Melbourne

Tonight the man and I have been invited to our daughter's year 10 awards night where she will receive 1 maybe 2 awards.

Awards are good and all but I'm more proud that she has a road to follow now after starting her secondary education in absolute chaos.

It's good that some of her teachers have taken an interest in her education by saying "hey you're really good at this subject. You should stick with it". My husband and I can only go so far with her and it's good to see some of these teachers step up.

She's worked out that being smart isn't good enough if you don't put in any work.

To keep the streak going, I'll contribute an OC Numbat:

My "why I don't think I'll have children" list is just growing longer every day

I called to confirm picking up Melbcat tomorrow, she's been such a good cat. I'm going to get the cold shoulder for abandoning her when she gets home though :(

Image source

Male antechinus (shrew-like marsupials) fuck themselves to death during a short, highly frenzied mating season. A rapid, fatal decline in health is triggered by high levels of stress hormones, immune system suppression, and just plain physical exhaustion.

We're back from the Awards ceremony. A very long night. A lot of speeches. The new principal's went for a good 15 minutes. I tuned out after 5. A lot of awards. Very deserving awards. A lot of clapping.

Then we went to macca's and the FRIES WERE FUCKING HOT. Bonus.

Oh and by the way the kid won 2 awards. One for History and one for Health & Human Development. These were HIGHEST ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS PEOPLE. Not effort awards. No Coles gift card 😔 So proud ☺

Microsoft Word just came up with an alert to warn me that the proofing tools are not checking any text that is in German. This does not seem like a problem, given that I am not using any words in German.

Caption: a big spinning Christmas decoration at Würzburg Christmas market. It snowed beautifully here in Würzburg this afternoon, so things are blanketed in light fluffy snow. It was -3° when we arrived this morning and we had a fun day exploring the city. No Glühwein for us yet as we’re still a bit jet lagged and I know I’ll get badly tipsy instead of fun tipsy on it. Hopefully tomorrow night!

Starfish do not have brains.

bacon and onion quiche is in the oven

Just to add insult to injury this week, after months of my brother pressuring me I reached out to elderly extended family. "You don't know how long they have left! You'll regret it". yeah pretty confident the conversation was more upsetting for them than cathartic. I stopped calling cause every time I spoke to them I needed a drink afterwards and this was no exception. They don't want to know what my direct family did, but they certainly wanna make me feel bad about it. Then I had to call my bro and be like "Yo, they dunked on me and kind of slammed you too. They're upset and pissed off at us and genuinely cant understand why we would turn out back on FAAAAAAAMMMILLLY"

Welcome to Numbat Facts.

The mean weight of an adult numbat is 552g.

This is less than the weight of a Large Slurpie. Which is not a very useful comparison as Numbats are not an effective hot weather beverage.

Good bot. 🤗

Still not feeling good at all.

It seems being in a fair amount of pain (frequently peaking to straight up 'vomit and lie on the bathroom floor' severe) is almost a daily thing at this point. I just want some answers and to actually treat whatever the hell is going on for me rather than waving it off as psychosomatic and being left to struggle with it using only the same things that aren't working. It's been so many years and it's only worsening. I'm tired of living in constant pain and having my life stunted because of barely being able to do anything. Praying that the new specialists can be seen soon.

Ugh.

I'm going to skip this page on drawing the manga eyes as that's not really the style I intend to pursue. I'm just speedrunning this book to get a very basic grasp on the more applicable things like figure drawing and proportions. Just to kind of shake me out of intimidation paralysis and to get more comfortable using a sketchbook as a tool, for learning and getting messy.

I really need to stop looking at Linkedin. My company went a restructure this year and all the posts from my former co-workers saying they landed jobs at bigger and better organisations is filling me with jealousy. I've been trying to change jobs since the start of the year, have even been applying at similiar organisations to theirs but haven't been successful. I feel so stuck and undesired as an individual.

I watered the garden then put the cushions to the outdoor chair out. Sorry for bringing the rain. I didn't think. 😔

I wish I was like the young people who can scroll and type with my thumbs on their phone. Instead I'm a one finger bandit. Evolution ay?

Can't stop thinking about my upcoming holidays!

Also regrettably said yes to my workplace's Christmas party, I'm new and need to mingle and handshake even though I don't want to.

I bought some frozen southern chicken bits and some fresh marinated chicken the other day.

I'm honestly excited in coking them and eating them later in the week.

Oh how simple my life is.

Wondering why I’ve been feeling so fatigued… Duh, just realised my iron intake has dropped quite a bit in the last month and I… somehow overlooked this glaringly obvious aspect. Plenty dumb I am sometimes.

Nice evening ride though I managed to make some of it look like amateur hour. Riding a different bike and the revs and I are sometimes not friends. Sometimes I can just feather the clutch and it’ll pull and sometimes it just drops into the never never. Not great when you crossing a road, but at least it was the slow area. Even if it took me part waddling and two tries since the bike didn’t roll. At least I encountered some forgiving people, unlike the person who 5 mins later did a u-turn right in front of me, right at a roundabout exit. Oh well, at least I can say it had good brakes.

The last two evenings have just been so lovely. Fish n chips yesterday evening and that amazing sky down at Williamstown. Even today it was just so… lovely. I just feel.. Grateful.

Back to reality again tomorrow morning. However, ya Llab was a good one and when I got home today, cooked, smashed a load of washing + hung it and cleaned the shower before I left for the ride. (So lame how some chores make you feel like you’ve partially adulted.)

Sweet dreams all.

My buildings water was meant to be off between 10am and 2pm.. it's 3:10, no water and no communication. I am displeased.

Edit: 3:30 still no water, no communication

Edit: 4:30 wooo cold water, no hot water, not sure if it'll stay on because it has come on for a few minutes a couple of times this afternoon

Breakfast 🍏🍎🍐🍊🍋🍈🫐🍓🍇🍉🍌🍒🍑🥭🍍🥥🥦🥑🫛🍆🍅🥝🥬🥒🌽🥕🥐🍠🫚🥔🧅🥯🍞🥖🥨🧀🧇🥞🧈🍳🥚🥓🥩🍗🍖🫓🍕🍟🍔🌭🥙🧆🌮🌯🥗🍲🍜🍝🥘🍛🍣🍱🥟🦪🍥🍘🍚🍙🐠🍤🪼🦀🐙 🍗🥮🍢🍡🍧🍰🧁🥧🍦🍨🎂🍮🍭🍬🍫🥜🌰🍪🍿🍯🥛☕️🍵🍺🍶🥤🧋🧃🥂🍷🥃🍸🍹🧉🔋

Giant snek has landed.

Cut for phobics. Turns out super easy to hide when I engage brain.

spoiler

Fuck yeah, Carcass / TBDM tour just announced.

Ooh package delivery notice! And 9 days ahead of prediction. Usually this would be cause for celebration, but now I need to find a long term hiding spot for a 10m stuffed toy. Um…

Job #1 finished early, job #2 likewise due to a mix-up with appointments (so the first half hour was mostly the provider and the client arguing with each other).
Next client is literally five minutes' drive so am chilling at home for now.
The cats are like 'you again?"

Hopefully I haven't overloaded myself, but now that I am halfway through my Diploma I've signed up to do an Undergraduate Certificate as well next year. It will mean I have 1 1/2 semesters where I have three subjects (which is 3/4 of a full-time study load, on top of full-time work) but I think it's doable. Fortunately a few of the subjects have reading lists at the library so I can do most of the reading in advance which will help.

If I can manage that I will feel a lot more confident about my plan to sign up for a double degree course the year after.

Anyone else strip their car before dropping it at the mechanic? Was on the phone to a mate while I pulled all my 4x4 recovery gear/tools, first aid kit, little knick knacks, and my current car-drobe out and he thought I was being weird.

I just feel weird about someone seeing all that stuff even though it's just normal stuff to have. Plus you know clumsy hands might start gropping if they get curious enough.