I did it!

Guess who got a distinction?

Me!!!

I honestly thought I'd be very lucky to pass... I must have got at least 28.5/40 and I was TOTALLY surprised!

What a great way to finish!!
5 credits, 7 D's and 1 HD later, I now have my Bachelor of Commerce.

So now I can totally kickback at Foreshore tmr - thanks for your support over the years!

Big week!

I spoke to a breeder today who is going to get back in touch with me tomorrow. You guys don't know how excited I am about this... or maybe you do, it's all I seem to be talking about. I hope Hope HOPE we get them soon!! My cage is waiting empty, although The Hun keeps commenting that I could fit in there... he better not have something planned.

On a side note, today I completed the largest part of a work project that has been going for like three years. And now that's done, there is two days of work before I start with my new team. Interesting times, people. I'm cautious and excited about it - it's definitely a change and probably for the better, but still scary... and I'm going to miss being so close to my curent team mates (if they think they can shake me, they're so totally wrong).

Lets open this baby up - what's on your mind? Spill!

We're up early, we're up with the birds

You guys!!!
The landlord said yes!!!


I've already gone out and bought a cage, now we just need to find a (nice) breeder with two hand reared boys... HOW EXCITING!!

Whoops

Almost a week!
I didn't realise.

Let's catch up, shall we?

• I'm going to a wedding this evening - one of my martial arts students is holding the wedding at his house, and the dress code is hats. This is partly so it looks nice, and partly because by rights it should be hot and sunny. We're expecting a top of 15 today, with potential snow. Nice work.

• We're waiting to hear from our landlord as to whtether we are allowed to have some birds. I would love a cockatiel and I have picked a name for him already, even though we haven't had permission yet and I'm not sure how to go about it in the vegan-est manner.

• We spent all last weekend cleaning and gardening for an inspection on monday - technically, The Hun and his parents did the gardening, and I did a lot of the cleaning. It's so nice to have a clean house! We did quite a grownup thing and hopped down to Bunnings to buy our Very First Hammer, some hanging cloth shelves and a wall-cord-place thing. The hammer was to bash apart one of my dressing tables that was falling apart and hogging the wardrobe; the cloth shevles were to hang up all the clothes that were sitting on top of the fallen apart wardrobe; and the wall plate thing was to replace one that was sitting behind our couch that broke when one of our post-it hooks failed and dropped a big picture frame on to the wall plate. We felt very accomplished that day.

• I've spend a fair amount of time putting all of my saved links and posts for wedding stuff into Google documents - I just love going back and looking through all the pretty things. I can see how women get all angsty post wedding when they feel like they are missing something after the actual day.

• Have you guys seen Puppy Cam? It's so cute!

• Work has been a little better - it's odd to think that next week will be the last week I work with the team I've worked with for over 5 1/2 years. Originally, a lot of the stuff I already do was going to come with me to the new team, and I was going to teach my new team how to do it so I could reduce that workoad, and I could learn more from them. Now, most of the work I am currently doing will stay with my current team and I'll be going over, mostly empty handed. I know this is the sort of thing that happens when people change jobs, but it's definitely going to be a change... at least I have three months transition where I hand it over to my current team.

• Am up to the Sunshine Coast in two weeks, so I hope the terrible weather clears up! We have two days of Dan Camp, but we get to stay at the fantastic place we stayed at in Feburary. Then I *think* we have a free day, then a 60th birthday party for one of my Master's, then a free day before we fly out that night.
  

• I went back to RPM for the first time in like over two months this week. On Tuesday, I forgot my special padded bike pants. ZED OH EMM GEE. On Thursday, I remembered them, but I could still feel it all through the padding. Still, lots of fun!

• Starting next Thurday, one of my good friends is going to come over and we are going to go on a bike ride once a week. This is going to be very fun because she used to ride to and from school as well, but she rode in the opposite direction after a little while, and she was a TERRIBLE rider! Will be lots of fun, and good exercise.

• Did I tell you guys I met up with LaLa the other week?! We both went to watch Mick play at the Kingo and I had a great night! She is just SO lovely -we have already arranged to meet up again. FOR SURE.

• We went to a Christening the other week, and the parents of the baby had their camera stolen! They left it behind IN THE CHURCH and it went missing! The church hasn't seen it and none of the guests saw it - but there was another bunch of christenings straight after. Can you believe it?

• We're booked on a Harbour Bridge Climb in January which should be very interesting - I'm not very good with heights, which I get from mumsy, and I'm a big fraidy cat. But she did it, so surely I can too!

• We booked it in for the same day we're going to see Bon Iver - I don't mind him, but The Hun thinks he is pretty fantastic. My favourite thing about him is pronouncing his surname as I read it, because apparently it's meant to be pronounced in a french accent. Heh heh.

• In terms of music we're not seeing a whole much else - we're going to Foreshore next weekend which I'm pretty excited about, and Bon Iver in January, and Good Vibrations in Sydney in February, and that's it! Quite a quiet festival season for us.

I think that's enough for now!

Same as it ever was

Hrm.

Well.

I don't really feel any different.

Studying for your last exam is quite an unusual experience. I could tell I wasn't absorbing a whole lot of it, but I knew I felt like that for the other 12 exams I sat this time around. I was memorising my acronyms, trying to tie everything together in my head, and counting down the hours on FB (sorry for those of you who got notified each time!).

I sat down and opened the paper.
I smiled and rolled my eyes.
I let only a little bit of panic through.

I was confident to the point of cockiness for this final exam. My tutor/lecturer is a pretty easy marker, she told us the chapters to study, she told us it would be four essays from six topics, she told us she was giving us a good idea because we were the students who made the effort to come to lectures.

The questions were long answer short questions, tying in different chapters for each one.

Ugh you guys.

But, I'm sitting on 46.5/60, so I've already PX'd... 4/40 is a pass, 19/40 is a credit.

I'm guessing the relief/excitement will kick in after I get my results in a fortnight.

On the bright side, The Hun and I went halvsies in Guitar Hero 4 for my graduation present. It rocks SO hard. I rock MEDIOCRE hard, but I'm getting better. We both think we're the best at the drums, but I'm starting at level 2 and working my way up, whilst The Hun has jumped straight in to level 3. I'll always be better at guitar than him, so I have myself a backup plan.

Whatever will I whinge about now that I've finished uni?!

Uni!!

Tomorrow is my final exam EVER*!

At 2pm I go in to the UC hall for hopefully the last time, and write four essays from six questions. I will walk out at 5pm (or maybe earlier!) and probably smile!

If any of my other mature age friends are loitering around we might go to the uni bar, but we have to drive home, so will only be for one or two at most.

Results are announced on 28th of November, my ceremony is on the 17th of December.

From here to here.

How exciting!

* have been talking to one of my old martial arts students partners who is doing psychology/zoology and is planning to live the life I want to live - animal psychology and behaviour consulting for domestic and captive animals. It is so interesting, and something I am actually seriously considering.

Sixth and sixth

Lulu tagged me!

"The rules are to post the sixth photo in the sixth folder on your computer. Some have done this and others have taken their sixth photo on flickr or in the 6th folder on flickr, or the sixth photo on their phones."

I've used three photos - the sixth photo in the sixth folder of my active photos, the sixth photo in the sixth folder of my pics printed in Feb 08, and the sixth photo in the sixth folder of my pics printed in Sep 07. I basically have an active folder that holds everything, then a subfolder for the ones I've already printed - that subfolder has the two other folders in there, coz I always save up to many photos and it's so expensive to get them printed.

Enough of the fun talk about my file storage, on to the challenge!

The sixth photo in the sixth folder of my active photos:
This was taken at a martial arts camp we ran for our blackbelts in May this year. It was FREEZING but we still like to take the students to the beach for tai chi and meditation at sunrise. Here we are doing tai chi - I'm the one on the left. Magf is in the background with some of the senior students.

From the folder printed Feb 08:
Christmas at mumsy and dadsy's! I'm not sure who took this or why, because we're not doing anything exciting... from L-R is dadsy, me, eldest bro's gf, eldest bro, youngest bro, and middle bro. We're upholding my parents favourite tradition, which involves them demanding we arrive at the house at some ridiculour early hour, only to find they're not even out of bed. Then they have breakfast and try to make us clean while the sloooooowly have a shower and then come back downstairs for the present swap. Good times, gotta love tradition.

From the folder printed Sep 08:
Ooh! This is a good one! This is from a friends house - the guy on the left is one of my first housemates, and this was the night he found out that another friend wanted to go out with him - they're still together and bought a house down the street from us! The girl on the right is the gf of one of The Huns best friends - they've been together like 8 years, and this was as she was getting to know us all better, as he was OS at the time. I've been getting to know her more recently, and she's super fantastic! I also later found out that this night one of the other guys there was spreading rumours about her bf cheating on her while he was OS - how terrible! And I had no idea that he was saying that, or that she heard that!

Anyways, I would love for EVERYONE to do this one - then come back and let me know you've done it!

Fian-say #5

Following on from this...

"Mumsy - I think we've found the perfect place!"

"Oh good! I was talking to (her sister) and we don't think you can get away with not inviting the cousins."

"Huh? Why not?"

"Well, you're the first (maiden name) to get married."

"Huh? (Girl-cousin) is engaged - she's been engaged for like a year!"

"Yes, but she's not getting married."

"What?... But... we were already going to cut our list of 115 down to 100 to fit into the venue, that's without cousins!"

"Well that won't do - we had 120 at ours!"

Guest list = 162.

So the venue hunt continued today, with the only two larger Canberra venues I could find that hadn't already been used by friends and that didn't charge over $140 per head.

And one of them was pretty tacky - like if it were the 80's and I wanted a Sparkle-Vegas-Winter-Sparkle-Princess-Sparkle wedding.

So at this stage it looks like the ceremony will be held here:



And the reception here:



Respective families have agreed to pay for their respective relatives. Or else it would TOTALLY be held here:

Touring 2009

NERD.

Pussycat Dolls.

Britney.

I'm one happy girl with one terrible taste in music.

Fian-say #4

Today we went to look at reception venues.

It's all a bit real how, huh?

Magf, eldest bro's gf and I had brekky at My Cafe, then headed over to the Sculpture Garden Restaraunt at the National Gallery. It was nice enough, and the lady seemed to be very accomodating with the budget, but it didn't really grab me. And to be honest I found the heads in the water to be a little creepy:

From there we headed on to the Hotel Kurrajong - this is my favourite at this point! I've emailed for a quote and hope we can go ahead with it. The room is lovely, there's a great spot for the actual ceremony, and people will be able to hang around there while we go get photos done:

We had a bit of spare time before our next appointment, so we stopped in at the Ottoman - lovely. It fits a good amount of people and wouldn't really need a lot of decoration, but it doesn't really have anywhere to hold the ceremony. Will keep it in mind though...:

We also stopped over at the Hyatt without a booking. I couldn't remember why I hadn't considered it, until they gave us the pricing package! There are a couple of nice places to hold the ceremony, but the reception area was a little perculiar (though still beautiful!) and I think the pricing will be out our range:

We rushed over to The Lobby and hung around until someone in the kitchen finally noticed we were there, even though we had an appointment - the guy told us that the person I was asking after didn't actually work there, so I have no idea what the story is with that. It was a bit small for us anyway.

We had some time to kill, seeing as we thought we'd be busy with The Lobby, so it was decided to try on some wedding dresses...!

There is something very surreal about wearing a wedding dress - it's quite perculiar! The plan is to go to the Botanical Gardens tomorrow, book a venue this weekend, see what date we can get, and then finalise the dress. I've found one I loved and one I liked, so will try some more on and see how we go. The best part is that if we can secure the weekend I would like that is less than 6 months away, I will be able to order in one of the dresses I have tried on.

Sureal.