Project 365 - January 8th - 15th

January 8th: Woke up and discovered my glasses were broken. gah!
January 9th: Playing Mario Kart.
January 10th: My aloe plant is loving the new pot - its sprouting all over the place!
January 11th: Rain, rain, rain. Taken from work.
January 12th: More rain...
January 13th: And more...
January 14th: Flowers in the front yard (they are actually purple in real life).
January 15th: Relaxing in front of the fan and watching tennis (yes our Christmas decorations are still up!).

Temperature: +16C
Sunrise: 6:16am
Sunset: 8:43pm

New lens & Birds

We bought my mum a new camera for Christmas (we = us and my brother and his wife) and a few days ago I picked up a new lens for her from work. The camera that we got her came with an 18-55mm lens which is a pretty good little lens but she's used to a lot more zoom so I picked up the 75-300mm for her.
Before I could send it to her I figured I'd better test it ;-) haha so a few days ago Glen and I went for a walk to take some pictures (part of testing this lens is to figure out if I could live with that lens myself or if I should shell out the big bucks for the 100-400mm).

Magpie


Sulphur Crested Cockatoo


Superb Fairywren

It was a pretty hot day so most of the birds were hiding so I didn't really get many shots. I was pretty impressed with the range since my longest lens only goes to 135mm. I think I'd still like the extra reach of the longer lens and the extra crispness of good quality glass. We'll see though!



Temperature: +18C
Sunrise: 6:08am
Sunset: 8:45pm

Project365 - Jan 1st - 7th

I've decided to give Project365 a go. I've wanted to do it for a while not but had missed out for some reason or another (I suppose I could've started it in the middle of the year). I figured the best way to actually get this done would be to use my phone to take the pictures - I love my SLR but there is no way that I'd actually complete this project if I had to lug it around with me every day all year. Another thing to keep this convenient is that I've downloaded an app on my phone so I can upload the picture straight to the website I'm compiling this all on.

Once a week on my blog try to I'll do a roundup of the photos from the week and if you're interested in seeing the photos before I upload them here, you can view my calendar here.

January 1st - New Years Day at the beach in Torquay
January 2nd - Twenty20 Cricket at the MCG
January 3rd - Quesedillas for dinner
January 4th - The drive home from work
January 5th - Glen has his nephew over for games night. The view from my laptop
January 6th - A walk in our favourite park on a warm evening
January 7th - Skating at the new rink in Docklands




Temperature: +29C
Sunrise: 6:07am
Sunset: 8:46pm

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

Views from my sewing machine

The spare room is slowly coming together. I finally have a table to set up my sewing machine and other crafty things, a few bookshelves have been put together and I've actually done a little sewing.

(These hydrangea bushes run all the way down our side of the building so we have a great view of them from every room)

Nothing finished yet but I'm making some progress on a few Christmas presents.


I haven't felt up to blogging lately because I've got a pretty busy work schedule at the moment. I'm working my regular 5 days a week and I volunteered to fill in two days a week (my days off) at Glen's work through the holidays. I started my epic run the last week of November and my first day off won't be until Christmas day (and then I only have the 25th off since boxing day is a big day in retail).



Temperature: +23C
Sunrise: 5:51am
Sunset: 8:32pm

Dragons, Pottery and Gold!

Glen and I finally had a weekend off together last week. It'll likely be our last days off together until Christmas day and even then, we won't have the day to ourselves.
We took advantage of the freedom and spent the day in Bendigo. The drive was quick and easy - basically we get on the freeway near the house and keep driving and it takes us straight there (no turns or anything!). One thing to keep in mind is that Bendigo basically closes on a Sunday. The streets were very quiet and a lot of shops were closed. Thankfully some of the touristy things were open.

Random shot of our rainy drive home.

We started off at the Chinese Museum and the Chinese Gardens (essentially a koi pond - not something I'd pay to see separately but admission was free when you buy a museum ticket).

We got to see the longest imperial dragon and the oldest imperial dragon.

The longest imperial dragon in the world - Sun Loong

Random other dragons (one is a guardian lion I think)

We walked through some gardens and saw a whole heap of bats (silver headed flying foxes).

We picked up a free tourist guide at the museum and we flipped through it to look for other things to do. The pottery place and the gold mine happened to be open so we decided to take a drive out to the pottery place first. The pottery place was AWESOME. I thought it might be some fancy-schmancy-arty pottery place but most of the pieces were utilitarian type things - sugar/flour/tea canisters, mugs, plates, bowls etc. We bought a few Christmas presents for family and picked up a sugar container for us. I'd love to go back and get their flour and tea bag container.
After that we drove over to the Central-Deborah Gold Mine and took a 75minute underground tour. That was awesome too. I thought I might be a little freaked out by taking the elevator and being 20 storeys underground but I was fine. Part of what made the mine tour great was our tour guide and there were only four people in our group (us and an older couple). They have an even longer tour available (you go further underground!) and I'd definitely consider doing that one as well (and it's definitely on our list of things to do when people come to visit).

We did a little bit of driving around Bendigo and happened upon this great sight:

Unfortunately it was closed so we'll have to take a trip up again.


We're in the process of planning an even more exciting trip for around March but I'm sure we'll get in a day trip or two before then! (more details when we have a few things confirmed!)



Temperature: +17C
Sunrise: 5:56am
Sunset: 8:16pm

Soggy Spring

We have a had a cold and wet spring. Everyone has been complaining - especially about how cold it is. I just kind of shrugged because I remember when I first came last year I was SO cold in the house and it took me a while to adjust to the cooler temperatures coming from summer in Canada (and in Montreal no less).

Well, I may be converted to thinking that we actually are suffering with colder weather. I just went to look at some pictures from this time last year - and posts so I try to repeat myself as little as possible (since I was thinking about talking about the Melbourne Cup) and this time last year we were at Wilsons Prom soaking up the sun on the beach.

The plus side to all this cool wet weather is that our dams are at 50% which is a first in many years (I've read varying reports from first since 2006 to first in 30 years... Either way it's a big deal).

Anyway, the first Tuesday in November is Melbourne Cup day - the major race in a spring horse racing carnival. It's the race that "stops the nation" and everyone at 3:10pm stops to see who wins. We thankfully had the day off though we were surprised at the amount of stores that actually opened.
Glen and I put a small bet on a horse each and spent the day at his sister's house with the rest of the family. We all picked two horses out of a hat and put $1 in just as fun (convenient in a family of 12 to have 24 horses running).
If you don't go to the actual races, having a BBQ and having family over is a pretty typical way to celebrate.

I spent the day yesterday getting the spare room into better shape. We inherited a great old (large) shelf from Glen's grandpa so I wanted to start unpacking some boxes to get the room in working order and then I'll be able to suss out what other furniture I'll need for in there (looks like a few short bookcases like we have in the living room and a table as well as storage bins).
Here's a picture of the shelf with tonnes of stuff piled on it (it's a great shelf made of real wood - it's solid and heavy - a real quality piece of furniture - there's two doors on the bottom that open up to small shelves).

I managed to empty 7 boxes yesterday (or condense a few anyway). I think I have around 10 more to empty before we're completely box free.



Temperature: +21C
Sunrise: 6:07am
Sunset: 8:01pm