kjp

I went with the Thursday gang to a place on Caxton street [Casablanca] for Latin dancing. Well it was "interesting": being the world famous dancer that I am: I don't think that I disgraced myself too badly:). It's important to keep the beat - 1, 2, 3. 5, 6, 7. Stop or tap on 4 and 8. Home via L's place for a further bit of a boot scoot - although I was tired - and need to get up early tomorrow, so I didn't really.

I've also discovered the big car park behind the abandoned Police barracks - handy: may be useful for a Wednesday in the future. The actual dance class was pretty good: very full - and pretty hot: apparently the air conditioning was on the blink.

I think that I'm going to enjoy the coming weekend: do a couple of good things that I like: not just do jobs. I've got and RDO on Monday - and I'm going to take it (for the first time in a while). If I can find the voucher (possibly not) I've got money to spend at Borders in the city, then I may go and use it up?? May also go and get a small tripod for my camera and go photographing at night? I have wanted to do the latter for a while: walk around the river shore with all of the lights of the city, South Bank, etc.

OK, so I have to get myself organised - something that has been lacking in the last two months. In no order.

In the next few days

• Get up to date with my clothes washing (the bottom of my dirty clothes basket hasn't seen the light of day in a long time...)
• Do my monthly money for August and September
• Order a filing cabinet (see below)
• Sort out the mess that is my contact list in Outlook
• Have a swim at the nearby swimming pool that is just up Queens? road from the big roundabout at the end of Rode road.

In the next one or two weeks

• Go to the Milk Bar - there's a newish, I think? jazz gig on every Wednesday night. Should drop in after Go either tomorrow or next Wednesday. I should go out more - trips to Canberra have kept me tired / busy.
• Do my tax return - I have no excuses really - since I'm expecting a refund.
• Do that QUT assignment that is due at the end of the October. It's not hard (I think: I haven't really looked at it) but it seems like a fair bit of work.

In the next few weeks

• Get a good nights sleep - this is important. But it needs me to:
• Not worry about Mr trouble maker down in Canberra
• Be happy with staying up in Brisbane for the rest of this year (at least??). This could be hard for me, methinks. I'm isolated: for the first time in my life all of my close family / friends are several hours in the plane from me.
• Accept that things at work won't be the ideal that I'd like - and not worry about it
• Get my bed and mattress up here
• Get my other important furniture up here. Sort out my other stuff in mum and dad's garage that I don't use - probably get them in a self storage place
• Organise all my papers: I've got piles and piles of papers that I should keep. So, I think that I should get a filing cabinet - probably a 4 drawer for future expansion?
• Go out more (been in Canberra too much recently)

I've put a few photos from the second of my three recent trips to Canberra here.

Well there's an election in Australia coming up. I'm kind of glad that the AEC is running the show: just read this on voting in USA.

Yay,

I have an internet connection at home. My new home, that is. In Brisbane, if there was any doubt... It's a slow dialup :( (yes, I know - but it is all I wanted - for now anyway). I'm now downloading the stupid number of emails I've received since the end of August (or so) - plenty of catching up to do.

Should be a bit more active here from now on.

I'm back in Canberra again. Unlike the previous two trips recently, I'm down for a "good" reason: there's a shindig on tomorrow (all day). Should be pretty good. It's good to be down here again. Recently I've been wondering what I should do in regards to work: it is the only thing keeping me up in Brisbane...

Was at Mr Y's place last night for dinner, movie (The Mexican), photos and talking and stuff. The movie was pretty good, but it didn't make sense: a product of the fact that I fell asleep several times during it (past my bed time, etc....... :). A good night. The brownies were well appreciated.

Got "Tangents" by The Tea Party (http://www.teaparty.com/) (released in 2000) yesterday. I haven't had the time to fully listen to it yet - what I have is pretty good: the mix of influences on their music is obvious. The album is a collection of the band's previous 10 years music.

No, I don't have an internet connection yet... (funny how this is here...)

On Monday I flew back from Canberra to Brisbane. Canberra was insanely stressful - in particular Friday... :(. There maybe some nifty pictures of Canberra coming (when I get off my bum and get a real connection) - the underside of Scrivener Dam at night is pretty cool. And the weather - was cool. No: cold. I've acclimatised to the warm Brisbane weather...

Anyhow, Monday was an overcast, bit windy, cool, drab day. But all the clouds were fairly low: above them there was lots of clear blue, sunny sky, with the occasional white puffy cloud. Very much like in the movies, and vaguely metaphoric of leaving your troubles behind / below: release of unhappiness. Or something like that. "Take me to the clouds above".

I slept most of the flight: got woken up by the flight person telling me to put my bag under the seat in front for landing...

Anyhow, work's busy. New home is cool.

Hopefully everything down Canberra way will go well, and I'll won't need to go down there. Hope. Hope. But I do want to be down there...

This is the lower side of Scrivener Dam - taken at night. Scrivener Dam is the dam that results in the artificial lake - Lake Burley Griffin - which in turn is a feature of the central area of Canberra. On the lower side of the dam (on the side of the river opposite to the Aquarium) there is a car park and viewing area - which is where this photo was taken from. The shutter was open for 1 second, F2.8 with a Fluorescent white balance.

I wish that I was a cold heartless bastard. Then it wouldn't fucking hurt.

Life is shit.

This was (mostly) written last night - around 9 / 10 pm or so - I didn't get a chance to post it until now.
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I'm tapping away at this on my little sister's PC down in Canberra. I'll explain later...

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic - there have been only two nights when I've just had a normal quietish evening...

I've moved out all of my stuff from Everton Park, into McDowall. There's still furniture and boxes of things in Canberra to deal with. Sigh: I've been waiting to deal with these for some number of months now. A lot of it is in boxes in my parent's garage: it's cheaper to store it all there instead of in a "self storage" mini warehouse / garage thing, that you pay $50 / week or so - way too much. Anyhow, I really do need to get some of my stuff up to Brisbane. It's starting to annoy me (it's been annoying others for a while...).

The new place that I'm in is really cool - really good people. In retrospect, this was probably the most important criteria when I was finding a new place to live. I should have realised that earlier.

We left Brisbane at 4 pm ish yesterday (Wednesday), and arrived in Canberra at around 10 am today. We had a pair of sleeping stops (and were sleeping when the other was driving). But I have been tired throughout today - sleeping for a bit in the hospital. Hopefully there will be good news on that front tomorrow (Friday).

It's interesting how the stress is getting to me: my ear is starting to get slightly dodgy, as is one of my toes: these minor annoyances tend to only crop up when I'm thinking about other things.

I fly back to Brisbane on Monday. It's probably going to be tiring up until then. And it's going to be busy at work next week - there's plenty to do. I don't have an internet connection at home yet. So who knows what will happen here (on this site).

At the moment I'm in what should be renamed the computer room - the other (family) computer is occupied, I'm writing this on the other machine, waiting for the internet connection to become available (no network!). Anyhow, that's life.

There's many a row of trees in Canberra - this is just one of them on the outskirts of Curtin. This photo was taken at the start of Spring: it was still on the cool side - hence no leaves.

Black Mountain, Black Mountain Tower (although it's called something else these days:) ), and a bit of the shore Lake Burley Griffin in very early spring.

A bit of the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. This was taken from the parking area on the upper side of Scrivener Dam.