Gran and Pa

I know it sounds silly, but I often wonder if you would love your family if they weren’t your family…now don’t get me wrong…I do love my family, but its just something I think about, however tonight I had that confirmed…well at least for my grandparents anyway. Tonight Gran and Pa came to visit me in Castlemaine and we had dinner at ‘New China’ the Chinese restaurant in town.

I have been really lucky to have been able to spend time with Gran and Pa pretty regularly as a kid, but I haven’t spent a lot of time with just me and them as I have gotten older. I mean I have seen them in passing or for a quick chat on Sunday mornings, but most long periods of time have been with mum and dad and/or the boys. And to be honest, I was a little bit anxious about how it would all work, but it was such a lovely night, and it made me realise again how much I love my Gran and Pa.

I think that the best thing about grandparents is just how much they love you…and how proud of you they are. It’s nice to feel so loved and be so encouraged. So I guess the whole point of this blog was just to say that I love my Gran and Pa and I am very very very glad they came to visit.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Betrayed

Just so you know I have been betrayed…not just a little, but like massively betrayed. In fact I don’t know if I can even bear to talk about it for long.

As some of you may know in the last couple of years I have developed a keen interest in the V8 Supercars, in particular with team vodafone. I have become blue blooded and developed a permanent distaste for Holden’s…its just what’s happened (if you want to read more click here or here).

Well today my favourite Ford team…team Vodafone broke my heart…in fact the ripped it out and tore it into tiny pieces. Today they announced they would be driving Holden Commodores as of next year. So now I have to decide if I follow the boys, or the team…and I don’t know. Everything I have ever known about motor sport has just been shattered and I don’t know what to do. I really don’t.

The thing is I know that its all Ford’s fault, they pulled the sponsorship so what did they think would happen…but did Holden really have to take Jamie and Craig? And now that they have gone, are there even any good Ford drivers left? How could they do this? How could they make me choose? I really really don’t like Holdens… but I really really really love Jamie and Craig… I just don’t know what to do…I really don’t…and I don’t want to take about it anymore.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Old Friends Take 2

I feel like I have written a lot about friends and hanging out with people over the last little while, so sorry if you are getting bored, that is not my intention, but it seems to be a bit of a theme in my own life at the moment. I think that since I have moved up to Castlemaine and have been living by myself, I have really noticed how important my friends are, and even though I don’t get to spend a lot of time with any of them, catching up is just extra special. Take last weekend for example when I got to hang out with my buddy Perri, it was so nice just to hang out and catch up on what’s going on in each others lives. It’s so easy to get caught up in what’s happening in your own world that you lose touch with the people that helped you get to where you are, so when you get a chance to stop and just hang, it’s nice and something that I am really learning to value.

Tonight was another night that I got to catch up, but this time it was with some friends that have been friends for as long as I can remember, in fact I have even blogged about them being ‘old friends’ before… Tonight Kirsten and Pheebs made the trek to my little cottage (and didn’t even get lost might I add!) to cook me tea. It was really nice, and I would have been content, well actually more than content, super excited just to have them there, but to be spoilt by them as well, well that was a bonus. But I think what I enjoyed the most, was just hanging out…I know it seems like a boring answer, but seriously I love it… We talked about everything, our jobs, our families, our lives, our boyfriends, our old love interest and even about our weddings. It was all very girly, but it made me realise how well these girls did actually know me and how much they loved me, and how sad my life would be if they were there. So thanks girls for such a lovely evening…I hope you make the trek again soon…no pressure though

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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5 years out

As if it wasn't enough that Jake turned 17 this week, I also had my 5 year out high school reunion. I tell you what, I am starting to feel really really old!

I am not old enough to have had a 5 year reunion, it certainly doesn't feel like I left school 5 years ago!

In my mind I imagined that when I went to my high school reunion, that I would be super successful, skinny and beautiful, all the things I never felt I was at school, but 5 years go by pretty fast and in reality not much changes at all. Everyone still hung out in the same groups, the pretty and popular girls were still pretty and popular, the smart 'nerdy' kids were still smart and 'nerdy' and the 'cool' kids were out having a fag, just like old times. Everyone pretty looked and acted the same like it was only last week that we were all there at school.

For me though, I realised one very important thing was different, my self confidence, even thought I was super nervous about going (if you want to know just how nervous...ask Dave), I realised that I was happy with how my life had turned out so far and that i didn't have anything to be disappointed in. It didn't matter if the popular crowd still didn't like me, because I had plenty of friends, including the ones I able to catch up with on the night. It was werid, because as much as I let all that stuff get to me at school, it really wasn't important tonight. I guess that's what growing up is all about, learning that the things that you though made you who you were at high school really had nothing to do with who you were at all.

All in all it was a crazy night, it was really great to catch up with people that I hadn't seen since I finished, and find out what they were doing...although thanks to facebook I knew a lot of it anyway.

The thing that I liked the most was the fact that even though 5 years had past everything still just went back to normal, people just picked up where they left off. It was so nice to know that even though time and life had come between us, it didn't matter, my friends were still my friends. So even though I was way too young to have attended, and I wasn't quite as ready as I would have liked to be, I was glad I went, it made me think back to all the bits I love and realise how much I have grown since and how far I have come.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Jake's 17

Today's Jake's 17th Birthday....so this is just a shout out to him and say thanks a bunch for everything....you are a ripper little brother and I wouldn't trade you for anything! Hope you have had a fantastic day, sorry I couldn't be there to help you celebrate, promise I will be there for the next one...the one where become legal...scary I know.

Oh and just so you know it makes me feel really to know that you are 17!

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Gay Penguin?

Sometimes there are just some really strange things in the news...I am not really sure how they even become news...but they do...take today's news for instance:

GAY PENGUIN HAS A CHANGE OF HEART

Posted Sun Jul 19, 2009 &:40am AEST

After six years together, the relationship between a pair of gay male penguins at San Francisco Zoo is apparently over, with Harry leaving Pepper for another penguin - Linda.

The Los Angeles Times reported Friday (local time) that the relationship between Harry and Pepper who lived side-by-side protecting eggs abandoned by other penguins, came to a shocking end when Harry moved into a neighbouring nest with recently widowed Linda.

The development had sparked a variety of reactions in the blogosphere, where Linda has been called a "home wrecker" who "lives for her own happiness, no matter who get hurt".

Harrison Edell, a curator of birds at the zoo, had a more pragmatic explanation, noting that Lind's recently-deceased partner was a leader of sorts among the small zoo penguin community, commanding not one, but two nests.

"For penguins, real estate means a lot," Mr Edell told the Los Angeles Times, so "as far as penguins go, she was a pretty attractive prospect".

With Pepper rejoining the ranks of the single, Christian website OneNewsNow.com took the split as a sign that "nature prefers heterosexual relationships".

Others were more sympathetic to the bereft Pepper.

John writing on The Friggin Loon Blog, said he was "heartbroken" about the split and that he hops Pepper "finds another male penguin that is 10times hotter than Harry!".

AFP

Seriously...and it wasn't even a current affair type story it was from the ABC which is pretty much as good as it gets in Australian news...how do the even know the penguin was really gay? Couldn't they just have been bachelors living together? That would fit the picture too wouldn't it? Oh well I guess the point is how on earth did this make the news? I am sure animals move on from each other all the time. Oh and I found it kinda funny too.


I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Dave's getting old

So it turns out I am not so good at writing blogs at night…but because I am still quite behind I figure I have no choice (and no just skipping a whole heap…not an option)

Anyway, today is a very special day…we actually yesterday was the special day, but today we celebrated. Yesterday it was Dave’s birthday…his 24^th birthday and today we are out with his family to celebrate (complete with my packet cake that Dave felt should be shared with the whole family…hope it was alright). So I guess what I want to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Hope you have had a ripper day and don’t forget that I love you…even though you are really old…coz yes 24 is really really old!

Oh and thanks for taking me out on the town tonight to see Crazy for you and for not telling me I was an idiot when i told you for the upteenth time that I wanna sing and dance in a musical!

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Love and Hate

Just incase you didn’t already know I have a quality quality boyfriend. What has he done now I hear you ask??? Well let me tell you…Today I caught the train back to Melbourne to go and see Wicked as a fundraiser for the Staff Songsters (but really, do you actually need an excuse to go and see Wicked). Anyway, I was a bit homesick as I came into the city on the train, just missing the city and everything that it offers, but as I got off the train at Flinders where I was meeting Davo, I spotted him standing under the clocks with a bunch of flowers. Now he tells me that he only did because his Nanny had told him when he was a little boy that if you ever meet a girl under the clocks at flinders station you must always have flowers…so thanks Dave and Nanny, I loved them…oh and sorry about the tears.

After the flowers my night just got better…I went and watched wicked…which is without a doubt the best musical I have ever ever ever seen, I would love to one day be an Elphaba of some kind! Its just so good, the music is amazing and the singing is incredible…I don’t think that I can actually tell you how much I love it, other than by giving you a rendition of one of my favourite numbers from the musical…and that’s a little hard to do on a blog. Anyway I love it, love it, LOVE IT!

Anyway, after the show, Dave and I caught up with one of our mates, DJ who had been playing the show and while we were out I was confronted with something that I had only ever seen on the news and it scared me a lot. Across the road from where we were a fight broke out with one guy just beating the crap out of another. Now I don’t know if I have just been lucky and been a little sheltered, but I had never seen anything like it and it scared me so much, I just couldn’t really process what was happening or why. Why was the guy so angry? Did he really hate the other guy that much? It was just a contrast to the night of, I guess ‘love’ I had experienced so far. I know that for one thing to exist there has to be some kind of opposite, but I wish there didn’t need to be, I don’t know how you would do it, but I wish there was someway to get rid of hate forever, it just seems like such a waste.

In one way I am glad that I saw what I did because it made some of the things that are going on the world more real to me, but I tell you what I never want to see it again.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Bendigo Salvos

This morning Dave and I went and checked out my next closet corps…Bendigo and it was very different to all the other country corps we have been to. I think that I forget just how big Bendigo is as a town and therefore the potential it has. Bendigo corps reminded me a lot more of what I have at home, it was familiar and comfortable, but it still had the humility of the country.

My highlight of today actually had nothing to do with the service (although the service was good). After church Dave and I got to meet a few people and chat, and being the social butterfly he is, Dave eventually gave up and went and played with the kids. While he was playing though, Hamish and Noah took Dave to show him their lizard, a little blue tounge lizard that lives in one of the pipe on the outside of the building and I tell you what Davo was so excited that the boys had shown him the lizard and not me, it was very funny.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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The day I cheated death…

Today I escaped death, death by chocking, death by poison, death by isolation and death by freezing…quite a day really.

This morning I got up extra early because I wanted to be at work early so I could get ready to go out on my first solo home visit. I got up did the usual things like shower, got dressed packed my bag and then attempted to clean to my teeth, only to have a first brush with death. As I was brushing my teeth, something that I have been doing for 22 years now something in what is normally an automatic process malfunctioned and I inhaled as I put the tooth brush in my mouth causing the whole amount of tooth paste on my brush to fly off the brush and down my throat…now at work if this has happened I would say that I aspirated my food and that if I continued to do this I would require thickened fluids, but instead I started to swallow over and over and over age and cough and splutter and then when I finally managed to get a drink I began to dry retch….crazy I know, and for a second I thought that I would die. Eventually after about 15minutes when I was able to breath semi-normally my throat began to burn…a lot and it still does, I guess that’s why you are supposed to spit the toothpaste out.

My Second brush with death came not long after the toothpaste incident. Because I was now running a little bit late, I didn’t have time to get any breafast….okay to be truthful, I never had time for breakfast, so I had to get some on my way to work. Normally in a situation like this I would have a good ol’ up and go, but I tried a new petrol station this morning and they didn’t have any up and go so instead I took a leaf out of Dave’s book and settled for and ice break. Not wanted to be any later I chucked it on my passenger seat and decieded that I would drink it on my way to the home visit. Anyway I finally got to work picked it up from the seat and as I did noticed that some had leaked out on to my seat. Here is the thing though, I hadn’t opened the drink yet…and maybe I am wrong but things aren’t supposed to leak if they are unopened. I looked at the seal on the drink…all good, I checked the date…all good, it was just leaking. So starving and running out of options I took it anyway, whether it was contaminated or not and so far so good.

The third brush happened on my way to the home visit. I was headed out to a town about half an hour from Castlemaine, well that’s what I had been told anyway. So off I went on a little adventure….the only problem was I got really lost and Karen (my GPS) was having a little holiday in Melbourne leaving me with only my where is print out and my vic roads 07 road map…which doesn’t have the new calder hwy in it. So I ended up driving in circles pretty much…with not a lot of phone reception on and off dirt roads. Once I was finally on the right road I got about 20km down only to find out the road was closed because they had collapsed the bridge to make a new one, so even though I had only just made my way onto the right path I had to take a 30km detour with out detour a signs and a poorly detailed map. But I made there, only and hour later than I should have, and I even made it home again with out too much hassel.

My final brush with death today (well so far anyway) was as I sat at the train station waiting for my train to Melbourne. It turns out Castlemaine is freezing and while this isn’t the first time I have discovered this, It is usually only freezing in the morning and at night, during the day its not too bad, but not too day, As I sat there waiting for the train, in my big black coat and scarf I thought that I might just freeze,. But thankfully the train came and now I am sitting here tell you about my day from the comfort of the Vline coach.

Just on completely different note, at the moment I am listening to the soundtrack to wicked (only the best musical ever!) and it is really making me want to be in a musical…really bad…

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Grey’s Anatomy

I love Grey’s Anatomy I really do and I am so excited that tonights episode was 2hrs long. However, Grey’s doesn’t bring the best out of me as a TV viewer…I get way to sucked in…tonight as Issy walked down the isle I bawled my eyes out, much like the night Denny died….way to sucked in, but I still love it. Oh and just for the record I don’t want Issy to die or George to join the army…and I am a little sad that Meredith and Shepard didn’t get married, but I am glad that Issy and Alex did.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Gilford Pub

The first night Davo came up to visit me I asked around at work to find out where we should go to eat and a number of people suggested the Gilford Pub’s Pizza night. So giving on their recommendation that’s were we attempted to go, only once we got there we looked at the pub and could only really see the front bar and not much else, let alone a restaurant or even a seating area where we could be served pizza so disappointed we turned around and went some where else.

But tonight, I went to the Gilford pub again, only this time I went with people who knew what they were doing…my work colleagues and I tell you what their recommendations were correct. Not only in this little pub do they serve awesome pizza, they also have a lovely seating area complete with open fires, it was lovely…of course the good company helped too!

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Scone anyone?

Today I learnt, thanks to my cooking lessons with Jane and Jana, probably the best, but most dangerous recipe ever….how to make scones…and I think that the method is pretty easy, and hopefully fool proof! Woo Hoo!

How could scones be dangerous I hear you ask…well I love them sooooo much and now that I can make them I might eat too many if I am not careful….but maybe I will cook some for you if you ask….

oh and they tell me that in the olden days a good farmer’s wife could whip up some scones as they saw you coming down the driveway and be pulling them out of the oven as you walked in the door….now I don’t have a very long driveway , but I reckon I could have them ready pretty quick….now all I need is a farmer and I will be the perfect farmer’s wife.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Saying Goodbye

This weekend was the first weekend that I have been able to stay in Castlemaine, and luckily for me I have some visitors to enjoy it with. Mum and Dad came up on Saturday and Davo spent the weekend up here, but I think that what I realised was that it doesn’t matter whether I leave people in Melbourne or people leave me in Castlemaine, I still hate saying goodbye and I am not getting any better at it. Even though I know that I have a full week coming up and that I will be too distracted to even think about it, I still get so upset saying goodbye. I guess it is just the reality that mum and dad aren’t just upstairs, and dave isn’t just down the road or that my buddies aren’t just a short drive away…instead they are all 2hours away.

I think that I thought I would get used to it, living by myself and catching with friends and family on the weekend, but I don’t know if you ever get used to it, I think that maybe I will just get better at dealing with it.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Step

Recently in my attempts to get a bit fitter I have discovered group fitness...you know classes, and my favourite so far...step class. So when I moved up to Castlemaine I thought I would check out the local gym and see if they offered one and guess what they do.

So tonight I went to my first step class in Castlemaine and I think my first problem was I didn't really think about it before I went and because of that I was a little shocked when I got there and discovered that there were only 4 people (including me) in the class, so my lack of co-ordination was probably going to stand out like a sore thumb.

The second problem was I didn't read the information about the class very well before I went, so when they asked me if I wanted the half hour or hour, I said the hour, why not, not realising that the second half hour was an ab-blast class...not step. So apart from my initial shock the class went ok, that was until the ab part. Step I could handle, I wasn't good at it, but I coped ok.

The Ab-blast however, was a completely different story. At the end of the step half two people left, leaving just two of us in the ab-class makeing me feel very very vunerable, (considering the last time I had done any ab exercisies was when Kat, Mim, Brad, Dave, Annie and I had a little super challenge on the ab-king pro probably close to a year ago)...But instead of bowing out gracefully I decided I would stay and give it a crack. For the most part I survived, I know that I will feel it tomorrow, but I am glad that I stuck it out. However there was one particularly uncomfortable moment... Now, I am not sure if this is normal or not, but one of the exercises that we had to do required us to get down on all fours and lift your back legs out (kinda like a dog whizzing on a tree), now if this wasn't uncomfortable enough, because there were only two of us we had a bit of close attention from the instructor, who was also on all fours looking at my legs, just to make sure I was lifting them high enough...it was weird and I do not like that exercise...at least next time I will see it coming though.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Castlemaine Salvos

This morning Dave and I went and checked out my closest corps….Castlemaine and a bit like my experience in Broken Hill it reminded 1. How very blessed we are at Box Hill but 2. What church should really be about.

My highlight of the morning was the little band…Often, whether good or bad in small corps the band dies and gets replaced with either CDs or DVDs or just a piano, but not in Castlemaine, while only 4 members strong there is a still a little band, complete with bass drum and cornet. I thought it was pretty cool.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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Hospitality

Today I experienced hospitality from all sides. This morning Dave and I checked out the Wesley Hill Market, where we just blended in with the crowd and watched community at its heart…which I really liked, we also got some Harcourt honey which was nice as.

This afternoon Mum and Dad came up to visit and because Dad kept asking my what I had been baking for them, I spent most of Friday night making some slices….well two slices a lemon slice and a rocky road hedge hog, so that they were ready to go Saturday afternoon. And even though my house was tidy, I had food ready and the kettle was on, I was really nervous about mum and dad coming up. I don’t really know why, but I was desperate for them to be impressed with how I was doing in Castlemaine…and I think that they were. Apart from the fact that my slice had more carbs in it than Dad had eaten in 5 years everything went off without a hitch.

Tonight the four of us headed out to the nicest restaurant in town the Empyre. Unfortunately for Dad though Mum, Dave and I being as uncultured as we are couldn’t decipher the menu, so once dad translated we picked out meals and enjoyed a delicious meal, complete with holy goat cheese and ox cheek. But check out how awesome the dessert looked!

Over all though, the day was really nice. It was nice to be in Castlemaine on the weekend and it was extra nice to share it with Mum, Dad and Dave. I enjoyed showing of my town and my slice, so thanks mum, dad and dave for such a lovely satuday.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!

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