Home

We're in. Picked up the keys on Sunday and our landlord was running around the place trying to fix everything that had broken in the last couple of years, while finding more things to fix all the time. Not major stuff. I think the inventory included things like a leaky tap, a broken window winder, some cracks in the walls that needed filling and repainting and some blinds coming loose from the window frame. Oh, and the front screen door handle is broken, and it is locked shut. That one defeated even our handyman landlord, and a locksmith should be coming some time this week.

On the plus side, the carpet and blinds are only a year old, as is the programmable gas heater, it has gas cooking and the master bedroom is huge (fortunately for our king size bed).

I drove down to the house first thing Monday morning, and the removalist arrived a couple of hours later. There wasn't too much problem, only a large bookcase that used to be in Scott's shed wouldn't manoever around a corner in the hallway, so another room had to be found for it.

There came a point when the house was full, but there were still another 20 boxes or so to be unloaded. The removalist looked knowingly at me: "Moving from a bigger house to a smaller one?" Well, we don't have a huge garage to stash stuff in anymore. I'm glad I got rid of a lot of stuff. Wishing I got rid of more. "Stack it up in the backyard. Once I get some of these boxes empty, it'll all fit" I said, optimistically. Thank God it was fine weather.

And so it began, sucking up my stomach so I could fit down the hallway, I began finding boxes marked kitchen and unpacking them, in the hope of being able to boil a kettle some time that afternoon. I started around midday. Didn't find the kettle until 2.30. Empty boxes with only wads of packing paper left in them began filling our backyard. Made my way to the bedroom. Found bedding. I have my bed back! (At the apartment they pushed two single beds together and called it a double!)

At some point I decided I needed some music and my eyes lit upon a box with the word "stereo" on it. After unpacking about 50 obscure Asian ornaments and wooden puzzles, I found one speaker. Scott came home from work and started flatpacking the boxes which appeared to be growing at an alarming rate across the backyard. We made a carbonara for tea and sat in the backyard with a bottle of bubbly. mmm.

Yesterday more of the same. Our clothing came out of boxes and I was reminded how badly I need a new wardrobe. (The contents, not the furniture). Then the books- arrgh. Spent the afternoon lugging books back and forth between bookcases and tossing more boxes into the backyard, which kept getting blown around. Scott got home early and joined in the fun.

By 8.15pm we'd had enough. Walked around the corner to the takeaway to find it shut at 8pm. Jumped in the car and drove down to the next suburb and got our first feed of fish and chips here.

Anyway, it all fits. Just. I showed you, sceptical removalist man! The place looks nice, heaps of character now we have put our eccentric touch on it. Now I just have to do something with those Asian ornaments....

The countdown

Well, we are more than ready to leave this little apartment behind. The only thing I will miss is the airconditioning- and the proximity to Manuka shops and restaurants.

We are collecting the keys on Sunday and the removalist is coming Monday. Scott will be working, he is trying to organise a conference in Indonesia. At least, that's what he says, lately he just seems to be going to christmas parties during his lunch hour that take all afternoon. He came home very merry yesterday, having had a christmas lunch followed by about 20 minutes of work before "D.A.W.s" started. Canberra is the city of acronyms and this one, for the uninitiated, means drinks after work. It's a tough life.

The social life hasn't been bad lately, met quite a few new people. We're looking forward to hosting barbecues in our backyard again.

I've been working on my thesis, and going slightly batty. This week has been all about working out who the local gas, electricity, etc suppliers are and organising connections, as well as doing the change of address things that have to be done immediately. This actually means sitting on the floor beside the phone listening to classical music, while a voice interrupts intermittently to say "We apologise for the time it is taking to answer your call. If you would like to leave a message, and have one of our representatives call you back within 24 hours, please press 1 at the tone... or you can continue waiting". Eventually you give up, press 1 and leave your message. Then, 24 hours later, when they have failed to call you back, and you are beginning to worry that the gas won't be connected and you won't be able to do any cooking in your new house, you call them back and the whole process begins again. The thing that cracks me up is that the greeting message is something like "Welcome to Actew AGL, the service that can connect all your utilities with just one call!" Hmmmph. I only wanted them for their gas, anyway. The electricity, phone and internet services they provide are overpriced.

Apparently my cat has completely forgotten us and has now transferred her affections entirely to my mother. This is still not without the occasional hiccup, however. Apparently, the other night, mum was reading in bed with Pippa, the dog, curled up on her legs, when Coffee, the cat leapt up onto the bed, landing straight on the dog. After that, she continued her flight off the other side of the bed, while the dog nearly fell off the bed with surprise and shock, having been rudely awakened from her slumbers. Yep. It should be a fun christmas.

A tiny apartment and bad tv

We couldn't stand the apartment any more last night. It was a lovely warm evening so we walked down to Kingston, grabbed an outdoor table at a little Italian restaurant and ate some fantastic gourmet pizza. Tonight a friend is having a house warming bbq, so we are going to grab the cask and some beef steaks and sit in her backyard. We don't have all our stuff around us, let alone our circle of friends, so other than watching tv and playing games on the computer, there isn't a lot to do in the evenings. We bought books last weekend at a second hand bookstore, but we've already finished reading them. We are becoming strangely obsessive about "deal or no deal". Last night we watched it with the sound off and predicted what the host Andrew and the contestant would be saying at every stage of the game. Andrew: "The banker thinks you aren't going to be game to go any further..." Contestant "Well there's still a lot up there... What does the audience think? Well, I might just go one more...."

But for the best in trashy reality tv, a new series started late Thursday night. It was like watching a train crash. You can't look away. The premise of "The beauty and the geek" is to pair up half a dozen bimbos (all models and cheerleaders, with low IQs) with half a dozen geeks (socially inept and unattractive young men, with high IQs and prestigious jobs) and make them teach each other their skills, to perform in tests to avoid being eliminated. The guys, including "has never kissed a girl" and a guy who kept getting nose bleeds, had to learn to dance, and perform the dance on stage with their assigned "beauties". Then the girls had to answer questions based on the grade 5 curriculum. After watching them misspell tattoo and calendar, and say that to the East of West Virginia was Dakota (as opposed to Virginia), the clanger was the answer to the question "Who was the President during the American Civil War?" The response, I think was "Hoover", and when she was informed that it was actually Abraham Lincoln, she nodded sagely and said "oh yeah, D-Day".

We went and signed the lease on Tuesday night. Moving in 9 days time. We will have about 3 days to unpack and then we're going down to my Mum for christmas. In the new year we will drive back up and the cat will be freighted up to us. Can't bear the thought of 8 hours in the car with that monster. She will like that. She will get to travel by plane while we drive through the sweltering heat. It will be good, because she will have a big garden to come to, although she won't be able to call it entirely her own as there are two cats living in the apartment upstairs. That should be interesting...

For anyone who is interested, we are planning a house warming party for Australia Day weekend.

Woo hoo

We got it! We got it!

The lady who owns the apartment rang back at 4pm today and said the apartment's ours if we want it. We're very relieved. We have a home. We will probably move in just before christmas. That's so cool. We can move out of this shoebox. Scott is looking forward to having a whole backyard. Unfortunately for him, the garden shed is only big enough to fit a mower in.

Hitting the town

Hope you enjoyed Scott's little outburst. I certainly enjoyed having a night on the town last night and coming home not smelling of smoke and not having red, stinging, eyes. One of Scott's friends from work heard that his poor wife was stuck in an apartment with only Scott for company. So she invited me to go on a girls night out. We met in a very cool bar called Hippo that is in Civic (the city centre). Fantastic cocktails, mellow music and lots of low padded stools to sit around on. The girls were very nice and a lot of fun. Then we went to the much less classy "King O'Malleys" where a band was playing such hits as "oh what a night" and the 21 year old blokes were trying to pick up. According to my new female friends, there are no attractive blokes in Canberra, and they suggested that it was a wise move for me to have imported my own. We had a bit of a dance, which was fun... but no one goes off on a dance floor like Zosia!

This morning we went to see an apartment that we have been getting excited about all week. It is in the inner south in a nice suburb, close to where we will be working. When I spoke to the landlord over the phone earlier this week, he indicated that a cat would not pose a problem. It is across the road from a cricket oval and has a large leafy garden. It is a red brick duplex, and we were looking at the ground floor apartment. It was very us. Older style but clean and large. Plenty of light coming in, good heater and gas cooking. Now we have to wait...

Hubby's Comment Number 1

Hi, I'm the Hubby, Scott.

You have all followed wifey's exploits across three continents now and would have some idea of the influence she has on people's lives. In particular mine! I know it is my own fault because I did marry her, but I had no idea to what extent Laura would go to in encouraging me to quit smoking. A law comes into effect today in Canberra banning smoking in pubs, clubs and bars, basically anywhere I would like to go have a drink except for the backyard. Hell, I currently don't even have a backyard. I do have a front step which I share with the neighbouring apartment. Comments have been made by local businesses about fears of extending the bans to other areas, including education facilities, where I might go to hangout, not to study. If this situation gets out of hand, I expect the students of ANU to light up. If not smokes at least some text books.

That's my comment for today. It could be awhile before I comment again, it is a bit of a walk from NSW, at least 10 minutes.

Scott the Hubby