Elsja Down Under

Help September 29, 2006

Does anyone know why all my album artwork shows up on itunes but only SOME of it shows up on my ipod?? I know its set to update because some of it appears, but others don’t. HELP!

My Furry Friend September 28, 2006

He’s still lurking up there… the creature in my attic. I hadn’t heard him in a few days so I thought his life was doomed and it probably came to an end when he met his fate… the sticky rat trap. However, I was wrong. He’s too smart for that! He’s no dummy. He knows a sticky rat trap when he sees one and so he has decided he will live on! He will continue to roam the many holes and crevices of the attic. He will continue to scurry along the ceiling baseboards above my head. I think I will name him. Since he clearly may be a part of my life for awhile, I think I owe him that. How about Jermaine? HAHA, that was literally the 1st thing to pop into my head. I’ll have to give this some more thought! Naming my pet rodent is a big job.

Fun Fun. September 27, 2006

Jen did it so I copied her! I did one of these years ago but I can’t remember who all my people were so I tried it again. I tried a few pics of course. I had to try a different pic of Andrew when they first said he looked like James VanDer Beek. Uck! HAHA.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 minutes left September 23, 2006

Of my sister’s birthday!!!

Happy 33rd birthday to Bronwen!! One more year down.

What is It?

Never in my life have I heard noises coming from the attic. I always kind of wanted to in a way… thought it may help me believe in ghosts. Anyways… tonight there is definitely something up there. From the sounds of it, it is a medium to large size rat. It is scurrying from the left side of my bedroom to the right. I don’t know why it has to run so quickly but it is definitely in some kind of hurry up there. At first i thought the noise was coming from outside… but I couldnt think of any animal that would be out there that would be running so quickly and that would be so loud! Yes, well the reason it is so loud is that it is right above my head. As long as it doesnt chew through the dry wall and fall on my face in the middle of the night, I’ll be fine. But I’ll forever be wondering… what’s up there???? Does anyone want to come and inspect it to find out???? Maybe this guy can come help!!

A Good End to a Hard Week September 22, 2006

Well it’s not the weekend yet for me… but it is for my wonderful boyfriend who had a rough week  It was just one of those weeks full of stress and crap and it sucks that I couldn’t be there to be supportive and I couldn’t be there for him to come home to and hug at the end of a long day. It’s especially hard because I have had a rough week as well just being home and jet lagged etc. But today was a much better day for him so it was a good, or at least more positive end to a somewhat cruddy week. I hope next week will be even better for him and I hope I will finally get rid of the headache that I’ve had since Sunday (yes, since SUNDAY…see my home again and jet lag posts!!!)

I’d also like to say:

1. Congrats to Jen for putting her 1st offer on a new home! I hope she gets it

2. I can’t believe Shannon is getting married 3 weeks from Saturday! Holy crap!!! I’m so excited for her! Um maybe I should think about getting my dress altered some time soon. Oh… and that means Vegas is in 2 weeks! Bridesmaids better bring strapless bathing suits- can’t have massive tan lines in our dresses!!!

3. Grey’s Anatomy was wonderful tonight although I’m really frustrated that they still didn’t answer THE major question that they left us hanging with at the end of last season!  UGH! Gay.  I also started to watch Six Degrees… which started off looking pretty good- but I had to drive home so I recorded the rest on tivo. I can’t wait for LOST to start next week! I swear, I forgot what it was like to be hooked on shows in Australia because I mostly just watched The Simpson’s and movies on Showtime! Even if I wanted to watch shows there I couldn’t cause they are all behind where we are at! I guess that’s one thing good about the U.S… we get the good TV earlier than other countries!! Oooo that means Desperate Housewives starts too and I can spoil it for Andrew

4. Happy early birthday to my sister who will be turning 33 on Saturday!!

Ok off to bed now! Wish me luck… seriously- lately when it comes to sleeping- I NEED LUCK!!

Jet Lag September 20, 2006

Why is my Jet Lag so horrible this time?? Ok, I guess i know why it’s bad, but still… it’s miserable. It’s like being really, really sick, but without being sick. Make sense? Head hurts, face hurts, tired but I can’t sleep, weak, hot and clammy, cold sweats….all the crap you deal with when you’re sick… but I’m not sick. Maybe I’m lovesick… hehe. Serioulsy sucks. I just want to fly back to Sydney and go sleep in Andrew’s bed. It was so much easier there! And then I could cuddle too..and I could eat some delicious Thai food… and everything in my life would be better.

Gross September 19, 2006

Why is there even a requirement to bring a workout towel to the gym? It is ALWAYS the men who are pouring out sweat from every inch of their body who just seem to never have a towel!! People like me who get a tiny bit of sweat on our forheads are considerate enough to bring a towel- but the stinky, nasty, dripping ones just dont care! Maybe they like to sweat because it makes them look macho and buff or something. Too bad their fat guts disprove any fantasy they may have that they will be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger! And they definitely aren’t attracting the ladies with sweaty neck hair!

Tonight the guy next to me on the eliptical was literally dripping and SPRAYING sweat all over the place. It was like a leaky roof during a heavy rain, just a constant drip drip drip. Almost even a constant flow like a faucet!! I look around, no towel. And then, it happened… I felt some land on my arm. At that point I almost went to the front desk to complain (seriously, that’s WHY they have a towel requirement)! I then noticed a tiny cloth shoved in his cupholder underneath his MP3 player and keys. Ummmm… doesn’t he realize what that towel is for? It’s for the disgusting sweat spewing out of every one of his nasty pores! Its guys like him that lie on the sit up machines, do their work and then get up and leave their nasty head sweat ring just lingering on the machine without wiping it up.  GROSS!

Back to Reality

Well I may have slept in until noon today (cut me some slack I couldn’t fall asleep til after 4am because of jet lag)…but tonight I still got off my butt and went to the gym. I thought I would have a really hard time on the machines since I have been so tired and just drained the last two days, but surprisingly- I was ok. I think getting on the scale this morning put me into a deeper depression than even yesterday, but once I was awake for a few hours and once I had a little lunch in my stomach, that scale had the opposite effect… it motivated me to get moving! I only planned on doing 20 minutes on the stair machine since I felt so weak but a really good episode of “Wife Swap” was on and I really wanted to see how it ended. Now, I never ever ever watch that show. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen an entire episode- but it was enough to hook me in to my cardio and I ended up doing about 40 minutes instead of 20. With Shannon’s wedding less than a month away… and my bridesmaid dress alteration looming, I’ll try to deal with all the sweat I can manage! Funny how all the Aussies say America is an obese country (which it is) yet,after my trip to Sydney, I weigh the most I have weighed all year!!! Even going on uphill walks and going to yoga 3 days a week couldnt fight off the effects of the Thai chicken curry. I guess it’s back to reality now -back to hard work and boring food if I want to fit into my dress for the wedding!

A Few More Things September 17, 2006

Amidst my sadness, I did find out something wonderful tonight!

Grey’s Anatomy starts this week and LOST starts next week. I HAD NO IDEA! They came back so quickly (because I was away). I guess that’s one thing to look forward to in the next few weeks of lonliness.

And… my mom and I killed a giant black widow in the front of my house tonight.

And, the airlines stole my toothpaste out of my checked luggage- not even my carry on. Either that or I left it at Andrew’s.

Home Again

They say “home is where the heart is” which is mostly true, but in my situation right now, I feel like my heart is on the other side of the planet. It got sucked out of me when I stepped onto that plane and flew over the Pacific. I would like to say it’s nice to be home in my room with my stuff, but it’s not. Of course it was nice to see my family and the kids (Preston was sooo excited to see me and just couldnt stop hugging me and telling me he loved me) but I didn’t really miss Huntington Beach. I went to dinner with Jen and Nicole tonight- I can say that eating Mexican food was nice– it is something you don’t find much of in Australia, but even still… I didn’t miss that either! I only ever missed people, and now, I miss Andrew more than ever.

So now I’m home. Don’t want to be but I am. Coming home to my family made me happy but I also came home to piles of junk mail, mounds of receipts and brochures and things from my trip that I need to go through, heaps of laundry… some dirty, some not- but I’m so lazy that I’ll probably throw it all in the wash so I don’t have to hang it all up yet.

 

Oh, and I came home to a credit card bill for a card I NEVER use. That was fun! It has no balance but I forgot that my Toll Roads account was linked to the card to automatically pay when my account gets low. Since I hardly use the tolls anymore, I hardly get charged. Well I did finally (figures the time I leave for a month is the ONE time this year that I received a bill from the card I never use). On top of the toll from July, it also charged me the “annual fee”… it must have come the week I left and wouldn’t you know, the due date was Sept. 13th. Since I always just pay my card payments online, I told my mom to ignore any credit card mail. Ooops. Gay. I don’t even know why I still have the card. I’ll be cancelling it tomorrow. No more $60 fees for something I don’t even want! I should have called and fought to get the charge removed, but I really dont have the energy or motivation. I figured it would be easier for me to just pay it.

I also came home to a package of several hundred pictures (literally) dating back to April that I had ordered from my Kodak site while I was away. So I need to organize them into albums. 5 months of pictures!!! Maybe this is all a good thing. Organizing usually relaxes me in a sense somehow… I cleaned up most of my mail and junk that’s been sitting around my room, and so that’s one less thing to do tomorrow. I really feel like I have this urge to clean my whole closet. I want to throw away half my clothes and just tidy up. Living in a small space for 5 weeks and sharing a closet made me realize that I have too much junk in mine!

I uploaded pics from my week 5 but haven’t added photo titles. I plan on finishing up all my picture duties tomorrow so if you’re on my picture list, you should be receiving them soon

And even with all this organization… and with jet lag…and a headache from crying so much… one thing keeps me happy–and that is knowing that I’ll get to do it all again one day. All the mail, laundry, crying, organizing… oh… and the weight gain from eating too much thai… it’s all worth it when I know it’s all so I can be with my wonderful boyfriend and do the little things together like eat strawberries and sorbet .

Š

Sept 17th September 16, 2006

is the crappiest day ever. I’m going home now and I’m sad. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow. I hate leaving the person I love and not knowing when Ill get to see him again.

Coming to an End September 14, 2006

My trip is almost over and that makes me sad. I woke up a little while ago and thought, “I only get to wake up here two more days and then it’s back to my uncomfortable bed.” I guess we knew this had to happen, and we knew it would come quickly but not this quickly! sad. On a happier note, last night I made my yummy delicious pasta again and Andrew and I drank two bottles of wine. I’ll quote Shannon when I say “I like staying home and drinking wine with my boyfriend way more than I like going out.” Today Andrew got the day off work (yay) so I don’t know what we’ll be doing, but it looks nice out. Much better weather than earlier in the week when it was pouring rain. Tonight we are going to centrepoint bar at the top of the huge Centrepoint Tower in Sydney. Ok that’s all for now.

My Birthday Weekend September 10, 2006

As many of you may know, it was my birthday on Friday and I turned 26 (old). So for my birthday Andrew and I took a drive to Hunter Valley (wine country) for the weekend. We left Friday morning after my wonderful boyfriend made me breakfast in bed and then gave me my present. My present was the most special gift he could give me. He wrote me a beautiful song and with the help of his brother Paul and a few other people, they recorded it at Nova studios and Veronica did all the artwork for the CD case. It brought tears to my eyes which is not an easy thing to do!! Of course I’ll have to play it for all my friends and family when I get home!! And of course we listened to it over and over in the car on the way up to the valley. Oh- and I saw my first wild kangaroo today!!! Too bad it was dead on the side of the road. Sad.

We stayed at a cute little winery/bed and breakfast and we were the only couple there along with the owner of the winery, John. Friday we had a little wine (John gave us a bottle for free which was nice) and we drove to this little shopping center near Hunter Gardens. (We drove there BEFORE we drank the wine) We were going to walk around in the gardens which looked beautiful, but it was $20 bucks so we decided it wasnt worth it. It was a nice day so we just lounged on the grass for awhile and enjoyed the quiet. We went in a few of the shops too but I only made one purchase. A little wine wheel that tells all about wines and where they are from and what they go well with. it was cool so I had to get one. Friday night we went to dinner. I won’t speak much about dinner because it was kinda chaotic and not the best service ever. It took us literally HOURS to find somewhere in the area that had chicken breast or anything remotely vegetarian (most places had things like duck, prawns, beef, lamb etc… but no chicken). We finally found somewhere and went there and needless to say, they didnt have their alcohol license so we couldnt even get wine (at a winery) haha. It ended up being ok though so I wont say any more about that. It was just nice to be with my love on my birthday.

 

 

 

Saturday was nice. We woke up and took a wine tour of 5 winerys, a cheese shop and we had lunch at a cafe nearby (that had chicken AND vegie stuff). Interestingly enough, 3 of the couples on our wine tour were the parents of some of Andrew’s old classmates from high school. We learned a lot about wine and things like that which was nice, but we didnt even get boozy at all. 5 winerys over 6 hours just didnt cut it because we drank all the wines so slowly. I guess that is probably the ideal way to taste wine, but whatever… we were looking forward to getting a bit drunky and we didnt. It was so different from wine tasting I’ve done before though. We actually got to sit in these private rooms and someone explained all the wines etc. It was very detailed, not the type of tasting where you just walk up to the bar and point out what you want. We had dinner at an Irish pub type restaurant and that was nice as well. Oh, and I forgot to mention… it was POURING rain all day- made it a little cold and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t really too bad.

Finally it was Sunday, time to go home We packed up, said by to John, got a few more sips of wine and we were off. We stopped by the Olive Center where they had SOOOO many yummy dips and spreads and jams and jellies and oils to try. It was wonnnnderful. You just walk around and get your bread and dip it in all this stuff. All for free, but of course I liked so many things that I had to buy a few My favorites being the macadamia nut butter and the dukkah… YUM I’m praying that U.S. customs doesn’t care that I’m bringing them home! Goodbye Hunter Valley- I definitely want to come back and see you again!!!

On our way home we stopped by the home of some of Andrew’s friends (John, Stu and Webb). Played some pool, watched  some “footy” and ate some delicious cheese and crackers. I love cheese! We then stopped by Andrew’s dad’s one last time so I could say goodbye before I leave next week. We just chatted a bit and stayed warm indoors since it was still pouring down outside.

I guess that’s it for my weekend. It was a wonderful birthday but it was my last full weekend here in Sydney and I’m sad about that. I’m looking forward to seeing all my family and friends, but I am NOT looking forward to leaving here. I’m going to just have to come back in a few months and stay again for a long time I guess I will be seeing you all in a week.

 

Hey girls, you up for some Don Jose’s when I get home on Sunday? I haven’t had Mexican food in almost 5 weeks!:)

Oh… P.S.- thanks to Sinead for planning dinner on Thursday night before my bday- and thanks for my drink It was nice to see you and Kris again and if I don’t see you before I leave then I will definitely see you when I come back!!!

Rainy Dashboard Nights September 6, 2006

So we made it to the Dashboad concert last night and it was nice You could definitely see, or hear rather the effects of jet lag on poor Chris Carraba. They seemed a little tired and played some pretty slow, mellow songs- but they were still great. The venue wasnt huge, standing room mostly, but luckily for me- not too crowded. An Aussie band called Antiskeptic opened and they were pretty good. Jen- remember the beautiful set with shooting stars and all the cell phones in the crowd that looked like stars? Well, he attempted that here… didn’t go over so well. He even called the people in the back lazy cause they didn’t get their phones out. HEHE.

Well anyways, the most interesting part of the night was definitely not the band. I’ll backtrack a little. It all started when we walked out the front door to get in the car and it was drizzling… we still get in the car. As we start driving I ask Andrew, “do you have an umbrella?” His reply was “no I’m a boy” hmm ok. Anyways, I said- “What happens if it starts pouring down rain and you have to walk really far to your car because you have to park far from everything in this city?” His reply was “that’s NEVER happened to me.”

hmm.. oh really?

Well so anyways… get to the concert… evertyhing’s wonderful… fun times… then we walk outside when its over…

it’s POURING

So what could we do? Well, like everyone else around us, we just said “1…2…3…” and then RAN for it. (Oh I also took of my shoes and ran barefoot because with thongs on I probably would have just ate it since they are so slippery)

This is what my pants looked like by the time we got to the parking lot so you can imagine how the rest of me was. It actually was Kind of fun running through the rain, but it sucked sitting in wet clothes in the car for 35 minutes before we even got out of the parking lot (yes lot, 1 of 2 I’ve seen this entire trip).

 

 

The thunder and lighting were cool last night. Perfect cuddle weather. The thunder stopped after we went to bed, but like all of Australia’s natural glories, we were woken up by a LOUD thunderclap at 6:00am. That’s all. Just 1. Just a random bit of thunder that said… “hmmm I think I’ll scare the crap out of everyone who is sleeping peacefully in their beds at the moment!” Took the place of all the birds since they were probably taking cover from the rain.