Nothing like a little excitement...

I got up this morning, pulled back the curtains in the bedroom and saw this:

(zoomed and cropped)

Yikes!!!! Actually, whatever it was scurried? slithered? back into the hole and we had to wait for about 20 minutes for it to poke it's head back out. The sound of me opening the curtains and yelling "GLEN!!!!!!!!!!" scared it away haha

So, we sat there and waited and it poked it's head out for a while... We tried to work out how concerned we should be lizard = no concern, snake = MAJOR concern. We rang Glen's dad who is thankfully quite knowledgeable about local wildlife. From our description he told us to call the local council and talk to a snake catcher and that he'd be right over.
Glen rang the snake catcher and they thought we had a lizard on our hands but would be over as soon as he could just to confirm.

As soon as Glen's dad got here knew knew what it was right away... A Blue-tongued skink. *phew* Almost as soon as Glen's dad got here the creature came out of the hole a little more and we saw legs. That's obviously all it took for us to be 100% confident about what it was. (we called the snake catcher back and told him not to worry about coming over).

Nothing like a little excitement to start your day!!


Temperature: +20C
Sunrise: 6:13am
Sunset: 8:44pm

2000-2009 Review

A lot of blogs are doing their 2000-2009 review so I thought I'd do one of my own.

2000 - I was in grade 11. Went to England with school (band/choir trip).

2001 - Graduated from grade 12 and spent August - December in Victoria BC with my aunt and uncle.

2002 - In June I flew to Germany by myself and spent 40 days there with my stepdad while he did some teaching. Mum joined 10 days after I arrived and we flew home together. We also did a side trip to The Netherlands and got to swim in the North Sea.

Mum and I at a cafe in Germany.

In September I flew back to Germany to begin a study abroad program for the fall semester.

2003 - Arrived home from Germany in February and moved up to Inuvik in April. Lived on my own for the first time (not counting Germany - I had room mates then).

Down at the MacKenzie River it's approx. 11pm

2004 - Started talking to Glen online in March and by November we decided that we liked each other enough to want to meet.

2005 - Got braces.

2006 - Glen flew up to Inuvik in June. My brother and his girlfriend moved up to Inuvik in August.

2007 - Flew to Australia for the first time to be at Glen's sister's wedding. Gained 43lbs from medication (which I've yet to loose... This is the year!! Anyone that says that you'll loose the weight once you're off the meds is lying).

Glen and I at his sister's wedding.

2008 - Turned 25. Got my braces off. Lost my job then got it back again. We started compiling forms for my visa. Joined a sewing group and started playing hockey. Went dog sledding for the first time. Got diagnosed with Crohn's Disease.

2009 - Applied and was granted my Australian visa. Put my cat down. Packed and moved across the world.

It's exciting to be starting 2010 in a new country. When thinking back to this time last year, we weren't even sure if this was going to be possible. We seemed to have made it out the other side and things are looking good!
Let's hope 2010 is a great year!

When Life Hands You Apricots...

Two days into the new year and I've already crossed off one thing on my "want to do" list. Actually I crossed it off before the new year so I guess I technically fit it in in 2009 but anyway...

I made jam! Real, honest to goodness, poured into hot jars and sealed, JAM!

Glen's parent's have an apricot tree in their driveway that I've been eying. They don't really do much with the apricots besides eat them straight from the tree (Glen's mum doesn't like to cook so adventurous things like jam are out of the question). I've been wanting to learn to can & make jam for a while now and was going to start in Inuvik. Needless to say the first 9-10 months of 2009 were insane and that never happened. When I left Inuvik I stayed with my mum's best friend and helped her make pickles. I mentioned to her how I wanted to learn to do that sort of thing and she gave me her spare copy of the Bernardin Guide to Home Preserving book. (Carol is a great enabler! lol). So after my pickle experience I've been itching to do jam.
I had a bit of a struggle finding jars but managed to find some people that sold them -nearby even! Picked two grocery bags full of apricots, laboured over recipes and techniques (and in the end decided to stick with the Bernardin long-boil method) and then got to work!

The recipe called for 1/4 of the fruit to be slightly under ripe which was perfect. I picked out all the fruit that was edible minus a bit or two that needed to be cut off and went to work (I managed to have enough imperfect looking fruit to do the jam and saved all the nicer ones for people to eat plain).
I stuck to the recipe minus hot processing the jars. I just turned them upside down for 5 minutes then flipped them back the right way and waited for the ping of the jars sealing. (very satisfying!!)
In all, I got 14 jars out of two batches (did the second batch the next day). I've given two jars away so far and I'm in the process of trying to find out if I can send some jars home to family.

If anyone is tempted to make jam, I'd say go for it! It's not as scary as it seems (canning and jam making always held the same mystery and perceived difficulty as making bread). Definitely give yourself some time and room to move around the kitchen and if at all possible, don't do it while it's +36C in a house without air conditioning!

Temperature: +19C
Sunrise: 6:02am
Sunset: 8:46pm

Yes, I Am a Procrastinator!

"All I have to do is find the disc with photoshop on it..." famous last words.
Um, hi! It's been a while!

Apparently digging through one box and searching through 3 discs of files is too much effort. hah. It took all of about 10 minutes. I've been putting it off and putting it off because it's the season of procrastination! I've been procrastinating about everything lately - like getting my Christmas cards and packages sent, finishing sewing Christmas presents etc. It was particularly bad this year (maybe because it's not -40 and dark?) and I had to force myself to do things that I normally don't mind doing. I hate when I do stuff like that because then I have to rush and get stuff done. It's also bad if you're living with other people and they're constantly asking you how x project or y project is going while you're sitting in front of a movie or taking another nap. Whoops. Planning for Christmas '10 starts now!! ('10 doesn't have the same nice ring to it that '09 [etc] does hmmm...)


So to update...

Paul Dempsey being awesome.

We went back into the city and saw the Myer windows for a second time (I went with Glen's mum, sister and the kids), we drove to Castlemaine to see Paul Dempsey do a solo show (it was AWESOME. I didn't think it was possible to love SFK/Paul Dempsey more than I did and I so do. Can't get enough!), and then had all sorts of family get-togethers for Christmas.

Very strange to be up on Christmas morning when it's light out! These were taken just after 8am.

Speaking of Christmas and get-togethers... It's weird for me to now be a part of a family that has both sides living within driving distance. This seems to be pretty common and makes things like Christmas a logistical nightmare for some families. Thankfully Glen's dad's side does a Christmas thing the week before otherwise I don't know what we'd do! Most people split the day between at least two sides (blended families makes things even more interesting), having breakfast/lunch with one side and then dinner with the other. We actually did meals at 3 different places this year (breakfast at Glen's sister's, lunch here then dinner with Glen's mum's family). Does anyone else do this or do you stick to one side per day? Growing up we went to my Grandma's house on Christmas Day (a few times on Boxing Day) and that was the extent of it.
The traditional turkey dinner is also out here. Dinner was cold meats, seafood and salads. No potatoes, stuffing or steamed veggies in sight! (Truthfully, I'm a bit sad. I love mashed potatoes and stuffing).

Glen looking thrilled to be up so early!

With Christmas came a flurry of sewing and I managed to finish the three quilts that have been hanging over my head for MONTHS. I was awesome and didn't take pictures of two of them and took a very bad, quickly posed picture of the third. I'll try to get over to Glen's sister's and take proper pictures of them on the kid's beds.

Quilt #3 with it's recipient.

We'll be house sitting for Glen's sister for all of January and then after that we'll hopefully be finding our own place. I'm looking forward to unpacking!!


Temperature: +19C
Sunrise: 5:57am
Sunset: 8:44pm

Formatted and Ready to Go!

Ok! So I bit the bullet and formatted the laptop. By doing that it - of course - solved all our problems. Once a computer gets all full of junk there's really only one way to get it working again.
The main problem was the "virtual memory" which means I didn't have enough RAM for what I
wanted to do. This was kind of a curious problem since I was only running Firefox.
Another curious problem occurred after we formatted and I went to get online... It wouldn't work. Glen set up a wireless network in the house a few days ago so he tried fiddling with that and it still didn't work. We hooked the computer up with the cord and the internet started work. Didn't do us much good when we wanted to be wireless... Anyway, we installed some updates and voilà! It worked! Who knew you needed more than service pack 1 to use wifi (clearly not us)?

Anyway, all I have to do is find my photoshop disc and I'll be ready to do some serious posting.

(I don't know how people can format so often, it takes ages to set everything back up!!)


Temperature:
Sunrise: 5:52am
Sunset: 8:26pm

It's Not That I Don't Have Anything to Say...

There has been a lot of exciting and fun stuff happening here but there's one problem -- my computer. I installed an update (I suspect flash) which has made my computer run like a snail. Because of that, when I type, the computer starts to lag and then Firefox throws a hissy fit and closes. It's VERY frustrating.

I'm going to format one of these days but I'm lazy. It's also one of my least favourite things to do.

For now I'll give you the list of exciting things and will hopefully follow up with pictures & a real post soon (of course I'm writing this now and the computer is FINE *rolls eyes*)

1. My stuff arrived! YAY! (nothing is missing or broken as far as I can tell)
2. Because of that, there has been knitting - yay!
3. Went to the city to see the Christmas tree and the Myer windows.
4. Got some awesome pictures of a sulphur crested cockatoo in the backyard (and fed him some seeds).
5. The weather here has been OUTRAGEOUSLY hot.

If I can figure out how to do a scheduled post I'd type up a few when the computer's not acting like an ass... Anyone know how to do it?


Temperature: +18C
Sunrise: 5:54am
Sunset: 8:20pm

Weekends Away

It seems every few weeks Glen gets two (rarely three) days off in a row. We've decided to take advantage of this when we can (especially while I'm not working). This past weekend we decided to go to Wilsons Prom.

The spiky things are the flowering tops of grass trees. The flowering cycle is stimulated by bushfire. Wilsons Prom was affected by the February bushfires which damaged 25,200 hectares (50%) of the park.

Wilsons Prom is the southern most tip of the Australian mainland and the national park covers over 50,500 hectares. Wilsons Prom is a 3-4ish hour drive from Melbourne. We decided to stay in Foster (where we stayed in 2007) which is a nice little town about 45min from the park. We were originally planning on going to Phillip Island but there was some car racing thing going on so we decided to save that for another time.

We arrived mid-afternoon on Saturday and went straight to the beach. Squeaky Beach is probably my favourite beach (so far) for a few reasons. One is the wow factor. It has brilliant white sand and crystal clear water. Growing up, all the beaches I went to were covered with rocks/sticks and had seaweed and gross water. Swimming here can be hit and miss though. There can be strong currents and big waves. We were lucky that the two days we were there the water was pretty reasonable (we enjoy doing more jumping in the waves than actual swimming). We tried to do a bit of swimming at Tidal River on the second day but the water was pretty cold so we got out and went back to Squeaky Beach (otherwise Tidal River is the ideal swimming spot for safety reasons).

The cool thing about Squeaky Beach is the sand is made from rounded grains of quartz and when you walk on it, the grains rub together and squeak (a lot like really cold, packed snow does).

We managed to see some more wildlife on this trip and I got to cross off two more "quintessential Australalian animals" off my list.

We saw emus both days and besides crossing an animal off my mental list, I got to highlight it in my bird book! (I bought a bird book in 2007 and highlight birds I've seen in the wild). It goes without saying that they're HUGE. It was pretty weird to see them lumbering across the road and it's kind of hard to link them as being birds since they are SO massive and don't act like typical birds (y'know, sitting in trees and flying around!).

Can you spot the Emus?

We also managed to spot an echidna on the side of the road. Once it figured out that we had stopped the car and had gotten out it quickly made it's way into the bushes on the side of the road.

We picked a great weekend to go as the weather was fabulous and HOT (all the locals were saying that it was unusal for it to be so nice in November). When we heard the weather forecast we decided we wanted to be somewhere near the water so this trip definitely satisfied our being near the water requirement (we looked into going to a few other places but I think everyone had the same idea we did and we couldn't find anywhere to stay).


In other news, it looks like the weather in general is on the upswing and after weeks of me complaining about the cold (it's cold in the house when you don't have a furnace!) the house is anything but cool today.


Temperature: +34C
Sunrise: 6:05am
Sunset: 8:03pm