21 Sleeps til Christmas

Friday, December 04, 2009

We had rough day yesterday here.  Leah had to take a CPR class all day so she got up and left the house by 7.  I stayed home and did a bit of house work.  I also waited for Telstra to call me back.  When they did I found that the Indian guy had been replaced by a woman who is my new case manager.  Let’s just say she wasn’t exactly in a hurry to get our problem resolved.  Turns out that the issue we are having is caused by our address being listed in one of the Telstra directories but not in the other.  I’ve been told I will be contacted in another three or four days, but they don’t know how long it will take to confirm our address.  I was also told they’d have to do another credit check because I put my order in at the store but the customer service is a different department.  Wouldn’t it be great if they denied me credit now after all this trouble?

Leah got home about 5:30 and I could see she was upset.  After a little prying I found that she was placed in a class with a group of people that all worked for the same company.  She had a hard time meeting people because everyone knew each other.  That was made worse by the fact that they were having their company holiday party and were not exactly in the mood to be serious.  It’s hard when you are the outsider.  After the class she went to get her books and found out she has five books for two classes that cost about $100 each.  Plus the classes are both repeats of classes she’d taken back in the states. Not to mention she fell off her bike while riding home.  We both are having a hard time acclimating to not having any friends and even little setbacks seem to build on each other and become big stressors.

I think I’ll go get a carton of beer and a bottle of wine tonight.  Getting shitfaced may help.

After letting it out for a while we both felt better and made some dinner.  We borrowed a DVD from Melissa and sat down to watch.  The DVD is a series from Australia called “Underbelly” sort of a “Soprano’s” meets “CSI” it’s based on true events I guess. We enjoyed the first couple of episodes.  I guess it’s kind of a guilty pleasure.

This morning I’m really stiff.  The bed we’re sleeping on has a brand new mattress but it’s probably the cheapest one ever made.  It’s sagging in the middle already and every morning I’m waking up with a stiff back.  We’re going to have to do something about that.  Add our bed to the growing list of things we miss.

Even on days that seem hard, Australia show glimpses of beauty.  The tree across the street that attracts the bats at night also attracts Budgies during the day.  Budgies are little green and red parrots that we’d call Lorikeets (sp?) back home.  They fly around really fast in huge flocks and make a phenomenal racket. They’re loud but I haven’t gotten over the novelty of wild parrots.  Also I went out to the clothes line and saw the most beautiful wild Cockatoo in the tree.  It was huge and white with a big pink crest.  It looked just like the one from Berretta, if you remember that show. 

Leah is going to Uni this morning to pick up her books.  Melissa is driving there to watch Thomas at his last swimming lesson in the Uni pool this morning and offered to give Leah a lift.  I don’t know what we’re going to do with the remainder of the day, but we need to do something fun. 

Some observations for today:

-They do have rasins here, they’re called Sultanas

-The second test between Australia and the West Indies starts this morning from Adelaide.

-Bush turkeys are also called “Scrub Turkeys’.

-Neither Leah, nor myself have had an affair with Tiger Woods.

-I’ve never been so happy in my life that the temperature dropped from 34 to 26.

-Zoe, Melissa and Andrew’s two year old has taken to calling me Bob. 

-All the celebrity gossip people on the news are American and it really annoys me for some reason.