on holidays to spend ages shopping. You have the limits of luggage weight and volume so you can't go crazy, and I also worry that I'll make bad purchases re clothes and buy things that are not suitable for my normal life. So I'm pretty restrained. But as it happens, the clothes I buy on holidays are the best. My blanket cape, for example.

What I do is, I don't buy souvenir trinkety things, but I buy normal things that I'll use and know they are from a nice holiday. So my blanket cape is from Armidale. My brown vinyl bag is from London. I'll be washing my hair in fancy Margaret River shampoo for the next 6 months and drinking tea from Fremantle Markets. Useful things from nice places.

I do, however, buy postcards. They are excellent value. I send one to work. Then when I get back to work, I read it and remember fun times, and I stick the postcard on my collage.

Last of the Far West photos.

Chocolate factory which served rocky road cheesecake, I have no idea how they cut through marshmallows so cleanly.

A fancy place called Providore, I think, where they make chutney and things.

A service station!

The cow milking toy at the ice-cream factory, with one of my new little friends

The green countryside.

The lovely yellow stone they have in Perth, the Mint.

The CBA view in the mall at lunchtime.

Some random Shakespearian shopping lane.

View from hotel at sunrise. I don't think I've ever seen so many sunrises and sunsets in one week.

Some boring council building with a changing light display.

My political highlight from last week.

I caught the end of Insiders on Sunday morning, this was most amusing. I feel like Mr Albanese is a kindred spirit when it comes to waiting around for people.

Start with soup.

I'm pretty proud of this. I had leftover pumpkin soup in the fridge, but also wanted to eat red meat because I need iron. But how to eat both? That's just weird. I found some frozen naan bread and was inspired. Cooked steak, cut it up, heated soup in microwave, added curry powder and steak chunks, and voila. Beef and pumpkin curry, with naan to dip. It was actually delicious.

Just keep walking, just keep walking, just keep walking, walking, walking.

Today, Thursday, I did my 3rd walk. Was feeling a little bit tired this morning and thought of taking a day off… the long walks are catching up with me, and I had bible study last night… but I was already out of bed, so why waste the morning. These autumn mornings are perfect, except when they rain and you forget your keys. Other than that anomaly, I think I'll try and walk every morning. Don't need a jumper, and don't get sweaty. And the lower angle of the winter sun is very pretty through dewy grass and the beginning of autumn leaves.

It's strange that the more I do the walk, the length of the walk feels less epic. I thought a 1.5 hour walk was too much to do every day, but it's really fine once you get used to it. Also, 90 minutes sounds shorter than 1.5 hours.

Something from the soundtrack of my life at the moment:

http://www.last.fm/music/Matt+Corby/_/Light+Home

Bowral day.

It was hard not to have a nice long weekend, with such weather. It was good weather for cleaning and washing, so I did some of that. I enjoyed morning church on Good Friday. Had the most fabulous swim on Saturday morning, and had lunch in the park with a friend. Had a ladies lunch with excellent home cooked food on Monday in Ashfield, with nail painting and Miranda for entertainment. I am now wearing purple Butter London nail polish, and I'm not sure about it... But that's the fun of nails!

The centrepiece of the weekend was Sunday, when E and I caught a train to Bowral for the day. I had to get a 6.40am bus for the 7.28 train, which took almost 3 hours to get up there with a bit of a connection wait at Campbeltown. So we arrived hungry and it was a little cold, so we rushed straight to the elephant boy cafe and had tea and shared a slice of cake. That's what it's all about.

Then we went to the bag and scarf shop, where I almost bought a bag and a scarf. We went to the earring shop Kish, where I did buy 6 pairs of earrings, but some are for gifts... It's my favourite earring shop. I am still wearing a pair from when I lived there 6 years ago, almost every day. The have so many earrings. 4 of these tables.

Then we went to some antique shops and I bought a brass box to keep nail polish in. E almost bought a dressing table. I almost bought another bag. Then we had a really nice cheap lunch, in an organic bakery... $6 pie for me, it had big strips of steak. I should make pie. Here is the pie with the brass box.

But after that I didn't have as much energy, and the shops were hot and I just wanted to sit down outside. So eventually I sat on a husband bench and read while E browsed nail polish, she found quite the bargains! 2 bottles of Butter London polish for $10 each! Then we found D who drove up for the afternoon, had a little walk, went to a last cafe for an iced chocolate, which revived me like it was a magical potion, so that's the power of sugar I suppose. Then we drove back to her place in Sydney which was very fast, and got the train and bus home from there in time to watch Doctor Who. What a night of TV Sunday is now! Doctor Who, Elementary, Mentalist, Miranda, not to mention Call The Midwife and Downton Abby which can't fit on my list unfortunately.

Randwick.

http://nowandthen.mindsocket.com.au/images?tag=randwick&keyword=

This photo (I unfaded it with photoshop) is from the nowandthen website I am enjoying in my lunch breaks. I walk past this statue every day, when I get off the bus which stops on the left hand side there. Looks like a horse hitching-post. There is a new bit of building around the tower now, where restaurants come and go, but it's still very recognisable.

Sparkling in the mountains.

We celebrated the day after Australia Day with sparklers, and we had AMAZING results with the long-exposure sparkler writing thing. This was our second attempt, and yes, I did my letter backwards, but I did it right the first time, which should count for something. Anyway this is probably the best one of these things I've ever seen, characterful spelling and everything. Long weekends are hooray!

Walking Kosciusko.

We took the chair lift on Saturday morning, and did the walk to the top and back. It's 13km total, and 1 hr 50 min each way, if you stop a few times for photos and asthma and so on.

It's such a stunning landscape. Like the bleak bits of Middle Earth where a bunch of orcs on wargs attack you. Tiny flowers. Lots of rocks. The path is often a metal grill walkway, like a rusty ribbon.

I re-enacted my top of a mountain pose.

We got stickers.

The weather was nice, and I had to carry all my warm layers for no reason because even with a strong wind it was not cold. But on the way back, a storm cam down the mountain behind us. Just as we got to the chair lift, it started raining and they turned the lift off for a good 45 minutes because of the storm. So we drank the highest hot chocolates in Australia while we waited.

The chair lift is really long, very high, and a lot of fun. It's amazingly serene, floating silently through the air. So, we stayed on and went around again (yes, that was my idea). Why not, it's a very expensive all day ticket. Get your fun while you can.

We went into jindabyne for dinner, at a very expensive and strange italian restaurant. Watched Captain America on DVD. Went to church on Sunday. On Sunday afternoon I did a good couple of hours on my cross stitch, played Bananagrams, and went for a walk around the property... I saw deer, and whacked thistles with a stick and cut my hand.

On Monday my carload left at 7, which was ok because I thought at least I'll have a whole afternoon back in Sydney to go for a swim or do my grocery shopping and stuff. Such plans were doomed, as it turned out we drove into worse and worse weather as we came north, and then there was a lost car keys delay, so I got home after 3pm in the end, and had to make do with putting a load of washing on, having a hot shower and eating a chiko roll out of the freezer.

I really would like to do walks like this more often.

Fireworks.

I was walking home down my street at 8.50 last night, and I had a splendid view of the Coogee carols fireworks display. Perfectly timed magic. Sweet way to end a fun night of carols with my church. Especially since I was trying to be thankful and not give into the post-event tired and gloomy crash. O Holy Night sheet music is put away for another year.

I watched a fantastic not-new episode of Big Bang Theory last night. Physicist Sheldon didn't think his girlfriend Amy's accomplishment in the field of biology was as exciting as him having 100 twitter followers.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ooh, 101! Air’s getting a bit thin up here.

Leonard gives Sheldon advice:

Leonard: Sometimes with women you want to listen to what upsets them and then show them that you can grow and change.
Sheldon: Nuts to that. What else you got?
Leonard: I don’t know what to tell you. Buy her something.
Sheldon: How does that work?
Leonard: Well, you skip over any attempt to repair your emotional connection and you win back her affection with an empty financial gesture.
Sheldon: Well, that approach has Sheldon Cooper written all over it.

Penny takes Sheldon to the jewellery shop to buy something for Amy. Sheldon buys himself a pocket watch also, because it makes him look like a train conductor.

Sheldon gives grumpy Amy a present. I was expecting lame. lol.

Busy but good.

I had a really nice weekend. I'm always torn three ways on weekends, I want to do nothing and rest with a book or the TV, I want to see my friends and do fun things outside and enjoy the weather, and I want to get my life and house in order and shop and exercise and be productive. All three is a bit hard. This weekend I kind of let go of what I wanted to do because there was just stuff I had to do, music for a kids event at church taking up half of it. But miraculously, I managed to get all 3 weekends in one anyway! It was actually a bit hectic and went fast, but it didn't feel hectic.

I had dinner with 2 friends in Chinatown after work on Friday, tick social, went to bed early, got up and did some Jillian after breakfast, tick exercise. Got summer clothes out and put some coats away, tick productive. Went to vote at my flatmates church with K, had a sausage bun for lunch and saw a car accident, tick do fun things, did my grocery shopping on way home, tick food. Walked to M Junction and EG Westfield to find a new fluro tube for the kitchen. Couldn't find one, and also got a bit lost on the way so was very hot and angry and tired by the time I got to church for music practice, in a foul mood. Fail. Oh I forgot, being so hot and tired I wanted a smoothie but couldn't buy one. After a few hours learning kids songs I got a lift home, and I was complaining about how hard it is to find a fluro lightbulb, and it turns out the couple driving me home had a lightbulb store in the boot of the car. What are the chances? "Mr Good" installed it for me and everything! Tick changing the light, and tick I feel happy because someone randomly helped me!

Then I was about to start cooking dinner but I remembered I should make soup for church dinner instead, so I went back to Coles and bought pumpkin etc and made soup. THEN I vegged out with Season 1 of Criminal Minds, tick relaxing. My flatmate likes the show but I find it scary and also the characters are pretty dull and I have no idea who is who, so I thought I'd start at the beginning, and it's a lot better at the beginning. The characters actually have personality.

Sunday morning was the kids thing at church, tick serving others. After lunch I watched some more Criminal Minds with my flatmate and a bag of freddos, tick relaxing. Then walked to church, tick exercise and enjoying sun. Soup after church but didn't have to wash up because had cooked, tick not washing up. More Criminal Minds after church. Made my sandwich for Monday, tick getting stuff done.

Lost chair.

The building across from my office is the ugliest building in the East, I call it "the projects" because it's all sheets for curtains and broken furniture for a garden. Complete eyesore. But the random lounge chair in the weeds looked like it belonged.

A Splendid Summer Picnic.

This is a party in a park, hosted my my friend on the weekend. She was "inspired" by my elaborate birthday picnic this year, where I went to great lengths to fancy up a picnic by bringing lace tablecloths to cover the picnic blankets, and made cloth napkins, and baked bread, and brought along proper crockery. She went about 1000% more amazing than that, sewing about 40 metres of gorgeous vintage-style bunting, arranging a literal feast and seating everyone with proper table settings (my lace tablecloths made a special appearance!). She got a lot of ideas from Pinterest. It was fabulous, like a really casual funky wedding lunch. It was a very one-off event, and the effort she put in made it very special. I do not exaggerate when I call it 'splendid'! Here are some photos.

House of dreams.

 
Haha. The first place I lived in when I moved out of home is for sale. $300,000 is a bargain on the Sydney scale, but to me it seems a lot for an East Maitland 2.5 bedroom weatherboard cottage with an outside toilet. And the outside toilet wasn't the worst of it. The whole place was small and old and always smelled like the stuff we fought cockroaches with, and it's located close to a street called Skilton Avenue, which should tell you what kind of street. Charles Dickens must have named that street. Living near Skilton Avenue we had our toilet paper stolen and after we moved out the wheelie bin was set fire to and scorched the outside of the house pretty dangerously. We paid $215 per week (not each) to rent it, and we were grateful, because the rental market in Maitland was tight and we were the bottom of the pile. Now I know how expensive renting can be, but I don't think I would go back to this one to save money.

The best place I have ever rented was in Bowral. Modern 2 bedroom unit with views for $180 p/w. When I shared it, I paid $90 a week, which is stunningly cheap. Because in Bowral nobody who is anybody rents, especially a place with no garden. When one next door went for sale it was for $250,000, which shows you the demand for buying verses renting. Renters are treated like kings and queens. Literally, when I enquired about a place I was offered a viewing time of my choice, and a lift in the agent's car. That is what I call service.

The Sydney experience is different again. It's about speed and strategy and only getting an offer because the agent randomly picks your application off the top of the pile and you can't even remember the inside of the house because you were in such a hurry to get to the next place and maximize your chances. Once you are in, you hold on and hope your landlady likes you. She must, because after 15 months no inspections and no rent increase. Thank you, God! I really love where I live now. If rent is twice as expensive as Maitland, it's worth it. City convenience and inside toilet. I'm so blessed.

Brooke.

Saw my favourite local artist, finally…

I can remember when I first heard Brooke Fraser, I was driving a ute or a hilux or some monster farm car from Tocal ag college into Newcastle to deliver some files to the printer, and I turned up the radio when I got to the Newcastle West railway crossing cos they were playing her Distant Sun cover. I was in love, and then never heard of her again for over a year until Anna at MM had her song Arithmetic. And then I saw the Shadowfeet video on TV and loved it so I bought Albertine and I've been waiting to see her play ever since.

Her 3 albums are quite different. I like them all. Her lyrics are quite subtle so I can always hear something new or understand something different, which makes them last, because once I know the lyrics of a song I get bored of it. And her voice is pretty special, of course. She can sing anything and make it sound heartbreaking. She's a weird a quirky person, which makes it a much more fun show than if it was dominated by her saddish songs.

I was a bit nervous that she wouldn't be good live, and the first 2 songs had me worried because the sound mix was quite unhelpful. The drums and bass were so heavy you couldn't hear her sing. But the 3/4 of the show with thinner arrangements were awesome. Sailboats was the most beautiful, I thought. We were all disappointed she didn't sing Who are we fooling? but it was not a certain chance cos it is a duet with a guy. A good reason to try and see her again ASAP.

Buskpackers. I made up this word.

I saw the coolest buskers ever yesterday when I was wandering around the city after church hunting for my dream teapot. They are buskpacking around the world, I guess, cos they're from the US, and their kit is pretty small. They've been around Sydney for a little while. Guitar, violin (bowed and plucked) and a drum kit made of a bucket, a small drum, a cymbal flat on the ground and some sort of pot that sounded like a snare. At one point the cymbal flipped inside-out in the middle of a song so the guy picked it up, thumped it on his knee to pop it back and kept going. They must be like gap-year age, they were all barefoot and messy-haired and wild in a Peter Pan sort of way, and they was so much fun to see, I could have stood there for an hour just watching them smash away. I heard them do Little Lion Man and something else cool I forget, some originals which are catchy, and I gave them money, cos they definitely deserved to eat.

Watch on youtube, but the drummer is at the wrong angle so you can't really see what he's doing.

Scootering!

I scoot to work about once a week, for variety. Other days I read and walk, or ipod and walk. However my fancy leads me.

This morning I slowed down for a little old lady to give her lots of room and not feel like she was being hooned off the footpath by a grown woman on a scooter. I didn't expect her to give me a bit grin and say "there she goes!"

Hymn: How firm a foundation.

(I discovered this hymn on the Together for the Gospel CD. That CD is a great singalong hymn-learning resource.)

After the first verse, all the verses are sung from God, if that makes sense. We sing to Got what he said to us. ie,

Fear not—I am with you, oh be not dismayed,
for I am your God, and will still give you aid.

That's a very unusual voice to write a Christian song in. It can be kind of confusing.

It's a good song to sing when you are walking in the rain, because there is a verse that goes: When though the deep water I call you to go the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow...

I especially like the last verse: the repetition for emphasis, singing about hell and foes. Leaves me pumped full of singing endorphins.

The soul that on Jesus shall lean for repose
I will not, I WILL NOT, desert to its foes.
That soul, tho all hell should endeavour to break,
I'll never, no never, no NEVER forsake.