secret money, stamps, and stupid security questions

I'm sitting here reading random blogs and procrastinating (I need to do chores, but I don't particularly feel like it) and then I saw that I got an email! Yay! It was just a message from Discover saying "Hey, feel free to pay us now," which normally would kinda suck, but then I looked at the balance and remembered that I'd gotten it to below $4,000 a couple months ago, and I didn't use it in OZ, like for some reason I kept thinking I did, so it was way less than I thought it was. For some reason I thought that card was maxed out. And it's totally not! I could still spend another $1,500! Woo!

Not that I'm going to, mind you.

It's just nice knowing that I can.

And, more than that, it's nice knowing that that's an extra $1,500 that I don't still owe.

I need to buy stamps so I can mail fuckface the deposit check. I'm not going to mail it until I get the check from him, but still. I also have another credit card payment I need to send out, and that one is due on the 4th, so I kinda need to send it now. I'd just pay online like I normally do, but I can't figure out what the answers to my security questions are. What is the foriegn country I'd most like to visit? What was my most unusual job? How the fuck am I supposed to remember what I put to those? I set that thing up years ago! And I've never had an unusual job!

grrs.

This is why I always try to pick easy questions like "What is my father's middle name?" Cuz now I'm gonna have a late payment, which is never good. I don't think it'll hurt me cuz it wont be that late and I do have a grace period, but still!

At least I'm back on CA time. And I've had some good shifts and made good money. I still can't make rent by myself (I love you Mom and Dad!!), but now I only had to ask for $300 instead of $600.

I hate being poor. grrs.

Me in Oz

So I stole some pics of me off of Carina's blog to post here, yay! I know most of you have seen them already, but there are a few people who go to my blog who actually don't read hers, so yeah. Those of you who have seen them already, well, you can just deal with it.


Here's me in Surfer's Paradise in Queensland. It was kinda awesome. Definetly not the Pacific we're used to here.

Here's me petting a red kangaroo in the Australia Zoo. It was VERY soft.


Here's me and Carina at Barwon Falls, on the way to Kuranda, which is in the rain forest outside of Cairns. It was lovely and wonderful.

angry commercials

Commercials for syrup make me angry cuz they make me hungry and crave pancakes. And I don't have any pancakes. grrs.

Back to the real world

The trip is over. I am back home. :(

Kinda. I mean, it was grand fun, I'd love to go back someday, but I'm glad to be home. There's just too much going on here!

I promise to post something better later, but I'm actually going to work now. I wasn't scheduled today, but I got a text at 11 this morning asking if I could, and since I had just slept for 14 hours I was feeling quite refreshed and ready to work, and of course, I'm poor, so yeah. :) But then I realized that I had no clean work clothes, so I tried to do a load, but they all came out dirty (dark brown spots all over my white shirts, I'm kinda pissed) and of course the dryer doesn't work either, so yeah.

Hey Dad! Wanna come down to Bakersfield tomorrow and try to fix my washer and dryer? Yeah? Awesome! :)

So instead I'm wearing some of my old clothes from OG. At least I managed to find some that didn't have marinara stains on them.

Last night we arrived in Sydney! Yay!! It's the last leg of our trip, which is kinda sad, we've been having fun, but we still do have all sorts of fun things planned for here too. Last night we went out for a nice fancy dinner with Will, which was fun. He wanted to hang out some more while we're here, but I'm not sure how that's gonna work, so we'll just have to see. Right now Carina's wandering around some shops and stuff downstairs, and then we're gonna meet up for lunch, and then go to the aquarium cuz it's right across the street, cheap (only $10 a person!), and everyone has told us that it's really good, and then we have our dinner harbour cruis tonight, which should be fun. It's been somewhat cold and rainy here, but that's ok. The rain looked really pretty on the water last night, so yeah. I don't knowabout the whole dancing outside on the boat while it's raining thing though. That might not be so fun.

Anyway.

The internet here is insanely expensive, so I'm gonna take off. You'll pretty much just have to wait until we're back to get better updates.

Adios!

Dingoes (or is it dingos?), Uluru, and stupid itchy rashes

Well I'm out in the middle of the AUstralian outback, and it's actually quite lovely. Much greener than I was expecting, and also a lot cooler (I guess we just got really lucky, last week was really hot, and with the heat comes the flies). Unfortunately I don't have any pics. We've been taking them, but Carina lost the cord to dl her pics onto her computer, so then we started using Mom's camera and then we don't have wifi here, so the pics from that camera are still on her computer, and yeah, I know, we suck.

Get over it.

You'll see pics when we get home. Not from me, mind you, but when we make the book.

Anywho. Uluru was lovely, although we were too sleepy to appreciate it. Last night was our "Sounds of Silence" dinner out in the desert, which was very nice (I ate the crocodile (somewhat fishy) and kangaroo (tasted like roast beef) but I don't know that Carina did. We met some really cool women there too, and really enjoyed ourselves. They gave us lots of champagne and wine though, and then we had a presentation by an astronomer, which was a lot of fun. Needless to say, we didn't get back until 10:30 and apparently our bar here at the hotel is the place to be, and I was still wide awake, so Carina went to bed, but I felt like being social. So I grabber a beer, sat down, and approximetly 7 seconds later some guy sat down next to me (I hadn't even taken a sip of my beer yet!) and we ended up staying up all late talking and whatnot. I actually stayed up later than I meant to, when I got back to our room I saw that it was after 2, and Carina wasn't there, which was a little worrisome. I guess she couldn't sleep and was in the hotel lobby and seemed a little irratated at me for staying out so late. I saw a wild dingo though! :) That was fun!

Anywho, so then when the alarm went off at 4:30 it was a little tricky getting out of bed, and then our bus didn't even show up until 5:30, which meant that we could've slept for another 45 mins, but whatever. We watched the sunrise on Uluru and then walked around the base of it for a bit with our guide. That was pretty cool. There were a bunch of really neat cave paintings that I got a bunch of pictures of. They don't know how old they are cuz everytime scientists ask to date them the aboriginals say "no thanks." The paintings have been around for "awhile" and that's good enough for them. We tried to get several shots of the both of us too, so hopefully they come out. Either way, you'll get to see them later.

But not now.

Ummm.... yeah.

Apparently Grace is living in Vermont with her boyfriend, their son (who looks EXACTLY like her) and is expecting a girl any day now, which is kinda awesome.

I'm getting all tan, and my hair is getting lighter, which is also kinda awesome, but in a more shallow way. :) I think I'm allergic to the sunscreen? or something? though which sucks because I'm covered in very itchy rashes. I've been taking benedryl and using both the benedryl cream and the hydocortisone, which helps, but it's still annoying and pretty ugly. And somewhat tricky cuz I don't want to just not wear sunscreen until it goes away, but I also can't really wear sunscreen when it's giving me rashes.

Very tricksy.

Luckily I brought my super lightweight pants and long sleeve shirt that I got for Peru, so I was wearing that today to protect my skin, so that was good.

Still though. It's annoying.

Alright, well I think I've killed just about as much time as possible on this thing, so i'll go ahead and stop writing now.

Jealousy

I just got back from snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef.

You are jealous.

Cheap Mexican beer, greedy bastards, and wildfires

Right. So I'm on again. After dinner last night we were sleepy and the internet was being slow so I just went to bed.

I'm less than thrilled with this hotel. It looks nice, and it's in a great location as far as swimming in that very fun lagoon/pool that Carina had a picture of, but on closer inspection it's probably not worth the money we paid for it. For one thing, if we want them to clean our room it's an extra $20. It's $2 for beach towels. It's $2 to get new shampoo, conditioner, etc. You get one of each when you check in, and that's it. It's not like I really need to have our room cleaned (we're only here for three nights), or extra shampoo (although that would've been nice since I have long hair) but come on! How much more can they charge us for? Also, the furniture is all faded and cracked, the toilet seat isn't attached straight, it's tiny, the mini fridge/freezer barely gets things cool, much less actually freezes them, the restaurant is closer due to "unforeseen circumstances," etc.

But I do like Carins! So far we haven't had any really great, ohmygod this is unbelieavable food, cuz it seems like all that food is insanely expensive. Every time we've asked for suggestions on where to eat they tell us somewhere that's really good, and over $50 a person. When we ask for something a little cheaper (there are tons of them) they tell us to try one of the many cafes along the boardwalk. Not too helpful.

But the beer's good! Although at the first place we went to they tried to sell me a Corona, which I just thought was hillarious. I didn't fly 7,000 miles to get a Corona.

Yesterday was, unfortunately, our only free day while we're here in Cairns, which is too bad cuz apparently the casino next to us has a cool little zoo complete with the option of taking your pic with a koala. The guy who told us about this said they have evening tours too, but I think by that he meant 5-7, and we don't get back until 7, so yeah. Maybe next time.

Oh! And for the reef today we rented a nice camera witha 2 gig card, so we'll get TONS of pics. We were only going to buy a disposable, but the girl quickly talked us out of it. Granted, it really didn't take much convincing. It's $40, which is a little expensive, but well worth it.

At least, I think it is.

I mean, how many times am I gonna get to be here? Do I really want to risk shitty pics?

Oh, and not to worry, the fires are nowhere near us. At least, not right now. When we're in Sydney they may become a problem, though. I guess there are 34 uncontrolled wildfires in NSW at the moment, although most of the deaths have been in Victoria. Which is all very sad, and not something I particularly feel like dwelling on while I'm on vacation.

So I'm gonna go grab some breakfast.

:)

Bats, lungfish and a lot of art

Hi everybody! I'm in Cairns (pronounces "cans" not "cairns" as one might expect). It's quite lovely. I mean, it's a rain forest resort town on the pacific coast right next to the Great Barrier Reef. Obviously it's lovely. And humid. And a little hot. And there are a gazillion bats swarming around. They're huge too! Like 2 foot wingspan! Ok, so maybe that's not huge in the strictest sense of the word, but they are bigger than most bats I've seen. They're sure fun to watch too. :)

I have a rash covering my entire left arm, half my right arm, and parts of my legs. I'm thinking maybe it's from sunblock? It's itchy and annoying. And ugly. It looks like I'm covered in zits. And if I accidently touch them they hurt. Not cool. Luckily I have a mommy who loves me and cares for me and made sure that Carina brought a nice supply of meds, including benedryl cream, which I have been liberally applying to all itchy areas. It's helped stop the itching, although the rash is still there.

Oh, apparently we have to go to dinner RIGHT NOW cuz we're falling asleep and we didnt realize how late it is. I didn't anyway.

I'll try to post more later since I still have a lot to say.

I mean, I didnt even have time to talk about all the lungfish we saw!

:)

Continuation of previous blog.

Make sure you read the blog below this one first. :)

Alrighty! So right after I said that I was just gonna leave the cops showed up!

Well, security did first, and I described in great detail what happened to her, and then the cops (a constable and a senior constable). Which was fun. They all looked at me like I was crazy when I said that I didnt immediately call down to the front desk, but come on, I was half asleep! So I gave them my email cuz we don't have a contact phone number, but they said they shouldn't need it.

I have to admit though, now I'm more curious than ever about what the heck happened. We tried to ask, but they were reluctant to tell us. grrs.

Anywho, so now that that's over (I hope) I'm going to beach.

It shall be wonderful.

Yes.

Mysterious Strangers, a silver bag, and an angry blonde woman

So I have an interesting story.

Last night I was chatting with Will about our trip and all was lovely and whatnot and after awhile I got sleepy. I'm not quite on CA time, but I'm not quite on Queensland time either. So I went to bed at 9:39.

I get all comfy in bed and was about to fall asleep, I'm sorta in that half asleep/half awake everything is nice stage when I look up and see someone on the balcony. Since we're on the 30th floor I was like "Hey Carina, what are you doing on the balcony?"

silence.

"Hi Carina!"

silence.

I look a little closer and see that this person is A. way taller than Carina, B. way skinnier, C. male, and more to the point, Carina is still asleep in bed.

"Ok.... Umm.... Hi?"

So this guy walks in. He asks if he can pass through.

"Sure go ahead" I mean, what else am I supposed to say to this strange man in my room who just walked in from the balcony on the 30th floor.

He mumbled something about his girlfriend kicking him out, and walked out. I told him to have a good night cuz I'm just nice like that.

So Carina wakes up and was like "Was there someone in the room?" "Yeah, some guy just came in, it's ok though." and I get up and close and lock to balcony door, and lock the regular door as well.

So then this morning.

I go outside and find a silver bag full of lingerie stashed behind a chair. Interesting. I take a quick shower and me and Carina go downstairs to turn it in and tell the front desk what happened. I told the girl who was there and she was just like "Oh my God. Ok... Lemme go get my manager...."

So he comes out, sees the bag and was like "Ok, so what happened? I've been looking for that bag all night." I tell him the story and then request a room change. Sadly, they had no more regular rooms available, so instead we got stuck with a suite with a huge bathroom, a spa, and a view of the ocean. So very sad. (see Carina's blog for pictures, which she'll put up later)

Right now I'm waiting for security to come up and take my statement and my limited description of the guy(it was dark after all).

Except that they're not here yet and we've been waiting for like an hour and I wanna go to the beach, so I might just leave.

We'll see.

In other news though, it is a beautiful day, the ocean looks way calmer so I might actually able to swim, and I have discovered that I drink what is called a "flat white" coffee. We just refer to it as a lattee, but they have crazy names for coffee here. Also, when getting a regular coffee at, say, the breakfast buffet of your hotel (for $20 a person, eek) make sure to only fill up the cup halfway to leave lots of room for milk or water (if you put water in it then it's a long black) cuz it is insanely strong. Also, they apparently love stewed tomatoes here and serve them with every meal, which is awesome cuz they are the yumminess. I didn't go for the canned beans for breakfast though, that just seemed weird. And waffles are made with cake mix, so don't worry about putting syrup on them.

Yes.

So that was my morning, how was yours?

Surfer's Paradise, Cute Koalas and expensive breakfast

Hi! I'm in Australia. I know you're all insanely jealous. I'd put up lots of pics to show off to you, but well, I'm lazy, and I haven't been able to figure out how to put batteries in Mom's camera (I have hers cuz I forgot mine, oops). You'll have to amuse yourself with the pics on Carina's blog, although the one of me at the beach is a truly bad picture. I look fat. And you can't even see the water. The waves were all huge and crazy. The have different colored flags stuck in the ground every few feet, and you're only allowed to swim in between the yellow and red ones, and only out to about your knees. Try to go in an deeper or swim (you had to keep both feet on the ground at all times) and the two lifegaurds who are watching that 10 foot stretch of beach will come yell at you. Needless to say, it's pretty crowded, but those waves really were crazy, and even in the "safe" part right close to the shore you could feel the rip tide pulling you.

Anyway, where was I?

Ok, so today we got up all early (at 5, cuz last night we laid down to rest for a couple minutes before dinner at 4:30, and then I vaguely remember Carina getting up at 10, and then yeah, I was out) and went to the zoo.

Dude.

I got to pet a freaking koala.

Awesome.

We got to pet lots of kangaroos too. They were super tame. At first I was a little nervous, but I dont think they even noticed us. We didn't get a picture, but there were dozens of them in this little area. The red kangaroos (the ones that Carina put a picture of us petting) were super soft too.

Oh, and I petted a wallaby, but I didn't know that that's what it was, I just thought it was a different kind of kangaroo. The Australians thought that was funny.

Come on, it was the first time I'd ever seen these things!!

blah.

So we went to see the croc show at the zoo. That was funny. We got Carina to stand up and be silly in an attempt to get birds to land on her arms. And then she got a free picture of Terri Irwin feeding a crocodile.

Umm.... yes. So it's really pretty here. The pictures Carina took of our view are very nice, but still. You kinda have to be here.

Anywho. I think that's about it for now. More to come later!

I got to pet a KOALA!!!!

Brisbane, new nieces, and pretty bracelets

I'm going to Australia today!!

And I have a new baby niece!

She's like, 2 hours old! :)

What an exciting day!

Now I need to go pack, but first I think I need to eat something, which is tricky cuz I have no food. Hmm.... Maybe I should just pack first, and then grab some food after class.

I think I"m ready...

Alrighty

Bought crickets- check
Showed Mom how to feed my animals- check
Did laundry- half check (the heat doesn't turn on in my dryer, so I can only air dry, which is taking awhile, but I have completed one load, and I have two loads to dry)
Paid rent- check
Packed-not check (kinda hard to do that with wet clothes)
Called the bus depot- check (it leaves for LAX at 6, which should still give me three hours to check in at the airport)

So let's see.... that means that all I have left to do is pack and go to Australia! Yay!! :) It'll be nice and warm (HOT)! I'll get to go swimming in my cute new bikini (also hot! lol)! I get to pet koalas and feed crocodiles and tour the Sydney Opera House! And go on a REALLY long flight... I get to LEAVE BAKERSFIELD!!!!

YAY!!!!

Orange bikinis, leftover Thai, and mean Mommy looks

Yay we leave TOMORROW!!! :) Awesomeness.

I'm busy doing laundry, Mom should be here in an hour or so so she can learn how to feed my animals, I still need to call the bus "depot," and pay rent... and.... uh.... I dunno. Pack I guess! lol, that might be helpful. But I can't do that until I have some clean underwear to pack.

That's really it. I'm boring these days. I've just been busying doing nonfun, nonblog worthy stuff. Although I did hand out with The Loss Adjuster last night. That was fun. But other than that it's just been school and work and homework and many, many trips to Target. I swear I've spent like $200 there in the last week. Ugh. I did buy a cute new bright orange bikini though. And some shorts. And little mini shampoos and soap and all that.

And now I think I'm gonna try to put my apartment in some semblence of order cuz otherwise Mom will give me dirty looks.

*nods*

mysterious boys

So I still don't get what turned Matthew into such a jerk after being nice for so long.

I don't think I ever will know what happened.

blah.