Floraish

I’m really happy. And tired. Mostly happy though.

Last night I got to make dinner for Steve! I was quite torn between doing my teriyaki salmon (a proven hit) with baby bok choy OR something new. So I decided I would go to the supermarket and see if the salmon was fresh or not before making the final decision. Turns out they didn’t even have any of the boneless skinned fillets! Ugh. Quick. What else to do? Well I did have an earlier craving for potato bake, so I decided to make that as my side and a honey mustard chicken dish. Both turned out sooooooo well! Steve was very impressed I think. He even had enough leftovers for lunch. So it was good We ended up watching Sleepy Hollow - very creepy movie. I don’t like scary movies. I wasn’t able to sleep much at all last night.

I didn’t see Steve tonight; I had a really long day and we’re both quite busy. I have an essay due this Friday which I started today. So that was, uh, interesting. I guess I work better under stress. Though I don’t really feel stressed. Maybe I just function well with deadlines. Debating whether or not I want to go into uni again tomorrow just to avoid the distractions of home and work some more. Obviously if I don’t go, then I have to do serious work. I wish I had the hindsight to start this during the holidays. Oh well. Too busy enjoying them I suppose. On another note; my stupid CRIM2001 workbook only got 12.5/30! WHAT? I swear there has to be some mistake. That’s not even 50%. How could I have gotten so low? Argh. I better not be getting too complacent.

Another rant. Stupid UQ Subway is not participating in the $7 Sub deal (which includes my all time favourite - Pizza Sub!). I am hellaciously upset! Not only that, but all their subs cost more than average! Hello? Uni students are POOR! So I boycotted them and did another bakery trip and got the trusty $2.10 sausage roll. Ahhh they haven’t failed me yet. Stupid UQ Union putting a Subway on campus. Thought they were meant to rule the Union with an iron fist! Obviously not.

So many things, where to begin?

Well here’s some awesome news; I’ve lost weight and currently weigh in at 60.3 kg. Impressed? I am.

What else? In other news, I guess I am working too much and not having too much time for other stuff. Sure it’s frustrating but I’m not too phased (or going to let it affect my relationship with Steve in any way *unresolved issues*). Life is busy and it’s a good thing I suppose. Time keeps rolling forward and brighter, better things are just around the corner.

Uni finishes soon. I’m currently on mid semester break and then it will only be another 8 weeks before completion. God. It’s almost scary. I have applied for a job with the QPS; so hopefully I will hear back soon, but no rush. The job market looks to be quite volatile at the moment. I must admit I am a bit worried as I only really have one speciality when it comes to formal qualifications. I suppose Finance could be a back up option, but not one I’m jumping for joy at the thought of.

Business is good. This week my final shipment of stock came in, so this Sunday should be an awesome day of trading, providing the weather isn’t being indecisive again. How annoying. But yes, selling can be fun! As so enthusiastically advertised on the back of every Market entry ticket. It is fun!

Just last week the one time stallholder next to me sold me some real awesome bargains. I picked up a Crumpler bag for the bargain basement price of $7! She was practically giving it away! It was insane. Anyways, I ended up buying that and another bag. It was a Sachi full leather messenger. Very, very cute. I tried to find a picture of it, but to no avail. I might just take a photo of it later on, but I am very happy with it. At first she had it labelled for $25 (still very reasonable given the brand and condition) but she offered it to be for just $20. I almost said yes but there were some people at my stall so I had to go back and I kinda got so busy I forgot about it until we were both packing up and she asked me to make an offer on the bag. At first I was a bit hesitant to insult her with a low offer and I casually said I’d give her $10 and that’s how much she sold it to me for!!! Awesome!

On the subject of relationships; Steve and I are good. I think I’ve kinda taken a bit of a backseat and am not so driven to be girlfriend of the year anymore. Things have been quite busy for the both of us and I don’t see that ending anytime soon. Just need to learn how to deal. We had a really good Easter where we spent most of Good Friday and Easter Monday together; eating, sleeping; Bettying; shopping; sleeping, eating. We’re so great but I just can’t help but still want more. It’s easy to say that you don’t; but I do. Maybe not right now; or in the forseeable future, but eventually I do. I think it’s just a girl thing. And him not wanting it (as explained ‘in the next 5, 10 or even 20 years’) is just a guy thing. It makes me feel a bit better I guess. Women are just preprogrammed to be gathers and men are meant to be the hunters. 2000+ years of life hasn’t changed that fact; probably won’t now. But we’re still good.

New season. New blog theme. It needs a bit of tweaking here and there, but I’ll figure it out.

Wow, another semester over, and another round of results posted! For the record, I did extremely well this semester with a GPA of 6.00 (for those of you who have no idea, that’s a Distinction)! And to top it all off, I got a 7 (High Distinction) for my CRIM3070 Research Proposal [Investigating Police Discretion: Does officer gender impact the policing of domestic violence?]! Man, I am on cloud nine right now. I’m really happy with myself because uni is a complete breeze. Sure I’ve freaked out here and there, but I haven’t had a real episode for a few years now - must come with the experience. So CRIM3070 was one of my final compulsory courses for my Undergrad. I’m currently doing Summer Semester and filling in a couple of electives here and there. Next semester will be another walk in the park, I’ve enrolled in three (count ‘em, one, two, three) Chinese courses. Sure you might think that’s cheating, but it’s not. I put the hard yards in! Then I have a CRIM3039 course to complete which I somehow missed last year, probably when I spent a ton a time doing random things like Political Science and Cultural Studies.

So uni is all good, so is gym. I’m finishing up my sixth week and have noticed some very positive changes to my physical being and overall wellness. Since it’s so late now, will write more later.

First off, I have to say; welcome to the new layout. I like it.

Secondly, I love my job.

Yes, yes I do. I had my third day today in the office and it’s pretty cool. C and I are getting along well, and he is teaching me many things (about finance and trying to get me in on ‘the Secret’)! The current project I’m working on at the moment is fairly boring, but important in establishing the client base for the company. It’s a challenge, but a relaxing one, sort of like a crossword puzzle if you will.

I’ve kinda added a few bits and pieces in the office, I took along my iPod stereo (a good one, mind you, not a cheap <$50 one) and left it there along with some snacks and things. It’s pretty cool. The dress so far has been relaxed casual, but I’ve made an effort to look presentable even if I don’t have to meet any clients for now. I actually went out shopping the week before and bought plenty of casual button up blouses which I could wear both to the office and around town, so it’s cool.

After this project is done (I’m about half way), I’ll get to focus more on the admin and personal assistant side of things, which I’ve come to learn is a very broad job description. Just today I was googling for various wine plans for C to join so he could gift them. I’ll even get to go out and meet clients with C! Top stuff, will have to dress up and look extra pretty too. Actually, today aside from my usual data entry, I was also on the phone to the tech because our software package was creating a headache for C and I (though, mostly for C). I’ve been on the phone a few times to him, and our problem doesn’t seem to be one which can be solved permanently unless C spends $xxxx to get some server or something installed, I really don’t know. I’m just the PA. I get coffee, files and sometimes laundry.

I’m really having a blast working there. I think C is looking for a protege or something, because he let me do some calculations this afternoon also, which I believe I failed miserably in, but I gave it a go anyways. Finance is something I doubt I could ever really get into, but we’ll never know. C is trying to talk me out of the Police, but I told him I’m way too righteous and ethical to live in the world of grey that is finance brokering lol. Should be getting paid tomorrow, which means money on Monday! Yay! Just in time for the holidays*!

*By holidays I mean ‘Catch-up-on-uni-stuff Week!’. I am so over uni right now. Today marks the end of Week 10. I have just three weeks to complete three pieces of assessment. That’s one a week, but they’re all due in Week 12. Sigh. Lucky I only have the one exam (on Chinese culture lol). This semester has been far too long. I really can’t wait for the Summer and Summer semester! C says I can probably work more (lol, there I go, talking about work again).

I finished writing my Sociology paper on ‘The Exodus of The Queensland Police Service: Increasing job satisfaction and decreasing police turnover’, and even handed it in a whole day before it was due. I was so chuffed!

So WP word count tells me I’m nearing 600 words. I really should blog more often!

Well things are certainly different!

For one, it’s FUCKING COLD! Just thought I’d point it out. I hate it. Whatever they’ve told you about Queensland, is false. We’re just as bad as a dreary Melbourne morning. All four seasons in one day. Bleh!!!~

It’s now week 2 of semester 2, 2008. It’s going well. LTCS1005 and CHIN2200 are total bludge classes so I’m enjoying them. My two compulsory subjects of SOCY3049 and CRIM3070 are a *tad* harder. For SOCY3049, there are only two pieces of assessment, however they are both worth 50% each.. and for CRIM3070, there is a semester long research project I need to complete, however it’s been broken down into 3 sections, with an additional 2 pass/fail marks. Sigh. The good thing though, I will have no finals at the end of semester, just the LTCS1005 final, but I’m already certain I’ll get at least a 6+ without showing up for class. It’s so easy. I practically have laughed my way through it.

Last semester results were:
CHIN1200 - 6 Distinction
CRIM2011 - 5 Credit
SOCY2329 - 5 Credit
POLS1101 - 4 Pass

Which leaves a GPA of 5.00! Yay for not even trying! Imagine if I did.. :] Anyways, a 5.00GPA allowed me to do a 5 subject workload this semester, however there were about a million timetable clashes which didn’t work out. So I was pretty angst about that. But no matter, 2 more subjects in Summer semester, the usual 4 in semester one, 2009 and I will be done!

What a mixed bag of a week!

Where shall I begin?

Tuesday morning: Between procrastinating my last ditch attempt to study for my Poli-Sci exam, I was watching Psych. Pretty unlucky because the hard drive on my Mac decided it would just die. Right then and there. It was fucked - in the most literal sense. Distraught, I called up Tatey who quickly came to the unfortunate conclusion that it was dead. Unwilling to believe, I called up the Apple store for a second opinion. Yep, sure is dead. Good news though; I have extended warranty until 2009. Dead hard drives? Sure, we cover those.

So fast forward, I realise it’s actually nearing 1PM. My exam was due to begin at 2:30PM. The original plan was that I would drive to uni, sit the exam, then drive to Steve’s and continue with whatever. But now the plan would have to include a detour to the Apple store in the City. That threw a spanner in the works and I had to reconfigure my plans - and quick! So I decided to inconvenience myself (and slightly Steve) by rushing off to take the next bus to uni, sit the exam, take a bus into the City, walk two blocks to the Apple store, wait 30 minutes before getting served, drop it in, find out how to take a bus to Steve’s house, get on said bus, travel 1.2 hours east, get Steve to pick me up.

Without going into TOO much detail (ha!), Tuesday was busy, and crap, but I got to spend a bit of the night with Steve, so all was not lost!

Wednesday: Cold turkey without my Macbook. I was in bed for most of the day, just looking at where the notebook sat, now an empty space. I managed a bit of reading and I even watched ‘View from the Top’ with my dad before having an afternoon nap. I really should’ve studied for my next exam, but the withdrawals were getting to me. It wasn’t like I didn’t have any access to the internet, it was just I didn’t like going downstairs and using my old and crappy PC. The Macbook was far, far, far superior in every sense.

Found out Erin got a promo gig at Kedron WoW for the next couple of weeks! Yay! Pretty sure she’s got a real job too- barista extraordinaire~ Congratulations to her. We’re going to be using this as an excuse for a celebration, so watch out!

Thursday: Another busy, run-around day. I woke up earlyish and attempted to call the Apple store. No answer. Obviously they didn’t open until 9AM, so I went back to bed for a quick snooze. When I finally did get through, I managed to talk to service guy into prioritizing my job as I was only going to be in the City until lunch time (true). Then I got up and got ready for my first day as a ‘JP in the Community’ and went off to my posting at Sunnybank Hills Shoppingtown. It was actually pretty fun! Signing and stamping. Stamping and signing. I think I was only there for an hour, but I witnessed/certified over 50 documents! Because I was only required to be there for an hour or so, I left at 11:30AM and got on a bus to meet Steve in the City for lunch. We did our usual lunch date of Japanese food (Steve the curry, and I the udon - we’re very consistent) and did some mini window shopping and picked up my Macbook. It was great (side note: I love our mid week lunch meet ups!). Then Steve sent me off onto a bus into uni where I quickly did some very, very last minute cramming before the exam.

I went into the exam a little nervous, but as I flicked through the paper during perusal, I realised I knew the answer to just about all of the questions! I was practically laughing my way through the exam. It was pretty awesome! Hopefully I can at least get a Credit for the overall grade. Feeling confident

So even though I had a pretty busy and slightly crap week (losing data is a BITCH), it was fun, and time flew by really quickly. Tomorrow is Friday and I’ve promised Lex for the 50th time that we’re going to see Narnia, so we’ll do that and while we’re out I’m going to buy an external hard drive to use a backup/storage unit.

Finally figured out my next 12 months of uni life.

Semester Two 08

Summer Semester 08

Semester One 09

So now I only have one more year before graduation! I’m kind of kicking myself for not having the foresight previously to enroll in any Summer courses, which could’ve accelerated my studies even more - but hey, got there now. If you have a look the next three semesters are pretty much easy since I only have THREE compulsory courses to do out of ten, I’ve chosen Chinese as another minor and picked random things that might be of interest. The only thing I am unsure about is the final semester’s offering of CRIM3039 - I don’t know if they will offer it, but judging by pass course profiles, they seem to have a pattern of being on during Semester One only (THEY BETTER DAMN WELL OFFER IT BECAUSE I WANT OUT!^%). But we’ll work it out.

Steve finally lodged his uni application in and they were quite happy to accept it! We’re going to sit down together and I’m going to try my best to explain timetabling to him. I’ve got mine, so maybe we could compare and work something out to optimise our ‘together time’. ^______^

Yesterday was another really relaxing day.

Started the day by dropping off the Renault to Windsor for a service and Erin ended up picking me up so we could hit the shops at Chermside together. We hadn’t shopped in ages, so I ended up spending quite a bit; but it was fun, great fun and I had a great time. I bought a few DVDs I had been chasing, a new jacket, a cardigan and some other pits and pieces. Also got my Marcs Babydoll glasses fixed too, for the bargain price of $2.

So today, I just finished cleaning a house and am now just chilling out before work. Greg just called me up also with the exciting results of our Field Report for Victimology; turns out we gained a credit for it, which means.. *drum roll please*

I’VE PASSED VICTIMOLOGY WITHOUT EVEN SITTING THE EXAM YET!!!!!!

I’m really happy with myself and uni this semester, I’ve managed to successfully pass ALL of my subjects before final exams, so this means I can have a stress free break before results are announced because I know I’ve passed everything I really enjoy uni now, the rest of my uni career will be a nice little walk in the park and I’m going to just happily stroll along. I only have 3 more compulsory subjects to go; and 9 electives to do. I think I’m going to consider summer semester and fit an extra couple of subjects in so I can graduate that little bit earlier.

Well just about nothing is going right.

Not even my healthy dinner of steamed rice and salmon sashimi helped things. Sigh. I’m ready to leave this dump and start afresh somewhere new. Definitely looking at the Territory with some new sense of longing. It wouldn’t be cold, or crowded. The air would be fresh, and the communities would be close knit. Most of all, I’d be leaving all the shit behind because drama can’t follow you 3500km west.. can it?

Steve and I have a breakdown in communication, Kyrin has a douchebag friend, Erin hasn’t got a job yet (though that doesn’t contribute to my anxiety, it’s just nice to list our woes), and I just don’t have time for all this. I feel like screaming my lungs out.

On the bright side, I think I’m pretty cool with uni. This is my hardest semester so far, and the next year and a half will be a walk in the park with 3 more compulsory CRIM subjects and 9 electives. Final essay is due this Friday and it’s already half complete. At least that’s one aspect of my life that I can say with certainty is going right.

So I made a conscious effort to write something tonight.

The meeting went.. smooth? Well? Great? Lies. It was a slight disaster, with Carmel treating me as if I was in her Year 9 Religion class again. I called her by her first name, that’ll show her. Not much to report on besides Alex not feeling any bit of a remorse, or even pretend remorse. Just one act of defiance after another. Sigh. I really hope he grows out of it soon. I’m going to try getting him a job tomorrow me thinks. KFC. Where teenage hopes and dreams are crushed. lol, no seriously, it’s a great place to work. I think it’ll socialise him if anything.

At least worrying about someone else’s troubles have taken my mind off my own woes. Money woes, emo woes, family woes, job woes, uni woes. Woes all around! At least I’m not drowning myself in any of it. It’s all quite manageable. I’m on top of things mostly, but I just can’t stop spending money. It’s really terrible, and I wish I could stop, but I can’t. I eat a lot. I filled up the car this week - twice! And I have a really bad penchant for nice, material things! Oh well, it could be worse - at least I have a roof over my head and a cute smile.

I’m still pretty chuffed over my 75% win, as it equates to 30/40 which is 30% of the final grade! I’ve already scored 30%!!!! Together with my workbook being handed in on Monday, and tutorial participation, I will gain another 20% which puts me as having a pass mark in the course before final exams are even on! If only things were this easy for my other subjects! Victimology is going well I guess. Greg and I are working on a joint field report (4000 words, boo), and there’s a final exam for that too, but I’ve already gained a distinction. Now I know how Houlihan likes to mark her essays, we’ll be a sure win ^__^ Statistics though (once again, sneakily hidden under the banner of Sociology and parading as SOCY2339), is a whole new kettle of fish. I mean, Erin’s helped me so much with the assignments, I’m going to fail the exam for sure!

TGIF - And I’m fresh out of ideas for this weekend already. I think I’m going to be seeing That Cute Guy (TCG) tomorrow, so that could be interesting.. ^_~

I’ve just spent the last 20 or so minutes reading through my archives of May 2005. Ahh high school. Anyways, here’s a revisit. Almost three years ago I was:

Ahhh memories. How I hate thee so.