Hotting up for our Honeymoon

The weather here in Brisbane has been scorching hot all week. I mean seriously hot, like sweating on the couch after work, too hot to stand over a steamy iron, way to hot to cook and almost hot enough to convince me to switch to iced coffee. Hot, Hot, Hot. Normally this would give me good reason to complain and moan, but not this week :) Tomorrow the Big Man and I are heading up to the Whitsundays for our Honeymoon! Bring on the hot weather.

Ummm, ok ignore what I just wrote. I just had the genius idea of checking the forecast for the Whitsundays.....

summary	Thu Oct 9	Fri Oct 10	Sat Oct 11	Sun Oct 12	Mon Oct 13	Tue Oct 14	Wed Oct 15
	Possible shower	Showers	Showers	Showers	Possible shower	Mostly sunny	Cloud increasing
maximum	27°C	26°C	26°C	26°C	26°C	26°C	26°C
minimum	23°C	23°C	23°C	23°C	23°C	22°C	22°C

chance of rain	50%		60%		70%		70%		50%		30%		50%
likely amount	< 1mm		1-5mm		1-5mm		1-5mm		1-5mm		< 1mm		< 1mm
uv index	Extreme		Extreme		Extreme		Extreme		Extreme		Extreme		Extreme
frost risk	Nil		Nil		Nil		Nil		Nil		Nil		Nil
	9am	3pm	9am	3pm	9am	3pm	9am	3pm	9am	3pm	9am	3pm	9am	3pm
wind speed	19 km/h	28 km/h	29 km/h	31 km/h	36 km/h	41 km/h	40 km/h	44 km/h	42 km/h	41 km/h	35 km/h	37 km/h	31 km/h	37 km/h
wind direction	E	E	E	E	ESE	ESE	ESE	ESE	ESE	ESE	ESE	ESE	ESE	ESE
relative humidity	68%	71%	69%	71%	67%	66%	75%	73%	69%	67%	64%	64%	59%	58%
dew point	19°C	20°C	19°C	19°C	18°C	18°C	19°C	18°C	18°C	18°C	18°C	18°C	17°C	16°C

Turns out the weather isn't really what I was planning on....

Hopefully something changes and it stays hot and sunny the whole time we are away, I was planning on spending most of my time in the ocean or on the beach. Cross your fingers for me!

Back in a week,

xxoo Tamsyn

The Pooper Strikes Back

This morning whilst I was getting ready for work I found Cooper asleep on my bed hugging his (completely destroyed and de-stuffed) monkey. It was the sweetest thing and I decided to take a photo of it. I picked up my camera to take the photo, but then decided to use the Big Man's fancy-pants digital SLR instead, so that I could actually get a decent picture. The Big Man's camera was flat though, but by this stage I had my heart set on taking some Dooce worthy doggy pictures and went in search of The Big Man's charger. I didn't find it. Instead I found a big, steaming, smelly dog poo on the carpet in our home office. Not happy.

I don't often give Cooper credit for being very smart (probably because he's really not a very smart puppy), but I think he had it all sussed out this morning. He figured that if he acted all sweet and innocent and hugged his monkey while he slept, that I wouldn't be able to punish him for pooping on the floor. Didn't work though. Because I have a truly evil streak, I punished him by shutting his Cat watching window and pulling the blinds. Now he will spend all day not knowing whether or not there are Cats invading his yard. Which I am pretty sure is his worst fear. He is absolutely obsessed with the 20 odd Cats that live in our street and he makes it his business to make sure that none of them step foot into our yard. He will probably need therapy by the time I get home. Might teach him for pooping on the floor though!

xxoo Tamsyn

Yay, it's Monday

Ok that was my lame attempt at sarcasm.

As I type I am sitting at my desk, biding time and pretending to be working whilst I wait for the coffee man to arrive.... I am seriously hung over. On a Monday. I think that I am missing my BFF more than I realised.

xxoo Tamsyn

I Miss My Internet

Since the Big Man and I have moved into our new home we have been semi-internetless. We still have full access at work, but nothing at home. It's killing me. When I finish up at work for the day all I want to do is go home to our new house and once I get there all I want to do is go back to work so that I can read blogs, and do other random internet things.

We had planned on getting iinet's naked dsl so that we could have a permanent voip line as well as decent priced internet, but thanks to Telstra we aren't able to get broadband at all. I don't completely understand why, The Big Man says that is something to do with the fact that we are in a pair-gained area. He explained it to me in detail, but I think that I zoned out about 20 minutes into his Telstra rant....

We have been told that there is about a 2 year wait and the best thing to do is just keep on applying for broadband every six weeks and hope we get lucky. I had to double check that we were still in Australia and hadn't accidentally moved to Namibia.

Obviously the whole two year wait thing is not going to work for us, so we are looking into wireless broadband. In the latest issue of APC they road tested all of the wireless internet options and recommended either Telstra Wireless or Three Wireless. Seeing as this whole thing stems from a Telstra problem The Big Man is dead-set against going with Telstra, so it looks like we are going to give the Three Network ago.

My question is, do any of you use wireless internet (ie using a mobile phone network rather than regular broadband) and do you have any recommendations, feedback or warnings before we go ahead and sign a contract? Thanks!

xxoo Tamsyn

Our Family Home

The Big Man, The Pooper and I finally have our home to ourselves. It still feels special :) We wake up in the mornings, as a married couple, in our own home, on our own. I'm loving it!

It's not that I didn't love having my BFF stay with us, or that I didn't like having a steady stream of pre and post wedding visitors. But it does feel great to be married and living on our own. Kind of makes me feel like a grown up!

It's more about the fact that where we were living was such a horrible place for me. We went back to the shop/house a couple of afternoons ago to do a walk through with the landlord and hand over our keys and it was at that point that I realised how much negativity I associated with living there. It was just one of those places that slowly, but surely sucks the joy out of your life.

The negativity started on the first Sunday after we leased the place. I was there on my own whilst the Big Man was out and about (at the hardware store I think). There was a knock at the door and I assumed it was one of the neighbours coming to say hi. The man at the door was visibly angry and demanded to see 'the old bloke'. I (naively thinking that he would leave once I explained that he was mistaken) told him that we had just moved in and that my fiance was only young and not the man he was after. The guy got really angry and called my a 'lying b***h'. At that point I started to feel nervous. I explained again that the man he was after must have moved because we were the only people living there now. It was then that the man yelled 'I know that he is here you lying b***h, tell him to come out here and see me, or I will come in there and I will get you. Stop lying to me or I will kill you.' That got me moving..... I slammed the door in his face, sprinted to the back door and locked it and then broke down on the floor bawling my eyes out. I have seen irrational and angry people before and I have felt scared before, but that was a lifetime ago and I was completely caught off guard. I called The Big Man and tried to explain to him what was going on, it took a while because I was hysterical and he thought that I must have cut myself with his new circular saw (that he had banned me from using). When I finally explained to him what was going on he told me to hang on and then hung up the phone. I figured that he was driving straight over, but he called me back in 5 minutes to tell me that he had called emergency and that the police where on their way. Hearing that actually calmed me down and I had the presence of mind to sneak up to the window and write down his car registration and a description of him in case he did a runner.

When the police arrived they did so in a spectacular fashion, three cars pulled up with their sirens blarring and they pulled into the yard blocking the guys car in. Whilst two of the officers quickly worked out the guy didn't have a gun or knife another one came to the door to talk to me. Which set me off again, I couldn't stop crying and it took ages for me to get my story out. About ten minutes later The Big Man arrived and sat with me whilst I talked to the police officer.

The guy out the front was charged with something, I'm not sure what and eventually all of the police left.

A couple of hours later the guilt kicked in for me. I figured that the guy was probably all talk and that I had over-reacted, but I still think that I would take the same course of action if something like that happened again. I also felt bad because he didn't seem very switched on, it turned out the had his girlfriend and kid in the car (which was unregistered) and didn't even realise that if he sat in the yard long enough that the police would catch him.

The policeman came back several months later to go over my statement for the guy's court hearing and he filled me in about the tenant before us. Alan Smith was his name and he had ripped a lot of people off (including the angry guy at the door) before doing a disappearing act. So now I feel angry, frightened and sorry whenever I think about what happened.

The Big Man and I stuck it out at the house anyway because we didn't think it would be long before our house was finished. But our home was delayed so many times and we ended up living there for a year. I hated answering the door though, which was tough considering we were running a business from there and I flat out refused to answer the door after dark.

Now that we are into our beautiful new home I really feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. We have a safe neighbourhood, great neighbours and nothing to fear. Home sweet home.

Sorry if that was all a little bit dark, but I felt the need to get it off my chest. Regular, light hearted content will resume tomorrow!

Tamsyn xx