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Browsing category: Uncategorized

  • September 3, 2009

    Car updates

    – Flatmate finally bought a junker of his own so he no longer borrows ours; he also no longer fills ours up (he was always generous with that and would put enough gas in to pretty much cover our running around).

    – We need to replace two tyres. A guy T saw said he could do them cheaply, but when T went back to the shop he reckoned he’d sold them already.

    – Instead, that money went towards a new tailgate. There was some rust around the boot – the main concern we had when we bought it, and we knew it would need to be addressed for a warrant – so when T found a mint tailgate at Pick a Part for $66 he called me and we decided to scoop it up. Voila – new boot, plus $120 for labour, priming and god knows what else was done. I left all that to him to worry about; it’s part of my maintaining sanity plan. Delegate, delegate, delegate.

    – We also need to budget for the registration (due this month) and take it for a warrant (October, I think). We’ll need to come up with money for new tyres, although I’m not sure if they’re needed to pass the warrant or what.

    – The Levin is STILL sitting in our driveway. Two separate people were meant to come and take the whole thing as a parts car. Neither showed. We’ve had quite a few enquiries about various parts, but most of them fell through. I think the reason must be that prices have fallen drastically. If we got an entire tailgate for $66 from a wrecker, suddenly $150 for a bumper from a private seller isn’t all that much of a deal. I think it’s time to start telling people to make offers, and then we can gauge whether they’re reasonable or not.

  • September 2, 2009

    Maternal instincts

    I got to play happy families this weekend – sort of! In the wake of Kashin’s death (the zoo’s beloved Asian elephant, who’d been there 40 odd years) the zoo had free entry on Sunday. We bundled up T’s nieces and little brother and packed them into the backseat for what we anticipated would be a fun day out.

    It wasn’t, by the way. 17,000 people had the same idea; the lines ran from the entrance to the end of the carpark, and were standing still, it started pouring down buckets and we had to take shelter under a puny shrub while T sprinted all the way back down the street, round the corner and up a massive hill to where the car was parked.

    I did get a bit of a kick out of taking the kids out, though. We blended right in with all the other parents and their offspring around – walking from the car to the entrance was no mean feat, as it involved navigating around countless prams and toddlers running loose (if your child isn’t old enough to be at school, they should be firmly attached to your hand, IMO). At the same time, though, I kept looking around to make sure everyone was keeping up. And I was terrified of turning around and finding one of them gone. There are a lot of things I never want to go through, and one of those is most definitely telling someone that I’ve lost their kid…

    I never used to have much of a maternal instinct. I couldn’t stand crying, screaming children and babies terrified me. I made snide remarks about parents bringing tots to restaurants, events or even on the bus and comment on how they should leave their offspring at home (which of course I realise is unrealistic, but we’ve all experienced frustration at a meal out being ruined by someone’s whinging toddler).

    Somewhere along the line that changed, though – pretty rapidly in fact! Now when I see babies and little kids out and about I ooh and ahh and gush about how cute they are. I get the warm fuzzies when I see their dads carrying them around on their shoulders. I still sneer at baby-size Crocs (why would you inflict those on your child??) and mock designer baby gear (why would you waste that much on stuff they’ll outgrow in a heartbeat?) But now, instead of thinking “God I never want to have to deal with that”, it’s more like “I hope that’ll be me one day.”

    I don’t by any means approach strangers and start admiring their babies. Hell no. Babies still scare me. I don’t know how to hold them (T will testify to that) and I sure as hell don’t know how to change a nappy or feed them (see previous parentheses).

    The other day I was handed a bottle while I was watching T’s latest niece in her walker, and not wanting to look like a complete loser, I gave it a go. I didn’t want to drown her, you see. I was tentatively holding it to her mouth at about a thirty degree angle, expecting a stream of milk to gush out at any minute and flood the poor baby. Little did I know that the baby actually has to such on the teat to get anything out.  (Cue laughter from onlookers at my pathetic efforts and removal  of milk bottle from my hands.)

    Spending time around her made me realise babies don’t, in fact, spend every minute of every day squalling. She’s actually pretty quiet. I could watch her for hours – she’s so entertaining, and so cute, despite the fact that she can’t talk yet.

    In fact, I’d wager she cries less than one of her older sisters. Observing the sibling dynamics between two little girls only a year apart is almost painful. You’ve got the big sister syndrome – the smarter, classically prettier one, who also happens to be stronger and can inflict more pain on the little one when they get into fights. I never really know what to do when that all ends in tears – try to comfort her, or just let her cry it out?

  • September 1, 2009

    Today is Random Act of Kindness day. The lame thing is, it turned out to be one of the worst mornings I’ve had in a while.

    I was in a bit of a car accident this morning. A friend picked me up, we went through the roundabout around the corner from my place, noticed the car in the next lane veering EXTREMELY close to us, and she braked, coming to a complete stop. (There are two lanes, both somewhat narrow, but wide enough for both as long as drivers actually STAY inside their lane.)

    Not so the other driver! Completely oblivious, without even glancing in our direction, she carried on her path, swiping us and scraping all along the front side of the car. It was so loud, I thought it had taken off the driver’s mirror.

    There we were, sitting in the roundabout, shell-shocked, and wondering if they were going to pull over and stop.

    They did. Two old ladies got out – “What have you done to my car???? We’ve been driving this road for fifty years! We always go in that lane!!! Who do you think they’ll believe?” They were incredibly rude, refused to take responsibility, and blamed us, saying “you swung around too fast.”

    We called the cops to ask them to come out and hopefully resolve the dispute. It took two hours. We sat on the side of the road, waiting, waiting and waiting some more. Just as we gave up and started driving to the police station, the patrol car arrived. Going the other way, of course. We had to flag it down.

    They took statements but said odds were they wouldn’t be able to settle on whose fault it was and it should be left to insurance to deal with. On the bright side, “if she can’t get money out of you, you can’t get money out of her.” They’re both represented by the same insurer, which should be interesting.

    Just like that, an entire morning wasted and appointment missed. The front right corner of my friend’s car is scratched (it’s their white paint, so hopefully that will flake off) and there are grazes all along the left side of the old biddy’s car. It’s patently obvious to both of us who’s at fault, but the old women were so adamant, I believe they really were convinced of their innocence. No wonder, given the fact that THEY DIDN’T EVEN LOOK OVER and I doubt they noticed we were even there. And of course, as they so kindly pointed out, who are authorities more inclined to believe? The little old ladies or the two young girls?

    We really didn’t need a random act of kindness today – just for two old ladies to do the right thing and admit culpability.

  • August 31, 2009

    What kind of saver are you?

    What a great post over at Weakonomics – the seven types of saver. I love trying to categorise myself with things like these!

    After reading all the descriptions, I have to say I’m a mix of two – the Bucket and the Sweeper. I keep nothing in my main account. That’s changed over the years – at one point I used to keep it quite flush, with a cushion of a few hundred dollars. Now I’m back to budgeting down to zero and everything is devoted to a purpose.  I also like to keep various savings separate, although I still need to open up a couple more subaccounts.

    There was a debate over on the MSN boards recently about this – whether it’s better to have actual differentiated accounts (and the possible fees that come with that) or simply shovel them all into one, keeping track of how much is allocated to each fund via a spreadsheet. Oddly enough, the battle kind of fell down gender lines, with the guys preferring to keep everything in one streamlined account and the women liking to separated them out. Luckily for me, my online savings accounts not only pay interest but have no fees and provide easy access through internet banking.

    The Mr. Bucket: Mr. Bucket has more than two savings accounts and each one has a name.  12% goes to emergency fund, 8% to the house fund, 20% to honeymoon fund, etc…  You have no fun with your money because each bucket is a never-ending pit.

    The Sweeper: These are the people that keep a bare minimum in their checking accounts.  Every penny above the minimum is “swept” into savings, paying down debt, retirement accounts, or something else.  They probably use a credit card for most expenses, paying it off each month.  Sweepers are aggressive savers.

    I (and T for that matter) used to be a combination of the Magician and the In-n-out paycheck to paycheck types. And this was when we were both working and he was bringing in decent money! But I have to bear in mind he was paying off more debt then, as well as all the other expenses incurred by work – gas, tools, clothes, food, etc. It’s a little hard not to be bitter and think about how much money we wasted during that period! But live and let live.

  • August 30, 2009

    I want a Time Turner (or, my life on the internet)

    just to have more time in the day.

    For me, news is a daily ritual. I just don’t feel complete until I’ve caught up with the headlines, and read every single story that catches my eye. That can take a while. I do it all online – I don’t really watch TV news and I don’t listen to the radio anymore. And my news consumption mainly happens in the evening, after all the day’s happenings have been and gone, because that’ s just how my schedule is.

    And that’s just ONE news site – it can take up to half an hour, plus the time it takes to scroll through my google reader, deal with emails, work on assignments, muck around on Facebook, and Twitter; and I sometimes like to check out Salon, Jezebel, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, etc, when time allows. Or when I still have the time and energy to bother.

    Seriously, the amount of time I spend online borders on the ridiculous sometimes. I’m on the internet constantly at work – that’s my job. I use it for uni, and for leisure (obviously). Sometimes I get home and just feel too tired to go through the whole routine; yet I feel almost obligated to. It’s a toss up between a night off, and dealing with twice the amount of, well, EVERYTHING, the next day.

    My week away on field trip meant I was more or less cut off from the online world. I didn’t know how I’d deal with that; I dreaded it. But you know what? It was FREEING. It was actually really really nice – it let me relax, and it was a relief, almost, to have all this free time. (That’s a bit sad, I know).

    How much do you spend online every day? Do you ever feel resentful about it?

  • August 29, 2009

    Real life courtrooms

    I recently got to sit in at a sentencing at the High Court. It was not an auspicious start. I was running late due to a phone interview running overtime. Then when I stepped outside, I found it was raining, and the downpour of course stopped once we reached the court fifteen minutes later – soaking, bedraggled, with the only dry parts of me being my back (wtf??). My hair was limp, damp and straggly, and I couldn’t see out my waterlogged glasses. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we hadn’t been allowed in, considering our state.

    Luckily, there were no metal detectors this time; last week my fork got confiscated at the district court and I couldn’t work out where to retrieve it from afterwards. I ended up going over to the AU campus to eat so I could pinch a plastic fork. Good times.

    I think we all know that law in action is nothing like law on TV. It’s certainly nowhere near as exciting and snappy as on Boston Legal. The actual sentencing took nearly an hour. I expected a flowing, succinct speech. Instead, the judge spent most of it flipping through pages and pages of documents, spending approximately as much time referring back to notes as he did in actually speaking. (That coupled with his pace of speech meant it was ridiculously easy to take notes – in long hand even). It was more halting than anything, and it was tempting to tune out. Don’t get me wrong. The judge was extremely articulate and delivered some excellent lines. And I understand the need to refer back through notes, given the vast amount of paperwork that would have gone into that case. It was just somewhat hard to stay engaged through all the page turning and lengthy pauses. Give me TV courtrooms any day.

  • August 27, 2009

    Selling journalism

    Sometimes I feel like nothing but a telemarketer.

    That’s right, I feel like a salesperson pitching crap to people over the phone.

    Is it really so different? You’re calling people, who you’ve most likely never spoken to before. You’re trying to get them to talk to you. To answer your questions. Sometimes they don’t want to, and they’ll do everything in their power to wriggle free. You try and try, you rephrase, you try to sell yourself. Sometimes it just plain doesn’t work.

    You try to coax the magic quote out of them. To get them to elaborate, to keep them talking, keep them listening. If it’s a controversial topic, something they don’t want to discuss, you try to get around that in the way you word your query. And you need the balls to keep asking, to keep hammering away.

    I realised this because today, I dealt with someone who was happy to talk to me. Someone not used to the media, someone genuine, someone whose story I just wanted to hear and who was happy to share it.

    It was just a relief. Such a welcome change from weary, wary people – and don’t get me wrong, I can more than understand WHY many of them are that way – who are afraid to utter a single word on the record, even when it’s totally non controversial, and actually in their interests.

    It made me realise how differently I can, and need to, handle ordinary people. Not business people, not politicians, who we have to hound and harangue constantly, and usually to no avail. People who actually return calls, and emails, and even pick up their phone sometimes. Perhaps even more amazing, today I received immediate responses from one political office. I took the measure of emailing two separate people with the same enquiry, expecting to hear back from neither. But both replied within the hour. I almost felt stupid and amateurish, even though the opposite was true.

  • August 26, 2009

    What I’m reading this week

    The recession bride: how one couple did an $8000 wedding. Not sure about the berry pies in lieu of cake, but I really liked this: Our wedding day will not fit into a nice, neat rose-and-lavender theme. Then again, neither have our lives. Our friends andfamily have shaped us and carried us up to this point. So will it be with our wedding. That’s how I imagine mine would be, anyway.

    Jobless couples: what happens when a partner’s laid off? I guess the one good thing about having flatmates is they keep BF occupied – he doesn’t “bombard me” when I get home, desperate for attention.

    DC Interns beware! : I love me a good snarky blog! Unfortunately this blog, touted on VF, didn’t quite live up to how it was pitched. Current fave snarky blog is still the newsrage over at Editing the Herald.

    A bargain over evolution: Can religion and science reconcile? Apparently so. I bring good news! These two warring groups have more in common than they realize. And, no, it isn’t just that they’re both wrong. It’s that they’re wrong for the same reason. Oddly, an underestimation of natural selection’s creative power clouds the vision not just of the intensely religious but also of the militantly atheistic. If both groups were to truly accept that power, the landscape might look different…and the two might learn to get along.

    The Women’s Crusade: She used to be beaten and abused by her husband. Then a $65 microfinance loan allowed her to start a successful embroidery business.

  • August 25, 2009

    What do you hate paying for?

    From Sunday’s paper: 10 things we hate to pay for. Though it seems to me largely cribbed from a similar MSN Money piece, 15 overpriced things we hate paying for. Popcorn00

    Here’s the list in short:
    ATM fees
    Movie refreshments
    Carparking
    BYO wine
    Bottled water
    Holiday surcharges
    Online ticketing
    Dental fees
    Wedding surcharges
    Commodity price rises

    To that list, I might add: although holiday surcharges suck, workers are entitled to time and a half on public holidays. You would be, so don’t begrudge paying the extra 15%. I usually don’t eat out on holidays, or if I do, I try not to moan too much about it. And…as good as popcorn always smells at the cinema, it NEVER EVER EVER tastes half as good as it smells! On the odd occasion that I give in and buy some, I’m always disappointed.

    Other things I hate buying: Eye drops. They don’t cost all that much – $5 to 10 – but you have to buy them every month! Which brings me to that other monthly expense I resent: tampons. I also find myself buying socks far, far too often, along with pens and razors (for T).

  • August 24, 2009

    This is what a 100yo book looks like

    It’s T’s 21st next month..and it’s kind of a big deal for his family.

    His mum is selling off a bunch of stuff so she can buy him a present.

    Stuff like silverware, jewellery, creepy old dolls…..and a reeeeeally old Bible, that’s over 100 years old.

    It’s kept him pretty busy recently, polishing off all the silver, driving around to pick up stuff, and driving to antique dealers/appraisers, etc. She’s making him work for it! Seriously, after buying the silver polish and gas for all the travelling, it’s probably cost us about $40. Better be worth it.

    Anyway – it’s a pretty awesome Bible. It’s huge – MASSIVE – and really delicate. But it looks well preserved; it’s not falling apart, probably due to the hard cover, and only a few pages are ripped.

    P8120366

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