Woohoo! May has finally rocked around which means I’m nearly halfway through this photo a day madness! And it IS madness because when I work for 9hrs each week day, my photo opportunities of things outside the absolutely mundane is pretty limited. Once the new house starts getting built, I might have a few more stimulating photos….maybe I could throw in a phoney photo pile which is exclusively of construction photos to bore your socks off.

Today was the Million Paws Walk for 2009, so I figured I would take the 365 photo I took today  of our canine companions and make it a more prominent feature in the mosaic. And what a great day out it was! I think we saw every dog breed from A to Z, from the diminutive to the monstrous and everything in between. We attended the Cleveland walk as we did last year and we couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather. Rock on MPW 2010!

May 17th, 2009 | Tags: Dogs, Million Paws Walk, Phoney Photo Pile | Category: Dogs, Phoney Photos, Photography, Special occasions |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (3)

This is probably the first year that I’ve paid any attention to IND, given that previously it passed almost without acknowledgement by employers, let alone members of the public. Think of it as Mother’s Day but for nurses, to recognise the good job that they do, in whatever capacity they work. It’s also the first time in a long time that I am proud to be a nurse on this particular day. Nurses are the backbone of the health care system and while it is true we work as part of a bigger team, nurses are the ones that are with the patients all the time. Without them, the system would fall apart altogether. Let’s just be thankful that the uniforms have improved over time.

Image sourced from Quite Adept (http://www.flickr.com/photos/quiteadept)

Happy International Nurses Day to all the nurses out there, no matter what shift you work or what role you fill. Enjoy the cake your employer has brought in for you and if they didn’t bring any, make sure they put it on their calendar for next year.

May 12th, 2009 | Category: Special occasions |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (2)

Whoa! I don’t think I realised how busy the last couple of months have been until I got this latest collage of 40 odd photos together. The year is absolutely flying by, almost to the end of April but wait a minute, what happened to March?

We’ve managed to buy ourselves a chunk of land to build a new house on in the last couple of months. The buying of the land was a big enough headache on its own and it seems the building process is going to be a bit of a trial as well. I’m looking forward to the end product and no doubt some of my daily photos after the site works start are going to be bits and pieces of construction. It’s an exciting and scary time simultaneously it seems….at least it takes my mind off turning 30 later this year.

April 25th, 2009 | Category: Phoney Photos |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

It’s interesting the stuff you find on the back of toilet doors. You expect the weird and wacky in public restrooms but the place I wouldn’t expect to find anything interesting is in a government facility. Traditionally, they’ve been fans of stark bathrooms with any form of graffiti removed or painted over pretty quickly. But I’ve noticed over the past few months that every single staff toilet at my workplace has got motivational posters on the back of the toilet door or on the walls on either side.

This perplexes me a little because these toilets are mainly in clinical areas. When I worked on the floor, I don’t think I went to the bathroom at all during the day because there was always that extra thing that needed to be done. And if I did get to go, it was generally a very very brief pitstop. Definitely not long enough to read the multitude of inspirational messages plastered all over the place. I suppose they are there for the benefit of people who have the luxury of spending just a wee bit longer in the loo to read them all….but who are those people??

One in particular seemed to stick out – “your attitude is a reaction to what life hands you, only you can choose that reaction”. I think I almost had a zen like moment reading that in the toilet. Something so common sense yet something I’d never taken the time to think about. It certainly makes more sense that in a workplace where every day can be a constant struggle, the workers tend to go about their day with a smile on their face and take the bad stuff on the chin and just get on with it.

I guess it’s just the new age version of the old adage “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!”

April 24th, 2009 | Category: Ramblings |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (2)

The traditions of Easter are pretty much lost on me. I spent a large part of Good Friday cleaning out my kitchen followed by a roast lamb dinner on a bed of risotto which had been in the slow cooker most of the day while I cleaned. Whoops. And as for Easter Saturday, we went to Bunnings to get some nails and tap washers and found they were giving out free Hot Cross buns to munch on while you wander through the store. A mate rocked up in the afternoon, obviously as lost as to what to do as we were, so we had an impromptu BBQ without a fish in sight.

Today is supposed to be the day that the Easter bunny visits but why? I don’t understand. The egg thing kind of makes sense because from eggs, little chickens are born so the egg symbolises renewal in the rebirth of Christ I’m guessing. But who was the moron who came up with the Easter bunny? The only eggs that an Easter bunny would produce are indeed chocolate in colour but you wouldn’t want to eat them. So why didn’t they have the Easter chicken dropping in on the Sunday? That would have made much more sense.

Happy Easter anyway, enjoy the chocolate, seafood, DIY jobs and whatever else you choose to do with your long weekend. And for those that are wondering, Bunnings is open again tomorrow so there’s no excuse for not fixing that fence, repainting that wall, cleaning that tile grouting or rejuvenating that backyard. You might as well do something to work off all that chocolate.

April 12th, 2009 | Category: Special occasions |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (3)

I could hardly believe my eyes. Among all the food courts in the shopping centres dotted across SE Queensland, I have NEVER ever seen a vendor with a Vegemite sandwich on their board. I guess when people are out shopping and in need of a feed, they generally want something that their mum didn’t throw in their lunch box most days for school. But at The Green Double Decker in one of Capalaba’s shopping centres, you can in fact get this for lunch. You can even get peanut butter if that’s more your thing.

What astounded me the most wasn’t its appearance on a menu board, but the price!  For the amount they are charging for a single vegemite or PB sandwich, I could buy an entire loaf of bread and a small jar of the stuff. Then it hit me….I could make 20 sandwiches, flog them off at a little stall down the way for $1 and still make a profit. Seriously, you could get the egg or cheese sandwich and pay the same price. Are they trying to tell me that eggs and cheese cost the same amount to purchase wholesale as a jar of Vegemite or peanut butter? The mind indeed does boggle. o.O

April 4th, 2009 | Category: Ramblings |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (1)

And it’s even less fun with a hysterically wailing moggie in the back who does not understand what exactly a car is and more to the point, why she has to even be in it in the first place. Mojo is a seasoned traveller, having been up and down the east coast of Queensland so many times before that he just curls up and goes to sleep. Getting him to go in the carrier in the first place is always a bit of a hassle….more often than not involving a fair bit of chasing until I can get him in a confined spot from which he can’t escape. Hey, at least that’s my exercise done for the day! But at least once he’s in there, it’s no drama.

Rosie on the other hand is easy enough to catch to put in there but once she’s in, the wailing doesn’t stop. And that’s before we even get out of the house! For the duration of the trip and until she’s allowed to get out at the other end, there is this continuous siren of hysterical wailing. Consequently, we don’t just go for drives for the hell of it and keep it to times when she absolutely has to go somewhere….usually the vet. Hmm….maybe the association of carrier + car = vet is the reason for her hysteria but honestly, where else would we go? It’s not like you pop your cat in the car to go to the beach or the park like you would a dog.

But I digress. It seems that both the cats are well with no apparent issues which is always good to know. Mojo is extra unimpressed this visit – being over 10yo, he was up for a senior health check, comprising of his vaccination, blood tests, urine sample and having his blood pressure taken. If you’re wondering how they get the urine – they stick a needle straight into the bladder. So you can see why he would be extra shitty with the vet but fortunately she clipped his claws before she took him in for the rest of it…smart woman. He’s a tad on the scrawny side again but otherwise good as gold. Rosie on the other hand has found his missing weight plus a bit more. So she’s off to a weight management clinic the Wednesday after Easter. It’s a free service The Cat Clinic runs (sponsored by Hills) because there’s been a bit of an influx of overweight kitties….they talk about portion control, best food mixes and trying to get them more active. Sounds a lot like going to a human dietitian….if it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for her too I think!

Are we there yet???

March 30th, 2009 | Category: Cats |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (1)

The year is flying by – already up to Day 72 if you would believe it! I probably should get into the habit of uploading my photos every night when I get home. It’s been a hectic month and I feel like I’ve got no time for anything. In one month, I’ve managed to fit in a crazy weekend up at Bribie, mad dashing around new land releases searching for that elusive quarter acre, a night out with some work friends to see Busting Out (not sure I will ever recover) and a few appointments with conveyancers, mortgage brokers and builders. I’m looking forward to this weekend, if only to try and catch up!

March 13th, 2009 | Category: Phoney Photos |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (1)

I don’t know why they call it spring cleaning because for some reason, I never get around to doing it in spring. I guess because spring is such a transient season of a week or two that I never get round to doing it. For some reason, when the mornings are finally starting to cool off again after five months of heat, I get a bee in my bonnet about cleaning the house. Why? Have no idea.

I think perhaps because I am a bit unusual in that I am not driven into activity by the heat. It tends to make me more slothlike than anything. While others are out hitting the beach, I would rather curl up with a book, preferably with a winter time setting so at least my mind believes it is cooler than it really is. During the initial flush of autumn, that’s when I start to come alive and want to do stuff outside. So maybe mentally I am preparing for wanting to spend more time outside by focusing on getting the inside clean enough that I won’t have to worry about those PITA cleaning jobs for hopefully another year.

Domestic goddess I am not. We don’t tend to put stuff away and having given that a thought, it’s because it really has nowhere to be put other than the transient place that it occupies between usage. It’s not that our house is small, it’s more than the morons who designed it didn’t give an iota of thought towards storage space. There is no broom cupboard so the vacuum doesn’t have a permanent home and neither does the broom. The mop and bucket got lucky, thanks to a DIY installed shelf in the laundry and a hook on the wall courtesy of Howard’s Storage World. The kitchen cupboards are not storage friendly. We don’t have other cupboards around the house to store stuff in while it’s not being used.

My other half has a logic that if you don’t have places to store stuff, then you don’t accumulate stuff. This is false logic because we get given stuff and buy stuff all the time, without chucking out other stuff because that stuff is still needed. So therefore, we live in a constant chaotic mess which although it is clean, is never tidy.

So the domestic goddess has been reawakened and she is itching to try to do the impossible. I wonder how long it will take till she gets the shits like I do and thinks it would be so much easier if we just started the house all over again from scratch.

March 1st, 2009 | Category: Home and Lifestyle |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (2)