Help, I'm drowning in Etsy!

The combination of Etsy and one-click Paypal purchasing is a dangerous one, Internet.  I basically did absolutely nothing at work yesterday, except for browsing unusual and interesting homewares.

I ended up getting this cushion cover, mostly because I just kept clicking 'next' on the purchasing screens and there was nobody to tell me to stop (I think I need adult supervision sometimes...):

It's a tea-towel from the 1967 Montréal World's Fair, recycled into a cushion cover.  The colours aren't necessarily in whatever scheme we're going to have going at the apartment, but I liked the Montréal connection and the hipster in me can't resist something old and weird turned into something new.

Today, Dan and I drove up to The Entrance to pick up a kitchen knife that we'd forgotten up there when we stayed over Easter.  It was a relatively expensive knife so it was worth the hour-and-a-half round trip.  The Entrance is full of weird junk stores, so we stopped into a few of them to see if there was anything worth picking up.  I found a little ceramic inkpot from the 1800s that I would have liked, but I ended up leaving it behind because there's only so many ceramic and glass decorative objects you can have in one tiny apartment and I already have way too many.  Plus, when I moved into our current place I rapidly boxed up all his Mum's china figurines and Swarovski animals and declared I would not live in a house filled with pointless ceramic shit.

Now for a night on the couch.  After a week working in Melbourne and an overnight trip to Brisbane for the same client over the last two weeks, I'm stoked just to be home.

A list of bridges that I will never again set foot upon.

I am terrified of bridges.  There, I said it.   And there's a special place in my cold, dead heart for the following  structures in particular...

1. The Jacques Cartier Bridge, Montreal

If you've ever been to Quebec, you'll know that most of their infrastructure is held together with sticky tape and Clag glue.  Overpasses are literally stapled together and held up with chicken wire, while roof collapses are basically a weekly occurence. So it's no surprise that the beautiful Jacques Cartier Bridge (designer of Eiffel Tower fame) is the diciest structure on the planet.  The whole thing jiggles like the San Andreas fault every time a semi-trailer drives over it.  I made the mistake of walking across it once and declared never again, after I more or less ended up crawling on all fours along the pedestrian walkway, hoping to god that the floor wouldn't give way.

2. The Brooklyn Bridge, New York City.

I don't care that it's stood faithfully since time immemorial.  I don't care that they used revolutionary building methods to sink its foundations metres into the murky bottom of the Hudson.  The pedestrian walkway is made of wooden boards, and you can see your swirling doom right underfoot as you walk.  As far as I'm concerned, it's a death trap and I shan't go near it again.

3. The Westgate Bridge, Melbourne

This beast is the worst of them all.  It snuck up on me this afternoon as I drove, blissfully unaware, into Melbourne and before I knew it, it was looming up ahead.  Not only does it look terrifyingly under-engineered and minimalist, do you see how it slopes horribly upwards? This is so when you're driving on it you feel like any second you'll just reach the end of the roadway and tumble down into the river below.  There's also no pedestrian walkway and those assholes have fenced the sides with what is essentially chicken wire, so you can see with absolute clarity the abyss that's roughly twenty centimetres to the left of your vehicle.  Never again.

I love bridges as engineering marvels, as innovative feats of design and architecture, and I freaking love looking at pictures of them.  I would dearly love to visit the Oresund Bridge and the Milau Viaduct, but (and particularly with the Milau), I just know that I'll wet myself with fear at the same time.  I'll leave you with a photograph of my Everest...

Holy shit.

We bought an apartment!

It was actually the first place we looked at, and after walking through about twelve properties there were two that we could actually see ourselves living in.  The first one, a two-bedder, ended up going at Auction for about $60k over our maximum budget (and about $90k over what we paid for this place).  The second one was this one.  It's in a large-ish block and has everything we had to have in an apartment (balcony, nice aspect) and a few things we decided were 'nice to have' (rooftop with swimming pool, heyooooo).

So, now the bank owns both our asses.  Settlement on 25 June!

On redecorating other peoples' apartments on realestate.com.au

Hello again, universe.  

I kind of regret not chronicling my travels on here, especially since I lost all my photographs from that trip (see post below regarding new DSLR camera for cruel, ironic juxtaposition), so I'm going to at least try to chronicle other (slightly) interesting things in my life from here on.

So.  Work. Both sucks and is kind of awesome.  On one hand, I love the higher-level stuff I get to do.  I love looking at the financials of some of the world's biggest companies, figuring out why they've changed, talking about elements of their business, and being taught by some incredibly bright people.

On the other hand, the small stuff really sucks.  Really.  Sifting through boxes of invoices to make sure that they match, looking at 90,000 line spreadsheets that I (mostly) don't understand, that sort of thing.  It's enough to make you want to tear your eyes out.  Especially when, like the client this week, their filing system is prehistoric.

Other than that, Dan and I might have almost maybe kind of bought an apartment.  It feels a million miles away still, especially because we're waiting on final loan approval and I've spent the last week of my life obsessing about things going wrong, wondering if we've picked the right one, fretting about strata levies, lather, rinse, repeat.  Anyway, it's a shoebox. A teeny, tiny shoebox but it's walking distance from my office, it's on the top floor of the building and has beautiful district views over inner eastern Sydney, so it doesn't feel cramped.

I've restarted my Pinterest account (http://pinterest.com/luiiiiisa/), and I've been feverishly pinning all sorts of things I might like to put into this apartment which not only is not even ours yet, but is also going to put us significantly into debt, so what the fuck am I doing pinning an Eames Sofa Lounge onto my Pinterest (RRP Eleventy Million Dollars).

Anyway, if this all goes to plan I might have some news around Monday/Tuesday.  Also I have training all week next week, then I'm heading to Melbourne for work for a week.  Here's to a cruisy few weeks.

On being Au Fait with it all.

As my leaving date draws near, more and more people (mostly at work) keep asking whether I'm excited/ready/scared/nervous/packed/etc. The answer to all of those questions has been to shrug my shoulders and say not really.. I've barely thought about it. Which is true - While I've never traveled for five months before, I've certainly done my fair share of various types of trips and so I've just been fairly unconcerned by it all. Experience has taught me that when it comes to travel, no matter what, I'll be able to find a place to sleep, and no matter what, shit will (mostly) be okay.

So I've been fairly unconcerned about the upcoming trip, to the point where towards the end of this week when the questioning has slowly reached a peak, I became mildly concerned about my lack of concern.

I had my last cello lesson and theory class this evening and at the end of the lesson, had to return to my teacher the cello I had borrowed, because I won't see her 'til the end of January. As the class drew to a close, I found myself gripping its neck like a child, growing more and more uneasy at the prospect of having to hand the instrument back. As the others gathered their things, I slowly put the cello in its case and took it back into the practice room to place it in a corner. I walked out and my cello teacher hugged me, making me promise to keep in touch, and promise to send her photos when I visit her native Vermont.

And I lost it. Bawling in front of my teacher and five semi-strangers. There's the pre-travel neurosis I know and love.

I'm the worst.

A couple of years ago before an overseas trip, I was whining about my crappy iPod earphones and Dan offered to lend me his brand-new expensive earbud things. Walking down the street in Paris a few weeks later and one of them just stopped working. Absolutely and completely, and refused ever to work again. I think it was because he'd been winding them tightly around his iPod for weeks prior, breaking the little wire inside, but I still felt terrible that it had happened on my watch.

Early last year, he got a Kindle (his sister got it for free, but that's beside the point). He lent it to me on a sort of extended loan earlier this year, and I was planning on taking it to Canada in four weeks.

That is, until I sat on it ten minutes ago and now that fancy pancy screen has a bleed. I am the absolute worst person ever. I have already bought him a new Kindle online (I didn't replace the earphones, but this..), but I feel completely dreadful. He made me a roast chicken and some leek soup for lunch today, and what did I do? I sat my fat ass down on his Kindle.

Adventures in DIY

So, more or less because I couldn't find something that I liked at the negligible price I wanted to pay, I have made myself a camera bag. Being a girl, I carry a handbag constantly. It's usually a massive one too, so the last thing I wanted was one of those twerpy black, faux leather camera bags. Apart from the fact that they look dreadful, the last thing I want is yet another bag (in a perfect leave-it-in-the-restrooms size) to carry while traveling.

So I made myself something in a minimal size with no bells, whistles, zips or extra pouches that I can slip into whatever bag I'm already carrying. I don't know that I necessarily would have known how to make something with bells, whistles, etc. either, but let's pretend it was an option.

So, here are the results of my attempt!

Velcro close, with down padding inside. I did not make the down padding. That is a level of skill I dare not approach. It actually comes from a couple of old dolls' pillows and a doll blanket that my Mother made for me when I was about seven. It had all been gathering dust so I decided to put it to good use. The covering fabric was stuff I had at home, meant for a (increasingly ill-fated) DIY chair re-upholstering that I keep planning to do.

Best of all, I didn't even spend a cent.

The plunge. I have taken it.

After numerous rounds of negotiations involving most camera retailers this side of Hong Kong, I have bought myself a brand-new camera.

I had been looking for a reason to justify the purchase of a new toy for a little while, because my gutsy little point-and-shoot just ain't cutting it anymore. The justification came perfectly packaged in the form of a suggestion from my Cello teacher that I visit her home state of Vermont during the Fall, while I'm in Montreal. A couple of quiet days at work gave me the opportunity to do some research (See, eg.) and I quickly decided that this was a side-trip I needed to make. Not only that, but the leaves! They needed to be PHOTOGRAPHED! Lest, I dunno, the seventy billion photographs that already exist on Flickr vanish somehow.

And so I spent the following set of quiet days at work telephoning camera retailers, trying to make them all undercut each other in the hopes that eventually I would end up with a free camera.

Needless to say that didn't happen. But I did get the Canon 1100D with 18-55 IS lens from Paxtons in Chatswood for $639.

Mostly I just want to take the Tax Invoice to Bing Lee, who were sizzling the obsolete 1000D for $800 and I want to wave it in their faces.