wrong number

i had the weirdest call on my mobile this evening. it was a a number that had the caller id hidden. when i answered it a woman with a strong indian accent was yelling into the phone at me asking who she was speaking to. i knew right away it was a wrong number so i told her. she kept insisting that it was the right number because she'd gotten it from her associate or someone (she was yelling so much i had to hold the phone away from my head and i couldn't understand it because it was distorted. i tried to ask her who she was trying to reach and i think she said some guy's name. i just repeated a couple times that it was the wrong number (and she kept insisting it wasn't) then i hung up. a couple minutes later the phone rang again with caller id withheld so i just forwarded it on to my voicemail. i figured if it was someone i wanted to talk to they would leave a message or txt me and if it was the woman again she would get my voicemail message saying that she's reached shawna (not amann or whatever she said the guys name was). its always a bit weird when someone calls you you by accident and then insists that they have the right number and you're the wrong person (zac used to get calls every month or so with someone looking for frank and they kept insisting that they were calling frank's mobile and they wouldn't believe zac that there was no frank there and it was not frank's number).

quarter of a century

we celebrated our friend amed's 25th birthday last nite. this guy is amazing. he came to australia 5 years ago on a temporary protection visa from iraq. he apparently didn't know a word of english when he arrived-- i find this hard to believe because he speaks english as if he's been speaking it most of his life (a girl last nite knew him when he first arrived and she assured me that he didn't know a word when he came to her!!). he's been through horrible, unimaginable things in his life but despite all of this he is quite a positive person. he's also extremely caring and shares all he has (which isn't much by a lot of people's standards but for someone who came to australia with absolutely nothing, what he has now is a lot and he loves to share it with his friends). it was amazing at his party last nite. we were in the upstairs of a resturant and he had about 30 friends there (all of whom he refered to as his "wonderful brothers" and "beautiful sisters"). not many of us knew eachother beforehand but everyone we talked to there was really interesting and it was kinda cool that we were all connected thru amed (and at least 1 person came down from canberra for his birthday!!). he's a great guy. before he even knew me he gave zac small gifts to give to me and he's bought wombat gifts too (he's still never met her but he always asks about her). he always insists on paying when we go out for coffee. before zac left his old job he got the ball rolling for amed to get into public housing. just a couple weeks ago he moved into a commision flat near here and he's loving it! he's a pretty amazing guy and i'm looking forward to our next coffee or dinner with him.

overheard at work

my co-worker overheard this conversation between a few girls sitting together at work the other day.

child 1: when i grow up i want to be a kinder teacher so i can work with teacher 1 (a.k.a. my co-worker) and teacher 2 (the morning teacher)

child 2: you won't be able to do that because they'll be dead by then

teacher 1 (who overheard her name and started listening to the conversation): i'm only 26! i won't be dead then!

child 1: oh. well teacher 2 will be (she's in her low 5os)

teacher 1: i'll think she'll still be around too

child 1: yeah, maybe

clever girl

i think wombat is one of the smartest dogs in the world but i am a little bias 8) last nite she was curled up on the couch sleeping. i got up to get ready for bed and i asked her several times if she needed to go outside (usually if she needs to go, she'll get up and run to the back door when you ask her about going outside). she just ignored me. i went and opened the back door (sometimes she'll get up when she hears the squeak of the handle). no dog. i went back to the lounge room and she was laying with her head proped on the arm of the couch so she could see me. i asked her again "do you need to go outside or do you just want to go to bed?" she stared at me for a few seconds then got up, stretched and trotted off to the bedroom. i went in to praise her for being a good girl and she was up on our bed where zac was reading. zac took her collar off and i walked out of the room. when i came back in a few minutes later she was all tucked in under her blanket fast alseep. zac said that after he got the collar off and gave her a cuddle he just said "ok, now you go to your bed" and she got up, jumped off the bed and curled up on her own bed (and zac tucked her in). usually if she goes on to our bed when she goes to bed it requires a lot of pulling and struggling and resistance to put her on her own bed (and usually after several minutes and failed attempts we give in and she sleeps with us all nite). she's very smart and she knows what to do when she wants to do it.

improvement

the last 3 days i've had great walks with wombat. she's behaved pretty well with other dogs and only gone stupid briefly once or twice. she's been really good at just sitting when we see (or hear) other dogs (sometimes before i even ask her to) and then i just feed her treats and talk softly until she's realizes the dog won't hurt her. she whines a bit but doesn't try to get to them. a few times she's barely even taken notice of them. today i took her to the dog run to play fetch. we haven't done that in ages! i don't think she touched her ball once but she had a lot of fun running back and forth and sniffing all the new smells around the grass. we saw several dogs (and a cat) on the way down and she just listened to me and sat. once while i was getting her to cross the road because of a small dog coming towards us she started to go stupid in the middle of the road. i just yelled "hey!" and she stopped, heeled and then sat when we got to the other side of the road. she barely took notice of dogs barking behind fences. maybe there's hope for her yet.

$2500

on his blog the journey, rodney mentioned that ashwin is giving away $2500 to one lucky blogger just by mentioning his blog. so here it is:

Over at Ashwin’s blog, you will find one crazy blog owner!! You can win
$2500!! To enter just copy this text and paste it in your blog!! But hurry, this
competition will not last long! So get posting.

lazy girl

chillin' with zac

taking over the bed (this is where she is right now). she's laying across the bed instead of straight down the middle so i was sleeping in a little ball for the last hour or so before i got up. its hard to move her when she's sleeping. she's dead weight. i tried, gave up and went back to sleep curled up.

4 down, 1 to go

its almost friday!! i haven't been this excited for a weekend in ages! i'm exhausted and i still have one more day to go. we've had 2 staff in our room sick this week (and 1 is still sick!) so i've been covering a lot of those shifts along with the teacher who usually works just mornings with the kids (fortunately her and i work really great together-- we worked at another kinder together-- and we had really relaxing quite afternoons). we've also had a casual coming in the days she couldn't do long days (plus she has a lot of planning to catch up on since that's what she normally does in afternoons). the casual was AMAZING. we've had great afternoons with her (and the kids have been really good too). hopefully we'll be able to get her any time we need a qualified reliever. i've put in a lot of extra hours though so everything else has been getting put off (laundry-i'm getting REALLY low on clean clothes; dishes- its been my turn to do the dishes since tuesday- they're still there and the pile keeps growing; buying food-- like i mentioned in the last post, we're down to random bits but zac was good enough to get some bread and soy milk so at least i can have a proper breakfast tomorrow and then i'll get some more stuff before work.......). we've had stuff on almost every nite too which hasn't helped. we saw the simpson's movie (that was pretty funny) and a movie about ian curtis (joy division) that was on as part of the film festival. zac's jamming tonite (i'm glad i quit cuz i'm too exhausted to do that. i think i'm gonna shower and be in bed by 8 tonite). 23 hrs and work will be over for the week (and hopefully my co-worker gets better over the weekend cuz i'd be nice to have her back next week).

flat out like a lizard drinking

australia has some weird slang but i feel just like that lizard this week. i'm going into work 3 hrs early today (for the second time this week) and this is my breaky:

(macaroni and vegetable soup)

we've got to the point of just random bits and pieces of food. i've also kinda run out of coffee (not good). this morning i had canadian maple flavoured coffee but because i need something in it to make it slightly creamy and there's no soy milk i had to add cocoa powder-- chocolate maple coffee (not the greatest). lunch is gonna have to be falafel from the take away place (for the second time this week).

i was gonna post more but wombat is yelling at me (seriously!) so i think i'm gonna have to go play with her and post later

i gotta be at work in 25 min anyway and i haven't gotten dressed

smoke free

its been almost a month since victoria went smoke free in all their pubs. i think i've only been to 3 places that weren't already smoke free (a lot of the venues we go to went smoke free in the band rooms a year or so ago anyway). last nite we went to a place that created a really nice looking little smoking garden on the front couple meters of the building (cuz there's not much room on brunswick street for a bunch of smokers to stand). it was really nice looking (although they're all inhaling each others second hand smoke as well as their own smoke). inside was really nice and clear without the smoke. it was great. apparently in a lot of clubs the smoking ban has caused people to notice other smells a lot more (like b.o. and farting) with no smoke stench covering them up. at least those ones aren't as toxic. i can't find the article about that but it was in the age or something. i'm looking forward to lots more nites out without inhaling smoke and having to wash everything (including jackets) that i wore out because of the smell.

winter is over!

technically its not over for 5 weeks but i think we may have passed the worst of it (at least for a week or so.....). it's been staying in the double digits overnite (it even stayed above 15C for most of last nite!). we haven't used the central heating (or the fan heater) in over 24 hrs for the first time in a couple months!! i've been riding to work without a jacket and only wearing 2 or 3 layers a day (and no gloves or scarf most of the time!). wombat has been able to stay outside during the day (although she did protest against that one day-- flying down the side of the house when i left the gate open for a minute, going to the front door and standing with her nose in the crack waiting for me to let her in and not drag her back down the side of the house). it would be good if we kept getting rain (which we had this morning for 20 min for the first time in 5 days) cuz we really need it. its soooo much nicer when its not 2C overnite and grey and cold all day. a few more weeks and i can start planting my garden again (and hopefully the peas that have been growing all winter will start flowering).

casual sneakers?

last nite we went to a friend's birthday in a function room a bar in the city. our friend had prewarned all the guys to wear a collar to get into the place. zac went out and bought a nice new shirt for the occasion and looked great in his all black "johnny cash" outfit (black shirt, suit jacket and black pants) and his vegan wear shoes. we get to the door and the bouncers looked up and down zac and said he couldn't come in because of his shoes:


they're dress shoes (they actually do look a bit casual in the pic but they look great with a nice outfit)!!! the guy claimed they were sports shoes and pointed to the dress code sign that says no sports shoes. we headed outside and called our friend inside to say zac couldn't get in. our friend came out, took one look at zac and said he looked great and he'd see what he could do. we waited outside while our friend (who happens to be a lawyer) went back in to talk to someone-- we figured he's probably pretty good at arguing a point professionally. 10 min later he came out with who we think was the maitre d' and we were escorted in past the bouncers (who zac really wanted to rub it into) and we went into the party (the guy who escorted us in did give the bouncers a pretty dirty look as we went past). of course because of that incident we spent the whole nite watching guys shoes. there were a LOT of worse looking shoes than zac's (including one guy who works there who was wearing black adidas shoes that looked slightly similar to zac's but with the 3 vertical white stripes-- shouldn't employees that are out on the floor have the same dress code as patrons?). also while we were waiting outside we saw several guys dressed much worse than zac (including one guy with the most ripped up looking casual jeans i've seen in a while-- no worn jeans was also on the dress code) getting inside. we figure the guy just didn't like zac's scruffy gotee he's got going (i don't really like it either). not impressed with the way that bouncer treated zac though. the party was great once we got in (lots of good food and free drinks) but i wouldn't ever want to go back there just cuz of the way we were treated at the door (also didn't really appreciate the moose antler light fixtures thru out the place and the gigantic moose head as a sculpture just inside the door).

the waifs

(photo courtesy of the waifs website)

last nite we went to see the waifs. it was really good (despite my sore ankle-- by the time we left my other ankle was worse than the rolled one from compensating onto the other side)! it was at the corner which was a nice smallish venue--the way the waifs should be seen (either that or outside on a sunny afternoon). it was a non-advertised gig that was only listed on the waifs website and in their e-newsletter. i spent the first morning of our queenland trip trying to get tickets (they went on sale the first morning we were away. i tried to get them thru the corner hotel website but that wasn't working so i spent $2 for 10 min at an internet kiosk for nothing. i ended up calling the corner as soon as they opened at noon to get the tix-- and probably paying another $2-3 for calling from my mobile). it was worth it though. they did a lot of their new stuff from the album they're releasing next month sometime. it sounds great-- a lot of the songs have kind of a jazzy/blues feel to them. they also did some of the old favourites (except crazy train cuz the opening act brett hunt did an amazing harmonica solo that was really good and i think vikki felt it was better than her bit in crazy train!! we only caught his last song so i don't really know what the rest of his stuff is like). hopefully they'll do another small venue gig sometime soon (won't be going to their big theatre gigs anymore. its just not the same.

good day for nothing

guess i picked a good day to be stuck at home. apparently its 2C with the wind chill outside (and i saw something about snow in metropoleton melbourne on a news brief earlier-- might have to look up the news find out what that was about). its been raining a good part of the day too (on the right side of the pic all that blue stuff is rain. earlier there was some green, yellow and orange too-- heavier rain).

r.i.c.e.

rest. ice. compression. elevation. i learned that before i ever even took a first aid class. that's what i'm doing today. i rolled my ankle at work yesterday. it hurt. then it got worse. by the end of the day i was limping a lot and the bike ride home wasn't fun (at least i had a co-worker to talk to during the ride to keep my mind off it). i rested and elevated it a bit last nite (and put tight socks on cuz i didn't feel like wrapping it up). i was too cold all evening to deal with ice though. it was really bad by the time i went to bed. i thought i might be ok today. it still hurts. i tried walking around on it a bit to see if it would feel better after warming up a bit. nope. still hurts. so i'm now taking a sick day cuz i rolled my ankle. that just seems dumb. oh well. i guess i'll just hang out on the couch watching dvds wrapped up in blankets with the dog. i've never rolled my ankle this bad (i had a friend that used to do it like this and i could never understand how you could roll your ankle so bad and not actually sprain or twist it or anything. now i know).