stretchy newkitty

I’m currently in that ever-so-slightly panicked, I have way too much to do before I leave state that you sometimes get into just before heading off for a holiday. 

If take a step back, I only really have one essential (though complex) item that needs to be completed, so I should just focus on that – and everything else can gosh-darned wait two weeks.

Just a smidge over a week to go!

I still intend to participate in the SML wellness challenge while I’m away and my goals are going to include:

+ don’t check work email
+ go to the hotel gym x 3
+ try a different sake every day
+ eat ramen for the first time (I’ve been saving myself for this!)
+ afternoon nap x 3

I’m really very excited about this!

Sydney house prices, particularly inner west house prices, are kind of nuts and have been for some time. There’s quite a bit of speculation that we’re in an extended bubble and quite a bit of alternative speculation that this is the new normal.

Evidence of the bonkers prices is a nearby recently sold 4 bedroom, 1 bathroom house which according to the listing is desperately in need of a complete overhaul (truth in real estate – novel!). This desperately-in-need-of-complete-overhaul-house sold for AUD 1,538,000. To give you some comparison this translates to GBP 891,606, USD 1,175,026, EUR 1,036,935. I don’t know how this compares to house prices where you live, but Yikes!

That intro is a round-about way of capturing the photos from the listing because I think they are (for serious) incredibly beautiful in that abandoned, urban decayed sort of way. Mad props to the (uncredited) Raine & Horne photographer!

This is what $1.5m gets you around here:

I’m pretty curious to see what becomes of it (unfortunately I suspect demolition and conversion to apartments).

Sydney house prices, particularly inner west house prices, are kind of nuts and have been for some time. There’s quite a bit of speculation that we’re in an extended bubble and quite a bit of alternative speculation that this is the new normal.

Evidence of the bonkers prices is a nearby recently sold 4 bedroom, 1 bathroom house which according to the listing is desperately in need of a complete overhaul (truth in real estate – novel!). This desperately-in-need-of-complete-overhaul-house sold for AUD 1,538,000. To give you some comparison this translates to GBP 891,606, USD 1,175,026, EUR 1,036,935. I don’t know how this compares to house prices where you live, but Yikes!

That intro is a round-about way of capturing the photos from the listing because I think they are (for serious) incredibly beautiful in that abandoned, urban decayed sort of way. Mad props to the (uncredited) Raine & Horne photographer!

This is what $1.5m gets you around here:

I’m pretty curious to see what becomes of it (unfortunately I suspect demolition and conversion to apartments).

my dad likes your car

Our neighbour car at Don’s-work-car-spot is a fancy 80s Italian rally car, which is in rather desperate need of a bath.

camouflage

HolyGoodness! I completed almost all of my weekend ActionItems. I’m actually quite stunned because I thought I was nowhere close – particularly after spending several hours each morning lazing about with the fam, watching athletics.

I was particularly pleased that I dragged out and rethreaded the overlocker(!) to hem Joe/Frank’s work pants. Well, I used it to finish the edge, I still hand-stitched the hem in the usual fashion. Baby steps.

I only failed to Action three items – editing photos, taking more photos (though I did take a couple)  and sorting the hardware boxes. 

Instead of those things we began a ruthless sort/declutter of the garage. This will take some time, but was very satisfying. 

And we packed away the winter coats! Obviously this will trigger some sort of lengthy Antarctic blast and we’ll be forced to drag them out again.

While in the garage I also unpacked my summer dresses, so I can pack them for Japan! 

I am very excited for this holiday!

I have possibly already mentioned that I’m back to not drinking alcohol for the next little bit (again) because we’ve had a big couple of months dining out and whatnot and probably will have a big couple of weeks in Japan. Also, my mental health (and desire for productivity) prefers it when I don’t drink. And my clothes are becoming a smidge tight too, so there’s that.

I attended a function on early Wednesday evening at SML to celebrate the retirement of a beloved senior colleague – the kind with Board members, waiters and canapes. Do you think I could get a water or a drink that was not alcoholic? Well, I could get water if I went to the kitchen a grabbed it myself.

I think it is only when you (well, me) aren’t drinking that you (me) become aware of how alcohol is pretty much everywhere and how much there is an expectation that you’ll (I’ll) drink.

I’m very into reading about women and alcohol right now. Much of this excellent  post/essay/story/rant** on medium very much resonated with me. You should read it! I’ll wait.

Fave quote: Newly sober women have a lot of wonderful qualities, but lack of judginess not one of them. I can’t even begin to describe how hilarious and delightful I find wine being referred to as ethanol.

And who knew there was such a thing as cinnimon churros flavoured smirnoff? Surely this is some sort of end of civilisation trigger?

xxx

** whatever the kids are calling writing stuff on the InformationSuperhighway.p theses days.

I decided to go with the unravel and re-do the four stitches of the cable option on the bad scarf.

scary

Two (or three, it was all a bit of a blur) hours later I had cables! 

But they were not at all to my liking and looked rather more messy than they do in the photo. And I suspect I got the spacing slightly wrong, because they didn’t quite line up with the other three cables. So I did what any Type-A perfectionist-sort would do and unravelled, unravelled and unravelled some more.

Oh well, I am in no rush to complete this and I would have bothered me a great deal leaving as was (see aforesaid perfectionist). It was good to know that I could (sort of) do this kind of repair,

xxx

ActionItems for this weekend:
+ run x2 >3km
+ tidy the very messy palace
+ cook beef stew, parsley dumplings
+ make some sort of cake / dessert thing
+ edit some photos
+ take more photos (practice with lenses)
+ hem Joe/Frank’s work pants (that have been sitting around for about 3 months)
+ buy white gloss paint (Joan is painting the interior doors for us! hurrah!)
+ ironing
+ replenish kitty litter stores
+ ruthlessly sort hardware boxes
+ sit quietly and think
+ plant something (this will score me bonus points for the SML wellness challenge)

I suspect what I won’t be doing is picking up that knitting!

I decided to combine my last weekend ActionItems with my SML wellness challenge and knit two pattern repeats (of 8 rows each) every day for a week. I’ve been bringing the scarf along with me to work each day and have been knitting one repeat (which takes 20-30 minutes depending on who interrupts me) in the SML kitchen during lunch. It has been quite peaceful and relaxing to listen to a podcast and knit away.

I’ve had some surprising reactions to this, mostly huge shock that I am a knitter, but also shock that I’m knitting something that looks really impressively complicated. Because of this public display of ability I have spent a bit of time with Clarissfer, who is a beginning knitter, explaining how cables and lace works and how to read a pattern. I’m a little surprised at how much I enjoy the explaining part.

This evening I was delighting in how much the scarf has grown with just those few days attention – it’s now at 59cm (23.23 inches)!

very poorly lit photo and not an adequate representation of the colour

You know where this is headed, right?

Of course, I found an error. I had crossed the far left cable to the front when it should have been to the back. ACK! It is really obvious too, though the camera doesn’t pick it up so well.

more adequate representation of colour

This error is 41cm (16.14 inches) in, this means I have to either unravel those 4 cable stitches for 18cm (7 inches) and try to reproduce the cable (that’s a pretty advanced kind of repair) or unravel the entire thing back 18cm (7 inches), which would take another 4 days to re-knit.

I’ll sleep on that one!

The joys of crafts!

xxx

** my response to Clarissfer when she asked how I could fix a mistake in her knitting so easily.

On Friday evening we walked the 30ish minutes to dinner at mezzalira. As noted, walking is not really a thing in Canberra, but it really should be. It is a very walkable city – well apart from the lack of pedestrian crossings.

After an excellent meal and probably way too much excellent wine, we strolled back to the hotel because it was a really spectacular evening – and we like to walk. 

bustling night scene

xxx

On Saturday morning, at Don’s behest, we visited Parliament House (first time for both of us). On the way there we took about 80 billion photos which I have yet to edit.

Once at Parliament House we basically had to strip down to get through security, but once inside we could wander about pretty freely. I very much enjoyed the artworks and the interiors were a trip – very much of their time (late 1980s) when too much pastel marble was barely enough.

I’m not a gin drinker, but this is possibly the best parliamentary souvenir I’ve ever seen:

Afterward, after another Big Walk, we lunched at akiba – as recommended by Bobs and anyresemblance – which was very good indeed. I bought fleecy-lined opaque tights/stockings which are quite possibly the best things ever. Then it was back to the hotel, where we mooched about, read books and watched football in the bar. Which to my mind is a pretty brillant Saturday afternoon activity.

Had that all-too-brief Real Life catch up with anyresemblance, where I did not get to chat about half the things I intended to, who then incredibly generously drove us to dinner at Ottoman Cuisine (as recommended by Joan). I’m going on the assumption that they were having a bad night. The food was fine, but it was very busy and the service was pretty distracted/indifferent (didn’t get water, didn’t get one of our dishes, had to wait 20 min for our table).

And more walking back to the hotel. Holy!Goodness! I love running about taking photos under cover of darkness.

xxx

On the way out we stopped by Red Hill lookout, another recommendation by anyresemblance (she knows all the things). Very spectacular expansive views – where I took another 60 billion photos and we saw a mob of kangaroos! Exciting! Much better to see than the squished ones on the side of the road on the way home.

I let Don drive home on the motorway (because it is straight and I was unlikely to feel ill and I’d had my driving turn) and we detoured home via Berrima, as suggested by anyresemblance (who [whom?] I should employ as my personal travel advisor) and grabbed a pretty decent pub lunch.

i’m getting a collection of these

We had a great break. It was Ace! to get away and we really must do it more often – we don’t have to automatically choose Melbourne as our default mini-break destination.

I was intending to collate the remaining Canberra iphone pix into one post, but this proved way too indigestible, so I’m going to eke them out a bit (and don’t even mention the DSLR pix!)

Anyway … the Nation’s capital. Don had been harassing me to take a day off from work for a while, because I really did need a mental health day. But I kept putting it off because, well self-care tends not to be too high on my Action Items list. Eventually he said, “we’re going to Canberra, take a day off”, and verily I did.

In summary, we had some very good food and wine, had an excellent (but too brief) catch-up with the ever-fabulous anyresemblance and a good wander about. The weather was gorgeous – it was a couple of degrees colder than in Sydney, but it was a lovely crisp type of cold, not the sort of damp cold that seeps into your bones that we’re used to.

When I visit a place I always spend a good deal of time imagining what it would be like to live there. Canberra is funny because we are very much, “I could never live here” and yet it has pretty much everything that would align with our lifestyle (well except actual jobs we could do!) – excellent food, great cycle and running paths, golf, everything in very close proximity, totally walkable (though no-one actually walks), decent weather &etc. To be honest, we very rarely actually take advantage of what Sydney has to offer – but we’re not getting out any time soon!

xxx

So on with the trip. We decided we’d take the back roads in the home of encountering some quaint ye olde towns (which if you’ve been reading along, didn’t happen).

Don was navigating, so drew up directions (much better than panzo’s GPS). It worked a treat, but we’d have loved an old skool hardcopy map!

I generally do the driving when we’re on winding roads else I’ll be sitting in the passenger seat with my head in a bag.

xxx

Before we left, we stopped for breakfast the pig and pastry.

I had way-too-strong coffee and an excellent breakfast pot of bircher muesli, toasted muesli and berries.

xxx

The drive was uneventful, entertainingly pretty much every small town was prefaced by “historic”, so I’ve taken to using this in every day life: “historic Petersham”, “Historic Newtown” &etc.

We probably should have stopped more along the way because I was quite stiff and sore on arrival. And I could have taken more photos, because the several hundred I have now is clearly not enough.

xxx

We arrived safe and sound to the many very pleasing rugs in the foyer at our hotel

Our room was very good – quite traditional, comfortable decor. Brilliant bath. I don’t know what it is about the beds in Hyatt hotels, but I am really keen to make one my own. Such fabulous, peaceful sleeping! Though maybe that was because I didn’t have to fight for space with a certain kitty.

xxx

After we settled in and grabbed lunch, we set out for a walk and encountered a poor lost teddy on the footpath.

And then wandered about a bit, took a bunch of photos with the DSLR and took a quick trip around the national gallery.

don’s fave

this is constructed from bondage gear! there are all manner of dildos and gimp masks and whips and such!

trying to be artsy

I always like visiting, though just between you and me, I prefer the NGV.

End part one.