Not Running, and Mango Trees

I got up this morning at 0600 to go for a run.  I'm trying to do this every other day, and it still takes a lot of effort to get out of bed knowing what I'm about to subject my body to...

I got dressed, fixed up my heart rate monitor and put on my GPS watch... grabbed my shoes from by the front door and... then I noticed.

The rain.

Well let's call it a waterfall.

And it's at this point that I mention that Kurt has suggested many many times that I check the weather before getting ready to do things - and I usually don't, because come on, it's Brisbane, so it's sunny, and hot, ALL the time.

It's not today.

In fact, it's very wet across most of Eastern Queensland, it's even on the news for the Wet in the likes of Rockhampton.

My mango trees still don't get any water unless I actually water them though, which is usually once very 1 - 2 weeks.

Here they are, in all their glory:

The tallest (the one closest) reached it's two feet mark a couple of weeks ago and I duly lopped its head off.  The purpose of this is to stop the mango tree from growing straight up and force it to grow side shoots.  This is to make the tree bushier and the more limbs a tree has, the more fruit it has, and the easier it is to reach, etc. etc.  This pruning has been very successful, there are about 5 or 6 shoots so far.  Once these are established, they will be reduced to four, which is apparently a good number.

Here is its neighbouring tree's single main shoot.  The other two trees have shot up amazingly in the last two weeks.  When I pruned Tree Number 1, they were lagging behind by at least half a foot and now only by a couple of inches - it will be their turn for the scissors soon!

The New Bow

It happened.  He got a new bow.  He didn't have a compound bow yet, so fair enough.  His is the Bear Agenda 7, and it is a 50-60lb bow, obviously wound up to 60lb, while mine is still sitting back at 37lb... it's not a competition!!! 

The shadow black with orange trim is really nice, and goes with his arrow combination of orange & black feathers, although in this case they are plastic vanes as this type of bow apparently tends to damage real feathers faster than his other bow.

And here is the bow itself, sitting on the Lakeside Bowmen Official Sighting-In Chair which is at the side of the sighting-in range, and which is quite useful for resting things on (such as my backside when my legs get tired).  I'm not sure whether the chair is intentionally camouflaged or whether it's just very very old.

The view from the sighting range back in the direction of the clubhouse (you can see our car).

And in the other direction (at this point, I am sitting on the aforementioned chair).

The other side of Kurt and his bow...

Catch Up Post 1

The weather's pretty ordinary at the moment.  That's what they'd say, in Australia, and of course, I'm in Australia, so the weather's pretty ordinary at the moment.

(Google suggests that "ordinary", in Australia, means "actively terrible" or "really quite bad" etc. while of course, everywhere else in the Universe...)

I'll try to give you all a head's up when I'm going to use words that don't mean what you think they mean.

I've always liked the American definition for "momentarily".  Especially when you're taxiing out for takeoff, and the pilot makes a PA declaring his intention to be "airborne momentarily". 

It's a good thing I understood.

And for fear of being sexist, the pilot was indeed a male on this occasion.

Today is Kurt and my five monthiversary.  Yes, it's really been that long!  Although I like to tell him that really we've been married a year now as we got married in 2014 and it is now 2015... where's my anniversary present?

I went to the sim at the beginning of January, obviously preceded by 2 weeks of insane stressing about something that generally goes well (and did) but nevertheless remains stressful every single time.  Kurt goes to the ATC sim in a couple of weeks to do his next rating (every piece of airspace holds its own rating) and he is neither stressed nor planning to study, so I envy him a bit.

Thankfully the more pilots Kurt talks to, and the more he realises that we all do this, the more understanding he becomes!

Running is continuing.  I fell over a piece of pavement last week, ending up with a few scrapes and bruises, and after taking a few days off running due to general soreness, I am tending to avoid the pavement when I can.  Yesterday I was running along the street next to the parked cars - this is in a quiet housing estate, mind, on a nice wide road - and this car comes up behind me and starts beeping his horn at me repeatedly.  I am still not sure what he wanted, as he seemed quite angry that I was running on the street.  He did not seem to be calling attention to the fact that I was a female, running, so who knows...

I have just finished reading the Harry Potter series, 10+ years after they were first published, and in general enjoyed them.  Having watched the movies already, I didn't find that this detracted from the books in any way, and it was quite strange how I associated the actors in the movies with the characters in the books.  (In general, what JK Rowling described was portrayed quite well).  There were of course differences, but these were differences that I could deal with.  (Unlike some movies/books which I am sure were meant to be either/or , never the twain shall meet).

I also watched the movie of the Giver, which was good but... missing something that the book has, although I cannot explain.

We bought a whole stack of movies after Christmas as JB Hifi had a really good sale on, so why not?  This means that we are now trying to get through them all, and Kurt finds it hard to understand how I can spend hours on my computer, either chatting on Facebook or watching Youtube clip after Youtube clip (season 9 of Bondi Rescue in 2 days heh heh) and yet need a break inbetween two movies.

That's just the way it works, okay?

Going back to Kurt being in the sim soon, this means that he will now be what they call a "fully endorsed controller" or FEC.  This means that he will hold all the ratings in his "group" - in this case, three - and be able to start doing shift work.  This will put him on a rotating roster of three on, two off... which actually is going to be a pain in the proverbial, as having me on a random roster could make matching days off quite difficult!  I get four roster bids in a four week period, which are not guaranteed (I'm unsure why they bother) so hopefully some of our days will line up.

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 !!!