I HATE DREAMWEAVER.

HOW can its FTP capabilities be SO BAD???!

I found out to my annoyance today that due to some vesting something
or other, Harvard gets to keep ALL the retirement I earned during the
1.5 years I worked there. Blah.

In other news, I am in my last week and a half of my contract. And
some of that time doesn’t even technically count as M-W next week I am
going to Sydney on a conference with Zaubi. So.. given that today is
Tuesday, this means I have 6 days left, including today.

I was just informed by my office mate (who just returned from a long
meeting) that the term “brainstorming” has been nixed as it is
politically incorrect — mentally challenged people may take offense!
The accepted term is now “thought shower”.

I will leave you on that ridiculous note.

Wow. I am incredibly bored today.

Only 3 weeks till my contract ends on November 3rd. I have to say I will miss this place in a way… certainly I’ll miss working in the CBD! Spanky clothes-wearing aside, I really enjoy coming into the city every day, walking around and looking at the people, the stores, the coffeeshops… much as I love and require peace and space and quiet, I’ve always been a bit of a city girl at heart.

And the Brisbane CBD really is charming. So small, so clean, so carefully built, so green, so young… the sidewalks are wide and flat and litter-free, the sky is blue, the sun is bright, and every corner you turn you run into yet another mid-sized crisp-edged newish steel-and-glass building… or else a charmingly ornate two-story 1800s stone edifice… or else a fresh little park. Shiny metal sculpture adorns street corners, and there are plenty of benches or conveniently located squared stones for seats. Below, the wide green river, winding its way around 3 sides of this city center, changes color as the wind whips up mini whitecaps… the public transit catamaran whisks swiftly by as bicyclists and joggers zip along the wide smooth riverside esplanade. The trees sway with bright blossoms and drop carpets of color at your feet. It’s like a toy city, it really is.

In just a month now we will be in LA, about to depart for our 10 days in Boston/NYC. I’m really looking forward to going home and seeing family and friends, but I think I will be happy to come back to this place.

I’ve been debating if I should look for a replacement job now, or not bother until after returning from the US and New Zealand since we will be gone from Australia for an entire month and therefore I wouldn’t be able to interview even if anyone wanted me, which possibility tends to be unusual! Still, I’ve seen a couple positive-looking PHP jobs on Seek so perhaps I shall send over a resume just in case. I wish, though, that it were easier to find something part-time… I have too much stuff to do on the side to work a full 40 hours per week. 25 would really be ideal.

Lately we’ve been discussing actually looking into buying a house. Of course, that thought is half terrifying to me, a person that can barely stay put in one place for 6 months, but at this point it’s probably the best thing we can do financially, especially with the way the market is going in Brisbane. Of course, we’ll need a few months to work up a decent down payment, but I guess we can have some fun looking at houses without having the money-burning-a-hole-in-your-pocket kind of mindset that can all to often lead to disasterous decisions. Still, I wish it weren’t such a complicated and recalcitrant process.

Wee haw! Time to go home.

Oh boy, I just looked up myself (well, my pseudonym kirilisa) on Google and, while the first hits are to be expected, like my website and LJ, also ALL my posts to forums such as Devshed and Webdeveloper.com show as well! Google bombarded me with my previous (well — some even as recent as a couple days ago) dopey questions regarding PHP syntax errors etc. etc.

What’s worse, that whole post trail from last summer (well, winter here in Oz) about my frangipani shows up — how embarassing! (Speaking of which, the frangipani is now producing new leaves and even branches – hooray!)

****************
Anyway, the Teva Race was a lot of fun, if surprisingly strenuous… I would have written earlier but I’ve been just too darn busy. We got there bright and early at 7AM on Sunday morning — it was up north in the Glass House Mountains, near Beerburrum — and got our maps etc. etc. and planned out our routes. There were about 70 teams, many of whom were very scary; slick and muscular and excessively equipped with bike-map tables and other interesting items as well as very swank bikes and the requisite brightly colored stretchy outfits. We, with our droopy gym shorts and dubious bicycles, looked a bit out of place.

At 8:30AM sharp the biking leg began — it took us 3 hours. It involved biking madly along dirt roads and lumpy trails through the bush, up and down and back and forth, bushwhacking into the forest at one point, doing sudoku, paddling a rubber canoe, building a device to launch a stuffed monkey into a barrel, naming Oldies tunes, running madly through the forest to find puzzle pieces or letters stapled to trees… and more biking.

We were pretty tired by the time we finished that leg. Still, we peddled madly back, at which point they tied the 3 of us together with rope, attached that rope to another rope, and made us crawl around and under a bunch of trees and other obstacles to untangle ourselves, before allowing us to set off (on foot) for the orienteering part of the race.

We did well in the orienteering due to Zaubi’s colleague’s friend who is very good at that sort of thing. We alternated walking and jogging — by this time the sun was beating down brilliantly — through what seemed like a million kilometres of bush and swamp. That section took us an hour, after which we were beyond completely exhausted. The heat, the sun, the hours of biking, and then the seemingly endless jogging and bushwhacking had us really near the end of our strength.

We then staggered back to the base area for the ‘Final Challenge’ which turned out to be climbing a mountain in the vicinity! You could choose to eiether hike all the way, or bike to the base of the mountain and then hike up — we chose to bike. The biking was all uphill — after some point, my rather crappy bike couldn’t take it anymore due to dubious tyres and insufficiently low gears — so I pushed it the rest of the way, at the base of the mountin, we dropped our bikes and started the 700 metre hike to the summit — 700 metres doesn’t seem too bad, especially on a paved path, but this was definitely the *worst* 700 metres I have walked in my life. Paved path aside, it was *straight up* at what must have been a 55 degree angle. I found myself walking literally bend double so that I didn’t fall over backwards an roll all the way down. My legs didn’t seem to be working anymore — they had long since ceased to obey my commands. Walking backwards made it a little better.

Well and that was that. We made it to the top, staggered back down to our bikes, and wobbled back to the base camp, at which point we collapsed and had some very dingy BBQ. We pulled in a good solid mediocre — there were a lot of people that finished before us (all those beefy meaty scary spandex types) but most of the ‘normal’ people finished after us, so we did pretty well.

************

I just saw the results! FOr the mixed-sex teams, we placed 11th out of 38 total. Not too bad…

Tomorrow’s the Big Day. We’re all psyched up for the Teva Adventure Race!!

Today was a fun day. Did lots of stuff. Spent 3.5 *hours* in a brass & wind store in Red Hill and came away from it all with a professional Yamaha tenor sax… it’s a rental (they never ever rent pro instruments, only student ones, but I guess my being in there 3.5 hours convinced them of my serious intent) and they say if I bring it back in a month I can apply my rental credit toward buying a sax.

There were some really nice instruments in there. One silver Yamaha custom tempted me greatly, but we need time to think about it. Zaubi is dancing in the street because he used to play tenor.

it’s interesting, I wouldn’t have considered playing tenor because I thought it would be too big. So I was testing out altos (playing very badly given I only rented one before last year for a couple months and never had a lesson) and the store guy told methat I sounded like a tenor sax player playing alto… so I tried a tenor and it was SO much better! Much nicer, mellower sound. Like the cello of saxophones. I guess because its bigger.

SO I played just about every tenor sax they had in the store (except for a super fancy one I was afraid to touch) and I really like that silver Yamaha custom… the guy didn’t want to rent me a student instrument so he dug up a tenor sax that belonged to the owner of the store and was just kicking around and rented me that instead.

Tenor sax is way awesomer! I’m so glad the guy told me to try it out!!

My mouth and cheeks are so tired.

I’m finding it more and more difficult to find a moment to write LJ. It seems I’m always caught up — either at work, or if I’m home, I’m madly working on one website or another, or cooking feasts, or watching Stargate, or traveling somewhere or other.

Two weekends ago we were at our church’s family camp up in Maroochydore — we had a really good time. It was nice to have some time to hang out with all the people from church who are such good, kind, enjoyable people as a whole. Everyone brought their kids so there were dozens of children of all sizes galloping around and keeping things lively.

The ocean was just beautiful, warm,with a good strong pull and big waves. Granted, there were thousands of dead bluebottles washed up on the shore, but there didn’t seem to be any in the water, at least, we didn’t get stung by any.

I don’t fear the bluebottles. Getting stung is surely awful pain, but pain can be managed. It’s death and mutilation I fear.

This past weekend we went up to Gympie on Saturday because Zaubi had a concert – his first since he joined the Brisbane Symphonic band. I’m thinking of renting another saxaphone so that I can practice up for a few months and then join as well. Much as I like playing in an orchestra, I’m left pretty cold by all the people in mine. I’d like to find some good chamber music instead.

Yesterday we met up with our third teammate for the Great Adventure Race which is coming up in less than a week! We spent a couple hours mountain biking in the national forest west of Mount Coot-tha — it was so much fun! How is it that we haven’t bothered doing this before??

Zaubi has some idea of how to mountain bike but both I and Ruth were utterly clueless. After a bit we figured it out, though I neraly killed myself bouncing down some ominously steep and lumpy hills.

I’ve been thinking about it all this restless day. I’m itching to grab my bike and go do it again. Our bikes are currently being serviced, but maybe we’ll go out for another crazy ride this coming Saturday, the day before the race.

In another couple weeks, after the race is over, we also plan to take a kite surfing lesson. I found a place down on the Gold Coast that gives three hour lessons and they sound pretty good. They give you funky waterproof helmets to wear with a little microphone inside so the instructor can tell you what you’re doing wrong while you’re actually doing it… supposed to greatly better the learning curve.

Every time I do something fun I miss my little sister in particular. I wish I could bring her here…

Back to taxes and JavaScript…