The joy of ebay

Ed and I have recently discovered the joy of selling stuff on ebay. It's so much fun and a great way to get rid of the usless stuff you have lying around your home. For instance, Ed was given an incredibly tacky ashtray that has a carving of a naked woman on it which he doesn't need anymore (when do you ever need an ashtray with a naked chick on it?) so he has put it up on ebay to hopefully offload it onto someone who thinks that that sort of thing is classy. After he had posted it up for $2, I was checking that I would be able to find it by searching for 'woman ashtray' and found another ashtray with a naked woman on it in a slightly different position to Ed's but otherwise identical. This ashtray sold for $80! There were 12 bidders! Who would have thought? Hopefully now the unsuccessful bidders from that ashtray will begin a bidding war for our ashtray. Fingers crossed!

Can I just say to the woman who pushed in front of me in the line at Cafe Kaz this morning

'Rude!'

Where have all the manners gone?

Give me the simple life

Recently my boyfriend/partner (i've never liked either of those words and don't think that they accurately represent our relationship but I am yet to think of something better) and I decided to get new mobile phones. We decided to go with Optus because we already had our home phone through them and we wanted to organise Broadband for our home computer aswell and thought that we might be able to get a decent deal if we packaged the lot. As it was during the post-xmas mobile phone rush the handset model that we chose was not in stock, so we were given our SIM cards and sent on our merry way. Of course we gave them our home phone number so that they could contact us when our handsets arrived. We were told that they should arrive within the week. One week later I call up and am told that they are still waiting for them and that I should never fear because I will definately be contacted when they arrive into the store. Another week passes. I call up again and am told that the handsets had already arrived a couple of days ago and didn't I get the message on my voicemail???? How could I when I didn't have the handset to put my SIM card into to receive the voicemail message about picking up the handset? It's mindboggling! When I enquired at the store whilst picking up said handsets why they had left a voicemail message and not called the home phone like we had requested I received no reply and no apology. It seems they really do have people living the simple life working at Optus.

The cost of living in Kingswood Country

Egads! I've just found out that it is going to cost me $1200 to fix the suspension in my car! And that's not fixing everything that needs to be done but in the words of my mechanic 'just making it safe to drive'! You'd probably think that I drive some swish car like a Saab or something given the cost of the repairs, but no, you would be fooled, you see I drive a 1976 Holden Kingswood and it seems it costs a lot to live in Kingswood Country. I had to think twice about whether I would even get the car fixed given that it only cost me three grand in the first place but I seem to have grown attached to my transportation device over the last eight years and am loath to give it up just yet. Oh well, my poor credit card gets another beating....

Miss Vs. Ms

I happened to mention at my Stitch n Bitch gathering this week that it bugged me how I was still addressed as a Miss through all correspondence with the Commonwealth Bank. I really should get off my behind and change it, as I have chosen to be a Ms every other time I am asked to choose a title. I think my Commonwealth Bank 'Miss' goes back to when I was about 7 or 8 and my parents set up a Dollarmite account for me to learn all about saving money (unfortunately I didn't learn very much - I've been trying to pay off my credit card for the last eight years but I don't think it helps when I spend more on it than I end up paying back into it! D'oh!) So anyways, the other lovely ladies at SnB all annouced that they have always been Misses (until they happened to get stuck with the old ball and chain that is!) and that they liked being a Miss. I was quite surprised. I've always found the title 'Miss' to seem rather young and girlish (perhaps they are trying to hang on to their youth?) and is basically used as a way of distinguishing unmarried (and thus available) women from married women, unlike the title 'Mr' which can either refer to a bachelor or a man with a better half (Can anyone say 'outdated'?). Not being the marrying kind myself, although for all intents and purposes I am, having lived with my partner (never really like that word, but boyfriend just doesn't seem to cut it) for around eight years, I do not like the way that titles are still genderly (pretty sure that's not a word but I think you get my drift) unequal. A new system of titles needs to be created! Or perhaps done away with all together. But I suppose then people wouldn't have any incentive to spend years working towards a Doctorate if at the end of it all they can't have the satisfaction of being called a doctor. So that's my little rant for today. I guess when it's all said and done I'm just surprised to find out how much of a feminist I am!

A whole new world...

Well... this is my first venture into the bloggosphere and I have to say that I'm a little nervous aswell as excited! Hello big interweb world out there. Hope y'all doing alright. Well I have just arrived home in Victoria from my surprise birthday holiday that my lovely boy planned for us both to celebrate me getting another year older. In celebration of this momentous occasion he took me to the state of his birth, Western Australia. We had never managed to get there before as we had both thought that if you're going to travel that long on a plane you may aswell go overseas to Asia, which we have done numerous times already. So anyhow back to W.A. The sunshine was beautiful and consistant (something that is definately lacking in Melbourne), the beaches were gorgeous, white sand that just goes on and on and the wildlife was plentiful. Especially in Monkey Mia which has a very misleading name as practically the only animal we didn't see there was an actual monkey! Oh, when I think of the many animals we saw. Naturally there were dolphins which is the usual reason people trek out to Monkey. We were in luck as the dolphins had just given birth to little bitty baby dolphins (which are possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen!)
Unfortunately I couldn't get the little blighters to pose for me and my crappy camera has a one second delay between when I push the button and when the image is captured but this pic came out quite nice. Plus I also had the honour of being chosen to feed one of the dolphins (apparently by the dolphin, but I think the woman in charge just liked my bright red Monkey Magic t-shirt!). Let me tell you it was pretty cool. On our trip we also saw (in no particular order) Loggerhead turtles (bigger than I thought), Dugongs (in the distance, very shy creatures), Hermit crabs (Ed and I attempted to sell a larger shell home to one who seemed to be growing too big for his shell (alas, after a half hour inspection of the premises, he declined), Blue swimmer crabs (Ed was hoping for a seafood dinner but he wasn't fast enough), emus (just passing through the resort), stingrays (via our glass-bottomed boat which was fun to putt about in but not fast enough to chase anything with!) and to top it off, the smallest, cutest shark ever (which appeased Ed in his hunt to see a shark on our trip, even if it wasn't a threat to his life). So I'm still basking in the loveliness that was our fantastic trip and I hope that this feeling will last through my first week back at work.