Bah. THe first ever Ebay Australia dewar flask showed up, and I was almost immediately outbid. And my bid was $100! Meanwhile, mrtee won one on Ebay US for $25. Bah!

Today I was banned from the blood van. Tried to get back on that horse – oh well. Somethign about my person completely and utterly rejects giving blood. Reaction wasn’t so bad as last time, but they still kindly, gently, but firmly requested that I not come back. At least not for a very, very, very, long time. Bah.

Tomorrow is my first German course. Yup. I signed up for nine weeks of level 2 Saturday morning German.

Ok. bed.

Swing dancing was fun. Zaubi did really well! There were not quite enough guys (well, what else is new) but the ratio was better than I thought and A. my officemate did in fact show up, to my amazement. Kifa only asked me to dance once, with reluctance, hmmph! but Zaubi danced much more than I thought he would. I’m going to coerce him into practising with me at home — we certainly have enough swing music!

Yesterday my shoe hunt drew to an end. I have been wearing the same pair of black shoe/boots since 2003 — bought them right after I first met Zaubi, in fact! I think I bought a bunch of boots that spring. A couple months ago I noticed that the soles were ripping away from the rest of the shoe, but I ignored it, until while in Taiwan my feet realized that it was time to turn them in.

But — it is practically impossible to find closed-toe shoes in Brisbane. They make beautiful sandals here, but closed toe shoes are impossible, unless you want super ugly go-go boots (or ugg boots, or running/athletics shoes). What I wouldn’t give for an Aldo or Fluevogs! But anyway, we traipsed back to DFO yesterday and I actually found two pairs of closed-toe shoes, albeit both the oddest shoes I have ever owned, perhaps. 1) A pair of half-suede half-fabric cream-colored Sketchers with embroidered art on them — reminiscent of Chinese/Japanese art, which is why I liked them and 2) Doc Martens. YES, Kirilisa has purchased her first pair of Docs in 12 years. Crazy talk. These aren’t standard Docs either — don’t liked the yellow coloured rubber sole — they are strange clompy Mary Jane style Docs. This from a girl who has never owned a pair of Mary Jane style shoes ever, in her life. So we’ll see how it goes. I think I will have to buy some socks to accessorize. I don’t know where to buy socks. But I know they look weird with white sport socks, the only kind of socks I own.

Wow, I think the last time I made a post about shoes was in 2003. Nuts.

While we’re going all materialistic here, I shall add that I bought a laptop. It is supposed to arritve on Tuesday. My 2004 ABS laptop died a month or two ago after a long and difficult life, and so I have just bought my first Dell. Strange, after spending so many years at MIT buying and installing them for other people! This one cost me $1600 AUD which is pretty good given that one with the same specs cost $1400 USD from Dell America. In spirit of true dorkdom, I shall post the specs. Nothing too impressive, but good enough and light enough for me, and it comes with entertaining addons like an integrated webcam, fingerprint reader (hah!) and slimline backpack as well as a whole bunch of remotes that I do not understand what they are for. And, it’s BLUE.

Dell XPS M1530
Intel Core2 Duo Processor T8100 (2.1 GHz, 3MB Cache, 800 MHz FSB)
4GB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
320GB SATA Hard Drive
15.4" Widescreen WXGA+ (1440×900) TFT Display with TrueLife(TM)
Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Combination Drive with dual layer write capabilities
Palmrest with Fingerprint Reader
Integrated 10/100 Fast Ethernet
Intel(R) 4965AGN Wireless-N Mini-Card
Dell(TM) Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module
Midnight Blue LCD display with Integrated 2.0 mega pixel web cam
TV Tuner with Remote Control
Belkin Slim Backpack (Midnight Blue Electric Blue)
Weight: 5.78 lbs (2.62 kg)

Today was another memorable day in that I did something I have never done before: cooked tofu.

In my household, growing up, anything that wasn’t plain meat and vegetables was eyed askance. We didn’t even eat rice. So tasting tofu when I was in my early twenties was something shocking and almost risqué.

Anyway, my new cookbook has a tasty pumpkin curry recipe that calls for tofu, so I bought a hunk of the stuff yesterday. Didn’t really know what to buy (hard? soft? medium?) but today I have cooked it.

The funny thing? I gave a bit of the extra to the dogs, and they loved it. Went crazy for it, literally. Jumped up and down on their hind legs with a kind of wild look in their eyes. They are a Japanese breed, after all, so perhaps a strange craving for tofu lies in their ancient bloodline (since 200BC, apparently) and only needs a sniff to be activated? Have I been abusing them by not letting them have tofu on a regular basis?

Heh.

Yesterday I burned my mouth on some moroccan curry I made. Really good curry, in my opinion. Nuked it too long, and when I took the first bite, it burned, and given consistency, clung to the top of my mouth/back of my throat. I have blisters now. Blisters! From curry! It’s gross.

Biked halfway into work on Monday – 13 or so Ks into the city, locked bike, took bus the rest of the way. It really wasn’t worth it, though, honestly: there was no free bike parking near the bus station (I refuse to pay $5/day!) so I had to fight the pedestrians back to the casino and lock my bike to a tree, then hike back to the bus station, and I missed my bus therefore. THe bus made very strange air raid noises every time the doors opened (the bus on the way home made rooster noises, which was even weirder!) and it cost $3.80 *one-way*. This is the same amount it would have cost me to go from home, 13Ks more distant! I hate Brisbane Transport.

So I’m not going to do that anymore. Instead, I’ve decided I shall bike the entire way into work, 27Ks, and then just bus home and pick up my bike with the car the next day. If I can do that once or twice a week it will be good, I think. I’m kind of jonesing for exercise.

Went out to see Seven Pounds tonight with Zaubi and Kifa and Kifa’s wife and son. It was terrible. I’d liked the look of the previews, but the movie itself was slow, too quiet, and worst of all, desperately morbid. I did not find it very moving at all, just vaguely sick. But Kifa and I hung out at South Bank beforehand (while waiting for Zaubi etc to show up) and got ice cream and I at least waded in the pools and it was nice. I like South Bank.

On the way home we drove around Dutton Park a bit to work out the best way for me to cut through there on my big bike trip. There are some fantastically horrible hills, so I’m glad I’ve got it specced out now.

Clyde is all better with his new battery. Hurray!

Today wasn’t as nice though. We both slept like the dead and didn’t manage to haul ourselves out of bed til past 9AM this morning! I was determined to do the non-Australian thing and buy a clothes dryer today, so we’d planned to go to the same refurbished whitegoods outlet where we got our washer a few months ago. First, though, we spent a few hours puttering around the house: cleaning up a bit, weeding, and I went through Zaubi’s massive T-shirt collection and confiscated about 2/3 of them ) Daggy husband begone!

Around noon, we hopped into Clyde, turned the key and — splut. Clyde, darling reliable green Clyde, was dead as a doornail. Couldn’t work it out. Got out the voltmeter — the battery was showing 12V, and we hadn’t left any lights on in any case. While puttering around in the engine, Zaubi discovered that we were almost 100% out of oil, rather incomprehensibly, given that we’ve gotten Clyde serviced quite regularly and he hasn’t been leaking that I’ve noticed, anyway. I called mrtee , my not-so-local car expert.Then, while I was talking, Clyde started! Holding our breath, we drove to the servo down the road, bought a litre of engine oil, poured it in. Don’t see what engine oil has to do with a car starting but anyway it started, though unenthusiastically, after that, so we hopped in and made our way to Alderly and the white goods outlet.

Here, though, things went bad again. First, the white good outlet was in fact closed. Only open til noon on Saturdays (ARG BRISBANE!). Then, when we got in to make the long trek back home, Clyde refused to start again. And this time he was unconvincable. We pushed him up a slight hill in the carpark — in the process, a guy and his son came over to help us — sadly, a rolling start didn’t work. So we opened up the hood again and this time, under the guy’s guidance, discovered that the battery cells were almost entirely empty. Blergh. Tried a pushing start once more, this time with me in the driver’s seat, and hey presto, it worked!

We drove back to the servo in Kenmore and bought some distilled water to fill up the battery. By this time it was 2PM and we were starving and grumpy so we hiked over to Woolies to get a bite to eat and some groceries. We were fully anticipating having to leave Clyde at the servo and hike home. But, after some time of sitting, he started up after a few tries and we drove home and parked him on a hill down the street.

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This evening we met up with L. and S. and one of S.’s work mates to do a mini-triathlon. Not sure if it was L.’s or S.’s idea, but we have decided to run our own mini-triathlon every other Saturday. So we headed to Yeronga pool to swim 400m, then did a 10K bike ride, then a 4K run. Then back to S.’s place for dinner. It went really well, though as ever I am depressed to note how unfit I have become over the last year or two. I did not think I would be able to swim the 400m, as swimming is not my forte by any stretch of the imagination and I don’t think I’ve been in a public pool since I was a teenager — still, I managed it in about 12 minutes and didn’t drown! The biking was no problem, but I was a bit bushed for the run, especially the final hill which I must admit I partially walked up. Dinner and company was good and I’m looking forward to keeping it up.

Clyde started up okay when it was time to go home, but we’re thinking he may not do tomorrow in time for church. So – it’ll have to be another hill start. I’m hoping it’s just a battery needs replacing problem and not something bigger. Either way, we’ll take him into the shop on Monday, which means I will have to bike into work, something I’ve been meaning to try, but wasn’t expecting to have forced upon me so abruptly! It’s 30Ks one way through some nasty industrial areas, so I’m thinking I’ll bike into the city and catch a bus from there. That will cut it to maybe 15Ks one-way and on mainly decent bike paths. The exercise will be good (and much needed!) but it’ll take about 1.5 hours to get from home to clean & dressed at work, though. And bus fare is $3.80… one-way. Yikes!