Life Update!

Wed, Mar. 18th, 2020 08:54 pm
annarti: (Default)
Have new phone, which is neither green nor waterproof, but it was cheap, so that'll do. Ankle also healed! I can do the fitness again! Which has meant Walk Week happened as planned last week! This was a thing I made up after having had this list of walks printed and mapped out for about two years now. I've done a couple of them here and there, but for Walk Week I made to do one a day for the week, particularly picking that week because of the public holiday Monday and also daylight savings is still in effect, making most use of time after work. The idea was to basically replicate as best I could when I was in Japan, where despite eating any deep fried dough on a stick that I came across, I still lost two kilos because there was so much walking.

Day 1 (last Sunday) was at Mount George and, because that went more quickly than I'd expected, the Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens. Mount George looked gorgeous, stunning views across the Hills, but it was so close to the freeway that there was no point where I couldn't hear it. One of the best things about bushwalking is being entirely enveloped in nature, and when there's this constant sound of traffic it sort of takes the serenity away. Botanic Gardens were as delightful as ever.

Day 2, public holiday Monday, was Noarlunga South to Moana, which was suitably dramatic. I walked along the clifftop on the way south then along the very wide and occasionally very rocky beach on the way north again. These berries which I know nothing about were growing all along the footpath. I figured, if they were poisonous, they wouldn't be so prevalent so I gave one a taste. More like a tiny plum, with the shape of the stone inside, and somehow sweet, salty and sour all at once. Odd little thing.

Day 3, back to work and fitting my walk in before sunset, here's the Marion Coastal Walk. Everyone who's been a student in SA has been to this park. Just look at all the geology going on! Sugarloaf! Giant boulders dumped on the beach by an ancient glacier! Layering of sedimentary rock and folding and colapsing! Also nice sunset. Which mostly happened while I was on a sodding detour through suburbia while the footpath was under maintainence.

Day 4, Andrew's Walk in Andrew Perry Reserve, very close to work. This one was odd and I don't know how it made a 'take your breath away' list of walks. I'd made it barely a kilometre in and came up against a quarry that I couldn't get around. I tried following the creek but it was just suburbia, so I gave up and went to the Himeji Gardens instead. It's tiny and hence not fitnessy but it WAS gorgeous, so I felt better about that =3

Day 5, covering two closeby walks in the Adelaide Uni loop (not sure how that made the list, when the whole of Linear Park was already on it) and the Folks on the Hill walk in North Adelaide, an historic walk looking at some classic houses and buildings. I felt like a proper tourist in my own city doing this one! Right down to scaffolding covering one of the landmarks. If you've ever been on holiday with me, you'll know I'm cursed with this kind of thing.

Day 6, the Waterfall Walk at Belair National Park, which I'd kinda wanted to hold off on until there was actual water falling but I've run out of walks near me that I can do after work. This one was kind of disappointing because of all the weeds. That first one of the waterfall (well, cliff)? All the green at the bottom of the cliff, ALL down that valley, it's blackberry. Finally get out of the blackberry and up away from the creek and you get into the bush, then back down again at the end and there's heaps of hawthorn and olive trees. Belair National Park requires that you pay if you're going in with a car (I parked out the front because I'm here to walk, so let's walk through the park), which I'd always assumed went towards, y'know, protecting the park. It's still ridiculous since all parks are maintained by the government anyway. But to see all the weeds? Especially knowing they'd just done some burning off at the top of the hill in November, it was disappointing.

Day 7, my triumphant finale, Linear Park! Following the River Torrens from its mouth at Henley Beach into the city. I started feeling it by the time I got to the city, rested a bit for lunch, then the way back was made of ow. My feet absolutely caned. Left foot had three blisters, somehow the right had none. But I made it! And then Mum and I went out to dinner to Apoteca, not technically as celebration, but it felt it! We decided to have a girls' night out while Dad and Colin were having a boys' weekend in Melbourne. It was awesome.

So over the course of that week I walked 93.25km (on actual walks, I'm sure I cracked 100 by just generally getting around) and lost 1.5 kilos! Victory! I'm so proud of myself for achieving this, especially when it was looking like my ankle would be stuffed and I wouldn't be able to do it at all, so to actually do it every day... I'm stoked. I even felt excited to do each walk, even Linear Park, as intimidating as it was. MADE IT. Next challenge, I'm going to do the Kayla Itsines thingo, because shuddup that's why. Next two weeks I'm gearing up for that. I've been jogging on the beach to build up endurance and also make sure my ankle is indeed healed. So far so good.

In other news: the bleedingly obvious. Yesterday I went shopping for the first time since the panic buying started and... that was an experience! I already knew about the TP situation, obviously, and knew it'd largely extended to pasta and tinned food, though there was at least some of that still on shelves. Of flour, which I needed plain flour (or thought I did, turns out I already had a bag I hadn't yet emptied into the jar thank GOD), there was one 500g bag of fancy pants wholemeal self raising flour. Fresh veggies were all business as usual. Some of the missing stuff was weird, though, like milk. There were a few 1L cartons and half a shelf of Pura 2L but the rest was GONE. How even? How do you stockpile fresh milk? What are people doing, keeping it in the freezer? Milk doesn't freeze well, also it'd take up a hell of a lot of space. Also, I needed coathangers. There was one three-pack of fancy wooden ones for $6, which is way more than I'd like to spend on coathangers. Why coathangers? Went around the corner to Target and got some there in a 5-pack of wire ones for $5, much more like it. I did have to get the last two bags of fancy pants kitty litter, though. I'm sure Rory'll know the difference.

Finally, after years of meaning to do it and not getting around to it, I booked flights to Sydney to see Vivid! Vivid is now cancelled. Go figure. Still going to Sydney, though, and also Brisbane. This'll be happening for two weeks at the end of May/beginning of June, assuming Qantas and Tiger aren't both bankrupt and completely grounded by then, but y'know, playing it by ear. I might just have to wear a HAZMAT suit going to Sydney.

Watching sport with no crowd is weird. We had the first of three cricket matches against the Kiwis with no crowd, and it was so quiet you could hear the guys' pads squeaking in the stump mike as they walked out to bat. 'The crowd errupts!' cried Mark Waugh at the fall of a Kiwi wicket. 'Look at him, that one guy down there clapped... How'd he get in?' The next day the Kiwi government announced that anyone coming into the country after midnight that night would be subjected to a 14-day quarantine, so the Kiwis went home and that was the end of the series.

AFLW, which I've been going to every local match of this season, just watched on telly this time. For some reason the friends and family of the visiting team were allowed into the stands, so our home ground had about 20 away supporters, applause echoing in the stands. The mens' season is due to start tomorrow and, at this stage, they're still going ahead, but I mean the odds of the season actually getting to the end are pretty slim. If there's so much as one case among the teams they'll call it off, I'm sure. The women's game without the 10k-ish crowd noise is weird enough. Mens' game, with the 50k+ Adelaide Oval empty, will be surreal. The frigging MCG holds 100k and we'll be able to actually hear the players talking to each other.

This morning PM ScoMo put a level 4 travel warning for the entire world. That's the highest it goes. It's just a straight up 'do not travel.' We've never done that before. Ban on gatherings of over 100 people, but we've been very strongly reassured we're not going into lockdown. To have any real, lasting effect, we'd have to go into lockdown for 6 months, which isn't sustainable. Schools are staying open, because kids are pretty much unaffected by the thing and, if they were to close schools, it'd put more people at risk because who are the kids going to be staying with? At-risk grandparents. That, or parents are going to have to stay home to look after them, and the biggest thing is to keep everyone working, earning money and subsequently spending money to keep the country moving as best we can.

Work is... quiet but still trucking on. Printing isn't one of the vulnerable industries at this stage, we're still getting our orders for business cards and pull-up banners, but we've got time on our hands to prepare should we need to start working from home, setting up Microsoft Teams and OneDrive and accessing webmail and all that, if neeeded.

Laura's due to give birth next month, so that's super exciting :D The hospital's only allowing two guests sum total, Colin counts as one, so to be fair on everyone they're not having anyone else in the hospital and will just allow people to come by their house on case-by-case basis to see bub. So they'll basically be on their own lockdown, which is sad but necessary and, if I'm honest, probably a bit of a relief for them. Legit reason to stop the constant stream of people into their house to see babby!

I say I'll keep on top of DW entries but it never sodding happens. Still, at least I get around to it eventually? Right?

Tue, Jan. 28th, 2020 09:16 pm
annarti: (Default)
Happy Australia Day two days later! This summer has been absolute balls and I feel like Australia Day this year was really all about the CFS volunteers et al. One of my Dad's mates is a CFS volunteer and has been doing stints in NSW, obviously Cudlee Creek and over to Kangaroo Island. The amount of time these people are sarificing to go into the teeth of these bastard fires time and time again is just insane.

Alex was over for a bit of a whirlwind weekend from Sydney, landing on Saturday for a 30th birthday on Sunday then off again that night. I picked her up from the airport Saturday morning and we headed up to LOT.100, which I've been meaning to do... well, since it opened, really but especially this summer. It's a sort of Hills booze collective place, joint cellar door between these five beverage companies: Hills Cider Co for the cider (my favourite cider), Mismatch Brewing for the beer (they have fruit flavoured beers!), Adelaide Hills Distillery (who make 78 Degrees gin, among other things), Ashton Valley Fresh for the non-alcoholic juices and, most importantly, Vinteloper for the wine. Vinteloper was one of the wineries that lost every single vine to the Cudlee Creek fires and, like every other business affected, they haven't been asking for donations but instead just saying BUY OUR STUFF. GIVE US BUSINESS. So we went there to do just that :D LOT.100 itself is perfectly fine, though from the pizza oven you could see one of the hills behind them was distinctly more brown than others, so that's terrifying.

So yus. Got a pizza and a cheese platter for lunch, a glass of rosé and a glass of red, then two bottles of shiraz, two of rosé and one of pinot gris to take home, along with some cider and beer (both flavoured with Davidson plum, aww yeah).

We then Googled antique shops in the general area and cruised up to Birdwood via Woodside and Lobethal, straight through the middle of the fireground. This was the first time I'd been through the fireground since the bushfires and my god it's terrifying. Entire hills behind Woodside burnt. Trees literally right on the edge of Birdwood turned to charcoal. One house that was just a few bits of corrugated iron sitting in ash. Acres and acres and acres of brown vineyards and burnt orchards. Entire chunks of forest where the road went through it with the trees completely black right up to the very top, their leaves bleached white to ash, and just imagining these towering walls of fire reaching that high; and then, right in the middle of it, a house still with its rose bushes out the front. This is the stuff that always amazes me in bushfires, the stuff that doesn't burn. Just imagining the inferno the fieries had to deal with, and they saved not just the house but the roses. I dunno that just... feels more real. They're volunteers. This isn't their job, they're not just getting it done and moving on, they know the roses are just as important to save, cos that's life. To whoever lived there, they love their roses. It just touches me to see that.

Every time we saw livestock we cheered them. Well done, cows and sheep, you survived a bushfire! Cos there were plenty of photos during the fires of livestock wandering the streets after the owners just opened the gates to give them the best chance at survival.

The gum trees, of course, will be fine. Give 'em six months and they'll all be covered in fluffy green pompoms cos that's what they do, but the rest is going to take years to rebuild. I still need to sit down and figure out exactly who I want to donate to. Red Cross just kinda puts it all into general revenue so your dollars aren't necessarily going to end up with the people you're donating to, so that bugs me. I want to go directly for KI, since it'll be a while before I can take leave to get over there and spend money on the island. I've been up to the Cudlee Creek fireground and spent money there, going to the T20 Showdown this Sunday (it's Crows vs Power but they're playing cricket I can't wait) but still need to work out an actual solid donation.

Anyway. Sidetracked. We visited three different antique shops, specifically looking for jewellery because Alex loves her some antique sparkles, and finally found some proper vintage stuff in Birdwood where I enabled her into buying a ring. Cos it was pretty! And the fire was RIGHT THERE at the end of the street! And it's not like it was hellishly expensive, and it was pretty! So she bought it. I'd seen a necklace of freshwater pearls out the front, all in different colours, and then inside found some earrings of the same multicoloured freshwater pearl variety. So I got them both.

We've also decided our next girls' trip will have to be KI. SA Tourism Commission has ditched the current campaign in favour of #BookThemOut and, ngl, made me tear up first time I saw that. I've always been a parochial South Australian, always try as much as possible to buy SA stuff, and this just makes me want all the more to go do SA things.

Vinteloper's first vintage back had better be called 'Phoenix' or something I swear to G.

Tue, May. 3rd, 2011 06:16 pm
annarti: (XD)
HOLY SHIT THE INTERNET LOADS AGAIN. I can load other pages of LJ outside the flist! I can download Doctor Who! dA doesn't take 20 minutes to load one picture! IT LIVES~ *loves on it* Never say we downloaded 86gigs in a day ever again, cos I swear I'll be around next time to bitch your arse off >(

SO YES. I went up to Mum's and Dad's over the Easter long-long-long weekend*, then took the remaining three days of last week off. Mmm, 10 days off for only 3 days of annual leave, tasty. Good Friday, Mum and I had a Dexter marathon, which finished on Monday, so she's caught up with that now :D We also had pork for dinner, because we're REBELS and pork belly is made of win and awesome, especially when Thai.

Easter Saturday was the traditional Oakbank Races, which my parents and a group of their friends do every year but this was only my second time. The 6am start tended to put me off in previous years >> You have to get up that early so you can drive inside the track and park in the best spot right on the boundary without having to squeeze between the four-wheel drives and Mercs. Tradition goes that each couple/family is in charge of one part of the day's eating--one lot does breakfast of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, another does lunch entree, my parents get lunch mains (barbecued Moroccan salmon, and my watermelon, olive, feta and mint salad this year), then there's dessert and afternoon tea/coffee and a cheese platter.

The five blokes, including Dad, have had a running VOR** competition, which has always been won by one of the guys until an ammendment of the rules two years ago that made it the VODR*** competition. Much fun is had comparing these c1969 bottles of red to vinegar and drain cleaner (ie pour it down the drain cos it's not good for ANYTHING). Dad's was the youngest--only a 1987--but one of the nicest I thought. Quite drinkable indeed =3

Packing up everything into the car at the end of the day, we had the footy on and everyone, including about three other camps around us, bonded over listening to the Power get beaten by the Gold Coast. It was hilarious stuff, you guys. You don't even know.

Easter Sunday Mum put on a feast four the four of us plus Colin's girlfriend and it was beautiful~ X9 We don't really tend to do Easter in my family, apart from a Lindt gold bunny from the Easter Bunny, but I think because I've moved out now, Mum decided any excuse X3

Easter Monday/ANZAC Day, nothing much. Went down to Victor Harbor to have an open inspection of Nanna's house and NOBODY turned up =( So I played Pokémon until my battery ran flat cos I hadn't charged it in about a week. And then Dexter marathon :D Followed by Doctor Who and alksdghlaksj this series will be epic, I can tell. Moffat love <3 Next episode is now downloading because I CAN DO THAT NOW OMFG.

Easter Tuesday... buggered if I know. I think we caught up on Burn Notice or something.

Wednesday was BAROSSA DAY~ <3 <3 You guys know I love the Barossa by now <3 <3 Visited the tried and true favourites of Henschke, Rockfords and Peter Lehmann and 'didn't have time' to do Two Hands. They were charging for it. Wineries that charge for tastings... yeah that's dodgy. But yes. I walked away with 15 bottles from Henschke, 9 from Peter Lehmann and one each of the Rockfords reds on the tasting menu (so another 6 of them, plus a white). They're sitting behind me in boxes at the moment, which will have to change =/ Vast majority of this stuff is for cellaring, so drink-in-ten-years type stuff. I worked out that my time off--three public holidays and three annual leave days--roughly paid for the wine, so that's a nice way of looking at it =3

Thursday came back home and found the internet was still buggered after the previous Wednesday when it had carked it, Friday I spent being pissed off at the internet for being dead but knowing nothing would be done because it was going to rollover today anyway, Saturday I was fed up enough with the net that I gave up and went to Marion. Two stylin' jumpers, two elegant pairs and two feather pairs of earrings and a fluffy scarf later I feel happy.

Also on Saturday night, footy happened )

Sunday, made dinner, yesterday back at work, today still at work, but HAVE INTERNET BACK NOW YES. Life is good :D




* We also got ANZAC Day on Easter Monday, so the Easter Monday public holiday rolled over to Tuesday. FIVE DAY WEEKEND HELL YEAH.

** Very Old Red (wine)

*** Very Old Drinkable Red (wine)

Wed, Mar. 2nd, 2011 10:10 pm
annarti: (*facePALM*)
Stupid. What NEEDS to be done is enforce trucks to use their gears to go down the Hill, not breaks. Speed limits aren't the problem here. Trucks aren't hurtling down the freeway because of the 100kph speed limit, they're doing it because their breaks have gone, at which point no speed limit in the world is going to stop them. Enforce low gear and build another arrester bed. Speed limits are going to do shit-all.

OR BETTER YET! Ban trucks from using the route at all! Make them take the old freeway down the hill, million times safer for everyone :D

...Why yes, I am still a Hills girl despite not using that road anymore during peak hour, thank you for noticing. Take a girl out of the Hills and all that.

Sun, Oct. 17th, 2010 11:11 am
annarti: (Default)
Reason number 4 as to why the people across the road from us (we call them the mansion) are Not Hills People: They're burning off, and were yesterday, too. You'll note how I said it's been raining on and off since Wednesday. Also, yesterday it was windy. That's the single most inconsiderate thing you can do to your neighbours in the Hills. Loud parties don't matter because there's that much distance and shrubbery and trees that the only loud parties we can here are from the place right across the valley, and that's only because they're in something of a natural amphitheatre.

But yeah. Don't like the people in the mansion.

Reason number 1 was that they didn't know how to build on their property in the first place: they spent 200 grand (or so it is rumoured) on their driveway, which is really only navigable by a 4-wheel drive. The property already had a driveway before they began. Also, they filled in their bit of the Sturt Creek, which becomes the Sturt River and later the River Torrens, the biggest river in Adelaide.

Reason number 2: more burning off related stuff. This time it was hot, dry, unsupervised and thankfully not windy or they would have burnt down the Hills. It set fire to a stringy bark (gum tree whose bark is basically kindling), which I noticed while out on the balcony, so Mum ran over to tell them. Their hose didn't reach to the fire, so they had to use buckets to put it out. Upon telling them they should be burning closer to the house, supervising it, not doing it on a stinking hot dry day under stringy barks, the woman's response? 'We'll take your ideas into consideration.' lakjsdghlajks We're calling the CFS on them next time they do that =|

Reason number 3: They build under gum trees. One predictably fell* on their gazebo a few weeks back, when that giant pine fell over the other end of the road and took down 2 stobie poles and left us without power for 16 hours. I lolled :D They've now cut down every tree near the house.

This is all pretty basic knowledge of living in the Hills. What are they going to do next? Plant an orchard and expect it not to be eaten by possums?



* There's a reason we warn people about drop bears. They're more believable than gum trees breaking with absolutely no provocation.

photo dump!

Wed, Jun. 17th, 2009 05:54 pm
annarti: (a good day to be a 'narti)
I just had my haircut and thought I'd show it off, and also found other piccies on the camera that needed clearing off. And so, photo dump! )

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