Life Lessons in Scrabble

Today was a very domestic day. Clean-Up-Sarah's-Act Day. Well, clean up my room & bathroom anyhow.

Three loads of laundry (I actually bothered to sort out my clothes into coloured and dark) and I was well on my way. Several boxes of books have been unpacked and others removed from the bookshelf and packed into boxes in a [moving] deckchairs-on-the-Titanic-esque manner. After slipping in the bathroom while mopping the floor and hitting my head on a shelf while dusting I decided to retreat to the safety of the bedroom. After a few hours I was happy to rediscover my floor under the myriad of boxes I headed downstairs for dinner.
THUD
What was that? Mum askes.
I wander upstairs having quipped that it was probably my bookshelf.
Turns out it was my bookshelf.

I may have gotten a little upset. Just a little.

The floor had disappeared under a mound of books that had also dismantled my clothes rack.
Just a little upset.

Three hours later and I had reclaimed the floor, fixed the rack and precariously stacked the books on the chest of drawers. I needed a break from the domesticity.

Clearly a game of Scrabble was in order.

Dad & I had bought Mum the Deluxe Scrabble board for her birthday.

The christening game reminded me of a valuable lesson. Greed is not good. I could have finished the game but decided to hold out by one more move in order to score more points. If I'd put the original word on the board I would have won. Instead Dad took line honours for tonight's game. Ah well, there's always tomorrow. Anyway, I have a floor. I need not for winning Scrabble.

Distractions

Well it's back into the rehearsal room again tonight for the "Scottish Play" Rock Opera. It's my last rehearsal with the group I think as I'm only filling in for a couple of days this week. It's been good to be back in a rehearsal room although odd filling in for someone you don't know. Anyhow I've learned a bit about Sibellius so that's been good.

I noticed that I fell off the face of the blogging planet again but I've been distracted by no only the joy of having an oven again or my knitting (sock has been stalled at row 49) but my shiny new laptop.

It's a bit of a tradition to name your laptop/computer at my place so I thought long nd hard about it. After all my iPod is Deep Thought. I had many suggestions for more Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy names but as my first reaction to the laptop was "shiny!" Gene suggested that it would be better named Serenity.

That pretty much sums up what has been entertaining me for the last couple of days. Synchronising information across the laptops and setting it up just the way I like it. Important things like desktop pictures and backing up music. I love it. It's just like setting up an office but with less physical effort. Perfect for a lazy summer's day. :)

Yesterday I was happily distracted by Sim City 4 Rush Hour. Yes, I'm a control freak at heart but I love these simulation games. My city's doing quite well thank you for asking!

Today I've promised myself that I have to achieve some of my to-do list before I can continue to build my thriving metropolis.

I'm doing okay so far. Aside from procrastinating while writing my blog. I just need to get to the bank so I can change my date of birth. According to them I'm born in September. News to me... Mum & Dad might be surprised too...

The only other thing I really should do is get around to baking the banana cake that I bought buttermilk for yesterday... The bananas are, to quote Mum, a bit on the nose. Might make some more sweet potato and green bean salad too. It was my favourite dish from dinner on Sunday which involved AU$80 roast pumpkin soup (that's Dad's story to tell so you'll have to wait until he tells it then I'll make the link), a simple roast garlic, tomato and mushroom pasta and the aforementioned and below salad. Tasty :)



I think it must be dinner party time. Anyone for dinner?

Mr Postman look and see...

Sadly no iPod has appeared yet and is unlikely to appear until, at best, Tuesday. I should probably stop obsessively checking the pidgeon holes for it until then but I'm optimistic!

I had a fabulous weekend with my gorgeous man. We spent Friday night relaxing and discussing our post-Games holiday. We've nutted out some dates and are aiming for our return flight to Melbourne on the 9th February (I guess arriving on the 10th, but we'll have to wait and see). Now all that remains are flight & accommodation bookings and much saving.

Yesterday, after sleeping in until the luxurious hour of 11am, we had beef(?) kuftas for breakfast and then asked ourselves what do you do when it's 38 degrees celcius and humid? Naturally the answer to that question is swing dance! So we set up my speakers and danced in our carport to the amusement of the neighbours passing us on the way to the pool (probably a more sensible option). Photos were taken but I've yet to see them. If they're not too terrible they may even get posted :)

After a brief altercation between my shoulder blade and the corner of the coffee table (the coffee table won. ouch!) we decided to rest for awhile and program a few slower songs to dance to while I nursed my injury with a packet of frozen mash potato. As soon as the aromatic garlic and herbs in the mash potatoes started to permeate the air we decided it was time to return my "ice pack" to the freezer for a bit and keep on dancing. By this stage our carport was in full sun and to be honest we were melting! Plenty of ice tea helped us through the next few hours as we tried to practice our moves and I'm fairly sure we made up some moves too! We're really missing our swing dancing classes here but I think we were doing okay.

The sun faded from our carport and that was our cue to finish for the day. (We're sensible people really). Gene had a haircut in Mel's carport (Mel & Dobbie's Barber Shop) and then it was time for us to head inside and consider dinner.

While considering dinner we started playing the Sims 2. This delayed dinner considerably. We ended up having corned beef, eggs and rice while continuing our game. Our Sims live in "Melbourne". I think it's a joke because it's always raining in the game. Still miss the rain by the way.

The hours (both simulated and actual) flew past us and before I knew it there were just seven hours left until I had to get on the shuttle bus for work. Whoops. Pumpkin time. We lay in bed and chatted about random things. Mainly PS2 related and then roughly five and a half hours before I needed to be on the bus I finally fell asleep.

Suprisingly I was on the bus about 10 minutes earlier than I usually am this morning. I even had time to polish my boots and have a quick breakfast before I had to leave the house. Amazing what a short sleep can do for me. So it's the start of another week and as the Carpenters karaoke DVD (complete with typos) serenaded me on the way to work I thought about when my iPod was going to arrive so that I could listen to my audiobooks and music on the way to work. I was briefly distracted by the image of Singapore's Underwater World during Mr Postman but that soon passed.

Tonight I'm going to the Ramadan tent at the Ritz Carlton with Amy & PC. I can sleep later. There's too much to see and do in Doha!

My name is Sarah and...

... I'm a yarnaholic. That's not to say that I love to talk a lot, which I do, but I have well and truly developed a serious yarn buying addiction having moved back in with my folks. It's the lack of having rent to meet... not to mention the stocktake sales - damn you Spotlight and your 20% off everything for one day only...

So my day started off in the usual sleepy way. I slept in on my nice new comfy Memory Foam pillow. I bought a pair of these pillows on the high recommendation from my Mum & my osteo that this would provide me with better quality sleep and less neck & back problems. One of the best purchases of the year so far to be honest! Much too easy to sleep in on though. Also entertaining for the easily amused as you can watch the foam spring back up after you mush it into funny shapes. :)

I woke up and found Mum doing some pattern editing on the computer and showed her how to instert a table in Word without any gridlines which made her happy and then trotted downstairs with full intentions of starting a velvet beret for Lisa (it's in a red wine kind of colour) as soon as I checked my email. Not a good move it seems.

In my mail box was an email from Spotlight that advised me they were having the aforementioned one day sale. Hmmm... interesting... I thought. I don't have any cotton to make that top that I like in the Happy Hooker book that I bought... or that bolero that I like either... I'd also really like to make Dad & Gene some socks... HEY MUM! We need to go out!. Thus began the trip to the shops where I got some gorgeous cotton/alpaca yarn to make my top & bolero, wool to felt into slippers, machine washable wool to make socks for the boys and some to make socks for the girls (Mum & I).

Luckily I'm making my way at great speed through my yarn stash. Last night I finished a hat for Jo, think 1920's cloche decorated with a treble clef that I designed because according to Gene she's a muso. I'm halfway through a moebius wrap for me in blue-purple varigated yarn. I've got a cabled scarf on the go and this new top from the book. Large variety of projects would usually reflect nothing but my fear of commiting to things, but it's actually got more to do with my RSI and carpal tunnel issues. Too much knitting makes my left arm hurt (it was rather swollen two days ago) and too much crochet makes my right arm hurt. So on advice from the experts plenty of projects to keep you moving.

So having spent up I declared two things. Firstly, I'm not going to a yarn shop in the near future. Secondly I needed to start applying for work. Happily the guilt from the yarn shopping prompted me to cautiously check my email again where I got the job list from Arts Hub and started to apply for work. Does anyone else hate writing application letters as much as I do? Anyway it's all done now and I'm still keeping my eye out.

Nothing else is new really so I'm going to crawl back to the couch with my Baileys and watch Gene play Final Fantasy X while crocheting happily into the wee hours of the morning.

Pets & Suits

Suit shopping accomplished!

We finally tore ourselves away from the PS2 and jumped in the car straight to Peter Jackson where the nice man showed us a variety of suits in Gene's size. After determining which suit looked like a school uniform and which didn't, we settled on a gorgeous brown wool pinstripe suit. Now all that remains is to find a shirt and tie and we should be all set.

The best thing about today's shopping trip was the discovery of dog boots/shoes. We went to the pet shop to get some kitty crystals (we're aware that we have a rat, but it helps him to smell less) and lo and behold, no kitty crystals but many pairs of doggy ug-boots. They were zip ups complete with velcro strap to make sure that they stay on. I was tempted to get some just to see if they did stay on because all of the dogs I've had managed to get most bandaging/protection off their paws with just a bit of time and dedication. The cost of the dog shoes greatly reduced my curiousity though.

Safeway proved to have some exciting products though. The one we went to sells Rat/Mouse food! We bought some of that and discovered that we're only meant to be feeding our rat 30g of food a day... Herman's now going on a bit of a diet. We were a little worried that he'd get bored or upset with the new gradual reduction in food so we made up for it by buying him several bird/small animal treat sticks that can be hung up in his cage. We even managed to remember to get him some of those kitty crystals that we'd gone in to buy. Not wanting the dogs to feel left out we got them some dog treats too. We did manage to leave the supermarket without actually buying any of the ingredients that I had planned to get for making dinner tonight though. Guess we really do love our pets!

A whirlwind of colour & noise

Wow what a day! Gene & I have been in Tokyo for 13 hours and have managed to pack in quite a bit.

After a day of flying we arrived rather tired but excited in Japan. Gene braved the complicated looking foreign exchange forms and I tried to get our rail vouchers exchanged. Gene was more successful as the JR Rail Offices had closed just after our plane landed. While we were hunting the correct (albeit closed) ticket window we missed our hotel shuttle bus by 6 minutes. After an hour waiting in the deliciously cool 17.6 degree celcius Japan night we finally made it on the shuttle. We spent our first night in Japan in the Narita Hilton which was wonderfully comfy and boasted beer vending machines about 10m from our room door. The view from our hotel room was pretty special.

Our first morning saw us enjoying a breakfast which melded Western bacon and eggs style food with rice porridge & miso soup. After this we headed to the hotel shuttle bus area where we saw a bus waiting. We tried to work out which bus we needed to jump on to get to Narita train station. As the bus was leaving, we worked out that it was indeed the bus we should have been on. Happily the next bus arrived and although it didn't go to the Narita train station, it did take us to to the airport where we could get a train from Terminal 2. It turned out that was ideal as the Narita-Tokyo express train we got on didn't stop at Narita station.

The trip to Tokyo took just over an hour and I took several (slightly blurred) photos of what could be rice paddies or could be wasabi farms... my agriculture knowledge is lacking I know.

We finally arrived in Tokyo's Shinjuku station at 12:30 and took in our first glimpse of Tokyo from the station. Our phrase book has come in most handy as I headed to the ticket office to ask for directions to the Tokyo Hilton. After securing a map with a friendly and simple looking red line to our hotel and the reassurance that it was only 20 minutes away, Gene & I set off to brave the streets with our luggage in tow. How lost could we possibly get when we had a map? Apparently a little... On closer inspection our map turned out not to have street names, only building names. Now you'd think that this would be really handy in a city of skyscrapers, but the thing that we noticed about Tokyo so far is the lack of logos and garishly bright signs at the top of buildings. They seem to be reserved for the lower levels. So we were stuck walking until we found a map in front of random building. Unfortunately the "you are here" arrow had been stolen so it took us a while to get our bearings again. We'd taken a turn too early or late, it was hard to tell, but we knew we were within blocks of the hotel.

At about 13:00 we made it to the hotel where we bumped into Gene's Mum, Cathy, who was in the lobby trying to find out if we'd checked in. We headed up to the hotel room and settled before heading to Gene's parents' room to snack on some rather beautifully decorated chocolates.

We headed out to the Keio department store to grab some food. It's great being in a department store trying to read the directory when it's not in English. It's even better trying to order off a menu when it's not in English. Our phrase book came to our rescue again and we managed to get a menu in English while providing our waitress with some amusement. Gene & I stuck to our usual favourites of katsu-don and oyako-don for our first meal.

After that we decided to find Kabukicho which was noted as the entertainment area where we could find all the latest Japanese arcades and more. We got there by means of a small alleyway that had stall selling everything from cheap sunnies to Japanese copies of Charlie Chaplin's short films. I'm amazed at what you can find in Japan! We entered the area which was hard to miss with all the flashing signs. I managed to find what I thought was a bead shop within two minutes of us arriving there and headed in to check it out. It turned out to be a craft department store with everything from "inner wear" (lingerie) to snake skin for craft use. I found the brand of knitting needles/crochet hooks that I was after (at 20% off!) but I'm holding out till we find the shop first.

Across the road from this shop was an adult toy shop (we think) which seemed to have vending machines selling capsules that contained everything from designer wallets to dildos. We were a little confused and somewhat disturbed but we didn't let it deter us from exploring the area further.

Walking around, it's hard to miss the multitude of pachinko & slot machine halls. Being the avid gamblers that we are, Gene and I decided that Pachinko, a game that apparently involved little skill and have little monetary incentive, was the way to go. In a whirlwind of colour, movement and much noise, we spent 3,000 yen shooting ball-bearings around the machine with gobsmacked looks on our faces. Unsurprisingly the clerk at the pachinko parlour was more than happy to give us a copy of instructions for the game in English. In all fairness though, everyone in Japan seems happy to help you out if they can. It's a wonderfully helpful and polite place to visit! Having not spent enough money playing games with little return, we both gave the slots a turn. We both got a pay out but not before making idiots of ourselves when we tried to store our tokens in the drink holder. It didn't go so well, mainly because there was a big hole in the bottom of the drink holder so all the coins fell out.

We decided we'd played enough confusingly noisy but oddly amusing games for the day and headed to another arcade for more familiar games. We played a Japanese drumming game before we decided to join in the photo booth culture. We spent what felt like an eternity posing for the camera, Gene was a little tall for some of the close-ups, but it was great fun. The language barrier proved amusing as we couldn't understand the instructions and were pressing buttons at random. We stepped outside to wait for our pictures, but they just didn't seem to be printing! We flagged down a clerk and after a game of charades pointed us to another booth where he demonstrated that we could add pictures to our photos. It was awesome! We spent another 5-10 minutes adding random characters and cartoons to our photos and then they printed. A game of Time Crisis 3, some poor drumming on my part and it was time to meet up with Gene's folks. On the way back we checked out a capsule hotel and saw many more interestingly named establishments.

The 100 yen shop grabbed our attention on the way to dinner but not nearly as much as the excitement of buying dinner from a vending machine. Well, that's not 100% accurate, we bought a token from the vending machine which we handed to the chef who cooked everything fresh. The main excitement came from not knowing what you'd ordered, just the cost. Gene & I ended up with some white meat and rice while Gene's parents ended up with some red meat and rice.

After dinner we explored the area further to find ourselves surrounded my men's clubs and ladies' clubs. We finally made it back to the Shinjuku station after Gene & his dad had been propositioned by various men offering to introduce them to lovely Japanese or Russian women for a while.

So here we are back at the hotel.

Now, it has to be done, it's an important topic of discussion when travelling, the toilet. When you sit down on the toilet, it flushes gently, apparently to help you pee if you're having troubles. It's actually a little disconcerting when you're not expecting it... Gene says "for all the good a bidet is, it might as well shoot water up my ass (or if you don't happen to be sitting on the toilet at the time, all over the bathroom)" Thank you Gene :)

Anyhow, accompanying pics to this rather long account are to be found at: my Zoto site. We're heading to Matsumoto tomorrow to check out the castle there.

Distracted

I've been meaning to blog all day but have found myself rather easily distracted. I ended up doing a couple of non-urgent errands in the rain today... played more Fable than I possibly should have. (On a side note, I rocked at the battles today, I think I get a little nervous when Gene's watching me fight in those games because he's just so much better at it than I am. That and we have different strategies. I showed those rock trolls good!) On a more positive note I did apply for a couple of jobs today which is something that I've been putting off. Now it just remains to see if I get some packing done tomorrow. *sigh*

Gene's in Geelong tonight. He took Gram down there to get a long overdue service, or possibly the bad news of the transmission/alternator issues that we suspect. We're still waiting to hear the verdict from the mechanics.

It's probaby a welcome change to sleep in a house that doesn't smell like burnt stuff. Stupid incorrect microwave instructions.

I'm a little sad that I won't get to wake him up on his birthday but he's aiming to be home in the late morning/early afternoon so hopefully I can give him his surprise pressie then.

With the amount of packing that hasn't been done, you wouldn't think we were moving out. Kind of wish we weren't because I really like this place. At the same time it's the kind of change that is likely to get us saving faster to get overseas.