My bike is.

After a week of broken bikeness and wrong parts and Easter Weekends when nothing happens, my bike is.

And yesterday, I went for my first ride.

Of course, first I apparently had to buy some "knicks" which are like spandex or lycra or something (is it the same thing?) with a padded bit to sit on the saddle.  We cycled for 6 kilometers and the rearness of me is already sore, despite the paddedness of the knicks, so imagine what it would be like without them? 

When I bought this bike, which was online because bike stores are so much more expensive, (as in, bike store, 26% "friends" discount was still four hundred dollars more expensive than the online one) I expected to be able to get it, and go riding.  I didn't care about special clothes, or helmets (I had a cheap pink one from Ireland) and I was like yay, let's go riding.

Except that then the bike arrived broken (someone stuck a fork lift through the box and scraped it) so we had to wait for a replacement part, and then the replacement part came and it wasn't quite right, so we had to wait for another replacement part, which is when the long weekend got in the way.  And in the meantime, I bought water bottles and another helmet because it matched my bike, which is the best reason to buy something.

And then having finally gotten the bike back together again discovered how uncomfortable the saddle was and had to buy some knicks... I am now determined to ride it with a normal t-shirt or sports shirt and not get a jersey straight away!  Otherwise I shall look truly bikeish and that would just be sad.

Dad, get some knicks.  They do feel better even if they look silly. 

Aaaanyway, maybe today I'll get a picture of me with my bike for the Purposes of This Blog.

We rode down to the Criterion Track, which is a proper bike track for people to cycle on.  I don't know why they want to do that, but they do. 

And Kurt wants to go for a 40k cycle on North Stradbrook (an island) on Saturday and I think it might kill me.  I don't want to diiiieeee..... *faints*

TTFN!!!

It's been a normal weekend, which has been a refreshing break.  No discussion of wedding plans, and Kurt bought me a chocolate rabbit for Easter, yay!  Here comes the difficult decision of deciding whether to eat him (the rabbit) for breakfast or for dinner.  Oh, the suspense...

I'm off on another overnight this morning, and then on Tuesday life as we know it will become weddingy again as all the decisions we made last week can actually be booked in.

I'm home.  I've been home 2 weeks and I haven't been blogging.  I'm engaged, I'm frantically trying to plan a very quick wedding (because we're crazy, of course) and really The Oz Report has not been on my mind. 

Let's see what we've done these two weeks:

found a venue
found a honeymoon destination
found a DRESS (yes, that's right! and I LOVE it)  (that wasn't a we, either, that was an I)
found a beach
and set a date.

We're looking at 22 August 2014... which is in 4 months' time.  Can we do it?  Well, the big things are sorted, and I can take a deep breath and some time off - Kurt will be happy to hear this.  It's Easter weekend so things aren't happening as quickly as I might like - still waiting to hear back from the venue that the date is still available, and then we need to pay a deposit and head in to Flight Centre to book our honeymoon. 

And of course, on Tuesday, I get to put a deposit down on my dress.  You know what's stupid?  If you get a dress with less than 6 months' notice, you have to pay 15% extra.  That's stupid.  How can it take SIX MONTHS to make a dress?  But if I order it this coming week, it will arrive on 20 July and then I will have 1 month to get it altered to fit me properly.  Which the dressmaker says is plenty of time.  And that obviously gives me 3 months to get to my final wedding size haha. 

The annoying part of having a weird shaped body, ie top one size and bottom half another size, is that one just has to go with the larger of the two and get the smaller altered.  Oh and also having short legs.  You can't make a dress longer, so they make them long and then you alter them to make them shorter.  I'd have to wear like 20 inch heels to fit a dress unaltered.  Lame.

Why are there so many things to do with a wedding?  The awesome part of our venue is that they do almost all of the decorating themselves, so there is only a small amount we have to do - plus cake, DJ, dance floor, photographer, all those sort of things.  Have you ever thought about how expensive a wedding photographer is?  Have I mentioned 'lame' in this blog post yet?

And before I know it, it will be 22 August, and wow... Me, getting married???

*faints*

He put a ring on it

I'm engaged!  It feels so surreal... is this really happening to me?  It was the night before last, after dinner, in the dark, and he said he wanted to go get something from my sister's house, so we walked down there... and picked up our dirty laundry (very romantic) and on walking back up, he paused just inside the main gates to HH and started taking photos of the lighted up house in the dark. 

"Isn't it beautiful?" he remarked.  "Don't you think the view is beautiful?"

"Well," I responded, with his camera balanced on my head to stabilise the photos, "it's rather cold actually." 

And then it happened.  Will you marry me?

What?  Really?  I think I may have verbalised my thoughts, looking with incredulity in the darkness at the faint glimmer of the ring.  And then, of course, I said yes... and I still can't get over it.

I had high hopes for this journey.  Three circa eight hour flights with two hour stopovers.  This all went fantastically until on arriving in AUH we found out that our flight was delayed by six hours.

A glimmer of hope was found in that my Velocity card got us into the First Class lounge !  I have never been in here before and it is a long sight better than 'bizniz'.  We managed to secure ourselves a large couch and armchair and have each spent a two hour period so far lying flat on the couch sleeping - a nice change.

Also they have a proper kitchen and proper menu!  - nice!  A selection of danish pastries, croissants, muffins and fresh fruit for breakfast?  I don't mind if I do.

Now just over 2 hours until the flight... did I mention the complimentary spa treatments ?

Heh heh... 

Sad to be missing brunch with family and friends at home though :(

Ladies and gentlemen, we will be shortly passing through the cabin for a final rubbish collection.  If you do not want your boarding cards, please ensure that you shove them in the seat pocket or under the seat in front of you.  If you are travelling with small children, please feel free to give them the messiest snacks you can think of (eg cookies) and ensure that they thoroughly masticate these and smear them both over the seat cushions and on the carpet by your seat.  Thank you.  Please do not worry about the fact that someone else will have to sit there on the next flight, it's perfectly fine and we expect to have to clean up after a hoard of savages.

In other news... 9 days 'til Ireland.  Unbelievable.  So many little things that I need to do, for instance arrange a couple of days on the West Coast to show Kurt some of the beauty of Ireland... and the Shannon ATC Centre!  No, I do not classify any part of Shannon as 'the beauty of Ireland'.  However, it is situated right beside some gorgeous places, Co. Galway, Co. Clare, so much to see and do ! 

I am so excited for this trip, although not excited at all for the actual travelling there - 28 hours, most of which in grungy little airplane seats... but I can't wait to see everyone, it has been so long - 15 months!

This morning, I took the first step on curing my garden - adding agricultural sulphur to it in a bid to bring the pH down.  I have decided to keep the garden going, but to try to avoid buying any more plants - I have bean, carrot & sunflower seeds already, so I shall just plant these and see how it goes!

TTFN!!!

Bar one, all the plants are gone.  The one lonely straggler is the raspberry bush, which I am hoping will survive.  All of the others were past it, and I decided it was better to start anew.

The question is, is it worth it?  It is mid summer here now, and although it is Queensland, the temperatures will start dropping in another month or two.  Also, the garden is still particularly alkaline - I also did a test on the rainwater, which matched! - and I would need to do something to fix that.  Apparently it is difficult to change the pH of soil which has free lime / chalk in it.  The test to see whether this is the case, is to take some soil, add vinegar to it, and see whether it fizzes.  It did.  Apparently free lime buffers the pH of the soil and defies all attempts to fix it. 

The only viable option I can see is to add elemental sulphur to the soil, which should activate in 4 - 6 weeks, and then retest to see whether it did anything.  Then, perhaps I will start planting again...