I have been cruising along the last few weeks. The days at work seem to take forever but they also add up to a week fairly quickly so that now it is only 3 weeks until I go on holidays! I have been looking at my finances and trying to decide if I really want to spend $6300 on flights for my trip next year. I really have no choice unless I cut out South America altogether. No thanks! So I have cut a few weeks off the itinerary and found some people to stay with so I can save a few pennies in the expensive countries. I have been doing a bit of research trying to find the cheapest and best value Machu Picchu trek and Spanish classes. There are a lot of choices out there.

This week has been a bit lonely since I haven't been able to talk to my normal chat buddy. I suppose in some way it is good because it reminds that I shouldn't rely on one person too much because they can quite easily just stop being around whenever they like. And do. I have started doing my Christmas shopping finally and am making good progress so far. Every day at lunch I wander up and down Runde Mall and see the shoppers growing in numbers, by the time I finish work in a few weeks it's going to be packed out there.

Tomato plant update: still growing. Masses of green toms everywhere.
Eggpant update: still growing. Plenty of flowers but no fruit so far. Hurryup!! Although I had better start looking for recipes using eggplants before they start arriving otherwise they'll all go to waste. I don't think I want to waste them making babaganoush or whatever that nasty shit was MM and I were trying to make last year. When batch 2 is still festy it's time to stop wasting vegies.

Monday again

The weekends go by way too fast! Today there isn't much to do at work so I am looking for Christmas presents on the web. It's hard to decide what to get people this year. The pageant was on Saturday. Kind of crazy how far out from Christmas they have it, but I guess they want to spur the credit cards into action. I avoided the busy sections of town and cycled out to Rundle St to look for a dress. I tried on a few, but nothing really great jumped off the racks. After an hour of that I was pretty much done. I contemplated pushing on to Rundle Mall but by then the pageant goers were starting to stream through and I couldn't be bothered. I walk up and down Rundle Mall every lunch break so doing it on the weekend isn't exactly fun.

What I did do on the weekend that I don't do everyday is assemble a trampoline! It was fun! Fairly straight-forward too, except these days there is way too much safety netting and crap all over them. After Generation Y is the Cotton Wool Gen I suppose. MM's dog now has a great deal of shade for the summer too, although she will have to learn not to walk under the tramp when someone's bouncing on it!

On Saturday I hung around in a hammock. It made me seasick :( But aside from that, it was very relaxing!

some stuff

Long time no blog. I haven't been very busy, that's kind of the problem. Nothing to report. Situation normal. Touch has started up again. I am learning to referee this season. It's exhausting, physically and mentally, all those decisions! It's not too bad though, the lower grades are pretty slow so I don't have to leg it to keep up with the play. But by the time my game comes around at 8 I am not exactly fresh. Our team has a lot of referees in it so that's going to be the story all season I think.

I have an engagement party to attend in a few weeks so I have been tempting myself with visits to dress shops. Not very sensible given that Christmas is just around the corner and 5 weeks of unpaid leave looms... For at least some of that time I will be in Canberra chilling out. The rest hasn't been decided yet.

Yesterday was a stupid horse race. I was asked to come to work with some kind of frippery in my hair. As if I own such a thing. Needless to say I did not participate in the event. I am not sure why horses running is so fascinating. Perhaps the fact that you have to lay some money on the line in order to summon up any kind of interest in it is evidence enough that it is a dull event. The only good thing to come out of the day was the left over Tim Tams.