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the jubjub birds

My internet is intermittently phasing in and out and it is KILLING me. This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. I am trying to DO STUFF here, internet! I mean, the correct thing to do here is turn the internet off, but it is patently obvious that I don't know how to do that.

I have spent an horrific amount of money lately and it needs to stop. I aimlessly wander through the internet and then I BUY IT. Just like other people wander through stores, only I am too lazy and busy to do this. Actually I was wandering through Target at one stage, minding my own business, when a saleslady of advanced age came up to me. She was brandishing those PixiFoto portraits that Target had at one stage, trying to sell me a photo package. "Would you like these beautiful family portraits?" she asked me, waiving a large portrait shot of two mildly ugly children in my direction. I opened my mouth to say, "But I don't even know those people!" then snapped it shut again. But really, I should have said it. I really DIDN'T know those people.

I think I have had too much sugar today. This is rating up there with the day I had a bottle of V at work (energy drink, similar to Red Bull but not as horrible); and the bottle is significant as it's twice as large as the can. Then, as you do, I bought a bottle of red ice tea at lunch, but I failed to see that the ice tea contained guarana. And really, why would I look for that? Who would expect ice tea to contain guarana? Who would put that into tea? Anyway, after the equivalent of 4 energy drinks, I was a wired mess and couldn't sit still. I basically kept printing things out, one page at a time, so I could stomp the length of the building to the printer and work off some energy. I feel sort of like that, but for no reason. Rarg! Hulk smash!

Also, I am allergic to something and have little itchy hive things. I never react to anything, so this is odd. (First person to suggest I am allergic to the carpet and should stop rolling on it gets a DEATH STARE from me. Only because this started before we had the carpet laid... don't think I hadn't thought of it.) I think it might be the soap I'm using, so I went back to the original soap. Hopefully this works out for me as otherwise I am out of ideas. Anyway, being itchy is not fun and I don't enjoy it. If I get hayfever next I will not best be pleased. Oh, this paragraph should really be in the post below, as it's something I'm annoyed about, but really this whole blog is Something I'm Annoyed About so I don't feel I've miscategorised.
10:08 PM § 3 comments
Every time Mr. T gives me a snack, like a biscuit or an Easter egg or something, he bites it first. Just to annoy me. HE TAXES MY FOOD. He tries to pretend he is testing it, like for poisons, but YOU KNOW it's not true.

In this new house, Mr. T taught the dog that when he comes in the back door, he cannot walk through the kitchen to get to his dog bed - he has to go around it, by walking through the lounge and back around into the dining room. (There's no real reason for this, apart from Mr. T's belief that dogs aren't allowed in the kitchen.) Unfortunately we are now severely confusing him by INSISTING he go through the kitchen... as this keeps his dirty outside paws off the new carpet (my prreciousssss). The poor dog is trying to be good and dart past whoever is acting as point guard, to go his normal way through the house... then he gets yelled at. I'm not annoyed at the dog for this, more that we didn't see this coming and let him walk through the kitchen from the start.

Actually, that's all I think I'm annoyed about at the moment. Surely that's some sort of record?
8:53 PM § 3 comments
Ah, the Simpsons. Now I have been reminded, I can see "powerful sucks" re-entering my lexicon. Does lexicon mean what I think it means? No matter. Oh, speaking of word things, as I published that last post, Blogger popped up a message which said "auto save failed, cannot find content" or some such crap, and I tell you if nothing had published there was no way I was writing all that out again. Seriously. It wasn't half interesting enough the first time round, and as I have set the bar so low, I see no reason to challenge myself.

Anyway, the carpet guys came on Friday (yes, on a public holiday, but it was their choice) and we were up until 1am the night before painting the lounge while we still had the freedom to drip paint all over hardwood floors. Yes, we have hardwood floors and yes, we are covering them up with carpet. You know what? I hate hardwood floors. I know I am the only person in the Western world who feels this way, but I don't care. Every person who's been in here since we ripped up the old carpets have raved about the floors and assumed we are going to polish them up... no no no no no. They are cold, noisy, drafty, the dog has been digging his claws in to prevent sliding all over them like he's lost control of his limbs, and they require the purchase of multiple rugs which then slide all over the floors and look like shit. I KNOW, I AM HEATHEN. But really, people, they are COLD. They are NOISY: for the two weeks we lived with them, we could hear each other clonking all over the house, and there's only two of us: we sounded like stampeding wildebeests. They are UGLY: there are replacement boards down the middle of some rooms, there are holes in the floor chinked up with spare bits of pine, some rooms have already been (poorly) varnished and require a complete strip back, and.... even when they're done properly I don't even like the look of it. KILL ME NOW I DON'T DESERVE TO HAVE THIS HOUSE. I know, I should be in a brand new 5 bedroom mcmansion in a subdivision. Well, maybe next time. Until then I have taken photos of the floor under this carpet and will keep them until we sell the house, where the next buyer can think of the GORGEOUS things they can do with the floors under the carpet. Better them than me.

Anyway, back to the carpet. I LOVE my carpet. When we bought the house, we thought the original carpet might be liveable - you know when you walk through a house a couple of times, then buy it, then don't see it again for weeks in which you obsess about just what it is you have actually bought? Yeah, well we remembered the carpet being crap, but when we got into the house we discovered the owners had been extremely crafty with furniture/rug placement and not only did it suck, it powerful sucked. There was two different types of carpet through the house, swapping randomly from one to the other, room by room. The carpet in the lounge was grey shag, which clashed beyond belief with our brown sofas and furniture. The other carpet was blue and looked almost industrial. There were mysterious stains and bits unravelling and my favourite, an iron faceplate burnt deep into the carpet in the family room. So yes, we decided the carpet had to go. Luckily a friend of a friend is a carpet dude, who just happened to have a house lot of carpet that he had started to lay in a million-dollar house, before the lady of the house burst into tears and said she had ordered the wrong colour. It may have been the wrong colour for her, but it is damn perfect for us, just slightly lighter than I would have chosen (and only because of keeping it clean, not because I don't like the colour). Anyway, we have super-expensive carpet, and super-deluxe underlay, for a nylon-industrial-carpet budget price. I love it so, so much. I may have, in fact, lay down on my back on the new carpet and writhed around with my legs kicking in the air like an ecstatic dog. I don't have a photo of that, so you'll have to make do with the below:


The lounge, before. I don't know what's on the TV but this is mid-pulling up the grey shag carpet. Note the high-quality foam chip underlay (possibly the cheapest you can buy, if you don't count egg cartons). The timestamp on this photo tells me this is 9.09pm, which is pretty early in the piece. We probably spent the next three hours pulling up carpet staples and swearing at each other.




This is the same shot of the lounge, but with the TV moved out to the dining room to the left. The hardwood floors don't look half bad here... believe me when I tell you this was the best room for floors. It also had a fine mist of paint spray around every edge from the last time someone painted the walls (with a paint gun, obviously).



After. Mmmmmmmmm. Carpet.
9:21 PM § 10 comments
Look, I'm never going to write anything if i try to write down everything. I'm going to have to start slow and go from there.

• My hands are covered in paint as I'm writing this... there are one and a half rooms to go. This doesn't count the lino-ed rooms (kitchen, dining room, 2 x bathrooms) which will wait for another time. The new carpet is coming on Friday, thus the haste for painting while I can still drip paint on the horrible, horrible old carpet with equanimity.
• I can't see the TV because there is a mattress standing on its side between me and it. The TV. Because we've been sleeping in the lounge for weeks due to paint fumes. Well, for days due to paint fumes. Weeks, due to laziness to put back up the curtains. It's not so bad except the dog can walk straight onto the bed and lie down on your throat. Well, he's only done that once. Twice.
• It was my birthday. I had cake. It was good.
• The cat has gone missing, the day of the massive storms in Melbourne. This is not good and I am heartsick about it. We have letter dropped, signs, rung all the shelters repeatedly. We spend hours walking the streets calling. Which is also not good because it excites the dog and he looks around for the cat. Awful. I'm not talking about this any more, and won't until we find him.
• Before all this, it was Easter and I went back to New Zealand. It was good and the weather was great. Man, I haven't written here for a LONG time.
• I resigned from my job and am starting a new one in three weeks. This will be good but I am sad to leave all the people at my old job. Well, most of the people.
• I tried on a dress today and loved it, then casually looked at the price tag before I bought it. It was $249. I had no idea and I will not pay that. It was a tough call though, because I have no willpower. But I also have no money. I also didn't buy green Camper boots, which were considerably more than $249, but they didn't fit them properly so I didn't feel so bad about leaving those behind.

I think that's all for now. I don't even have any photos. Well I do, but they're all in the camera. But if I wait until I have photos... I think you know the rest.
10:16 PM § 5 comments
So that leap day thing? Never happened. I had to get up impossibly early and put my car in for a service, and before I even left the premises they had phoned me to tell me I had the "old engine" and the quote was going to be different. Take a guess: is the older engine going to be MORE or LESS expensive to service? Oh yeah. Double that quote. And also we'll make you late for work. kthxbye.

Oh, and THEN my day was frenetic and hugely filled with work and I honestly didn't leave my desk except to go to meetings, the printer, the photocopier or the toilet. None of which are suitable photographic subjects. And I did take photos but they were of work things, for work reasons, so I don't think posting unlaunched products or clearly branded items is really the way to advance the old career. So in the end, I did this on March 1, which was a Saturday and much more conducive to photo taking. See the full thing on flickr below:


...if you want to, I mean.
10:04 PM § 4 comments
I might do this tomorrow. Anyone else on board?
10:46 PM § 2 comments
Yeah. So I posted my beach picture, stood up from the couch and went to have a shower... only to have Mr. T start yelling for me to come back and see this. Then he said, "Oh no wait... maybe you don't want to see this."

He was right. I really don't want to see this.



Oh, you can't tell how big that is? (Or you're focusing desperately on my my pink glass lightshade in the dining room through there?) That is one BIG MOTHERFUCKING HUNTSMAN. Oh, you'd like a closeup? How nice of you to ask...



I actually couldn't resize these to my normal size as I couldn't bear to. Yeah, so guess who else likes the beach? Fucking giant spiders. Glorious. My personal favourite.
10:45 PM § 11 comments
It's been such beautiful weather the last few days... I wish I lived near a beach or something.


*not gloating just feeling extremely lucky*

*also omg I have a mortgage and will have to work until the end of time*


11:10 PM § 1 comment
You know what? This is my three-hundredth post. How about that. I would have got here sooner, but I've been busy. What with buying a house and moving and all.

Yep, Mr. T and I have finally bitten the bullet in Melbourne and purchased a house. Looking back I'm surprised I didn't talk about all the many many weekends driving around looking at houses, complete with Mr. T's carefully annotated spreadsheet of places in open-home-time order which we had to visit. I still have it - there is a column for comments, in which I have attempted to jot notes to remind myself which house is which. A couple of them just say things like "scary" and "bad renovation" and my favourite, "omg drug house" which... OK, can you tell we didn't want to spend much money here? Not that we COULD spend much money, but in fact if we were willing to go with what the banks were willing to lend ("Sure, we think a monthly mortgage repayment of 1.5 people's salary is totally manageable!") we could be set up in a very nice mansion indeed. Of course, I wouldn't be able to sleep, what with worrying about the mortgage and all, so we went for a more manageable (yet still SHITKICKINGLY expensive) option and ended up here, bayside on the wrong side of the Westgate Bridge.

That's right, you heard it here first. I am. a. WESTIE. Also, I need to buy moccasins. And possibly trackie daks. We are in an old suburb, about 1km from the beach, in a brick house, and it's a cross between liveable and a fixer-upper. We are pretty pleased. The dog is happy. The cat is unmoved (and yes I lost him outside for a few heart-stopping hours - things never go smoothly with the cat and moving). I have put off writing this for so long in the theory there will be photos... but I can't find my memory card reader and since there are still boxes everywhere I can't see it happening for a while. The kitchen is unpacked (LOVE the kitchen) and everything else is on hold under the premise that we might be replacing the carpets. Also, I just can't be bothered unpacking any more. Oh look, I found a photo:



9:30 PM § 8 comments
When we watch Iron Chef, we always guess what the battle is going to be. (If you don't watch the strange Japanese wonder that is Iron Chef, there are two chefs competing to serve a menu based on a theme ingredient, and the ingredient is called the Battle. If you search youtube you can see clips for Sushi Battle, Liver Battle, Bell Pepper Battle, Rabbit Battle and Natto Battle, and no doubt many more because these people are insane.)

Anyway, tonight I guessed Parsley Battle and Mr. T guessed Lobster Battle. However, we were both wrong as it was Chicken Battle (how unimaginatively unlike the Iron Chef). Anyway, it reminded me of another Iron Chef a few months ago, which started when I was out of the room, and Mr. T hollered out, "There's a warning saying this episode is graphic and may upset some viewers!"

I yelled back, "PUPPY BATTLE!"
9:53 PM § 10 comments

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