Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Courage Under Fire

So, yesterday I got a work email titled "Staff Presentation". I really like being able to come into work in jeans and a t-shirt when I don't have a meeting lined up with a client. "Oh no, we're all going to get told we're dressing too casually for work", I thought. Then I realised that this was a calendar event scheduled for that afternoon. Phew. Next thought was that someone was giving a presentation on something. I then remembered that we'd all been getting a fair amount of praise for various things and that this was probably to present certain members of staff with a little reward. I thought about a few things that I'd been doing well that had received a good response and thought I might be up for something. Of course, it'll probably be a bottle of red, which I don't drink anymore, so I'll pass it on to someone else.

The presentation came around and I was the first one called up. "Suzanne. For Courage Under Fire on the _client_name_ project." "No kidding!" I laughed. This was one of those projects fraught with inexperience and political issues on the client side and language and cultural barriers between us. I was then handed a nice, new, shiny, black iPod Nano. Wow. I was completely shocked, given that during the entire seven years I've been with the company, it has only ever handed out wine. They also had it engraved with my name, the company logo and the year, which was an extra bother they didn't have to go to, so it was nice.

So I'm not in fear of losing my job anytime soon.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Hello... Summer?

How amazing is this weather? I feel positively human again. I went for a walk to the growers market on Saturday for my usual Banana and Chocolate Gozleme. How I miss bananas! Since two cyclones went through our banana growing areas up north, the price of bananas has quadrupled so I just don't buy them now. I can't wait for the market to recover.

Shawn got a chorizo roll, from the South American food stand, that was incredible. He also picked up some Empanadas for us to share later on in the day.

We used to go for a long (ish) walk every Sunday morning and now that the weather is far more conducive to this we went for a walk through the neighbourhood, our local parks and down to the local creek. The birds were going insane. It's breeding season and they're all looking for new homes and territories. This means we witnessed a lot of smaller birds chasing off bigger birds. One particularly brave soul was a little Willy Wagtail dive-bombing a very patient Kookaburra, who was more interested in the people wandering around the park. We sat down and watched him for a while. After we got up and walked off he followed us for a few blocks. Not an uncommon thing for a Kookaburra to do. I've been followed by a group of three through state forest near Robyn's house.

The weather has also brought me into the backyard more often. This means Kimba gets out for a while too.



She loves it so much I hate bringing her back in again, but she isn't allowed to get sunburned and I can't have the neighbourhood cats realising she's alone and taking the opportunity to pounce on her.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Different Weekend

Could this weekend have been any more different to last weekend? So much rain and so much colder. Spring is such a tease. I can't wait until the grasping hands of winter are really gone. Winter used to be my favourite season, but I feel the cold a lot more now, so I'm very grateful when Spring starts to take over.

On the upside, Saturday was filled with dvds and junk food, mostly chocolate. We didn't eat one healthy thing on Saturday. It was fun, but I don't think I'll be doing it to the same extent next Saturday.

Sunday was more of the same. Too much rain to do much else. I also got a call from a dear friend in New Zealand. This always makes a weekend better.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Sunday Garden



On Saturday night we stayed at Robyn's house. On Sunday morning I woke up to the most amazing, warm day and took a walk around the garden to enjoy it.



Everything is in flower.



It's that time of year when all the fruit trees are flowering and only just starting to get leaves and all the flowers on bare wood look phenomenal.

I could have sat in their backyard all day, but we had to get home at some point.

Kimba's New Bed


Really it's a blanket with edges, but she really loves it. If I want to encourage her to go to a certain spot, I put her blanket there and she goes to it. It's pretty amazing. The texture is a little like fur. I suspect this is why she loves it so much.