After finishing the books a few months ago, and since Anne of Green Gables was on last night, I thought I ought to watch it.  (edit: it was actually over a year ago I finished the books and nearly two years ago since I finished the first one - scary!)

Well since it's the first of the year and all, thought I'd do this "First" meme I saw on Dawn's blog just today (even though it was posted a month ago) ...


1. Who was your FIRST prom date?
My first "prom" I didn't take a date too - that was our Year 10 formal.  For our year 12 formal I took my boyfriend of the time (Mark)

2. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?

Well I'd had sips of my grandfather's beer when I was younger.  Didn't have my first full beer until I was 25, and it was a Corona.

3. What was your FIRST job?

Shop assistant at a newsagent

4. What was your FIRST car?

A bronze Ford Laser.  It was my special, but someone kidnapped and murdered it :(

5. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?
Striker

6. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?
Stubie

7. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?

Miss Rees.. I didn't like her much at the time.

8. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?

New Zealand when I was a toddler

9. Who was your FIRST best friend, and are you still friends with him / her?
Donna Bonnefin.  No, she dumped me for Kerry Williams and I've only seen her once since (and that was in 1988).  I think she's a nurse somewhere..

10. Who was your FIRST kiss?

Charles Cordingly.  He was from Western Australia and I never saw him again.

11. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?

Stubie

12. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?

Got up and went to check my mail.

13. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?
The Choirboys.  Our school entered a competition to have them play at our school and we won.

14. What was your FIRST tattoo or piercing?

My only piercing was my ears at the end of year 9.

15. What was the FIRST foreign country you went to?

New Zealand, but I don't remember any of it.

16. What was the FIRST movie you saw in the theater?

Don't remember, would have been something I saw as a kid.  I do remember seeing Snow White at the drive-in once when I was pretty young.

17. When was your FIRST detention?

I think the only detention I ever got was part of a class detention.

18. What was the FIRST state you lived in?

New South Wales

19. Who was the FIRST person to really break your heart?

Mark I suppose.  We broke up shortly after starting to go out, but got back together.  Was with him another year before I finally got rid of him.

20. With whom was your FIRST date?

Probably Mark I suppose.

21. What was your FIRST pet?

We had a blue budgie when I was very little.  I got another blue budgie for my seventh birthday.  His name was Bluey.

22. Who was your FIRST roommate?
Stu (I've never lived with anyone else apart from my family)

23. Who was your FIRST love?

Man, Mark is certainly getting more than his fair share of entries here :(

24. What was your FIRST screen name?

Kazza

25. When did you have your FIRST baby?

Never had one! 

Have I ever mentioned that my brother rocks!!??  Yup, seems I have .. twice.. :)

He was coming down to Canberra for the week to work on a train, so last night came over to stay the night.  This morning we thought maybe he could have a look at the adsl link which is a bit flakey, and maybe replace a light fitting for us.

Instead he invited his friends over (Shane and Chris with Lowie in tow) and they wired the whole house!!!  Cleaned up the incoming phone line, cat 6ed the study, lounge room, spare room and bedroom, with everything terminating to the garage where we'll get a proper switch setup, as well as fixing up the aerial and wiring up the downstairs room with an aerial outlet...!! omigosh!!  We were so excited - this was so much more than we were expecting of the day!  And we did end up getting the study (dining room) light fitting replaced, a compact fluorescent dimmer installed (only $10 for dimmable compact fluorescents these days, although you do need a trailing edge dimmer not a leading edge one like most currently are), and the other dimmer moved to the living room chandeliers.  Totally f-ing brilliant! 

Of course having so many people in the house all day was pretty draining, so we ordered pizza and watched the first couple of episodes of Californication season 2.  And then I had a meltdown because my computer wouldn't connect to the internet.  We replaced the cable (that was working previously) and all seems well, but it was just too much to bear at the time.  

And we didn't get anything else that we'd been planning to do this weekend done, but hey, who's complaining..?? :)

Had a bit of a financial "moment" today.  Found out my other mortgage account has been frozen - a couple of weeks earlier than we thought it would.  Had a bit of low level panic cause all my money is tied up in that account.  Had enough change for lunch, then got some money out of my "internet" bank account, but there's not much in there til pay day this week.

So now have to chase down all the automated payments that come out of that old account and stop them.  Then there's a tonne of paperwork to read and sign for the new mortgage.  And we haven't done our tax yet.

It's all a little stressful :(

(oh, and then realised we were meant to be going to Newcastle with friends at the beginning of November (not to mention going away with Scott and Kerry the weekend before), but we're likely to be moving that weekend.  And I'll probably be on call.  It's not shaping up to be a stress-free couple of weeks....)

Urghh.  Sunday was tiring.

So we were out the door at 7:20 to be in town by 8 to pick up Rully for breakfast.  We toddled off to My Cafe in Manuka which was one of only a couple of places open so early.  Stu had French toast, and I had the mushrooms and capsicum on toast..

After breakfast we headed for the hills .. Red Hill in fact. Nice view, but looking into the sun..

Stu wanted to be friends with kangaroos..

I don't think they wanted to be friends..

There was even snow on the Brindabellas over Woden..

So by now it was mid morning, so we dropped Rully off and headed out to Yass for lunch. Which was very pleasant, and had a delicious lunch and Little Squishy was being very cute..

And took a walk in the sun and photographed the flowers..

So that was all very nice, but we didn't get home til after 5pm .. and so after having been out *all* day we were pretty exhausted. Felt like crawling into bed when we got home. But after *stopping* for a bit felt a bit better.

Stu's friends Ro and Alex came over last night to stay a night.  Much food was ate and alcohol was drunk.

Then we subjected them showed them our wedding and honeymoon photos, and they humoured us by oo-ing and ah-ing in the appropriate places :)

Was a very pleasant night.

Except I was rather tired today heh

So had a small bunch of my friends go out to the Dumpling Inn for a kind of a hen's night thing.  It was very pleasant and gave some of my friends a chance to get to know each other before the wedding...

Really must figure out how to blog from my Blackberry...

So Friday we tidied house and did fishy-type things before heading for the Big Smoke. 

Stopped in Goulburn for lunch, and got an alternative view of the Big Merino.  And strangely enough this was the only photo I took all weekend!  How unlike me! :)


Dropped in on D&Y, and even remembered to take my toaster oven, which me little brother fixed for me... he rocks!  Had afternoon tea there before heading to my parents'.  Dropped off my Lego cake-topper and picked up pinking shears and had a very Stu-unfriendly dinner which he suffered over for the next day or so :(

Then headed up to J&G's where much wii-ing was to be had.

Needed to point out that Sydney roads are horrendously bad.  The physical state of them that is.  The car rattled and bumped like you wouldn't believe. Had forgotten how awful some Sydney roads are.

Saturday we went on a shopping mission to Bondi Junction.  Stu got the hiking shoes he was after.  I tried on some too, but they didn't have as good arch support as my runners, so didn't get any.  We even ran into John, which was pretty cool.. as I thought it might have been nice to have lunch with him but it was all too hard by the time I thought of it.  Oh well.

In the evening Ralph and Ali and Luc and Liz came over with various kidlets and George did a massive roast in three ovens!  We played Emporer-Scum as that was the easiest game that scaled well to eight people.  I went from middle to third to fifth to Scum, then back to third.  Stu went out as Emporer :)

After the others left, we played more wii, and had wii-shoulder the next day to prove it :)

On Sunday I went to church with J&G while Stu recovered.  Then a quiet afternoon.  Stu went and visited Tim and Dave and Dave gave us a jackstone!  Which are devilish little things to make.  I went with J&G to A&M's where much wine was drunk and food eaten. 

And then sadly it was time to come home.  I lost it going past the airport.  I *miss* Sydney, and Sunday night dinners, and my friends and living next to the airport.  *sigh*  Managed to stay awake til Sutton Forest, but after that I collapsed and didn't regain consciousness till our street.

Today was spent recovering and tidying and shopping and honeymoon planning.

And have to go back to work tomorrow :(

I have to apologise to my friends who I just can't invite to the wedding.. There's a whole stack of people I'd really like to invite but just can't because of numbers.  Also it's a case if I was to invite one person on these lists, I'd need to invite several more.  As it is I'm already worried about offending people :( 

*sigh*

So I was thinking last night, oh it's two months and a day til the wedding.  Then Stu freaked me out by saying we'd need to send out invitations..!  eeeep!

While we've come up with a preliminary guest list, we haven't refined it yet.  It's still quite a number over our initial estimates. 

I'm lucky in that I don't have any feuding relatives (except perhaps one of the aunties, but don't think she's getting invited).  My problem is with feuding friends.  There's certain people I'd have liked to invite, but can't if I invite others.  It'd be like putting matter and anti-matter together.  Catastrophic universe implosion potential.  I suppose that will help reduce the numbers, but I'm a bit sad I can't invite everyone.  Not being able to invite friends I don't see much of anymore is also a bit sad.  Also vaguely annoyed that will have to invite four of my parents friends.  That's four less of my friends I could have. 

*sigh*

So anyway, this week is trying to design invitations.  Talking to the reception venue peoples on Thursday to get some more details and hopefully decide on a menu.  I ordered stamps last week which are pretty nifty.  With any luck I'll be able to send out the invites next week.

Fancy material has been bought for wrapping up sugar-coated almonds which have been ordered.  Necklaces and earrings bought on ebay.  Doing as much buying of stuff through the internet and ebay as I can.  Anything that takes paypal is a big plus heh :)  Decided not to hire a professional photographer.  Will be asking a couple of people that have fancy cameras to be semi-official photographers and everyone else to download their photos to a computer at the reception if they're willing.  Sure to get plenty of good photos that way.

So it's all slowly coming together....