saturday penguins + a vege pizza, add beef

the other day while walking to the bookshop, i was quick enough that the lollipop ladies were just finishing up outside of the primary school (usually they are gone by the time i get there). if you don't know what lollipop ladies are, their job is to stand on the pedestrian crossing outside of schools to stop cars for the little kids. they have a big stop sign and a whistle. sounds like a cute, old lady-type job, right? well, they were just leaving as i went to cross at the crossing and i smiled and said 'hello'. her reply? 'don't get hit by a car now. they don't always stop'.
that's not all, a few weeks ago i got there while they were still working. one of the ladies actually yelled at me for 'not waiting for the whistle'. my bad, i forgot that the whistle is the only thing stopping the car from hitting us!

on monday at work a man came in and asked for a vege delight with beef on it. like, really? okay, maybe he enjoys the taste of the the vege pizza toppings with a bit of beef but that just sounds so ridiculous. i do get it a lot though; vege delight with pepperoni or bacon. the point of a vegetarian pizza is that it doesn't have meat on it. it's not a vege delight, it's just not. you're ridiculous. 

it has now been two years since i started dating my amazing boyfriend bren. to celebrate, i organised for us to 'go to sea world for the day'. i don't really know why that's in inverted commas, i mean we did go to sea world for the day... but i had secretly planned for us to do one of the animal adventure programs on offer - the penguin antarctic adventure. in the package, we spent time 'behind the scenes' at the penguin enclosure before actually stepping onto the ice with the penguins. 
unfortunately, i couldn't just take him to the meeting place and bam, surprise! we're going on the ice: he needed to sign waivers saying that we wouldn't sue sea world if the penguins became violent and killed/seriously maimed us, sort of killing the big surprise. also, we had to check in with sea world at least an hour prior to the adventure. so i told him as we arrived (and i'm fairly sure he has been suspicious of me for a while. he knew that i was up to something). 
basically, it was the best experience of my life. to have these beautiful, inquisitive little penguins waddle up to us and to be able to pat them was so surreal.
since the gentoo penguins are going into breeding season soon, they were making their nests out of stones so to make our visit interesting, we took in a box of stones to give to them. more often than not, when a penguin took a stone from my hand it would try to take the glove as well. at one point, bren thought there was something falling out of his pocket but there was actually a penguin pecking his bottom! i just can't stop thinking about it. i want to do it again, i want to stay in there with them. to think that the workers there are in with them every single day... man, i'm jealous. 

bren and i on the penguin antarctic adventure at sea world

ps, as well as today being bren's and my anniversary, it's also the day the hogwarts train leaves kings cross station. if i'm not posting frequently, it's because at hogwarts, muggle devices don't work, therefore i have no internet. i'll have to send my blog posts via owl to someone who can post them for me ;) 

psychic monday + vegemite in slovenia

you know that time of night when tv gets really dodgy and it's a pretty frightening thing to watch? well, at around 1am with bren and kylie, watching austar, a commercial for psychics came on - basically you call this 'psychic' woman and she'll tell you how to improve your finances and whatnot. so she's telling people that they need to de-clutter their houses, brighten up aspects of their living room etc. and meanwhile, this poor dumbass on the phone is paying $5.45 per minute for some crackpot pretending to know how their finances will be in the future. i'll tell you right now how your finances will be in the future, pretty damn shit if you're willing to pay $5.45 a minute for this crap! and i'll tell you that for free. it actually is quite difficult to feel sorry for the callers though... seeing they're dumb enough to call in the first place. i'm sorry, i will never believe in that crap. if i was good enough at improvising and lying to people, hell, i'd become a psychic! $5.45 per minute? $327 an hour? even if i felt guilty for ripping these people off, i'd just cry myself all the way to the bank.

while having a conversation with my slovenian friend nina, we got onto the topic of vegemite. like i said, nina is slovenian so.. she's never in her life tried vegemite. ever. in her life. i can't even imagine how tragic that must be for her. she actually described it as 'that gross thing you have that looks like nutella'. one does not compare vegemite to nutella. they can not be more different and as mum said, nutella looks a lot more appetising than vegemite.
long story short, nina will be receiving a jar of vegemite in the mail shortly. 

ekka thursday + 25c strawberry sundaes

i think it can be concluded that my nineteen-year-old sister is not actually an adult, she's just a big kid. all morning we were planning to get to the ekka and visit my (favourite) aunt who was working in the information stall, however we entered the show grounds in the middle of the rides and it was hardly twenty minutes before we were on our first ride. then after that was another ride, and another ride after that before she was 'all ride-ed out'. only then did we make it up to see our aunt (who kindly asked me to write a blog after the exhibition!).
amy and i got a strawberry sundae which costed $4.80 and was worth every last cent, believe it or not. tonight mum told me that she remembered a time when they costed 25c and they complained about the price.
i also paid $4.50 for a 600ml coke zero which i couldn't even enjoy drinking after paying that much for it. it was just sad. 
probably the worst thing i saw today at the ekka was the 'mcdonalds cattle display' - no more needs to be said. except that i hope they weren't selling burgers in there.
i will put a few photos that i took from today in my next (hopefully) blog after i edit them.

bren and i had planned to meet at roma st. at 2:05 for lunch after he finished tafe and got back to the city. there was a train leaving the exhibition grounds every fifteen minutes and was meant to only take five minutes to arrive at roma st. obviously though, translink really did not want me to get on that train. after a delay of around 30-40 mins, the train finally arrived and i was standing trapped behind a foreign man against the train door due to how crowded it was. this delay was also after delays on both of the two previous train trips we made today and i swear i could have punched translink's stupid face. generally i don't mind delays, because they can't exactly be prevented, but three in one day? not impressed at all.
(ps. today was the second time this week that i've seen bren - normally i don't see him til friday - and i'll also see him tomorrow and saturday! how great can one week be?)
i managed to convince bren to come to the ekka for 'just one hour'. he got a wonka show bag out of it so i think he enjoyed it overall.

tonight i was with mum at one of her friends' houses and we literally only got home at twenty past nine. every time we made a move to leave, mum or her friend would find something else to talk about or a there was a wedding album to look at - of course every photo needed to be discussed.
mum's friend also has (at least) four extremely fat cats. my nose was exploding just being under the same roof as so many stupid fluffy things.

the very important draft for film and tv that is due tomorrow still hasn't been completed and in all honesty, i'm going to bed right now and i will not worry about it until the morning (that's when i'll panic).

wednesday sneezes + 1000 views

in my absence i hit 1000 views! (something i probably could have achieved a lot quicker had i been posting) for those who keep pestering me, i will try to post more regularly again.

at work, above the sink where i wash dishes, there's an air vent which directs cold water onto me. sure, it's nice when it's hot, but it makes me sneeze excessively. those who know me would be aware that i sneeze a lot. not just one sneeze, done. no, i'm not that lucky. i have sneezing fits. sometimes i'll sneeze around five times and my manager will always say 'bless you' at the end. after this if i still have some more sneezes, i either try to hold them in or else i'll sneeze really quietly because i feel bad if she has to keep saying bless you.

yesterday when i left school i ran straight into bren. it was such a huge surprise because he's in brisbane all week and comes home thursday nights (though i don't see him til friday). he'd come home especially to surprise me and i could not wipe the smile from my face.

i had thought of other things to talk about but now my mind is blank and i'm ready for bed. tomorrow i'm going to the ekka with my sister, so i may even have some photos. 

monday-itis + pretend cars

it has been so long since i've blogged, that blogger actually signed me out. i'm never signed out.
my mobile phone provider has died in the local area apparently, therefore i cannot call bren on my phone. i called him instead on the home phone and after talking for half an hour, realised that it's a lot more expensive on our home phone. i'm not looking forward to the next bill. mondays kill though and by the end of them i just need to talk to bren. my monday-itis is forever. 

just a short blog seeing i'm ready for bed. 
i hate when cyclists think that they're traffic. no, wait, i hate when cyclists think that they're traffic, but they don't have to obey the traffic laws. you are a bicycle, not a car. you are not a car. YOU ARE NOT A CAR. why must you, bicycle, hold up all of the real cars, just so that you can pretend to be a car. just, just, no. but even worse, when they pretend to be a cars yet proceed to do things that are illegal for cars.
on saturday i was down town and there was a some cycling event. there were a few bikes around town that i saw. one bike rode up to the traffic lights in no particular lane and rather than waiting for a green light, just started riding in circles. do that nonsense on the footpath! you are not a car. you will never be a car. i hate you. 

saturday busking + karma

today bren and his friend were at the bookshop busking to celebrate red pages first birthday. i think that buskers are amazing (and i'm not just saying that as i'm biased). i can't think of very many times that i have walked past a busker and not given them change from my purse (unless i absolutely had none). i think that even if i'm only putting in 50cents, if everyone put in that much then the busker is getting something from it. and i don't think that it is easy to sit on the pavement, putting your talent out there and hoping that someone will like it. i remember, as a kid, i would get very excited if mum gave me some coins to throw in someone's guitar case.
there's an older man who quite often sits outside of iga in town, playing an accordion and singing. he also has a wheelchair, or a walker - i'm not entirely sure - and he displays a few albums that he's released. i think it's incredible, this is what he loves and he's making money from it; very usually when i walk past there will be $5, $10 and even $20 notes in his case.
i always hope that if i have this way of thinking - to give spare change to buskers - that it'll come back as a good thing, good karma, whenever bren busks. that people will in turn give him a few dollars. he also loves buskers seeing he hates having change in his wallet ('it's too heavy'). hopefully bren will get a license (we don't need one in such a small town, just permission from store owners is enough) and can start busking in the city. who knows, maybe thanks to our good doings, people will put spare change into bren's case - i don't see why people wouldn't, they're giving up their own time to entertain, basically.

i've been reading stories on karma just this afternoon and i half believe in it, because sometimes people do really kind things without anything in return - solely because they're good people - and often people who maybe need something bad to happen (which sounds awful, but we all have one person who needs it) as a bit of a wake up call. 
i like the thought that even if karma doesn't exist, people want to do good things in case it does. 

potato pie friday + satanist snails

the other day i went to feed my fish. there were three; spotto (bren's big fish), ivy (my fish) and mr. unnamed fish (bren's little fish. he might have a name but i don't know that it is...was...). i could only find two of my fish, spotto and ivy. at first i worried that he'd jumped out, until i saw it. a giant cluster of satanist snails. i couldn't actually see mr unnamed fish but when i looked thursday morning i could just see his skeleton. i feel really awful that it happened, i have no idea how he died. but now there's a skeleton of a fish at the bottom of my fish tank and i don't know how to get rid of it, it's really awful.

yesterday i went to lunch with amy and marcus. we went somewhere none of us had eaten before and the menu looked really good. when we got to the counter though, everything we asked for the woman told us they didn't sell any more; that the menus were old and they are waiting for new ones to be printed. why even display the old menus then? she wasn't even polite about it and it came across as though she thought we were idiots. i then found a hair in my pasta which was super.
we went bowling afterwards and since amy has nice, small feet and i have clown feet, she got the cute shoes and i got clown shoes. marcus kicked our butts in the first game and then shouted us a second. guess who won the second game! i decided that i love bowling.

i saw bren last night for maybe an hour and a half and it was great. then this morning i got to see him before school for a few minutes and i swear it brightened my entire day. after school i even speed-walked down to the bookshop for more bren-time.

at school i got a potato pie for the first time in months and it was too amazing. it makes me want to buy one every day (except for the fact that i can not even nearly afford to). i don't understand why the food at the school's tuckshop is so expensive. i'm fairly sure that there is not one single hot food item that they sell that is healthy. i guess the closest to would be a hot chicken wrap and the chicken is probably not even chicken. who even knows.
tonight i went to youth group with caitlin for the first time ever. it was insanely fun because we played games and i never get to play games any more. also i now remember how much fun balloons are and i can literally amuse myself with a balloon for an hour, easily. so i think i'll just keep an inflated balloon in my room at all times for when i feel a little sad. good plan.