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. 

today is tuesday + other boring stuff i talk about

at work on cheap tuesdays, i generally put dibs on dispatch (cutting the pizzas) so that i can avoid angry customers. kylie asked me around how many pizzas i cut a night and i couldn't really give her an estimation, so she told me to count. unfortunately, another girl who also likes to be on dispatch was there before me and i had to serve and answer phones.
later on in the night, however, i did cut a few pizzas. eight to be exact. not exactly accurate, but that's okay.
i ended up with a really bad stomach ache at around 7pm while working and i couldn't bring myself to go home early (i would have felt guilty leaving). despite the pains, i managed to eat two pieces of a stuff up pizza that was my mistake. it probably didn't help. so i've had pizza two nights in a row. disgusting. 


i can't remember much about school except for the fact that i did no work whatsoever. literally. in any class. oh my god i'm going to fail everything and i am 100% okay with that. i give up on school forever. caitlin is going to punch me for this...
oh, we did watch my grade competing for high jump. it's insane that people can jump over things that are higher than themselves. i have never been able to do high jump, even in primary school when it was about 80cm high. 

kick-in-the-face monday + dodgem cars

i remembered yet another thing that i forgot to mention in my catch-up post on saturday. every year at the show, i always go on the ferris wheel and the dodgem cars. always, it's like a rule. this year though, i was trying not to spend too much money, and the ferris wheel and dodgem cars were both $7 per person, which is crap! for another dollar i could go on an awesome crazy ride, which i did. but i'm still sad that i didn't get to go on the dodgems. ferris wheel i can deal with not going on, but i still would have liked to have. so i broke my rule by not going on the dodgems, which is sad. i'll definitely go on them next year. 


today, despite hardly any sleep last night and an early morning, i was reasonably awake at school. no, make that overly awake at school. it was a different feeling... but as soon as i got to work, dead. so dead. deader than dead. my strategy at my old job used to be to not look at the clock all shift, and then it would go quicker. it's so hard not to look though, i just want it to be over so i can sit down. i started counting the minutes with about an hour and a half left.

i decided that monday is the worst day of the week. i have double modern history (kill me) and double math (double kill me). as well as those two subjects that i 100% hate, i also hate every other subject. every. subject. english sucks, drama sucks. monday sucks. i want to kick monday in the face.
that is all for a crappy monday. 

sunday cuddles + bunnings quality

i just realised something that i forgot to mention in my post last night.yesterday, mum and i went to bunnings in toowoomba to buy some stuff for dad. you know what bunnings means - all of the sausage sizzle. if there's one thing you can count on, it's bunnings having good sausages.

i'm currently sitting in bren's studio as he plays drums. he has the cutest drummer faces (i don't think he even realises that he's making them).
i got on the bus at about 7:30 this morning to come visit him and he'll be back off to brisbane tonight for another week of tafe. i've seen him three times this weekend, so hopefully i won't miss him too much this week at school.
we watched batman begins before and cuddled - my idea of a perfect sunday morning.

(i wrote the above this morning on bren's laptop)
it's 8pm at the moment and i'm legitimately exhausted. when i got home from brens at 4pm or so i went straight to bed for an hour or two. i think i'm going to die from sleep deprivation.

catchup saturday + the past three days

what a busy week. i think the last time i posted was tuesday so i will start with wednesday. it was raining, and it was semi-formal - which wasn't a good combination as a) my dress was no good for keeping me warm and b) i have serious hair issues. when you straighten curly hair, and then add rain, you get frizz. frizz frizz frizz. i hate frizz. 
anyway, wednesday was also my first encounter with false eyelashes. it was a fairly traumatic experience. see, the boxes tell you how to put the eyelashes on but say nothing about taking them off. i had no problems putting them on and they looked fine (i think, i'm no expert) but when i got home i nearly ripped my eyelids off trying to remove the lashes.
my main complaint of the night was that the only food that they served (apart from fairy floss, which doesn't count as food at all) was hot dogs. i cannot begin to express how much i dislike hot dogs. i would have been okay with it if they'd bothered selling packets of potato chips or something, but no. dumb.
it was a really good night though and i was grateful that mum didn't bother waking me up for school the next morning. instead we took my costume back to the party hire shop and did a little bit of shopping (always beats school).

my dress for semi-formal (the theme was carnival/carn-evil)- i was a tightrope walker

thursday afternoon kylie had the bookshop packed up ready to leave early and we were on our way to brisbane to see jodi picoult and more importantly, bren. being the sneaky person i am, i told bren that we were still ages away less than two minutes before knocking at his door.
this is kind of confusing to explain. him and his dad were off to see the new batman movie while kylie, candice and i went to jodi picoult. except bren and his dad left at about 4:30, so we still had an hour and a half to fill in.
we decided on pizza for dinner (seeing as i don't eat enough pizza already) but we went to the opposing pizza place. i felt traitorous. but it was nice pizza, so it's okay. i like pizza more than i should, seeing how often i see/eat it.
jodi picoult was amazing! i didn't know what to expect since i've never been to see an author talking but she was great. they did a few readings from the book (which unfortunately i didn't finish reading beforehand, but they only read up to where i was up to). i just realised i'm saying 'they' but only mentioning jodi. it was actually jodi picoult and samantha van leer as they co-wrote the new book, 'between the lines'. after the readings, they took questions. i am proud of myself for actually getting up to ask a question seeing i generally don't.
kylie and candice were so amazing. we were waiting in line for about 30mins in freezing wind afterwards to get our books signed. i owe them a lot!

samantha van leer, jodi picoult, candice, kylie and i getting our books signed

the trip home involved a lot of back seat cuddling with bren and buying a hersheys bar from the servo on the way home. bren bought me a red bull to keep me awake, too.

friday night was the gatton show with bren. i got him for two nights in a row, how lucky is that? we went on a few overpriced rides and spent too much money in the arcade. bren wanted to win me a penguin but there was no such luck. the way mum put it, i'm lucky to have a musician boyfriend and it's just one drawback that he's not all that great at sideshow alley games. in his defence, i suck too.
anyway, i had my heart set on a little stuffed penguin which was impossible to get. instead, i got a cute little stuffed bear which fit inside my handbag (not quite as impressive as the girls walking around with teddies bigger than them, but i love it lots anyway). 

we stuck around for the fireworks, got show bags and then left. i always get bertie beetle show bags, you cannot go wrong with them.
we went to mcdonalds (this week was full of unhealthy eating, i know) and i bought a happy meal. i accidentally got two toys too, so that made me double the happy. 

bren won the beautiful elephant for me at the show last year, and the bear this year. it says 'i love you', so it's double the cute. i think i will start a collection of the teeny prizes he wins for me.

i love them! 

cheap tuesday + bookshop creeper

eep. it's official, whenever i think about pizza i feel sick. not even kidding, i think i may throw up if i eat it. i did have some garlic bread tonight though because i worked overtime and i was super hungry. 
(just quietly) i am blaming a co-worker for having to stay overtime. see, where i used to work, if someone said the word 'busy' in the context of, 'oh, i thought it would be more busy than this', it was jinxed and suddenly everybody in the world would want our food. so we wouldn't say it. tonight at work a girl was asking why it wasn't busy since it's cheap tuesday and she attracted the pizza-eaters. it happens. true story.
also, i put on a glove backwards tonight and it literally took me at least ten seconds to work out why my hand didn't fit. and this is the second time this has happened in a week. oh dear. 

i have nothing else to talk about, except the creepy man who came into the bookshop. i said hello to him, how was he, and after he answered he just stood there. and i was so freaked out by him that i couldn't bring myself to ask if he needed a hand with anything, just pretended like i was really busy on my laptop. and he just stood there for a while, before he sat down. i flipped it and just ran into the back room before discovering that it was the little tutor kid's father. whoops. 

monday sucks + pizza problems

last night i got a shit of a night's sleep and seeing how dedicated of a girlfriend i am, i woke up at 6am to talk to bren on his way to work. not the best idea seeing how tired i was whilst getting ready for school. mum made me a coffee though, like the lovely woman she is.

at 9:30am, i was sitting in modern history. with a small case of monday-itis and a large case i-over-think-every-thing-and-make-myself-sick-about-it, i felt like i was going to throw up and ended up coming home. bren cheered me up by texting me from tafe, and i talked to him until i couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. i made sure not to sleep too long though, so that i may be capable of sleep tonight (probably not likely, seeing i can't fall asleep very easily these days).

the first customers who i served at work tonight were a couple who came in looking pretty happy. until they decided arguing over every small decision. she wanted this pizza, he wanted that. so they got his pizza. she wanted this base, he wanted that. they got his base. she wanted to pay for extras and 'he wasn't paying $3 for it to be gluten free'. then when it came to pay for it, he asked her to use her card because 'his didn't work'. righto.
anyway, while they waited for their pizza i don't think they talked once, and they didn't look very happy when they left..

i'm now off to call sir bren because i miss him super duper muchly and still have three days before i see him. but on friday we're going to the gatton show (he thinks that i'm working and can't go, i'm about to tell him that i can and i'll hopefully put him in a good mood). 

sunday juice + walking cosmo

this morning i woke up and tried to move but i was stuck thanks to my phone charger. i fell asleep last night talking to my love and could have potentially choked myself.
thanks to falling asleep on him though, i woke up at about 9am feeling wonderfully well-rested. but now, at 7:30pm, i am nearly dead.


mum and i went to coles early and i cost her a fortune in fruit and veg. to make room in the crisper, we juiced some of the apples, kiwi fruit and oranges that had been sitting for a while. in my defence, the apples were mooshy when we bought them.
around midday i took cosmo (or did he take me?) for a walk. cosmo is not very well trained, and extremely strong. i believe that my hand is bruised from him pulling me. i hope that if i take him more often, he'll get better.


it's now been two days since i've seen bren and it'll be another four until i see him again. i somehow don't think i'm going to get used to this whole not seeing him thing. i hate it. i hate it so much.

saturday eggs + odd conversations

the story of why i didn't post yesterday is long and boring and it is easier for me to just pretend like it didn't happen and add what i would have said yesterday to what i will say today.

yesterday, all day i was so excited to see bren in the afternoon. i got butterflies on the way to the bookshop to see him and got a little bit emotional while hugging him.
since i am the pizza cutting expert, kylie let me cut the frozen pizza that we had for dinner. bren also told me that i can't consider my job a profession because it's at a pizza store. i was offended. 
i took his fish from him seeing his parents kept forgetting to feed them while he was at tafe (they were still quite alive and happy though) and now i have a whole heap of fish problems. see i used to have a big tank with about 5 molly's and a siamese fighter (he was a cool, social fighter who didn't mind sharing a tank), and a separate tank with my other fighter, tibbler. i didn't actually buy two fighter fish, because that would be ridiculous. i was given both for my birthday, quibble from bren and tibbler from my brother. anyway, the molly's had babies (and out of the seven thousand that they had, only two are still alive. the others all died and/or were eaten) so i had to make a new tank for them so that bren's fish wouldn't eat them, and so i have three tanks around my room and bren's fish keeps chasing my molly around. so complicated.

anyway, i was planning on just talking about how much i miss bren but i ended up with a very long story about my fish.
today was a fairly lazy day. i decided to have something to eat before work and opting for something healthy, i cut up some cucumber and lettuce and boiled an egg.
actually, i tried to boil an egg. emphasis on the tried, because i suck at life. like i really, really suck at life. i can't even boil an egg. i took it out too soon and it was all runny and gross. i literally cried. and just had cucumber and lettuce.

i love working at pizza palace because there's always at least three people, and conversation with three plus people is always so much more interesting than with just one person. we always get onto very odd topics. tonight we started talking about public toilets and how disgusting it is that people don't wash their hands afterwards. but really, washing our hands is pointless when we open the door afterwards.
they all had different techniques on how to avoid opening the door. 
one girl, when no one was around, would use her foot to open the door. 
another would use a paper towel, or wait for someone to come in or go out. 
i'm a bit like that (not the foot-door whatever), or else i use one finger to open it. 
but it's sort of similar to crossing at traffic lights. so many people with lord knows what on their hands touch those things, and it's sort of disgusting. a girl at work said that she generally just bumps the button with her hip. bren and i actually went through a stage where we would karate kick the button to avoid touching it (which is really not making the dirtiness of the button any better). 

cube thursday + missing him

today i didn't go to school because it was the only time my sister was free to help me get a semi-formal costume (i can't say what it is - you'll have to wait and find out). for lunch we went to the cube where they have 'stone dining', where you are given a raw piece of meat on a 32804382 degree stone. the man who bought our meal had maybe finished explaining that they are very hot, don't lean on them, don't bump them, don't lick them, a minute before i accidentally touched it. probably the most painful burn i have ever experienced in my life.
the lighting in the cube was a bit funny, so while i was cooking my steak (of course paranoid that it wouldn't be cooked enough), i wasn't sure if the steak was pink or it was just the lights.


i know that i haven't blogged in ages - going back to school was insane. i worked monday night 4-9pm and tuesday 5:30-8:30, so i was absolutely dead both nights. yesterday i stayed behind at school until 4:30 to help with semi-formal preparations and when i got home i went for a jog.
but i will get back into the habit, since i can't ever keep a diary, this is the next-best thing. i had a diary once which i kept for a few months when i first started dating bren, and reading back, i'm so glad that i had it. i wrote down so many things that i would have forgotten otherwise and sometimes i read it and get butterflies. 


only a week until i see jodi picoult, and i should really finish the book that she's talking about (i started reading it today, i'm up to page 17) but i don't see that happening. i wish i wasn't a slow reader. 


also, this week was bren's first at tafe. i haven't seen him since last monday and i am just about going crazy. it's hard going from seeing somebody every single day, to not at all. i will see him tomorrow, and i know that i'm going to value time with him so much more, but i just need him sometimes; his hugs, his kind words, his kisses on my forehead. i've called him each night but it somehow doesn't measure up to having him in the flesh... i'm counting the hours until i see him. 

i hate saturday + everything in the world

tonight was so awful, i don't even know what happened. i just started hating everything and everyone, but i learnt that when you're pissed off, people are more likely to be nice to you. i actually enjoyed it.
i was full of rage all day actually - dad came into my room this morning and asked me if i wanted a new bed. while we were putting it in and moving my room around, he kept complaining about the mess. i was so angry, and i know it's ridiculous to be upset over that, but it's my room and if it's messy then that is my problem.
my room is clean now and i won't admit to dad how much i like it. it's so much nicer when i can actually walk around, even if it won't stay like that for long.


i had a nana nap before work and i think it made me feel crappier. i needed a powerade at work and right now i'm nearly dead so to even out the long post i had last night, i shall end this one here. happy saturday.

friday, believe it or not + pink lemonade

this morning when i woke up, the today show was on so i sat down and watched it for a while. they were showing close-up photos of people. that's fine. except they blurred the faces. in close up photos, the entire face was blurred. why on earth would they even bother showing the photos? it frustrates me so much. find something else to show.

so today i went to the coast with amy and her boyfriend, marcus. i took my book for the trip down, the same book that i finally got back from her after leaving it in her car, only to not read it at all (they are fun to talk to) and to once more, leave it in her car. what an idiot.
i went to my first irish pub for lunch and amy bought me a pink lemonade, only for the girl to realise that they were out of lemonade. water is good too. amy cleaned out my wallet while we were waiting for our meals - a job i hate. so many receipts.

anyway, we decided to go to ripley's believe it or not. it was absolutely brilliant. i loved reading all of the interesting things and seeing unusual things - like a replica of the last supper.. made entirely out of toast, burnt in all the right places:

sorry for the awful phone quality

amy also took some nice photos of us/myself.

after ripley's we got ice cream. it was sort of the best ice cream i have ever tasted and there were unlimited test-tastes (even though after the third i felt bad for asking and just made up my mind). unlimited taste-testing is the most amazing thing ever invented.

during dinner tonight, the door opened slightly and the curtain started blowing. i immediately thought of the worst-case scenarios - a burglar was first to mind? but luckily, it was just our dog, cosmo. if anybody tries to come into the yard while we're out, he'll go berserk, turn into the hulk basically. but as soon as someone in the neighbourhood lets off a firework, he's straight inside, cowering with his tail between his legs. anyway, mum was nice enough to let him stay inside. 

book happy thursday + june/july issues

"you can't buy happiness, but you can buy books and that's kind of the same thing." 
extreme happiness was bought to me today in the form of jodi picoult's new book from my favourite bookshop owner! (thank you a billion miss kylie) - she got them in just today and i'm the first to have one. i'm halfway through another of her books - nineteen minutes - so i have that and this to finish before i see her on the 19th of this month. jodi picoult is probably my favourite author as well as my inspiration. i would love to be a successful author like her. 

there are only a few days of holidays left and today my sister, amy called. when i told her that i didn't have plans for tomorrow, she told me she would take me to the gold coast. to go bungee jumping. i had to ask her a few times whether she was actually being serious - and she was - but the plan was ruined as soon as i asked mum, no surprise there. our plans to go ice skating at the lipton tea ice festival were also ruined when i did some research to discover that it finished on sunday. so we're still not entirely sure what we're doing but we'll work it out tomorrow - yay for not having another lazy day like today (sims, sims, sims).

so i hired a book from the local library sometime last year and i never returned it (although to be fair, i don't even remember hiring it out..) and when i went to hire a few weeks ago, i was told i had to replace it or pay for it (then i vaguely remembered persistent letters from them, reminding me). i was given until the end of june to find a copy of the book, which i did, the only problem is that i haven't actually gone down to give it to them and it is now the fifth of july. i am so bad at this.
that reminds me, i hate june and july. they are such ridiculously confusing months to put beside eachother, ugh. just me? probably. 

bookshop wednesday + banana smoothies

today i woke up unreasonably early, for two reasons; i was planning to hang out with marishka, and i wanted to play sims. yes, i woke up early to play sims. the addiction is taking over me once again.
a long time ago when i had absolutely no life whatsoever (literally, i don't even think i had friends), i used to play sims all day. you know your obsession is unhealthy when the windows update comes up to restart your computer and you have to press 'postpone for four hours' more than once. yes, it happened. multiple times.
after going down town (where i bought bananas and yoghurt), i made a banana smoothie - it was absolutely amazing. i used to always always make banana smoothies, sometimes even add a little bit of kiwifruit. from now on i shall always have banana smoothies because they make me happy.

anyway, around midday (the time i should have been waking up), i went down to the bookshop to help the lovely kylie with pricing books. we worked through a massive pile of books that took us a good two or three hours (though admittedly we got distracted a few times). it's actually a lot more fun than it sounds. in fact, we came across a  second hand book that had a cute little note in it -

obviously muma didn't like the book. 

tuesday pizza inventions + sims cheats

so working at pizza palace has it's advantages.
chocolate on pizza? we did it. that's right - there was a stuff up vege pizza and a brilliant idea and next thing you know i'm eating chocolate vege! who knows - we may even  suggest it goes on the menu. you'd be surprised, it isn't as disgusting as it sounds. while eating it, one would even go as far as saying that it tasted good. and then comes the after taste. the after taste that only a mouthful of straight chocolate sauce could fix. yes.
yesterday in the city bren and i were craving pizza, so we went into enemy territory - another pizza shop. i felt guilty just looking at the menu, and i knew it wouldn't be as good as usual because i'd have to pay full price for it (i love staff discount). anyway, we decided that it was too expensive for the ridiculously small pizzas that they make and continued on our journey.


i can't think of anything to talk about, since i had a lazy day. literally - i woke up at midday. no one was home so i wandered around the house for a while, checked the pantry a few times in case good food had appeared suddenly, got back into bed before deciding that was pointless and then played sims. my sims game is so ridiculous. my sim had triplets, and then twins. do you know how difficult it is to keep up with seven sims? probably not. but cheats are glorious things.

monday travel + pirate bird

today was absolutely crazy. an early morning following a very late night (never a good start to the day) and to get to the bus stop on time i sacrificed getting a jacket or shoes that went with my skirt. so i was freezing, and looked like an idiot. luckily bren's sister, candice is the same size shoe as me (and she's super nice).
so i got on the first bus at 7:54 this morning and got off of the last one around 7:10 tonight, with seven million buses and trains in the middle. bren and i were trialling his bus and train routes around the city. and of course i messed up our entire day. sort of.
see, the buses around here stop at every stop on their routes. and they're very easy routes to follow. but in the city, you press a 'stop' button before where you need to get off, and you have to hail the bus driver unless it's a station. i was under the impression that on this particular bus, we were getting off at the first stop and i got really excited about pushing the 'stop' button. i asked bren if i could push it and he said yes. of course he didn't realise i was going to push it straight away. so we had absolutely no idea where we were, we were ages from where we were meant to be, and we were scared the bus driver would eat us for pushing the button just for fun (well i was scared of that, anyway).
bren tried to be very positive about the entire situation, that it'd be fun walking and whatever - i was wearing a broken shoe that hurt to walk in and the most uncomfortable pants you can imagine. so i got really grumpy! it turned out to be a really good walk, it took a ridiculous amount of time and i fell in love with all of the pretty houses. when we finally got to where we were meant to get off of the bus (if i hadn't been an idiot), we still had another half an hour if not more of walking ahead of us.
we started our journey home at around 3:30-4 (as soon as we got to the train station and had something to eat) and got slightly stressed about train timetables.
the bus home was freezing and bren wrapped himself around me to keep me warm. i've never been on a bus of a night time and there were these dim blue lights running up the isle and all i could see out of the windows were blurs of streetlights.


anyway, my late night last night was due to a sleepover at marishka's. we decided on a scary movie night (getting through three) and we started watching texas chainsaw massacre. i was turned off of it within the first ten minutes - there was a creepy guy whistling. i hate when people whistle. happy whistling, sad whistling, if you whistle i will assume you're a serial killer. needless to say, we stopped watching that pretty quickly and i'm glad we did, even if it makes us sooks.
we watched a movie called '30 days of night' which was absolutely 100% the worst attempt at a horror movie i have ever seen in my life. after five minutes of the movie you know how the rest of it is going to go. in the first five minutes (don't take my word on the five minutes thing, i'm prone to exaggeration) you know that there are vampires killing everyone. after fifteen minutes most of the town is dead and you think 'where can this movie even go from here?' - it proceeds with a group of survivors, perhaps the most idiotic survivors in any movie i've ever seen, who insist on running from place to place in the abandoned town despite a group of maniac vampires. then they all sacrifice themselves to save the others. ugh, right. so i proceeded to sing inappropriate songs when something dumb happened.


i know this post has been insanely long and boring, but the other night at a family party i discovered that i have another (second, but it counts) cousin my age. that makes a grand total of two. it's insane, i didn't even know i had all of these relations and i meet new ones all the time. i swear my parents just like messing with me.
his name is jack and his brother's name is jim. naturally i had no idea which was which and didn't want to awkwardly ask after we'd started talking, so i just waited for someone to say his name. he looks like harry styles, no joke.
they have a parrot which they tell me can talk but i didn't hear it so i was disappointed. it chewed my necklace and broke it, and then proceeded to chew.. everything.. but i felt like a pirate whilst it was on my shoulder.

potato saturday + marshmallows

the other night i was working with a sort-of boss rather than just a manager, so i made sure i was wearing entirely correct uniform and whatnot. obviously one of the first things he told me was that my name badge was on the wrong side. i wanted to tell him he was lucky i was even WEARING a name  badge but i decided i would like to keep my job for now. the reason i stopped wearing my name badge is that it's so weird when people i don't know - complete strangers - say my name. it's creepy, actually. really, really creepy. the same thing happened at my last job - i stopped wearing my name badge because people would say 'thanks, jess' and leave me thinking, 'who the hell was that?' and feeling that moment of panic. even if i can clearly see somebody's name thanks to a badge, i don't say their name. it's weird, don't do it. 


on thursday, cate's last day, we bought a lighter and marshmallows and sat in the park, attempting to roast marshmallows on sticks. it was fairly unsuccessful due to the wind. tonight at my sister's birthday barbecue, we had a fire (easier to use than a lighter) and marshmallows. i like my marshmallows absolutely black and bubbling on the outside so that on the inside they are goo.

also on thursday we found these ridiculous 'self heating' cans of hot chocolate and mocha and bought them to test them out. sure enough, you press a button, shake the cans like crazy and they heat up. sounds insanely unhealthy and reminds me of the time i found 'instant mashed potato' which was powder that you just added water to to create mashed potato.. mash your own potato and heat your own chocolate people.

friday flight + socklessness

cate officially left australia today. i had a sick feeling in my stomach all day and even researched her flight to make sure it was still on track without delays. she has a stopover in singapore and it makes me a bit nervous finding out from the website that there are thunderstorms in singapore. cate also told me she would message me when she arrived there, and no word! but the website tells me that she is safe, so touch wood.


today bren tickled me to the point where i was on the ground, nearly crying. i narrowly escaped hiccups! he proved how much he loves me this afternoon when i realised i hadn't packed socks for work (i went straight from the bookshop to work). he sacrificed his socks for me and while that may sound disgusting, it was actually really good because not wearing socks with my work shoes is even worse! kylie offered me her socks too, but i would have felt bad stealing hers.
from work i received a monstrous burn from boiling hot pans and we are running low on aloe vera, go figure. 


i have just had to replace a book from the library that i apparently lost. to be honest i don't remember hiring the book at all! the library wanted to charge me $32 to replace a crappy old book, or i could find a band new copy of the book myself for cheaper. this is where having connections comes in handy; since bren's mum (kylie) owns a bookshop, we could find it for cheap.
ugh, i have books that are due back at the library soon and i haven't started them. i'm trying to finish nineteen minutes by jodi picoult but i am always distracted by the computer. the computer is the devil.

nothing thursday + proston

the first place that i am going on a roadtrip to when i have my p's is proston. never heard of it you say? i didn't expect you to have. proston is a tiny little town out whoop whoop and the only reason you'd ever go there would be that you're staying at the nearby dam and you need some fresh eggs. lake boondooma is a fairly popular dam and is probably the only reason that proston can survive. from memory, it has a supermarket, pub, warehouse, newsagents, post office and a few other things. so it's not exactly tiny, but it's still in the middle of nowhere.
a few months back, dad and i drove into proston from lake boondooma for some groceries and to use the pay phone. we walked past two elderly men sitting outside of the supermarket talking. they gave us odd looks as we walked past and when dad asked the register lady in the shop about phone reception, she laughed at him. obviously out of the question. but i was actually fine with going a few days without my mobile, it was relaxing.
anyway, proston really stirred the creative section in my mind and i decided to locate a story of mine there. words do not express how badly i want to go back. there was an abandoned butter factory, a laundromat, closed and for sale and a butchers shop (also closed and for sale). so picturesque and i think i could write books upon books whilst sitting on the same seat as the elderly men.
looking back on the photos that i do have, i am kicking myself for not taking more. the ones that i do have, i adore. i miss proston.

ps. the photos are awfully edited, it's currently too cold to venture into my room for photoshop. 

'make yours a butter home' abandoned butter factory

rainy wednesday + the land before time

the weather was against us today. cate, caitlin and i have been planning a trip to the coast for a long time now and this trip had to be cancelled last minute (and by last minute, i mean 8:30 this morning). many thanks to the ridiculous amount of rain. the backup plan, a trip to toowoomba) was also cancelled because our driver was too sick to take us. my brother was kind enough to drive us to a nearby shopping centre for a little while but wanted to get home early.
i cannot wait until i have my licence. i won't have to rely on people and pay insane amounts of money for my brother to taxi me around. also, i will be able to explore all of the places i have ever itched to visit. 
in the toy isle at target today, we found interactive dinosaur toys. so you press the buttons on the individual dinosaurs, and they have conversations and sing together. at one point i had about five or six dinosaurs singing together. it makes me wish that i could be a kid living nowadays, they have the best toys. 
i can remember when i was younger, we had a show called 'the land before time', or maybe they were a series of movies. either way, i remember always going to a friends house and watching them with her because we didn't own them.

tonight for dinner we had shepherds pie, except mum must have felt especially lazy (considering it was only for her and i) since it was a frozen meal. those sneaky people hid peas in the pie! i hate peas. how dare they.

àèòù tuesday + gremlin cats

tonight i am staying at the lovely italian (cate)'s host family's home. her host mother loves cats. but not just cute, fluffy cats. no, it's not like that at all. she loves UGLY cats. they are so ugly that they literally look like gremlins. they are extremely fluffy and look like walking footmats. cate also tells me that they smell awful.


i'm currently typing on cate's computer as well. it is an italian mac, and it is really confusing because nothing is where it is supposed to be on the keyboard. for example, where the apostrophe is meant to be, is this: à. and since everything is in italian, i have no spellcheck and hardly any punctuation (because i can't find it), so please forgive me. 


for a lot of reasons, we have decided to sell my F100. in all honesty, i don't trust the man who is buying it. why? because he has a ponytail and freaking drives a white van WITH NO WINDOWS. it doesn't seem right..  but today, i got to drive my beast for the first and last time. it was amazing! if only i could keep it.

these italian things keep popping up in my sentences! i'll be typing and then suddenly, òèà happens. this laptop is so difficult!

taco monday + 'late night strawberries'

tonight at 8:54 i ran into iga to buy strawberries. it was quite a frightening experience. there was more staff than customers and the few customers who were there looked very shady. a lot of lights were off in their lead up to closing and i felt like i was in a horror movie walking up the fruit and veg isle. it wasn't even worth it considering the strawberries are only half ripe.

it was taco night at bren's house and we discovered how great of a cook his mum is. she misread the instructions on the pack of soft taco shells, thinking that they said "microwave for 5 minutes." really it said "microwave a pack of 5 for 15 seconds" - they were extremely burnt! and they stank. lucky for her i forgive easily. i joke - the meal was brilliant (we cooked new shells).

after dinner we watched masterchef. i don't watch tv often - my parents are constantly watching movies - so i don't get to see ads. but there were at least two or three ads for 'new series' of tv shows. how many tv shows can there be? especially singing shows. there's not enough good singers for the amount of singing shows there are. 

saturday sausages! + party plans

so tonight there will be a party at my house - a going away party for cate. i've never actually had a party so i don't know what i should do, what to buy. and the fact that i'm not exactly a 'party person' (i don't get invited) doesn't help. we're planning to sleep in tents in my backyard but it's going to be absolutely freezing tonight and tomorrow. any plans of lighting a fire are about to go out the window thanks to the wind that has started up and it even looks slightly possible that there will be rain. wish me luck though.


while down town buying presents, there was a sausage sizzle outside of the supermarket. i love sausage sizzles. i don't just like them, i love them. i bought two sausages and i don't care who judges me for it. i wish there were sausage sizzles outside of my house 24/7 like at bunnings. i should move to bunnings. pitch a tent in the parking lot or something.

finally friday + self introductions

today was a pretty average day. not in an average way, but in a really-positive-really-negative kind of way. i got my math assignment results back after waiting an entire term due to a so-and-so teacher. i got an A! pretty impressive since i started the assignment a day or two before it was due, and finished it in the lesson that it was meant to be handed in.
in film i found out why you should ALWAYS wear waterproof make up, because the one day that you don't is guaranteed to be the one day you need it!
and in english, i found out that i completely ruined my good run in english, by misinterpreting the actual task. so after two A-'s, i dragged my mark down to a B+ by getting a B on the exam. very negative since it was a simple mistake, and not entirely my fault. but still so excited with these good marks.


enough boring school talk though. i got home to my dad in such a good mood, with a neighbour over watching the football. ben is the neighbour, who i have only ever seen from a distance, so to walk into my living room after finishing work to a stranger for the most part was a bit confusing. but i found out that i am awful at self introductions. i just said my name. not anything polite like, "hi, i'm jessica. nice to meet you." no, i just looked at him and said "jessica." i'm great at socialising apparently.


the good news is that i am now on holidays and sleeping in is mandatory from here on in.

tired thursday + sock mystery

today i feel like i'm going to keel over and die at any moment. i'm more tired than yesterday and snoozed my alarm about three times this morning.. but mum solved the case of the disappearing socks. turns out everyday for the past week or so i've worn socks to bed and during the night kicked them off. at least i got new socks out of the situation - i love new socks. i love sliding around in the kitchen in them.

in english today there were only four students there since it was the second last day of term. it was so quiet, that we could hear the clock ticking at the back of the room. and of course someone had to point it out so that i couldn't. stop. noticing.
tomorrow will be a sad day - it will be cate (italian exchange student/one of my best friends) and bren's last day at school. cate is going home and bren is leaving for tafe. and i'll probably be the only person in english with the loudest clock i've ever encountered.

also an update on my war with the free bars campaign; mum and i each bought a chocolate tonight and neither won. i'm much too determined to win this thing. 

wednesday hiccups + free bars

waking up today was especially hard. after saying goodnight to mum last night i stayed up late writing bren a letter with everything on my mind. lately there seems to be so many things that i'm thinking but can't put into words, and even if the words are there, won't i be bothering people by voicing them? everybody has their own problems and mine are just more for them to worry about. 

snickers and mars bars have started their 'free bar's' campaign where if inside the wrapper it's written 'you've won,' etc., you get an instant free bar. last time this happened, i was working somewhere that sold these chocolates and according to the company '1 in 6 wins instantly'. either i can verify that this is utter bullshit or i have absolutely no luck. i would literally have bought over twenty chocolate bars (i'd buy one or two each shift, sometimes more) and so many to the point that i didn't eat them, i gave them to other staff members because i was so determined to win. as soon as i opened that winning wrapper i didn't buy another for months.
kudos, mars bars and snickers for your awfully brilliant advertising idea.
this afternoon i bought a mars bar and obviously no such luck. tonight though, my sister, her boyfriend and i each bought two. amy had one that was a winner - 1 in 6. i can't even eat them and i can tell this is going to be so painful until i win.
also, a little bit of twisting the knife, one time at dreamworld i bought a chocolate bar from a vending machine. it was a 'free bars' bar, and it was a winner. the only problem was that it had expired a month beforehand.

this afternoon, bren made me laugh until i had a severe case of the hiccups. he then proceeded to tickle me to ensure that the hiccups didn't go away. just quietly, its a bit fun having hiccups. 

tuesday evening talks + wanderlust

today my big sister amy arrived home from seven weeks in new zealand. she doesn't live at home any more and i only get to see her every so often, but having her in another country meant there wasn't any way to visit her at all, apart from pretend visiting via skype. the only other time she's been overseas was a short holiday in fiji and having her gone so long (she was planning on staying for three-six months) was heartbreaking for my parents. i'd show them all of the pictures she'd upload and we'd occasionally call her. the first time dad saw her on skype (he's not very good with technology and didn't understand entirely), he started crying so much that he had to hand back my laptop.
amy is three, nearly four, years older than me and loves travelling already at age nineteen. i hope that when i'm her age, i have the money and confidence to travel abroad. i ache to travel and get much too excited over travel magazines. i'm the worst at geography though and have no idea where most countries are. i love making lists of where i want to go and what landmarks i want to see. my dream is to travel and i feel as though i'll be disappointed in myself if i never get or take the opportunity to. only a year and a half left of school before i'm free.

this afternoon i visited one of my best friends, marishka, who lives a street and a house away from me. despite the closeness, it's rare these days for us to see each other often. we stayed out til dinner time when it was dark and i was shivering on her driveway in my thin school uniform and the winter weather seemed to breeze straight through me. i saw the stars come out one by one and we talked and talked as the high beams of passing car headlights flooded our faces. 

monday, payday + pedestrian crossings

today is monday meaning payday. probably my favourite day of the week, followed closely by friday. the feeling of having money doesn't last long though, because i buy ridiculous things, like excessive amounts of makeup and energy drinks.


i have a friend who, whenever we cross at a pedestrian crossing, will thank the car waiting for us. she knows they can't hear her yet she will still add a little comment, "thank you, you are so kind." she's italian and has the most beautiful personality, along with enough patience to teach me certain phrases in italian. my favourite is 'io voglio cinque pizze!' meaning 'i want five pizzas.' she's promised to cook me pizzas - the italian way.

lazy sunday + crumpets

it's 4:06 of a sunday afternoon and i am in pyjama pants and bottoms that don't match, not because i'm going to bed early but because i've had a lazy day.
due to a severe lack of food in the house, i settled for crumpets. whenever mum cooks me crumpets, she does them in the grill because the brand she buys are too thick for the toaster. considering the difference in effort between the two ways, and since mum was sleeping, i opted to forcefully pushing the crumpets into the toaster. the main problem with this is that the top of the crumpet stuck out meaning that it didn't cook, and the second problem (which i will admit is my fault) is that i turned the cooking time down so that the edges wouldn't burn (or cook, at all, as i discovered). since they had to be shoved into the toaster, they didn't pop up when they were ready. i used a knife (after unplugging from the wall) and ended up with warmed up, uncooked, crumpets.