I used to live with a complete psycho.  Kurt and I nicknamed her Alpha Charlie - her initials - not sure exactly why but the nickname stuck, and I guess that makes us complete geeks.

Anyway, as she proved herself entirely batty and downright verbally abusive, I moved house.  As I have mentioned previously, many times.

And although I was told by a few people that I wasn't the only roommate she had treated this way, I did wonder whether I had contributed to the disaster in some way, and whether I could have done anything differently.

So, although it does seem a little mean, I was actually happy to hear this morning that she has already (after about 3 - 4 months) fallen out with the next housemate and booted him out of the house - and this is someone she has been friends with for 12 years!  Apparently it degenerated to only communicating via text and email, and then he came out of his room one day to see a note telling him to move out.  And even though I'm not sure I should be, it makes me feel happy inside because, you know, it wasn't me.  Well of course, I know really it wasn't me, but my subconscious... well sometimes it says maybe it was you.  Or at least, it used to.

So now, I wish this guy the best of luck in finding somewhere else to live, and I wish it hadn't ended like that but... I'm sorry mate but ... it wasn't me.

Oh and, here's a picture of a runway.

And some smoke.  Because the firies (for all non-Australian, firies = firefighters) were out playing... with fire, surprisingly.  And the smoke kept alternatin white and grey, a bit like the piano keys on the runway, so I took a photo.

Oh and we hit a bug at 3,000' that splattered onto the windscreen a splat about 8 inches which was cool and I don't know what sort of bug it was because it was a little unrecognisable which is what happens when you hit an ATR travelling at 230kts in the opposite direction.

And I don't have a picture of the splat.  So sorry.  

So instead, here is a picture of how hot it was in the flightdeck this morning - 32ish degrees.

You're welcome.

Yesterday was Kurt's birthday, so I made him a cake.  Actually, I made him two cakes, because I decided that one cake just wasn't hacking it.  I then chopped off the top of both of the cakes and sandwiched them together to make one big cake.  Obviously, the question was what to put in the middle?  I am not a fan of too much butter icing (I think it gets too sickly) but neither am I keen on putting jam in a cake, so when a friend suggested raspberries and cream, it was a go-er.

Oh yeah, and I bought this awesome cake box which has a cake plate with handles... solves getting the cake in and out of the box perfectly - and the handles fold under the plastic plate and clip in place, so that they don't look ugly any more.

Here is the first layer, complete with cream and whole (flattened) raspberries.

The cake!  My first proper piping experience... and the white chocolate writing was extremely difficult - probably because I was doing it wrong...

Different angle of cakeness.

Inside :)

Oh, and did I mention that it was delicious?  Although Kurt said it could have done with a little more icing.  Hehe.

Did I mention that I met his parents on his birthday?  Yeah.  Well.  It went fine actually, although he said I was freaking out about it and I claimed not to be.  Was I?  Will I ever tell this story?  Probably not.

I think he had a good day, although it's hard to get the truth out of him there :)

TTFN !!!

The First Fruits

Sydney Revisited (Part 3)

In the afternoon, we went to the Maritime Museum.  It was reasonably priced, and we got to go in three boats.  For those who object to me calling every sea vessel a boat, get over it.  I shall continue to do so, and it is my blog.

This is the HMS Vampire, and beside her, on the right, is the submarine whose name I forget.

Climbing down the hatch into the submarine

They make the doorways as hard as possible to get through...

Torpedo tubes in the submarine

The engine room

Sitting up on the deck of the HMS Vampire

This is a replica of the Endeavour, Captain Cook's vessel, and it was very unstable and made me feel a little queasy.

And then we ate food and hung around the harbour until it was time to fly home.   Having walked around Sydney for hours and hours and hours we didn't really feel like exploring the actual maritime museum - the boats were sufficient !  Okay, maybe Kurt would have if I had felt like it :P

That's Sydney in a nutshell, folks!  No more Revisited posts to come !

TTFN!

Sydney Revisited (Part 2)

On the second day, we went to Pancakes on the Rocks for breakfast, which was to die for.  I had black forest chocolate pancakes and Kurt had plain buttermilk pancakes with strawberries and vanilla icecream.  I think mine was better, but he disagrees.  

After this, we walked past Martin's Place where a TV news show called Sunrise is broadcast.  I'm not posting any photos of this.

Then, we stopped by the Opera House:

And Sydney Harbour Bridge

And took lots and lots of wonky panoramas of said House & Bridge

And a large number of selfies:

And found a cruise liner and Kurt liked the ropes so I took a picture at this angle to try to get how massive the ropes were... but it doesn't show all that well.

And Kurt tried on an Australian hat thing, and looks very Australian in this picture...

And we watched Dragon Boat racing from the bridge in Darling Harbour

And that took us about to lunch time....

Sydney revisited

I'm so sorry, people, that it has taken me this long to get around to posting pictures of our trip to Sydney, but here I am, and better late than never!

Bondi beach was lovely, but even though a major tourist attraction, it was not as nice as all the amazing beaches we have up in Queensland.  I already knew that of course, having visited it previously, but as I said to Kurt, the Bondi lifeguards are SO much hotter than the ones up in Queensland...

Yes, I have watched all eight seasons of Bondi Rescue.  I am that sad.

And yes, someone brought a paddling pool to the beach for their small child.

And here's me... wrapped in my favourite beach towel from Noosa and looking not a little foolish.  Just to prove that I was really there.

There is a skateboard park at the beach, there is in fact one of these at most beaches and parks in Australia, which I think is cool.  This was some eight year old kid who was skating rings around everyone else.

The beach from above.

Off for dinner, we had to wait an hour for a table - what better opportunity to get a couple of cocktails? The one on the left is a salted caramel martini (which was amazing) and on the right some sort of lemon/cointreau/apricot liquer creation.  Also very good.

We even found a British SWEET Shop - I did complain that they called it a Lolly shop and the shop assistant snapped back that "Australians would not understand what sweets are".  Kurt objected to this and said that yes they would, so we had to end that conversation fairly quickly...

I introduced him to blackjacks (he refused to try), fruit salads, drumsticks, and many other of my childhood favourites.  Unfortunately no sherbet fountains.

We then walked slowly back to the hotel via the Westfield Tower, from which we could see all of Sydney, but unfortunately there were a ridiculously large number of lights on so everything had a reflection and also there were many grubby finger prints on the glass, so it wasn't a great experience for $26 each !

I couldn't take any photos from the tower - I did, but they're useless - due to the above, so have settled for one from the bridge in Darling Harbour:

And that was Day 1 !

I can't believe it's already November.

Back home in Ireland, I imagine the leaves have turned golden and rust, and are coating the lawns and paths, ready to be raked up.  It will be fire in the hearyh weather, all bundled up in sweaters and scarfs, perhaps even a few blankets.

It was 31 degrees here today.

Last night, there was a command party put on by some of our newly upgraded captains.  It's a tradition in our company that when you get your first command position, the difference between your last first officer salary and first captain salary goes on a bar tab - for all of the other pilots to drink.  This time, we had six new captains providing drinks not just for the pilots but also the cabin crew and office staff, and it turned out to be a great party.  This morning, we got up late and lazed around for awhile, and then headed out to Bunnings to buy yet more stuff for my garden.

I even took some more pictures.

Here, in the first one, you can see four sunflower plants at the back - now about a foot tall - with a thin line of carrots in front of them, and then at the front some flowers - yes, I went there.  Marigolds and some random slightly cactus-y things, I can't remember what they're called.

At the other end of the garden, past the courgettes (zucchini) and tomatoes, we have the beans at the back, with a newly-erected frame in case they need something to lean against.  Nine out of the eleven seeds sprouted, which is pretty good going.  To the left of the line of beans, is the fifth sunflower, which I transplanted this morning (it was getting cut off by the courgettes) and it is looking rather sad and wilted as a result.  Under the wigwam is the cucumber plant, to its right is an eggplant and then the red capsicum, which has several tiny still-green capsicums on it now.  And all around the edge are more marigolds, petunias, and the cactus-y things.

Here are the tomatoes and courgettes.  There are five courgettes on the plants now, unfortunately most of the flowers appear to be male, but google says that this is normal, so I live in hope of more fruit.  In between the tomatoes I have planted some basil, which apparently keeps flies away from the tomatoes and also helps them taste good !    In between the wooden chopsticks are a few more carrots.  Yes, they are actually chopsticks.

You may notice the pretty little metal & ceramic bead butterfly in two of the photos... I fell in love with it and decided it had to join the plants in my garden.  :)