Christmas Eve

A winter's day

In a deep and dark December

I aaam alooooone

Gazing from my window

To the streets below

On a freshly fallen 

Silent shroud of snow

 

 Okay, okay... well I AM alone, Kurt is at work , so poor old me has gone to the beach on my lonesome...

Mind you, I do have the whole family to hang out with, and they DID drive me the 2 blocks to the beach rather than me walking...

And Kurt is home tonight, and we will both be together tomorrow...

So life isn't really so very hard...

I feel like such a horrible blogger, in fact, given November's record, I don't think I can really call myself a blogger at all ! 

Christmas is rapidly approaching, and I think we have bought almost all of our gifts... one or two remaining, but who's counting?  I think that my lack of Christmas growing up has made me appreciate it more in some ways, be confused in other ways, and just not understand some of what it's really about.  However, I am trying to learn!

Tonight we went out for dinner with a couple of friends, and exchanged Christmas presents, which we unwrapped there and then even though it's not Christmas yet.  Well, we unwrapped theirs, and gave ours to them... unwrapped as I had given up trying to wrap the awkward shape, much to Kurt's disappointment (but I hasten to add that he did not attempt to wrap it himself!).  Surprise, surprise, we both gave each other a form of Christmas hamper.  Is that what you automatically get for people when you really can't think of anything to get?

Actually the one we got is really nice, a wicker picnic basket that is a sealed cool-bag inside and lots of chocolately and sugary snacks!  Bang goes any semblance of a diet between here and the new year - there are way too many goodies to get through, given my resolution to give up sugar in January...

...I know, I know, it won't last, but ONLY January, is the resolution, don't want to make it too hard for myself.  Cold turkey much.  And I obviously am not the type to make resolutions to actually help people and make the world a better place... as my giving up sugar will really just make everyone around me completely miserable.  *evil cackle*

I'm rambling.

Apparently I don't blog about flying any more, well, there's not really much new about flying.  I go to work, I fly to M, G, R or E, and then I fly back to Brisbane.  And then, usually, I do it again, often overnighting in R or G, and not really anywhere else.  And I fly with all the same people, some of whom I like (which is great) and others that I'm not particularly bothered about (which is fine) and others that I really am not fond of at all (oh well) and then I get to go home!  Whoopee! 

After Christmas I get to fly somewhere new... new to me, not to everyone else who has been going there for months, but I didn't get rostered before now.  I'm glad I waited, because now the airport (well... landing strip) has lights!  and RNAV approaches!  and an actual airport plate! When people first flew in there, there was no weather report (actually I think there is still no weather so we're very restricted about time of day etc. that we can fly in there, like we can't go in if it's night time, for instance) and no lights, no PAPI (approach slope guidance), no approaches and no map of the airport to show us where to go after we land.  Which actually wasn't that much of a big deal as you land, keep going until you run out of runway, and then turn off the runway and voila, there you are at the terminal (okay, one-sided shed) and you can pick between two bays (generally you don't get to choose) and God forbid that someone else taxied at the same time as you, because there isn't anywhere to turn around once you've moved off the bay!  So much fun...  I'm just waiting for someone to taxi and some other idiot to land and them sort of look at each other stupidly, like what do we do NOW?

It's been very stormy the last few weeks, summer came in with a bang, and although Brisbane technically does not have a Dry and a Wet season, I think it does, because it was very dry (except for our wedding day) and now it is very decidedly wet.  Even Moranbah is green, which is saying something.  However, it doesn't just rain over here.  When it decides to rain, it's like a swimming pool in the sky, and add that to some tennis-ball sized hail (in some areas - we only got tiny little golf-balls) and a whole bunch of lightning, and there you have it.  The Brisbane Wet.

Obviously, flying + thunderstorms (with the occasional supercell thrown in) doesn't mix all too well, especially when you have idiots flying around who think they own the sky.  Over the last week we have had two aircraft grounded due to lightning strikes.  I don't know if I've just been lucky, but in all 7 years of flying, with 2.5 of them over here, I am still waiting for my first lightning strike.  And I'm happy to keep waiting, thank you very much.  Pick the other guy, why don't you.

On the subject of guys, we were walking through the terminal yesterday, me and another female pilot, flying together, as we often do, and some guy fundraising for life savers says "are you really pilots?"  T lost her smart, as she often does, stopped, and was like "what did you say???"  The guy is like "what?" and she is like "what did you just say?  Did you say are we really pilots?"  And believe it or not, ye life saving fundraiser man replied "I just thought you were models."

Which was weird.

Aaaaanyway... add that to the list of crazy-female-pilot's-life stories (like the female security guard looking me up and down and declaring "aren't you a cute little pilot?") !

I have now submitted my application for Permanent Residency - and I was told that as soon as I had the email confirming my application I could apply for Medicare.  Oddly, you submit the application and THEN upload all the supporting documents, so without having uploaded anything to support my application, I printed out the confirmation letter and headed off to Medicare.  Having done it all so promptly, my details weren't even in the system yet, but apparently that didn't matter so they gave me a temporary card and sent off the permanent one which should arrive in the next 3 - 4 weeks (give or take Christmas).

So once I had the temporary card, we managed to get me proper Australian health insurance so I can cancel my useless visa health cover!  That also warrants a "Whoopee!"

I think I'm running out of things to say, which probably you are all (or maybe there is only one of you left reading this blog by now) pretty happy about.

Oh yeah, it's our four monthiversary on Monday.  I forgot the three monthiversary which was probably more significant but I think I got stuck in an outport or something similar.  I won't get to see Kurt on this one either as he goes to work at 0530 and I leave at 1200 on an overnight before he gets home from work!  Such is married life :)

Anyway that's it folks, I'm bored now!

TTFN!

Christmas

Christmas 2014 has begun!

31 days in October, and I managed 15 posts.  Hmm....

I'm not cut out for this challenge business.

I am, however, still running.  Running, and running, and running, and today I did my first 10k without stopping.  Quite a good feeling to feel my Fitbit buzzing that I had completed my daily goal of 10,000 steps by 0630!  The problem with running so far, is that it takes so long, so on a normal day it's not a goal that I'm really interested in.  Today it took me 1 hour, 8 minutes and 26 seconds to run, which is about 6 minutes less than the Bridge to Brisbane (we walked 1.4k of that, so it doesn't count as a non-stop 10k) and about 5 minutes slower than Kurt achieved it in a few days ago. 

I'm pretty happy with my time, however, especially as for once I managed to pace myself rather than completely exhaust myself in the first couple of kilometers!

Kurt won a couple of personal trainer sessions in a competition at the physio, so he has gone to get yelled at for an hour. 

The last few days have been particularly busy, as it was Kurt's birthday yesterday, and we wanted to do lots of celebrating.  I managed to sneakily buy him his birthday presents without him knowing, guessing, or actually having any idea whatsoever, which is a big achievement as he is extremely nosey! 

On Tuesday, he opened his birthday presents early as we were going down the coast for 2 nights.  Personally, I think it's pretty much as exciting as receiving a present to give something that you know the other person will go crazy about! 

We stayed in a hotel on the Gold Coast on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, it's only an hour or so's drive from the house, but it was nice to just get away and not have to do anything!  We did, however, get up at silly o'clock both mornings to go surfing!  This was another part of Kurt's birthday present, and it was lots of fun.  We had lessons from 0700 to 0830 both days, and the instructor broke it down to easy steps and Kurt was able to stand up on his board really quickly... mind you, he fell off really quickly too, but by the end of both lessons we had both learned a lot.

The surf lessons ended somewhat dramatically for me as I was stung by a jellyfish when I fell off my surfboard.  This was incredibly painful and included me hopping out of the sea dramatically and then running off to douse it under fresh water.  Kurt, on finding out that I had been stung, was like "meh!" and went on surfing, being a strong Australian man and not thinking anything of jellyfish stings.

For me, it was a different story, being my first jellyfish sting ever, and being in a lot of pain.  However, after getting back to the hotel and having a hot shower - hot water really makes the sting feel better - the burning eased off and now I just have a rash across the inside of my knee as evidence of the vicious attack.

We got home yesterday afternoon, via Bribie Island, which isn't really on the way (being an hour up the coast, while we were already an hour down the coast...), but Kurt wanted to see his parents so that he could get the rest of his birthday presents on time! 

Then, last night we went out to dinner at Hogsbreath with a few friends, which was fun.  Kurt got a couple more presents and then we came home relatively early (2130?) and collapsed with exhaustion.  Okay, I collapsed with exhaustion and went straight to bed, and Kurt played with his new arrows and xbox game for an hour or so! 

And then I woke up bright and early this morning and went for a 10k run... which brings us back to the very beginning of this post so I can stop now !!!

Gone are the days of painfully kneading pizza dough... yippee!!!

I just ran for 10 minutes (1.83km)

cycled for 10 minutes (5km)

and rowed for 10 minutes (2046m)

which is hardly a triathlon (besides, I didn't want to get wet), but it was tough anyway.

This whole getting fit thing sucks sometimes.  After a work out, the aches and the tired and the I've-worked-really-hard feeling is really good, but pre workiut? During??  No, thank you very much.  The getting one's self out of bed to drag oneself to the gym?  Urgh!!  And then usually at the 5 minute mark where it all looks horribly uphill... can I stop now?

the thing is, it allows me to eat chocolate croissants... and chocolate... and KFC... and all the other healthy things I want to include in my life.

So as far as a weight-loss tool, it doesn't really work, but as a 'dont end up looking like a whale' tool it is doing a fairly good job.

 

And whoever said that girls dont sweat, they 'perpire' - whatever, folks, they made that up.

The Neon Run

After we ran (mostly) the 10k Bridge to Brisbane in September, they advertised for the 5k Neon Run, which is a night run with lots of neon lights and disco music, and we thought ooh, that would be fun, let's do it!  And having spent the last few weeks desperately training so that I could run 5k without stopping (I did manage it once, pre-Neon) we read the event package they sent us last week and realised... well this was more of a have-fun-drink-beer-dance-to-an-open-air-disco-and-meander-5k than a run. 

Being very stubborn and determined people, we decided to still treat it like a run.  Having planned to run 5k, and having been timing ourselves and pushing ourselves and being generally horrible to our poor aching bodies, it was only right that we got to run 5k despite the odds.  The Neon Run organisers were strictly "we're not timing the run, it's just for fun" which didn't sound much like fun to us, because it's running so it's supposed to be really really painful - so Kurt used his new Garmin running watch, and I used my i-phone's GPS, and we religiously tracked and timed ourselves while attempting to dodge large groups of meandering walkers.

We (all 6,500 of us) were segregated into groups named after bands and singers, ours being "Coldplay", and we were about the tenth group called to start the run.  The first runners left at 1900, the event having been "opened" from 1700, including the bar.  We arrived at 1800 and ate pizza and corn-on-the-cob and bought neon shoelaces and found abandoned glowsticks to stick in our shoes and on our wrists.  Our "event package" included a battery powered neon bracelet which was sound activated (so the closer you got to the stage, the more it would blink, until it couldn't handle the noise any more and just remained on).

Finally, we started running.  Okay, it was only about 1920 at that stage, but as we were runners 4396 and 4397, you can imagine how many people were already on the course!  Most of these weren't running, so it was quite interesting and very frustrating at times, trying to duck, dodge and weave our way through the crowd - while trying very very hard to keep running.

Every km of the course they had a "station", whether it was a foam station - positioned precariously under a bridge next to the Brisbane River, with runners walkers standing around blocking the path so that you had to run on the very edge of the walkway... with a six foot embankment (about 60 degrees steep) into the river which if just one of these human obstacles took a step backwards at the wrong time... swim time and dinner for the bull sharks.

We survived.  But only just.

By about the 3rd kilometer, we had left the majority of these Incredibly Annoying People behind, and managed to go a bit faster.  My fastest kilometer was still only 6'12" but I was still pretty happy with that given the winding-ness of the course, and the 6498 other "non-competitors" we had to avoid.

As you can see, there is quite a marked difference between us pre-run and post-run !!!