New Year

Now that Christmas and New Years is over and done with hopefully things can get back to some semblance of order and routine.
Not that I didn't have a good time during Christmas or anything but working two (retail) jobs sort of sucked all the fun out of it. I was looking forward to and dreading Christmas. On one hand it was going to be my first day off in a month (and it was CHRISTMAS) and on the other it meant the next day was Boxing Day which is pretty much the most dreaded day if you work in retail.

Anyway, we had a good day even though we were dead tired by the end of it. One of the highlights (comedy wise) was throwing Glen's 13 year old nephew into the pool because he was being cheeky and didn't think we'd actually do it haha

On the 27th we went to the MCG to watch day 2 of the Ashes in Melbourne (The Ashes is a cricket game between Australia and England). Australia did pretty bad but it was still fun - and it was my first time going to the cricket.

We had a pretty low-key New Years. We went to a BBQ at one of Glen's co-worker's and then came home around 11:30 and watched the fireworks on TV then went to bed. I know the whole point of going somewhere on New Years is to actually still be out at midnight but they were all driving 45 minutes down the road to the beach and we didn't want to be out driving that late.
It was also incredibly hot yesterday (+41) so that pretty much sucked the life out of me and I was asleep right after the fireworks finished.

It was pretty warm again today so we decided to take a drive down to the beach where it was MUCH cooler than it was in the city. We still managed to take a dip in the water though! (I told Glen we need to make 2011 the year of getting to the beach!).

Lets hope we all have a great 2011!!

Temperature: +16C
Sunrise: 6:01am
Sunset: 8:45pm

Finals Fever

September is footy finals month and if your team happens to be one of the lucky ones to make it, it's a pretty exciting time.
Like I've mentioned before, pretty much everyone has a team they barrack for (even if they aren't major fans of the sport).

Our team (The Bulldogs) made it into the finals again this year so we went to the September 5th game (first game of the finals) against Collingwood where we unfortunately lost. Luckily we finished in the top 4 this year, so we have two chances. If you lose the first week, you can come back in the second week to play another game (it's an elimination game from then on).

Western Bulldogs vs Collingwood Sept. 5th 2010
66,545 people in attendance

We also went to the September 11th semi-final game against Sydney where we won!!

Western Bulldogs vs Sydney Swans Sept. 11th, 2010 39,596 people in attendance

There's a very interesting dynamic between supporters and certain team's supporters have certain reputations (I won't go too much into this because it's of course all subjective but if you ask people, they'll have an opinion about which supporters are considered the worst/most intimidating). When you're at a game with 66,000 people and your team is losing (especially if you're playing Collingwood), it's a pretty lonely place. Even yesterday at the Sydney game, when they were winning they were LOUD and it didn't sound like there were a lot of Bulldogs supporters there at all\.

The atmosphere at these finals games is incredible. This is my first time going to finals games (we went to the pre-season NAB cup final earlier in the year which was awesome too but this is even crazier) and you can definitely tell that there's something different about these games. Every time we go to a big game I'm amazed at how many people are there, hearing the roar of the crowd from the other side of the grounds. Incredible. The fact that 66 thousand people all turn up to watch something (there's usually 25 thousand plus at regular season games -- and there's more than one game on per week!) amazes me.

The opening bounce
Western Bulldogs vs Sydney Swans Sept. 11th, 2010

Last night was a real nail-biter so if we play well next week, I'm sure there will be a lot of excitement!


Temperature: +13C
Sunrise: 6:26am
Sunset: 6:08pm

I don't think they got the memo...

As seen at the top of my e-mail today (click to enlarge):

This kind of cracks me up and makes me a little homesick. It's like yahoo is telling me to go home! haha
It's kind of funny that ad showed up because at work on Thursday, some people were printing photos of their trip to Victoria (BC). It was weird to see because a lot of their pictures were of places we either visited/specifically took photos of/specifically noticed (like the giant Commonwealth Games plaque at the Inner Harbour) or they were places I visited/walked past when I lived there. (it's not like I flicked through their photos but if you're standing at the machine when they come out, you happen to see them).

I've managed to knit HALF a row on my sweater since I posted. I'm planning to do a bit more today since I don't have much else to do at the moment (I COULD do the dishes but I'll leave that for a while longer).

Here's another photo of our livingroom now that the TV is in place and there's not so much stuff all over.

It's weird to have so much space. Our livingroom back home was SO cramped. We had Glen's youngest nephew over for a few hours yesterday and we pushed the coffee table up against the bookshelves so he could run around. He had a lot of fun bouncing a rubber ball around the room (and was surprisingly uninterested in all the colourful things on the shelves).

We went to the footy with work last weekend. I had a lot of fun. The atmosphere was CRAZY. There were 71,000 people there (yes, really) and it was SO loud. It's by far the biggest (attendance wise) game I've ever been to.

I don't really follow either of the two teams that we went to see so I got to spend more time people watching - and let me tell you, there were some real characters out there.

There was one guy (pictured above in the striped toque) that was SO into the game and spent a lot of the match on his feet yelling & screaming at the players/umpires. At one point he didn't think he was being heard so he ran down to the front of the boards (when I took the picture) and started yelling from there. haha he was pretty intense. We also had the interesting experience of sitting behind the goals so we had to watch out when the teams kicked the ball (and when people in the crowd thew the ball back).
I went to a Bulldogs game the next day but didn't get any pictures because the bag checker/security woman told me that they'd take my camera away if I had it out... booo... It's not like I even had my (crappy in low light) zoom lens on. I had my 50mm lens which is no better than I regular lens - it doesn't even have zoom. I tried to explain this to the woman but didn't want to push my luck. Apparently only point and shoot cameras are allowed even though my point and shoot camera would've zoomed more AND can take video (which isn't allowed). I suppose I could've taken my camera out once we got to our seats but oh well...


Temperature: +26C
Sunrise: 6:48am
Sunset: 5:51pm

Back from the dark ages!

And by that I mean not having internet!

We're pretty much all moved in to our new place and are slowly getting things hooked up. We borrowed Glen's parent's internet stick thing to use while we saved up enough money to get the internet hooked up properly. This might've lasted a little longer if the internet stick didn't COMPLETELY suck. After about a week I was ready to run it over with the car. The thing was SO slow and unreliable. You pretty much had to stand on your head and hum the hokey-pokey backwards for it to even think of connecting. So yeah, blogging was completely out of the question and so was pretty much most internet browsing.
I think it just might be the area we're in because the stick thing worked fine at Glen's parent's.

So, we've been slowly setting in to life in our own place again, getting used to the neighbourhood and all that sort of thing. We're not totally unpacked yet (minus all the stuff we use on a regular basis). Tomorrow we're going to IKEA to pick up some bookshelves so we can unpack a bit more and at least make the livingroom look decent. We bought a 3-seater couch and two recliner chairs (package deal) a week ago and they were delivered this past Saturday. It's AWESOME to have furniture! (also, first couch/etc that is actually my own and not someone's hand-me-downs that were left in the apartment when they moved).
They have a lot of free-to-air channels here so we don't need to pay for cable TV. AWESOME. In Inuvik you were lucky if you got a fuzzy B&W CBC. (I think we have 22 digital channels but some of them are repeats.)

So besides all that, I've started working at Glen's work on Mondays in their photo centre/cashiering. I'm going to be looking for something on top of that (obviously) but it's nice to have that little bit of extra money coming in (something crazy - casuals get paid WAY more than full time staff - sucks that I'm casual but yay for getting paid a decent amount of money!).

We went to the footy last weekend too and had an AWESOME time. It was the first time that the team Glen follows has been in a final in YEARS (as in Glen has never seen them in a final) and they WON! Woo! It was great! We had a great time screaming/yelling/cheering (Glen lost his voice and I almost did too!). Ahhh so fun.

And yeah! Once we get a bit more done in the house I'll post some more pictures. I've been wanting to post an update for WEEKS now (even just to say our internet sucked) but the site just would NOT load.


Temperature: +29C
Sunrise: 7:20am
Sunset: 7:37pm

The Australian Open

Yesterday Glen and I went went to Day 1 of the Australian Open. We bought tickets to Rod Laver Arena (centre court) ages ago. We had no idea who we'd be seeing since they don't release the schedule until a day or two before but we figured we'd take our chances. We got to see Maria Sharapova (vs Maria Kirilenko) , Kim Clijsters (vs Valerie Tetreault - a Canadian!) and Andy Murray (vs Kevin Anderson).

I've been watching the Australian Open on TV for quite a few years now so it was interesting to be there watching it live. Because of the crappy weather yesterday the roof was closed and it felt like we were watching a night match.

Players warming up.

First up was Maria Sharapova and Maria Kirilenko. It turned out to be a really good - LONG - match. Kirilenko ended up winning (7-6, 3-6, 6-4) which kind of surprised us. Sharapova didn't seem very comfortable the whole time.

Since that match went on for so long, there wasn't much of a break before the Clijsters match started. It was just a bonus that we managed to see a match with a Canadian (since like I said, when we booked the tickets we had no idea who we'd see). We have six females playing singles matches and I've only ever heard of two of them - Tetreault wasn't one of them. Despite that, I still took my Canadian flag and waved it (the only one there!). We were getting a bit discouraged when Tetreault lost the first set 6-0 but she came back in the second and managed a 4-6 loss. So if anyone happened to see that match and saw a Canadian flag, that was us! I didn't really get any good pictures from this match since I was too busy holding the flag lol (the first picture in this post is from Clijsters and Tetreault warming up when we first got there.

After that was Andy Murray and Kevin Anderson. That match played out pretty similarly to the Clijsters match. Unfortunately Anderson didn't really get into it. Murray took the match 6-1, 6-1, 6-2. The funny thing about this match was that since Murray is Scottish, there were all sorts of Scots and Brits there cheering him on - with coordinated songs and outfits. There were four guys wearing shirts (one had an "A" the next an "N" etc) and they'd get up at the changes of ends and sing/chant. Quite amusing.

By the time that was all said and done, it was after 5pm (we got there at 9:30ish). We did a quick walk to some of the other courts and then decided to head back home when it started sprinkling. By the time we got to the tram stop, it was full-on pouring. We got DRENCHED because there were tonnes of people waiting for the tram and we had to miss two before we managed to squeeze on (we were close to not getting on that one as well!). While we were waiting, we were standing next to a guy with a huge golf umbrella and a tram came by, knocked the side of the umbrella and a massive amount of water from the top of his umbrella poured onto me. It was pretty funny - Glen was laughing and two ladies scolded him haha

Glen was just getting over a cold and while we were walking from the train to the car (about 4 blocks) I told Glen that I was pretty sure I'd be sick today and sure enough... I woke up with a cold. Thankfully I have wireless internet (thanks to Glen who figured out the password for his sister's network --- so I'm posting from bed! haha) and the tennis is on. My day is planned!

(P.S. Sorry to any tennis nuts if I messed up the whole game/set/match terminology. I think I got it all straightened out but I might not have. I drive Glen insane by saying "the game" instead of "the match"!!)


Temperature: +17C
Sunrise: 6:19am
Sunset: 8:42pm