My update - spammers leave me alone!

Have done a Home and Away update below. But now its time for my own.

Yesterday was Australia day and me and Debra decided to take in some Australian culture and go to a fair. We headed down to see what they had in store for us.

There was dog trialing, sprinting, bull riding (one bull in particular was quite feisty and gave us quite a fright when Debra tried to take a picture), pig racing (mine and Debra’s came last and second to last), various other things and Camel riding. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity and decided to wait in line. After half an hour in the sweltering temperature we finally got our ride and what an experience. Camels are somewhat taller than horses and higher from the ground. Gave us quite a shock when they got up and down, almost felt like I was falling off and defiantly didn’t want to do that. The guy who was operating the camel tours say they do an 18 day trek across the dessert, thanks but no thanks. Don’t think that is really me.

After being in the heat for the morning we decided to head to the theatre. We ended up seeing

Walk the Line with Joaquin (??) Phoenix and Reece Witherspoon.
The movie was about the life of Johnny Cash and June Carter. I thought this movie was great. We didn’t recognize many of the songs but enjoyed it the same. I would definitely recommend it and give it 4/5.

Another pastime we have decided to take up in Australia is French lessons. I found a number for a private French/German tutor and we began our first lesson on Monday night. Before we could even start learning French the tutor made us learn/reminded us of English grammar. I have never been very good at spelling and grammar and neither is Debra. After we established what was a noun, verb and adjective, we finally moved onto French words.

Up until this morning I was real excited about ice skating. We had decided that if we wanted to go further with our ice skating dream, we would need to invest in our own pair of iceskates. So after some investigation, we measured our feet, filled out the forms, took photos and sent them away asap so we could have them by Tuesday, for our next lesson. As is a constant rule practically in Australia, which I am quite frankly starting to get pissy about. Debra can get her skates but I can’t. Basically they have hers in size but for mine they need to send away to get them which is going to cost me an extra $75.00 plus take 4 to 6 weeks. I was most upset this morning, but have since cheered up (thanks mum, aren’t mums great like that) and will look into another place to see if I can get them. But it’s not fair Debra will have her new white shiny skates and I will have to keep using the crappy rentals!

Anyway I am hungry and its time for home.

Have a good weekend and sign my guestbook, haven’t had a message in a while and will give me more motivation to update more regularly.


Toni

Home and Away update

First I thought I would start my update with a Home and Away update

The cyclone tore through the town and many of the residents of Summary Bay were in its path.

Kim
Kim was last seen going into a room to take some drugs. Then the next we saw of him was him being dumped outside the hospital in the storm unconscious. Will he survive? Well luckily the new doctor, Rachel Armstrong, came to the rescue. It was touch and go there for a while but she managed to find out what he took, then suddenly he went into cardiac arrest but the power went out. Oh no. But luckily he made it and is trying to change his ways. In fact he is going to counseling with, Dr Rachel Armstrong. Who has taken quite a liking to Kim.

Leah and Dan
Well Leah kicked Dan out. During the cyclone, Dudley, the guy that Dan owed money to for gambling and who he put in jail, escaped and was holding Leah hostage. After about two hours of hostage, Leah is saved by Dan’s brother Peter Baker. Who is coming back to the show as a regular. Leah has also found out she is pregnant but with her marriage practically over, what will she do. Peter still harbors his feelings for Leah and they share a kiss!

Tasha and Robbie
Well Tasha is still at the “farm” with the believers. Robbie goes out to check on her during the storm, she is ok, but won’t go with him. Robbie is distraught and was standing by the river and someone pushes him. Will he survive? Well actually he did and he is fine and insists that someone pushed him but Tasha is being brainwashed by the believers and won’t see sense.

Tasha has told Robbie it’s over and gives back the ring. Poor Robbie. She then kisses, Jonah, one of the believers. He and Mumma Rose have some kind of plan in store for Tasha. What is it though?

Robbie gets a visit from a girl called Rebecca, I think. She used to be a believer ages ago and went to court but decided to drop the case. She heard about Tasha and decided to come and talk to Robbie but then she mysteriously changes her mind, or does she; did one of the believers kill her?

Sally and Flynn
After collapsing at Hayley and Scotts leaving party, Flynn decided it was time. He and Sally are arguing over whether he should take the morphine and Cassie walks in and is most upset and storms out in the cyclone. As the cyclone worsens Cassie is still out there. Rick finds Cassie in a Caravan. I didn’t really see this episode, but Sally gets an electric shock from one of the caravans. But then power lines fall on Cassie and Ricks caravan. But Flynn comes to the rescue with his rubber gloves, rain coast and gumboots and saves them all, after a few shocks himself (personally I am hoping the shocks will have cured his cancer, but doubt it). Flynn decides not to take the morphine.

Morag, Amanda and Josh
Amanda ended up marrying Graham.

Amanda needs money to fund project 56 and asked conned Graham for some money to put together a drama school. He agreed.

Morag is very close to solving out what project 56 is. She downloads something from Josh’s computer but Josh and Amanda find out and attack Morag. She ends up in hospital but can’t prove they attack her. Everyone thinks she has gone nuts with her story about “project 56”. Amanda and Josh ending up getting it on.

I think that is about all the juicy goss that has gone on over the last couple of weeks.

Update

I haven't updated for a while, cause I haven't really done anything big and exciting, but have a few bits and pieces to share.

First up is the most exciting. After about two months or so learning ice skating, I achieved my goal on Tuesday night. All I really wanted to achieve out of the class was to skate backwards and now I can finally do it. And its just so easy. The teacher was like just walk like this with your legs like this and then suddenly we were moving backwards. It was amazing and so easy. We are so excited we plan to go back sometime this week to make sure we can still do it before the lesson on Tuesday. We are even considering buying some boots! Winter Olympics her we come !!

Over the past couple of weeks we have been spending most weekends at the movie theatre. We have $9.00 passes and its a nice cool place to lax out and escape the heat. Most days here at the moment range between 26 - 34 degrees.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Debra reluctantly came and watched this one with me. I am a Harry Potter fan and have read all the books. Unfortunately, this movie was too different from the books for me and I didn't really like it that much. I would give it 2.5/5.

Just Like Heaven.
I loved this movie. I like Reese Witherspoon as an actress so that got me hooked on going in the first place. But its a nice movie and has laugh out loud bits. Mark Ruffalo is pretty funny, but a bit greek for us (if you know what I mean :) ). 4/5

Rumour Has It.
This movie has Jennifer Aniston and Mark Ruffalo in it. It also has laugh out loud scenes, in fact me and Debra were laughing so loud at one point I am sure people were looking at us. Could wait until DVD to watch it though. 3/5.

The next on the list are Walk the Line and The Family Stone, will keep you posted.

I have finally got the picture from the christmas party.

Me, Laura, Orlena, Tara, Sian and Karen

Back to work

The guests are all gone and life has got back to normal. Unfortunatley, due to the fact I have only been at my job for two months and don't have any leave, I had to come back to work on the 4th by myself! The office is nice and quiet and its a good chance for me to catch up on work and edit my blog.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year and look forward to hearing all about it.

Toni

New Years

For New Years we all decided to go on a plan b tour. Debra and myself had done one before and it was quite good and Richard said that he and Zac did one last year. So at 4.30 on New Years eve all dressed up we got onto the bus and headed for Surfers Paradise. The tour started at 5pm and the first stop was the Hard Rock Cafe.

We ended up going to only four bars, due to high cover charges here (on a normal weekend some cover charges are $10.00 but apparently on New Years they are like $30.00!). After Hard Rock we went to the Bedroom bar (which apparently actually has beds in it, Debra informed me). There we discovered that we were surrounded in Kiwi's as the majority of the group was from New Zealand.

We then headed for Shooters were we got free pizza and Toni and Lisa meet some "foreign boys" who knew how to dance! We then proceeded to the Shack for a quick drink and dance before heading to the beach for the countdown. I call tell you I have never seen so many people on one beach before. There were people for miles in every which direction you looked. At 12 they had the fireworks (they were quite lame compared to the ones in Gisborne) and then proceeded to the bus stop to wait for a bus.

Me, Debra and Dave ended up missing the bus as it was too packed but Toni and Lisa didn't. They also didn't have keys and we weren't shore if they actually knew the way home. The bus line was growing bigger so we decided to walk home. Whose dumb bloody idea was that! About an hour and a half later (after stopping to get a pie and seeing the temperature was 23 degrees) we finally got home to three people sitting on the grass and very sore feet. New Year's was pretty average, don't think I would do a tour again. Gisborne is definetly the place and the place I have had the most fun.

Lisa and Toni

On the morning of 30 January, Debra got up at some ungodly hour and went to pick up Toni and Lisa from the Gold Coast Airport.

We decided to go to Dreamworld that day because Debra could get 4 friends into Dreamworld for half price because we are action card holders and her birthday is in December. Once we had entered Dreamworld I instantly decided it was a bad idea. The park was packed, its was hot, there we heaps of kids and we had to wait about an hour plus for most of the rides. I don't think I have waited more than 15 minutes (excluding screamworld) for a ride. After we got onto the giant drop. I decided to go on a nice relaxing boat ride whilst Debra, Toni and Lisa went on the rapid ride.

We also saw a celebrity, well not really a big one, New Zealander's might not know yet. But we swear we saw Anne from the latest series of Australian Idol. I wanted to take a picture to prove it, but didn't think that really was appropriate. She is a kiwi living here, we really wanted her to win.

Richard and Dave

The first of our guests arrived on the night of 27 December at the train station, only an hour late. As they thought they needed to change trains, from the pretty much express train from Brisbane to the Gold Coast, therefore had to wait for the next train to come. But they eventually made it.

The next day we all decided to head for the beach. We went down to Surfers Paradise and hung out there. Debra was in charge of sunblocking everyones back and you were in charge of sunblocking the rest of yourself. Me and Debra didn't get burnt. But check out typical "man" sunblocking. Just a smooch on the front and she'll be right!

During the time they were here was also headed down to Surfer's to watch a beach cinema movie /documentary about surfing, one of the most borist movies I have ever seen. After the movie we came home, Debra went to work but Richard, Dave and myself cranked up the singstar and contiued to play into the wee hours (4am).


The next night we decided to head down the road to the broad water and have a bbq. We packed up our stuff and our 20 cent coins. We got the bbq area to find that the bbq's were free. How fantastic is that. That would never happen in New Zealand. So we cranked it up and had a lovely meal over looking the broadwater on a clear night. Something we will have to do with the next guests that arrive.

Christmas

After finally finishing work at 3pm on 23 December 2006 (we were supposed to finish at 12pm but had to schmooze with clients. I headed off home for a few days of rest, relaxation and Christmas before the guests arrived.

My first text message on Christmas morning was at 4.30 (cheers Alie), followed by Tania at 5.30 and then my mother. Now I don’t mind text message but 4.30 on Christmas morning. I had been so excited about Christmas that I had finally gotten to sleep at 12!

This Christmas was more exciting than other Christmas’ because for the first year since I have been a grown up. I didn’t know what my presents were going to be. My mum called and I ran in to wake Debra up and went through the process of opening gifts. I got heaps of cool things and most events got documented on the camera to show my family. Thanks to everyone who sent us presents and christmas cards. It made Christmas more bearable being away from home. After opening presents was over we got ready to go and have Christmas lunch.

Thinking lunch began at 11am we bowled down to Surfers RSL and went it to find out two disappointing things: 1. It actually started around 11.30 – 11.45 2. They didn’t have daiquiris. We decided to go and see Santa at the beach and hang around until it was time.

The food was really good but not that organised. It was a smorgasbord with crabs, mussels, salads, meats, etc. But that thing was there were about 100 people and only one place to get the meal therefore, if you weren’t lucky like us, and got up early you had to wait in line for about 30 minutes just to get your meal and the bar was understaffed so you had to wait about 15 minutes to get a drink. As I said fortunately for us we were quite close to the table and got in early but when dessert came around had to wait in the line to later find out for dessert you had to wait in a different line and that when people were getting tired of waiting and had finished there drink our table looked like a good place to dump empty glasses. So overall the food was pretty good and Debra polished off some Pavalova we didn’t eat as much as we would have liked because the line was to long and when we went down to the beach it was overcast and got advised to leave due to a storm that was on the way!

Anyways, still had a pretty good Christmas but still think home is the place to be especially when my sister sent me pictures of the food they had. It looked better than anything I could have had. Mum’s gravy is the best!

This is Katie and Me having a chat on Christmas day.