Brunch with Sarah

New blog post: http://tinyurl.com/6yeay2

housematehorror
Horror stories from the world of shared living spaces. EEK!

dwseason4
A journal where the alternative fourth season of the TV show Doctor Who is being written.

lol_comics
Keep youself smiling at the little things with some funny comics.

bikes
A community for everyone who loves bicycles, motorbikes, and more.

Yesterday, I was at the Supanova Pop Culture Expo (with free tickets) for about half an hour. It was excruciatingly dull, so much so that I felt sorry for the people who paid money to get in. The highlight for me was noticing Jewel Staite sitting at a table behind a back-the-fuck-off-this-bitch-is-a-celebrity style of rope divider. You had to queue to see her and I don't care enough about anybody's celebrity to warrant standing in a line. From the outside of this impenetrable roped fortress, for the briefest moment, I took a gander at her. That was only until I noticed she was looking back at me, the leering Australian with a sense of debauchery surrounding him. As our eyes met we made love for the first time and for the last time. She was okay, I was superb. The entire expo would have been a waste of time if not for that completely one-way and yet possibly (note: not very likely) shared moment of fantasy.

My escapism has socially ethical boundaries but they're not very clearly defined.

Today I met with Judeebee for tea in Cottesloe. There is such a different atmosphere in that suburb. So many pensioners were walking around, a contrast from the typical Mt.Lawley area I'm used to. We (by which I mean, she) bought some blueberries (that I gobbled half of) from a health shop afterwards. Blueberries are expensive! They're good but these dried ones weren't that good. I've actually been out and about a lot recently. Miraculously I'm managing to not buy food whenever I'm out. That being said I do have an insatiable desire to go to Flipside, Levant Cuisine and a few other places that I haven't visited in a while.

and now a moment from the dictionary:

(sometimes the example sentences in dictionaries make me snort with laughter)

Well, I'm mostly moved in now, barring my clothes and the odd bit of furniture. Still got to change my billing address for a few things, but I'm mostly sorted.

It's fantastic to have my own space, and I'm really happy now I don't have to wory about stuff going missing, people being loud at stupid o'clock, finding the sink full of washing up for days at a time, the house reeking of ganja, or any of the other problems that have made living in Croydon so much "fun."

So yeah...today's been tiring, but it's definitely been worth it... :)

Contaxt details all updated, and I'm about to head off to collect the keys. Let's hope the shifting of stuff all goes smoothly... :D

Might be offline for a whiile. There should be a cable guy around this afternoon, but you can never tell if there's going to be a problem or not...

+ shopping for nothing in particular
+ finding a fantastic lemon tart at the tea & coffee merchants
+ lunch with friends
+ buying a psp
+ eating take-away lebanese last weekend
+ spreading chilli jam on toast

+/- accidentally putting premium petrol in the car
+/- figuring out new bank accounts
+/- changing health insurance payments
+/- tracy bugging me to make a trifle for her
+/- boxing old university notes

- not being able to fix my beard trimmer
- reading grammar books that push christianity on children with no subtlety whatsoever
- being dion's personal banker
- still fucking waiting
- getting chilli jam in my eye

While going through a quintillion old messages, I realised Toni didn't get a call until about a month before she had to leave the country. There is a timeline breakdown of what to expect on the website and now I don't see any reason for them to contact me until I am allocated to a province. I don't really know what is going on, I'm just wading in a stream of non-information. I could call them but they're always so ill-prepared to receive calls from people.

so god hates, california, it's official.


it's intense out here. there are 0ver 800 fires in the state, over 150 in my county alone, and more than 60% are uncontained and unnatended.
ouch.

our firefighting resources are pretty much exhausted. it's a panic situation.

it started a few days ago, after a lightning storm
the smoke is so bad here you can't even see the hills.
and the hills are RIGHT THERE. the valley is a birds nest.
you can't see the water tower from the parking lot at the college. it smells like a campfire, 24/7 and it is more or less raining ash.
some people have argued that i'm making that part up, but those people don't own cars. i left my windows cracked slightly the day before last and when i came out the seats were covered in ash. 


this would affect me less if i wasn't alread a certified emergency responder (community emergency response team, or CERT). i went out to the firehouses today and yesterday with my friend stephanie, and they are all unorganized and ill informed. finally we got someone who know what to do with us, and she said that at the moment, they didn't need us for anything (even though they clearly need people).

it's like we finally found someone who knows what to do with us and her higher ups don't know what to do with her.
or us for that matter but lets not get redundant here.

i can't blame anyone. i went to the firefighter's mini city they have set up at the fairgrounds. it's pretty much chaos, no one knows what to do, so i can't blame them for being unorganized. and i certainly can't blame them for not knowing how to utilize such a new program. there's little we can do to help out the big effort. 
it's not a mass casualty incedent (good) so they really have no reason to use us for medical purposes (which is really our strong suit). it's the main issue is the fire, and we aren't trained to handle anything of that magnitude.
small fires.

it's frustrating to say the least, knowing that they need help, and you want to help, but they don't know how to use you.
on the bright side we now know exactly where the program stands, and we can fix the problem. 

once the fires are out and the panic has subsided, the CERT team is going to focus on becoming more organized, dividing off into groups sorted by area.

i just spoke with the coordinater, and she pretty much gave me the title of district leader, now in charge of the lower ukiah area.
it basically means if we have another natural disaster, i'm in charge of everyone, and i get to decide what actions to take.

which is a pretty damn big deal for a 17 year old with no prior experience.

i'm just crossing my fingers and hoping that everything that's been laid out on the table gets properly executed, and that i make a halfway decent leader.  

So my son ( tom Cat) has gotten himself two girlfriends (Pussy cats) both of them are residing with us at the moment they are all so cute, playing all over the house sleeping on our bed and just generally creating chaos in our home - we got Phraxuis better known as Phrax, Ash and Gizibelle which is quite ironic the naming being Grey , grey and black lady hahaha trust Geri to name animals, suppose once we get to meet the actual owner of the other two neco chans they will be so accutomed to their new names they won't even respond to their actual names. Its such a pitty though these two kitties are so cute and yet their owner is never home... W isnt reacting too badly to them , he hasn't said any thing about his allergies yet suppose its ok. He even baught shampoo said we will give them a bath over the weekend , dont know if they have fleas but rather be cautious.

knitted_wedding
Follow one woman's quest to knit an entire vow-renewing wedding. Encouragement is encouraged.

brigits_flame
For writers interested in an ongoing competition that tests your narrative chops.

hollow_art
A longstanding art, icon and base archive centered around RPGs.

Well, looks like I might just about be set to move this Friday...Everything looked a bit bleak, what with the agents wanting the deposit, the "admin fee," the 4 days to the end of the month and the first month's rent on the 27th, when I get paid on the 30th.

Landlord being incommunicado means that I'm going to owe both sweetcyanide and elegy_of_flames a great many drinks for offering to bail me out and make up the shortfall his non-repayment of my deposit is going to cause. Thankfully, this isn't really going to affect me too much beyond having £450 less in "savings" than I would otherwise. By which I mean that it's not going to stop me doing anything regular - I'd kinda planned to get my hair done, get the new PC's motherboard sorted, and maybe get myself a tattoo with it.

Anyways, I know that the landlord never got around to lodging the money with the deposit protection scheme, so I'm not entirely sure what I can do to get it back, although the fact that he only gave me one month's notice, and that verbal, means he's rather heftily violated the terms of the Assured Shorthold tenancy agreement (thanks for pointing that out to me, hazyjane!). I'm guessing that kind of puts me, legally, in the right.

I don't think this week is going to go fast enough for me now...Once all this moving business is cleared up, I've got some really nice stuff to look forward to over the following few weekends.