Its official.  [edited @ 3.30pm today for clarity and detail]

It’s my birthday. My activities over the weekend have been many. Went out to a party on friday, got drunk, ate chinese food. Went back to someone’s house, played spics and specks on their DVD, and then passed out at 2am on Sat morning.

Of course, whilst we (j & I) were waiting for the taxi, we opened up a bottle of wine and drank it on the kerb like a couple of derros. By the time we got to the restaurant I was half cut. We drank the rest of the wine in between courses, and I had this chilli squid dish that was so hot, that my mouth went numb. I couldn’t taste the wine or the food anymore after that.

Saturday was recovery day. Sunday I went out with the parentals and my sister to the WA Maritime Museum. Never been before and my suggestion if you are in Perth, and plan on going, put aside more than 2 hours. The museum is so huge we haven’t finished going through it. So we’re going to book outselves a session at the museum again so we can finish looking at everything, and go on the submarine tour!

It was a little like going to see the Norwegian Maritime Museum in Norway for some bits (boring stuff). Lots of different kinds of boats, bits of fishing material - this interactive stuff like dummies wearing bed sheets talking to you. Great for kids, when you are an adult, it’s a little cliched. There is an exhibition at the moment about the discovery of WA, from the Dutch, to the French, to the English. Of course, we didn’t see the real Vlamingh plate, or Hartog plate, but we saw replicas and that was OK i suppose.

Today, going to the Perth Mint, never been there before, all part of my educational birthday theme this year. Hopefully I will learn something on this visit aswell. Dad then told me last nigh that he installed some kind of exhaust pipe for something in their basement. Interesting

I am home at 3.30pm and now have a fully charged ipod. it’s no different to any other mp3 player, cept the cool thing is i can play videos on it, store all my photos on it (all 4.5gig of em) and play games on it. Bizarre! I purchased some car chargey goodness for the ipod. I can’t stand the idea of leaving my laptop on all day to charge the thing.

OK: The Perth mint tour was .. interesting. It was short, there wasn’t too much to see in reality, because lets face it, it has gold bullion stored somewhere in it, and you can’t take photos. We got to strike a coin. Well J did, we put it in the machine, it rumbled, and spat out a copper coin, with some stuff about the mint on it.

The highlight for me .. watching the gold bar get poured and created, hearing about the amount of gold they retrieved from cleaning the smelting room, lifting the gold bar (it was only 12.5 kilos heavy) and checking out the awesome display of gold ingots.

Another thing on my to do list is struck off, and that’s to eat some gold. I saw when I was a kid, this cake layered in gold, and I thought that would be awesome to do. So I purchased some gold brushed chocolate. Ok it’s creme de menthe, but who cares! I will be eating gold! woohoo!

I miss MM i hope we can talk tonight.

As is my wont, when I am stressed on the real life side of things, my online life gets interrupted and I don’t really do much, or participate much in the online lifestyle. This includes, reading, posting and commenting on my, and other people’s blogs, even forums have suffered. The source of my current stress is of course home and work. I don’t think really there is much else.  Whilst mother dearest breaking her wrist was indeed stressful, and she’s now in the midst of another health scare that I really do not want to participate in, I have found the constant staying at home, cooking on the weekends, going shopping for food, dealing with parents arguing over smoking and the like, is indeed, stressful.

Moving home when you are an adult, like myself is a smart move when paying off credit card debt, and saving money. I am aiming to save enough to pay off the CC, and ensure that I have enough to travel on overseas for several months before considering employment opportunities. This naturally leads to my next stress point which is work.

I would like to rant and rave about it, but what’s the point. The amount of customer contact has increased by.. I don’t know - close to 20% from what it used to be. As a TL - I am forced to take escalated calls from customers who want to rave about the lengthy call cues, their bills, and anything else they can think of whilst they have been on hold for nearly 45 minutes. They are writing down key points whilst they listen to our hold music, and some nice lady telling them about how important their call is to us.

Newsflash - we know the call queues are long. We know you have been on hold for 45+++ minutes, we’re sorry. Very Very Sorry. Shouting at call centre staff about the wait does nothing but make them and sometimes, me, want to cry after being abused for 10 minutes on the phone. Thanks to the woman who screamed at me for 20 minutes over $1.80 that wasn’t refunded back to her account. I’m very glad then you got that off your chest, now please, hang up, and let me try and pull my shattered self together so the consultants sitting near my desk don’t see my face and how I feel, since I have to keep them motivated and flying the flag.

Still I get up every day and go to work. Because today, a man who escalated a call to me, who was angry about some detail about his plan, remembered that I spoke to him 2 yrs ago about his mobile phone issues. He remembered that I tried my best to help him with the phone, and he said thank you, and that now his phone was working, and he appreciated the effort I put into him. That made me smile, and that is why I post tonight, because after a shit 2 weeks at work, he reminded me why I still worked there.

Well with mum’s arm in a half cast at the moment, it is still my job to do all the cooking.

Today I created Salmon Quiche, Bacon and Mushroom Quiche, Banana Cake!. I will list the ingredients and activities for the Salmon Quiche.

Salmon (tinned or the smoked stuff, it doesn’t matter to me)
3 eggs
1 cup of milk
a fistful of english spinach
onion
pepper
Pastry
cheese

1. Butter a pan, roll up some pasty into a ball, then roll it out onto the bench till its flat, and put into your quiche dish.
2. Cook the onion till it is golden brown, scatter onto your pastry base.
3. Scatter your spinach leaves over the onion
4. Scatter your bits of salmon over spinach and onion
5. Scatter your cheese over the spinach, onion and Salmon
6. Beat 3 eggs, add milk, beat more, add pepper, pour into Quiche dish
7. Bung it in the oven and cook till the pastry is golden brown

Remove from oven, let cool, serve with anything you like.

Picture will be uploaded later and added to this recipe!

After that I cleaned the bathroom. Not that interesting, but hell, I am the paid slave at the moment, and my cooking is getting better

I am resting my poor old body in bed after a weekend filled with activity and laughter, tears and sadness… [cues sons and daughters themesong music]. Nah it was OK. I certainly had a few highs, and some lows this weekend, friend and family wise.

Friday I went out after work for dinner and movies with J. We watched Transformers. Now I am going to do two reviews.

For those who have an active inner child: TOTALLY AWESOME, LOVED THE GRAPHICS, TOTALLY FUNNY AWKWARD TEENAGE MOMENTS BLENDED IN WITH SOME AMAZING BLAMBLAM BLASTER AND EXPLOSIONS STUFF!!!

For those who have a sophisticated Margo Pomeranz and Dave Stratton style palate: “Completely awful, who remembers that scene in American Pie when the character is caught in the kitchen bonking an apple pie, and having one of those discussions with his father and the mutilated pie on the table? Cue the scene with this kid’s parents and talking about Masturbation. ”

J wanted to walk out of the movie, but I and my inner child were suitably entertained with the cool graphics and explosions.

Saturday: wake up, have shower, cook lunch - and that’s where things went bad. It appears as though mum has a right handed spatula (with some weird curve in it) because I couldn’t use it with my left or my right hand ( I am left handed). Mum was watching me mutilate this piece of fish and laughing her ass off at me. So, finish mutilating the fish, and start making all the lunches for this week.

This involved making breadcrumbs. MAKING them.

me: Why can’t we buy them like other people do mum?

mum: because there’s no love or reward in it

me: %$@^%& ok.

so bread was crumbed, potato mashed, parsley and onion chopped, eggs, tuna, mixed in and voila patty mix.  Awesome, now I gotta go to the shops, I need an outfit for the ATA awards.

Got my outfit, raced home.

mum: you didn’t cover the mix in the fridge

me: you didn’t ask me to.

mum: $%#^@%@  ok

Get dressed and run off to the awards, yay team, don’t get drunk but have a great time with friends catching up, and eventually get home after midnight. Mum get’s up and we watch an old movie together called 36 hours. I toddled off to bed at 4am.

Sunday - work rings, i confirm stuff, hang up and then try and snooze. Mum knocks on the door at 11am.

mum: are you awake?

me: I am now

mum: oh good, i need some help in the kitchen

me: %^$%!@#$  ok.

My sister then turns up, and I am enslaved in the kitchen all afternoon during her visit whilst dad sits on his ass in the lounge room. I make dinner (beef casserole) diced beef, potato, carrots, capsicum, some red wine, tomatoes, onions, garlic,  brew for several hours and serve. Also made beef rissoles with sundried tomatoes. So I have started learning how to cook some traditional meals. I will have to do this all again next weekend with the cooking. *sigh*

There is a frustrating factor, and that is dad is a typical old fashioned male, and I am not used to cooking this much for anyone else, let alone myself.  Good experience for me I guess.

I wrote a few days ago,  a line at the bottom of my post.

Let’s hope this week is better.

 Pfft, obviously someone thought that- Nah Let’s not do that.

This morning I awoke to mum asking dad for help. It wasn’t the standard tone I would hear from her. She was in pain. Alot of pain. I wandered out in my pj’s (elegant as ever) and asked her what was wrong, and she looked at me with a white face.

“I think I have broken my arm or my wrist”

FUCK

I look for dad who is faffing around looking for something, I don’t know and I just flicked into emergency mode.  I put all that first aidy goodness into use and in 5 minutes had a splint done, and a gauze bandage around the splint and her arm, and in a sling shortly after.

Dad was going to take her into hospital, but he was looking for phone numbers and not finding anything, and moaning at mum about her thongs.

“I will take her to hospital dad, you just get ready for work.”

Off we went to hospital,  and encountered an empty waiting room. She was triage’d immediately, and off I went to make the phonecalls. 1 to my work, 1 to mum’s work, and 1 to dad saying, “she’s ok - she’s been assessed, we will be seen to soon.”

Less than 10 minutes later, in we went.  The worst thing is watching your mother in pain, being examined.

the nurse unwrapped my bandage to find the splint and was impressed before making mum do things. Clenching, wiggling fingers, bending (trying to) the wrist.   After rebandaging it, she got a doctor in, very new. (like just over a yr old) who did the same thing and did a shocking rebandaging.

Mum and I did comment that well, we were in the good hands of .. and we paused, because we both knew and so did the doctor that she wasn’t an expert. So I said, a good doctor, because she was. But that poor woman, blushed, looked bad and embarrassed and kept looking at me when she was talking to mum.

There was a man in the “behind the curtain” next to mum who came in after her, moaning and groaning about his wrist.

“oohhh ahhh”

“jeez… this hurts”

“ohhhh…… “  *hissing of breath as he draws in deeply*

He ended up going to radiology first, and mum was quite indignant, and she complained loudly about she got there first, do I need to moan and complain louder than him?  In the end it didn’t matter. They plastered her first. She had several people standing around observing a master plaster man at work. He stood back, lectured about meta tarsels, carpels, and elbow creases. Everyone watched in awe as he created the cast and molded it around mum’s forearm. Very impressive.

After that, was all down hill, and I really don’t want to be at work right now. I want to be with MM.

My sister and I went to Pink at Challenge Stadium last night. My sister was running a little late, finished work later than normal. That was OK, I had managed to have a pretty relaxing afternoon with mum and was prepared and looking hot! We will start this post with a summary of my afternoon.

Mum and I had been looking for some Mattress Pads, IKEA don’t sell doubles. Only single and queensize. I only have a double bed. I need a mattress pad on the bed I am sleeping on due to the uncomfy nature of lying on a sofabed, where I can feel the metal railings when I roll over. On the otherhand, at the moment, I am just too tired to care most of the time, but I would like to have a bit more of a comfy sleep. So.. Clark Rubber here we come.

Getting back to P!NK… We rocked up at around 7.45pm and parked on the roadside, the car parks looked chockers and there were people still arriving even though the doors were open. We slipped into a queue to get in and made our way to the stadium, and they were really strict on who entered with bags, and bottles, and even had my bag searched (they found a mobile phone switched off).

The first act was The Androids, They were as bad as other people who had been to pink previous had said. They were so boring, they played some songs about some shit, not sure. My sister and I went and found some water, and sat in a door way whilst they played, and we stared at the people walking in and out, and they stared at us. The worst thing, is despite the fact I am overly round, I saw more rotund women than skinny. I am a reformed fatty, but I saw women that just shouldn’t have been wearing short skirts with their plump white doughy legs.

I chose to disguise my generous figure with jeans, a nice purple shirt showing off my awesome cleavage helped with a very well designed bra. I don’t need anything like a U bra, but this was an impressive cleavage bra. Enhance the positives! Anyways, my sister was dressed up nicely too, nothing too revealing, and both of us were not impressed with some of the clothing we saw. I beleive that if you are a big chick, you don’t wear skin tight clothing, if you are a thin chick with bones and ribs sticking out of your body, don’t wear things which make you look like you just came out of a concentration camp.

The concert itself was awesome. She had this voice so powerful that as she belted out some of her hits, like “who knew” you just got goosebumps. Other songs, she didn’t sing herself, but she danced and performed as a support act for it. Then she sat down on a stool in a simple white dress, with 3 others and sang some of her ballads. The song that is my favourite, family portrait was up, and she wore a grey smock and she sang it. Gave me goosebumps.

Girls were carried out periodically due to nearly fainting in the crush of the main floor. The heat rolled off the bodies towards us as we stood off to the side, so if needed we could get away quickly. We were close enough to be able to watch pink, without needing to stare at the vid screens on either side of the stage. A very good night in all.

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Now that the move to my parent’s house is complete, I am happy to start relaxing and getting into the move of living at home. Already I have started unpacking but there is now an unfortunate side effect.

One of mum’s cats doesn’t like the fact I am taking up mum’s time.

She has peed on a towel, a scarf and tonight I found my beanbag has also been peed on. Guess that will need to be chucked out.

Parentals are going to a wedding tomorrow, and I am going to an indian dinner with friends, that shoujld be very nummy! Now the reason for the silk ties part in my blog header, I purchased one for dad today. He is going to be matching mum’s outfit

One a side issue - some dude that dad had been talking to has been calling all week to speak to him. He runs a website for betting, and wanted dad to invest money into it. Now this dude spoke to me several times this week due to me being home. I told him dad was back at work, and to call after 6pm at night. Said that twice. He rang today, and mum answered the phone as she and I were heading out the door. Basically she said that she was about to go to work and goodbye. Hung up on him. He rang back 3 times straight after that, but obviously we couldn’t be bothered picking up the phone, and off we went to our different places to go.

He sent dad a rather abusive email. Telling him to go put on a blouse and spend his time outside in the flowers and stop pretending to be a man, if he was going to hide behind a woman. How nasty. I won’t list the website here, since I don’t want the abuse then directed back here at me, but if anyone is interested, I can always email you the website URL.

UPDATE  27/05/07 :: Dad emailed the dude back a short simple and sweet email on Friday night. He stated that myself and my mother had been picking up the phone as we were both at home and he was now back at work. He sent a reply Saturday, apologising with some BS excuse. What a complete tard.

Firstly, I miss MM. Just need to get that out there, cuz right now it’s all I think about.

My friday was great. My special consultant had his last day, no more do I need to screech out his name across the call centre when he is flitting from desk to desk getting his water, when he really does need to be sitting down and working. We had a kick ass team meeting, we ate food and discussed work and food, and other such fun things. Only thing I felt disappointed about, was that ppl didn’t know anything about our KPI’s, which I have covered before during individual coaching sessions. Ah well, I have an idea on how to fix that, so no biggie.

Saturday.. lets see. Organised lunch with friends @ dimsum and invited JJ. D was there and completely ignored me. Not surprising since she and I had words in writing, in an email and I am over it. S is pregnant, and I think that is awesome. Went out afterwards and purchased some clothes for work. I was happy with my booty and I am going to look purdy! Sat night, got absolutely maggotted on alcoholic fruit punch at a 21st. I haven’t been to a backyard party for ages, and it was a good reminder on how much fun they are. I didn’t make too much of a fool of myself which is great.

Sunday.. i went to bed after trying to sober up at about 5.30am in the morning, got up at 10am after my sister rang. She came over to have a shower (long story but her water heater blew up). We went to the parental unit’s place. She got flowers and a card, i got the chocolates and a book for mum, we combined the gifts for mum. Dad on the other hand has health issues, and is now on blood pressure tablets. Seems as though his weight and blood pressure has skyrocketed since his enforced home stay after his accident. Rather than exercise to get it off, he has taken the pills option instead.

Flat is now starting to look less flat like, and a little more chaotic. I need to get rid of so much junk in here, I really don’t need any of it. I have to get rid of excess clothes next!…

Nothing witty right now to say.. have a good week.