Coming Up At The Sedshed....

Well, not long after I typed my last post, the laptop carked it by getting the blue screen of death. This is only a few weeks after my desktop PC decided it needed a new motherboard. So now we're computer-less and photos of our Tassie trip after looking unlikely for the next few weeks at least.

At the moment, I'm using a friend's computer and thought I'd get you all excited about all of my new series that are coming up after I get home. So again....don't nobody go nowhere.

• Madam Sarah's Fine College of Etiquette.....my unique view of manners in today's age and beware - this is no finishing school.
• The Pendulum......all about those 'grey' areas and how I strive for balance when it comes to certain issues. Sound intriguing? Then hang around....
• Lyrics I Can Relate To......I'll post some lyrics that are relevant to my life at the moment or just about issues I'm musing about.
• Small Groups....in this series Ill examine the pros and cons and all kinds of issues associated with small groups. I'll mainly be focusing on Bible study/homegroups but will refer to groups of all kinds.
• From Head to Hand - All About Writing......for those who (like me) have a passion or just a general curiosity about how to be a writer. I'll focus on characters, plots, developing ideas, basing your writing on 'real life', how to get published and more.
• Friendships - the complex issues that arise in our relationships with each other and why we struggle to be 'friends forever'.

Vote on the poll on the right for the one that interests you the most.

Tassie-Mania

If this blog's a bit quiet over the next few weeks it's because Duncan and I fly out to Tasmania on Sunday morning. It's kind of our 'official' honeymoon as we only got a few days after the wedding because we went to two more weddings a week after ours. Then Duncan had to go back to work so this is going to be an extended time away.

Our itinerary is as follows:

• Arrive in Hobart Sunday afternoon and pick up our hire car.


• Spend a few nights in Hobart then travel to Port Arthur.


• Stay one night in Port Arthur then travel to the west coast.


• Stay in Strahan a few nights then see a few of the surrounding places - Zeehan, Rosebery and Cradle Mountain. We're also going on a cruise on the Gordon River.


• Travel to Devonport on the north coast and stay one night.


• Travel to Launceston and stay there for a few nights. Fly home to Perth on Thursday 17th July.
  

All together we'll be gone about 11 nights. Then we head down to Albany on Friday 18th until Sunday 20th for my dad's belated 60th birthday party, then it's back to Perth and back to Buntine on the 22nd.

Phew!

I'm very excited about heading to the land of the two-headed people. Sorry Tassies - I can't talk actually as my mum's side of the family hail from there. My nan was born in Zeehan and worked in Rosebery (that's why we're visiting those two places) and my mum was born and spent part of her childhood on King Island.

We're taking the laptop and will hopefully be able to get wireless internet access so I can blog and put piccies up. We'll see. I'm hoping to be able to do one more post before we fly out.

WOOHOO!

Image is from www.tas.gov.au

New Hair....Yeah Yeah

I've decided I'm sick of my long, straggly mane and that it's time for a haircut.

I've always been fairly conservative with my hair in that I've never had a really drastic haircut (ie. having long hair and suddenly chopping it really short) but now that I'm married, I want to do something a bit 'different'. I figured that even if Duncan doesn't like it, he's stuck with me now haha!

And I'm not too worried about looking really dumb. I'm out in the middle of nowhere anyway and by the time I get to a hairdresser again (there are no hairdressers in Dally, have to go to Perth) it will have grown back.....probably.

My hair is currently pretty long. The last time I had it short was 2005 when I went to the hairdresser for a trim and relayering and came out with a mullet! I've never been to that hairdresser again! If you'd also like to avoid that place, leave me a comment or email me and I'll tell you where NOT to go. Three days later, I was in Kalgoorlie, visiting Rhianon who lived there at the time, and a fantastic hairdresser there fixed it for me.

There's a great application on Facebook called HairMixer and it enables you to try different styles on your face. All you need to do is upload a mugshot of yourself and away you go. So here's where I need your help peoples. Below, you will see five photos of different hairstyles on my face and I want you to tell which one you like best. I've labelled them Hair 1-Hair 5. You can vote by either leaving a comment or voting on the poll on the right hand side (how techy am I!)

I've already made an album on Facebook with the same title as this post so if you're my Facebook friend, you can vote there as well. If you're not my Facebook friend then you should seriously consider adding me haha!

While I do appreciate your input very much, I also reserve the right to go against the majority and do whatever I want. I'm the kind of person who just does that sometimes ;)

Also, if anyone can recommend any (cheapish) hairdressers in Perth, please let me know. I'm hoping H-Day (Haircut Day) will be this Saturday.







Hair 1















Hair 2












Hair 3 (me on right obviously)












Hair 4











Hair 5

Arte y Pico Award

Rodney from The Journey blog has honoured me with the Arte y Pico Award. Cool! Thanks Rodney.

The rules for passing this honour on:

1 - Pick 5 blogs that you would like to award this honour to.

2 - Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3 - Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4 - Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

Go to the Arte y Pico blog if you'd like to know more about this award.

It's hard to pick just five blogs, but here are a few I enjoy reading regularly:

1. Bek from Longfur for sharing openly about her life and faith and not being afraid to share the hard bits either.

2. Middo from Disciple of the Way for raising great questions about theology and church and making me think.

3. The ladies from GirlTalk for getting me to think more about what it means to be a Christian woman.

4. Amanda from Amanda's Musings for being arty and tempting me with her many wonderful creations online.

5. Iris from Double Half and One Ten Without Ham for having possibly the most unique blog title and for blogging in her second language (I don't even have a second language!) There are some great pics of Germany on her blog.

Go check these blogs out if you haven't already!

Netball Update

Well, I've played five games of netball so far this season. It should have been six but we won one game on forfeit. It's a long story and was due to a mix up of timeslots. The team we were meant to be playing were VERY annoyed they had to forfeit (they only had two players show up) and for a moment I thought a catfight was going to erupt. Mrrrrow, I thought a few of the ladies were going to get the claws out but nothing happened. I think there's a fair degree of bitchiness in EVERY netball competition. Well, pretty much anywhere where it's all women sadly.

Our win-loss record is 2-4. In our second game, we lost by two 26-24 and then we had our first win the following week 38-21. The next week we were hammered by the top team, Miling, 31-11. But EVERYONE gets thrashed by them so we didn't feel too bad about ourselves.

Last night, we played the Skunks again who we lost to narrowly in the second game and I thought this time we could have a win. Except we only had five players available but you have to play if you have a minimum of five and they had seven so we really didn't stand a chance. One of our girls rocked up halfway through the first quarter so we quickly shoved her on but still it was six against seven and we went down 47-24. Very disappointing but I feel if we'd had a full team we could have won or at least the game would be very close.

I hurt both my shoulders quite badly during a game a few weeks and it took ages for them to get better. I'm not exactly sure how I hurt them but I was in quite a bit of pain for the next couple of weeks and no muscle cream was working. I couldn't lift many things, including the doona off our bed, but I kept on playing even though Duncan said I shouldn't. I'm all tough haha :) Then one morning last week I woke up and I was pain free and have been ever since. Whoever said God doesn't heal?

I'm still very much enjoying it and I'm hoping we get to do some social things together soon. It's difficult to chat before or after the game because most people arrive just before the game starts and leave as soon as it finishes because they have kids or a fair distance to travel (like me). Oh well, I'm sure I'll get to know them better gradually.

The competition has a three week break coming up soon. That'll be good.

Last Day of Work

My last day at Curtin was the 27th March. Here are some photos:













My boss Lib about to present me with pressies from everyone.













Ooh I wonder what they could be. They turned out to be Cluedo, a pizza tray and a wall clock.

Workmates waiting to see my reaction.













Reading the touching sentiments from everyone.













Lib and Kathy













The whole bunch of us (well almost, there were a few missing).

I was telling Duncan last week just how much I miss my old job. It's funny when you're working how you can't wait for Friday each week and how you get so frustrated and think of quitting. But when you actually leave, you feel fondness and sadness. I don't think I ever hated my job, I just loved writing more. I miss the people more than anything and I plan on calling in to say hi one time when I'm in Perth.

I miss working with people with such great senses of humour. I miss the in-jokes. I miss M&Ms in the lollybowl. I miss the great mochas at the cafe next door. I miss working with so many hardcore Eagles' fans. I miss teaching and helping students. I miss the few oddballs who would ask for help at the reference desk. I miss the lunches and the dinners and other work social events. I miss wearing decent clothes every day.

No workplace will ever be perfect. At times I think we all got on each other's nerves and often I felt patronised because I was the youngest. But mostly it was like having lots of aunties and big sisters (male librarians are a rare breed, there were only a few).

Do you ever look back at places you've worked at in the past with a sense of nostalgia? Or have you worked at places where you've just been glad to get out of?

Job Snob

Over the past few weeks I have started the dreaded task of job hunting.

I'm not sure if I'm doing it because I really want a job or if other people really want me to get a job. Hmmm I suspect it's a bit of both.

I'm not entirely bored at home because us women can always find some pottering to do. However I do feel 'wasted'. Not drunk mind you, that's not what I spend my days doing. By 'wasted' I mean that I've completed the task I was staying home to do (unpack and organise the house) and now me staying home is a waste. I have no reason to stay home other than cooking and cleaning which don't take all day. I don't have kids to look after. I'm not sick and unable to work. I write only one day a week. Therefore there is no reason why I shouldn't be looking for a part-time job. I think for me to stay home and do nothing would be a waste of my abilities when I could be out there being useful to people.

When I moved here, I braced myself that it wasn't going to be like the city. I wouldn't have a lot of options. In fact, there are no librarian positions here as the public library is run by the shire officers. I would have to do something unrelated to my degree......and that was worrying me.

I applied at the shire but was told there were no positions available but they took my resume in case any vacancies came about. The only positions I saw available were for shops, supermarkets and cafes. I hate hospitality jobs, having worked in hospitality when I was 18....never again! One of the other vacant positions was at a gift/clothing/makeup/toy shop (basically an 'everything' shop) for a couple of days a week. Those hours would suit me perfectly and people I know were asking me whether I had applied. But there was something stopping me.

It took me a while to figure out why I was so reluctant to apply for this job. Basically the only reason I could put it down to was that......I'm a snob.

I DON'T look down on people who have lower paid jobs than I did in Perth. I think people should be happy doing what they love even if that's cleaning or being a checkout chick or a nightfill person. I don't know many people in those jobs who actually DO love it but if someone loves their job then that's great and it doesn't matter how 'lowly' society considers their occupation to be. But there was no way I was going to consider a position like that. If one of those jobs would make other people happy, that's fine, but they're not for me. I think part of it was that I'd studied my butt off for four years (three in Communication and Cultural Studies and one in Information and Library Studies) and I was going to work in an area related to what I'd worked towards. If I didn't then it'd be like those four years were for nothing.

In retrospect, I can see that God had much bigger reasons behind me going to uni other than getting a job (I became a Christian there for a start) but it didn't make it any easier applying for a job that really wasn't what I wanted just because I had to find work. Also I can see now that I care way too much about what other people think, particularly my former workmates at the library who are keeping in touch and are quite keen to know where I'll be working next. I have a feeling that they wouldn't be very impressed if I went from being a qualified librarian to working several days in a shop. I already copped enough weird stares when I told them I was moving to Buntine. To them, it must have looked like I was throwing a promising career away.

I know this is worldly thinking and it frustrates me so much because I don't want to think this way and I don't want to care what worldly people think. I want to enjoy my job and work well rather than climb a corporate ladder, gain prestige and make bucketloads of money....but it isn't easy to change your thinking, especially when there are so many people who will encourage you to think otherwise.

After much thinking and deliberating, I decided I would apply for that job. If I got the job and people in Perth asked me what I was doing, I would just tell them and ignore any raised eyebrows, knowing that I'm with Duncan and my marriage is far more important than any career.

I applied for the job and went for an interview a week ago. Slowly my perspective has changed. I could see that the role would take a bit of adjustment but I think that if I got the job I would really enjoy it. It is cruisy and people-oriented, just not as face-paced and stressful as working in Perth. But I also have peace that if I don't get the job then it's okay, that God is in control and I will work when he determines.

I'm supposed to hear back whether I'm successful or not.

I'm still waiting......