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, Feb. 25th, 2020 08:53 pm
annarti: (WAAAAAAAAAAAAH)
My phone carked it :< After years of loyal service it's just given up the ghost. It was the perfect phone: green, reasonably cheap and, best of all, waterproof. I've taken it in the pool on multiple occasions, been running with it in the rain, swum in the ocean with it shoved in my bathers. Apart from that one time last summer that I forgot to dry out its headphone jack after swimming in the sea and the salt very quickly corroded said jack, it's been brilliant. This afternoon, though, dead. Functioned fine while in the sea (well, 'fine', with everything wet the touch response always takes a bit of effort to dry your finger off enough for it to register, but still, fine), fine when I got out of the water and dried it off to stop my fitness tracking, but when I got home, it wouldn't turn on again. I took the back off, where it's usually bone dry, and it was sodden. I followed this tutorial to take it apart and subsequently shattered the screen and possibly broke its earpiece, but I had fun taking it apart, anyway.

So now I'm in the market for a new phone. I highly doubt I'll find that holy trinity of cheap, green and waterproof, but I can dream. Or just find another Motorola G3 on ebay. I've done that before, when the headphone jack died, with the intention of using its headphone jack to replace mine, but I've just been using the extra phone in the car for music. It came from Brazil, tho, so my Aussie sim card won't work in it, sadly.

ALSO. I have a bung ankle. This was from Wednesday two weeks ago, now. Running on the beach, doing my sprints as I've been doing for a good chunk of February, and I stepped in a footprint, rolling my ankle. It felt so innocuous at the time, just a bit of an, 'ooh,' bit of a sting, and I kept going with just a twinge, figuring it'd work itself out. Once I got back to the car, it had swollen up to give me a not insignificant cankle. After a week of no improvement, I went to the doctor and was told that yep, that's normal, this sort of injury usually takes 4-6 weeks to heal.

D:

This sucks balls. I've been doing so well with the fitness! Going to the beach after work for most of February to do sprints on the beach or go swimming if it's been warm enough. If I made it down every day for the month, I was going to reward myself with Copenhagen ice cream on the 29th and it was going to be awesome. I've been gearing myself up for self-imposed Walk Week! For the second week of March! When there were going to be no committments from Sunday through to Saturday, no footy or cricket, no family dinner and even a public holiday Monday, so I was going to go on a bushwalk (or similar) every day after work with the last of daylight savings... That's not happening now, cos the stupid thing'll only be at 3.5 weeks by then and not up to bushwalking. It STILL doesn't feel any better than day one.

But eh. New tech is exciting, my phone was getting somewhat slow and only just lasting the day on battery anyway, so that's fine. Ankle will heal, and I can't feel it at all when in the water so I can at least still do fitness while it's summer. I'm just piling together eeeeverything to give me motivation right now. For every 5 kilos I'm buying myself a fitness reward. 85kg will be new socks (I know, thrilling, but that should've happened this week if not for the goddamn ankle, and my sockies right now are so threadbare in the balls of my feet that one of the four has a hole there), 80kg will be new shoes and 75kg, my goal, will be sexy activewear from, like, Lorna Jane or Seafolly or something. Because screw you I'll have earned it by then. Anyway I'm compiling pictures of all these things as motivation. Also, a list of things to ddo to mix it up, such as Walk Week, which will now have to move to the end of the year (booooo), interesting places to do the fitness (like the beach! Or the botanic gardens, along the Torrens, look up other places...), do like a gym/yoga/pilates/whatever trial month to see what, if anything, I'm missing there. All that stuff. So I'll get back there. Just frigging annoying right now.

Time to look at new phones. Yay.

Fri, Jan. 25th, 2019 10:01 pm
annarti: (Now the rubberband is on the other claw!)
COOL CHANGE YESSSSSSSSSSS oh my god it was only 28 degrees today and I had legit goosebumps when I went to lunch. Drops of water fell from the sky but only of the variety that sit on the ground for about 20 seconds before evaporating and making it humid. But I mean. At least it was so humid that the garden was still damp after I watered it last night, so that was a nice bonus. Didn't have to water the garden today, woo.

So yesterday it was foreccast for 47, right? We exceeded it. Forty-eight degrees Celcius. That's a touch over 118 for my American lovelies. D'YOU KNOW WHAT? NOT KEEN. I'm not sure I can put this into words someone not Australian will understand? But anyway. When it's hot and you stand in the sun, you can feel it burning your skin. I guarantee this is a uniquely Australian thing, because we have no ozone. Trust me, you can feel it. It's not just hot, it's actually burning as you're standing there. So that's normal omfgHOT. That's like... 35-42 hot. Everyone in Australia has experienced that kind of hot. It sucks, but you get a day or five of those every summer.

48 is a solid six degrees on top of omfgHOT. It feels like that in the shade. It feels like the sun is burning your skin while standing in the shade.

It hit 40 by about 10am and just kept piling on a degree or two every hour until we maxed out at 3pm. The aircon at work was really struggling, so even inside it was probably nudging up towards 30. In the absence of blinds, we taped a piece of pull-up banner stock to the window when the sun came around that side of the building and that made a noticeable difference.

Then I had to get in the car and drive home, and that suuuuucked. Even parked in the shade, the steering wheel was burninating so I was holding it with my fingernails. Pumping the aircon, obvs. Got home, had dinner and went straight to the beach.

Glorious.

The sea was glassy-flat and there was absolutely zero chill factor. None of the hugging yourself as the water inches up your knees, thighs, bits, belly--none of that. It was practically tropical. There were pockets of water so warm it was like someone had peed there, only they hadn't because these pockets were fully the size of a human and also nobody was within 50m of me.

So I did my fitness, swam half a k or thereabouts, and floated there until I got bored, basically. Then I got ice cream because fuckit. I felt like it was cooling down at, like, 8pm. Checked my phone and it was 40. It had indeed dropped eight degrees, woo.

And that's the story of how I survived 48°C. I feel like I need a tshirt to commemorate the occasion, to go along with my I Survived The Statewide Blackout commemorative cap of... whenever that was. 2016? Meh.

Tue, Nov. 1st, 2016 10:19 pm
annarti: (see it's like this...)
Pamper day was so beautiful I highly recommend doing one.

For starters, the weather was perfect which is just amazing, because it's still winter. It was forecast for 30 and sunny and not windy and it was literally the best day since autumn. I mean, still dunno what a 30-degree-day is doing in what is clearly winter, but hey, we'll take what we can get.

So, I headed down to the beach and started by going for a run. But 'narti! I hear you cry. That's not pampering at ALL! It's pampering my ego. It makes me feel good about myself to do the fitness, so this was a good start indeed =3 Also this was, like, 9am because apparently that's how I wake up now when alarms aren't involved. DOGS EVERYWHERE. I swear every dog in Adelaide was down at the beach that morning. They were all very well-behaved, though. None came within five metres of me, or even looked like doing so, so that was nice of their owners.

Later on in the year I would then go for a swim, cool off and just starfish on the surface, but the ocean's still pretty arctic and I never got deeper than my ankles. The beach was packed, of course, but it was only kids under 10 who decided to pretend the water was nice. Literally no adults deeper than ankles. The sand was still lovely, though, and after I'd changed into my lovely floaty summer maxi dress, I walked up the beach to breakfast. Zesty eggs with avocado and a big iced coffee, aww yeah. I always have to wait for a table to go there, but it's so worth it. I love that place.

Stayed there for a bit and read, then wandered back to the beach to sit on the lawn and read some more until my only appointment for the day, the massage 8DD After all the shovelling of tonnes of scoria and tonnes of dirt and tonnes of white pebbles, my shoulders needed this badly. It was awesome. She didn't do my face/scalp, which was sad, but she did spend longer on hands and feet, and you know me and hands. I also got some hand cream for myself, and two bottles for Mum and Laura for Christmas.

I never really did lunch, because breakfast was filling enough, so just grazed on tasty treats. Because it was SO gorgeous, ice cream, and a little lime and coconut cheesecake with another iced coffee. Bracegirdles was perfect. They have an upstairs section which was completely empty, and a balcony looking out over Jetty Road. So I just stayed up there with my book for the rest of the afternoon. You can see all the way down to the beach and back to the Hills, and it was so warm and delightful. Best day 8D

I finished off by getting a gourmet lamb pizza from my local with some garlic bread and watched two X-Men movies and it was perfect.

I cannot recommend a pamper day highly enough. I'm still feeling awesome from it three days later. Do it. Do it now.

Sun, Jun. 10th, 2012 09:45 pm
annarti: (the world through the winter palette)
"No white, no snow-melt, no ice-bound lakes, just birdsong strung across a cobalt blue void."

Cos sometimes winter does that. I rode down to the beach today, which took all of 25 minutes, got myself a piece of grilled butterfish and chips for one (which, being a fish and chip shop, means two pieces of grilled butterfish and chips for a respectable-sized Italian family) that I ate on the lawn, then walked pretty much the length of said beach over the course of the next hour-ish looking for driftwood. Didn't find any, but I did get a bunch of pretty shells and rocks and a shard of mother-of-pearl so that went well.

GLORIOUS. The only way you could tell it was actually the middle of June was that nobody was in the sea except stupid dogs who'd lost their tennis balls, and all the people were rugged up in jackets and scarves. Much fish and chips on the lawn and kids running around with ice creams still happened, though.

Bummed around GW2 for about two hours when I got home, literally accomplished nothing but just ran around Divinity's... Whatever It's Called going OMG THE PRETTY. I found a sinkhole and a freaking STUNNING city garden and a little... memorial gravesite type place where there were no people and the lag was nonexistent, so that was nice. I will need moar ram for release, tho. One frame per second really doesn't make for great battle experiences. I died on a wurm :<

I've also spent $50 on skin shit to make my bacne go away. I WILL REPORT BACK. In, like, a year apparently. YEAH~ 'this time next year' seems to be coming up a lot in my plans. Looking for a house, full-time graphic design, 74kg/size 12, no more bacne, all of it is 'this time next year'. June will be a big time, apparently. GO ME.

Hot chocolate mix is going well but requires further testing. I've got the cocoa-to-sugar proportions right, just need to figure out the spices.

Now I'm going to reconnect with my formative years and watch Trigun because it's been TOO LONG.

Sat, Nov. 5th, 2011 04:56 pm
annarti: (now the rubberband is on the other claw!)
photo post! )

Sun, Jan. 30th, 2011 05:32 pm
annarti: (bring it bitches)
Number one, happy belated Australia Day! I went up to Mum and Dad's, watched the cricket, had lamb on the barbie for dinner and a rollover pavlova for dessert. The only thing that could've made it more Aussie would have been if we'd won the cricket. Always feels a bit wrong losing the Australia Day one-dayer >>

Number two, I didn't buy the car =( Took Colin's friend, who is a Holden mechanic, to have a look at it and, well. Looooooong list of issues, topped by a cracked manifold, which is close to a grand on its own to fix. In all, it would have cost another $2500-ish to get it back in proper working order, and with that and all the hassle involved--now and probably later down the track--I said goodbye to it. So, back to car shopping for me. Just printed off another seven potentials, yay. I hate car shopping.

Number three, IT'S SUMMER. We're stringing, like, three or four days of 30+ in a row now. Not only that, but 40+ 8D Went to Normanville yesterday arvo and had AWESOME fish and chips for dinner. The sea was so warm, bloody beautiful <3 We have so needed this~ *^^* Only took until the last weekend of January to GET summer, but now it's here, I'm bloody loving it X3

beach time!

Sun, Feb. 21st, 2010 12:57 am
annarti: (loev my Anna P <3)
Today~ it was 37 degrees, so we went to the beach! )

Tue, Jan. 26th, 2010 10:47 pm
annarti: (its a fuic or its nothing)
I heart Australia Day *^^* Plonked myself in front of the cricket until Anna P turned up, then we lazed around in the pool on giant inflatable thongs (ours had Aussie flags on them, tho) with the Triple J hottest 100 cranked for a couple hours. Watched the end of the Australian innings, then went down to her place for a barbie~ of lamb chops and sausages, followed by minipavs. The cricket was on in the background, with interspersed channel switches to check on the tennis. We had planned on going to the beach after our very early dinner, but the weather suddenly turned windy and too cool for the beach, so we've made a raincheck on the beach for Saturday instead. In the end we just stayed and watched the end of the cricket--fabulous Aussie win with the South Australian bowler taking five wickets and man of the match at the Adelaide Oval. Couldn't possibly have ended any better *^^*

Just about my favourite holiday of the year, second only to Christmas. I love my country~ *^^*

Fri, Oct. 24th, 2008 11:51 pm
annarti: (oi oi oi!)
Today~ was christening the boardies for the summer day <3 Beach day with Alex, wai =D Went down to Glenelg, got beach hair, had a hot dog and an iced coffee milkshake, read a bit and didn't get sunburnt, so all pretty snazzy. More proof that Adelaide is freaking tiny: We passed by a guy from one of my tutes at uni* on Anzac Highway, then saw him again at the beach Xx Thankfully he either didn't see me or didn't recognise me or we never would've gotten rid of him.

Anyway, yes, went back to Alex's to get rid of BEACH HAIR which is just not sexy, then headed back into town to watch this (omg there's a youtube link already. It turned on, like, three hours ago.) Which was kind of... awesome in its lameness. Oh Adelaide, you try so hard <3

Also met up with one of Alex's mates from the UK, specifically Wales but he sounds English, so I dunno. He's Pommy, anyway X3 Went to the Pancake Kitchen for 'dinner' which I didn't really feel like cos I'd only had lunch at about 4:30, but never mind. It was noice X9

Finally Anna P joined up for some general bumming around and then home.

Fun day out :D I love summer <3 Even tho it's technically still spring, but c'mon, 32 degrees is close e-bloody-nough X3 BRING IT ON.


* Moe, who is Egyptian but sounds like he comes from the Ghetto. As in, walks into class ten minutes late going, 'Yo, wuzzup y'all? How's ma homies?' He learnt English watching Tom and Jerry cartoons, apparently. I DON'T KNOW HOW THAT WORKS.

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