Because I don't seem to be having much of it lately ... As stolen from Dave

1. How old do you wish you were? I dunno.. 29?
2. Where were you when 9/11 happened? I was at CIA. Gamera was having a bad disk night, and I needed to kick the machine. Marc was there and he was chatting to people who told him about it. We found the first pictures on the BBC website. I then went home and stayed up til 3am watching the coverage.
3. What do you do when vending machines steal your money? It's only ever happened to me once (I rarely use vending machines, maybe this is why). I didn't think the $2 or whatever it was was worth the hassle of chasing it
4. Do you consider yourself kind? No
5. If you had to get a tattoo, where and what would it be? It'd probably be something cute, like a flower, and somewhere inconspicuous
6. If you could be fluent in any other language what would it be? Maybe French or German
7. Do you know your neighbors? Not really, except in passing in the corridors
8. What do you consider a vacation? Going somewhere exciting and taking lots of photos
9. Do you follow your horoscope? No
10. Would you move for the person you loved? Yes
11. Are you touchy feely? To some extent, moreso with people I like
12. Do you believe that opposites attract? Sure
13. Dream job? Pilot
14. Favorite channels? um.. 9?
15. Favorite place to go on a weekend? Stu's place :)
16. Showers or Bath? Shower
17. Do you paint your nails? Sometimes
18. Do you trust people easily? Yes and no. Yes in that I take what people say as the truth, and so hence am quite gullible, but I don't open up to people easily
19. What are your phobias? Don't really have any
20. Do you want kids? No
21. Do you keep a handwritten journal? Nah, I hate writing longhand
22. Where would you rather be right now? With Stu
23. What makes you feel warm and safe? Stu
24. Heavy or light sleep? Fairly light
25. Are you paranoid? Yeah somewhat
26. Are you impatient? Yes
27. Who can you relate to? A few years ago it was Ally McBeal heh
28. How do you feel about interracial couples? No different to "same race" couples
29. Have you been burned by love? Not really
30. Whats ur life motto? Live long and prosper
31. What's your main ringtone on your mobile? The Harry Potter theme. But it's too subtle when I'm out of the office and I don't hear it, so been thinking about using something else, most likely by John Williams
32. What were you doing at midnight last night? Sleeping
33. Who was your last text message from? Stu
34. Who's bed did you sleep in last night? My own
35. What color shirt are you wearing? Teal
36. Most recent movie you watched? Pirates of the Caribbean, it was lots of fun
37. Name five things you have on you at all times? Blackberry, memory schtick, keys, swipe card, glasses
38. What color are your bed sheets? Blue at the moment
39. How much cash do you have on you right now? $10.80 in my purse right now
40. What is your favorite part of chicken? Drumstick
41. What's your favorite town/city? Sydney, although New York was a lot of fun (pre 9/11 at least, haven't been back since)
42. I cant wait till... tomorrow night when I'll be with Stu
43. Who got you to join MySpace? I never joined myspace...
44. What did you have for dinner last night? Leftover pepperoni pizza mmmmmmm
45. How tall are you barefoot? Dunno, about 5'1" I think
46. Have you ever smoked crack? No
47. Do you own a gun? No
48. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Orange juice
49. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex? er, I don't have one
50. Do you have A.D.D.? Don't think so
51. What time did you wake up today? ~6:20. Then decided to turn my alarm off and sleep til whenever, which happened to be about 7:05
52. Current worry? The thought of leaving my job
53. Current hate? People that push in and don't indicate properly
54. Favorite place to be? With Stu wherever he is. Lord Howe Island would be nice
55. Where would you like to travel? Europe and the eastern half of the US
56. Where do you think you'll be in 10 yrs? Canberra most likely
57. Last thing you ate? Leftover beef stew
58. What songs do you sing in the shower? I don't sing in the shower (unless the radio/cd happened to be up loud enough for me to hear it, which it never is)
59. Last person that made you laugh? Dunno.. someone at work maybe
60. Worst injury you've ever had? Broken metatarsal
61. Does someone have a crush on you? Dunno
62. What is your favorite candy? Mint chocolate perhaps

Got off to a bit of a slow start. Caught up on some blogs. Talked to Stu for a little bit. Went to the fish shop to trade up for a bigger gravel vac and get the bits of the underwater light that were missing. Came home and did a bit of sorting of stuff to get rid of on Freecycle. Ran out of steam late afternoon and felt a bit flat cause hadn't had a chance to talk to Stu all afternoon. Went to the parents for dinner, then got smsed/called from Ric and Campbell wondering where I was - turned out Campbell was having a farewell after all, but somehow I'd missed out on an invite :(

So wandered along to that, and it turned out to be a really nice night. Met Zara who has gotten herself into an even harder long-distance relationship - with a girl in London - and I thought *I* had it bad! Jess also showed me her extremelly funky handiwork with a GPS, a laptop and Google Earth. The gps outputs a csv to her laptop, and she's written an app that takes that and outputs it into a format that Google Earth can read, and she has a kml file that loads other kml files that have custom refresh rates that load the data from a cut-down web server on her computer so they come into Google earth every few seconds as network locations. But bottom line is, she can do traces of her travelling overlaid on google earth, so accurately you can see roundabouts and even which lane she was in when the data was recorded. And it shows how close google earth pictures are to their correct locations :) Way way way cool :) She's a much better geek than I am :)

I also managed to get Di and Daniel to play lots with my camera, so should have lots of fun photos, which I'll download tomorrow.. er.. later today :)

So went to a time share presentation tonight. Seems that Luke gave them my details the other week. When they called they said they'd give me a 1-4 night stay at one of their hotels in exchange for coming along to hear what they had to say. So I thought I had nothing to lose, so I went along.

Well it was interesting. I'd never had time share explained to me properly before, so really had no idea what it was all about. I can certainly see its benefits. You could certainly save a lot of money on good accommodation, especially overseas, although local is also very good (free in fact, conditions apply heh). The problem is that you're kinda locked into staying at one place. Which is not how I travel. When I travel, I like to stay at relatively cheap places, and use where I stay as merely somewhere to sleep, and only stay for a short time, maybe one or two nights, before going to the next place. The sort of thing you get on timeshare holidays are resort-style accommodation where you stay there and do activities there. So I don't know that I'd get a whole lot of benefit out of it.

The other gotchas include yearly strata fees. Which are $300-$600 per year depending on your package. Which kinda cancels out a lot of the benefit you'd get.

It actually was cheaper than I thought it would be. But I was not prepared to say yes to their offer. More on principle than anything else. I really really hate those offers that you have to sign up on the night right then and there to get the benefits. If you don't have the time to go off and think about it and read their documentation, then really I think you're acting a little foolishly. Of course they get a little bit rude with you after you say no. And then try and give you other options - oh you can have six months to pay the deposit, or you can "rent" points, or you can go away on a little holiday, and if you decide to join after then you get the cost of the holiday off the membership. And they question you why you don't want to do it and don't you think it's a good offer, and by this time you've been there two hours and your parking is up and you just want to get out of there. So I did, with voucher for free accommodation as promised in hand :)

Missyisms had this on her blog the other day, and I realised I never posted a completed version (I have an early 2004 version here, and the big usa trip one here). She's been to somewhat more states than me :)

create your own personalized map of the USA

So after getting back to the motel yesterday, we went and picked up Arian for a grand tour of Armidale. Swung by the uni and walked around all the various buildings that they lived/studied/worked in over the years. Then drove around town seeing various places people had lived. It was pretty darned hot, so we decided to go for a swim, at a place we dubbed Swan Cove. It was lovely, although Stu apparently picked up a bug from the water and was sick for the next 24 hours :(

So after the swim we dropped Arian off, I washed my hair of swan poo, and we watched Mars Attacks while waiting for the hordes to return. Which they eventually did. We got chinese and lots of wine for dinner. Was a pleasant, if somewhat rowdy at times, evening. Except of course for Stu being sick, which he didn't find pleasant at all :( Counted in the new year with Mr Wilkins, and watched the Sydney fireworks (best fireworks in the world :) ). Eventually the hordes left and we crashed out.

This morning Stu was even sicker, which really wasn't much fun for him. Although he did feel up to travelling, so we dropped by Arian's for a cup of tea before making a dash for Brissy. Got here about 5:30, NSW time. Got myself all confused about what the time actually is. But for the purposes of this week, I don't think it's going to matter :)

Sadly, many of Stu's fish didn't survive the week. Papa guppy, the corys and the rasboras except one were all decomposing and the tanks smelt awful. Was really really sad. We think it was the heat. The water was over 31C. They're down to 28C now. On a lighter note, his mama guppy had her second lot of babies, and two of them were still alive - they're so *tiny*! And the nine guppy babies I brought from work not only survived a week in a plastic bag, but survived two days in the car travelling. And next to the other babies they are *huge* :) We're currently slowly mixing the water, as the pH was a full point different, and just chucking them in would have killed them.

So then tonight we went and got an Al Funghi pizza from Pizza Capers, and watched Encounter at Farpoint on DVD. And watched the lights turn green twice :)

Now, the computer clock says 10pm. I guess that's 11pm in real time. No wonder I'm so tired..! :)

Got to see into the roofspace above our offices yesterday. The novelty factor was high for me heh :) A contractor was up there trying to find a leak in our air conditioning pipes, so I popped up the ladder while he was out checking outside.

I was amazed how easily the sound travelled between rooms. And how shoddy the cabling is up there. No keeping cables neat and tidy, it's just drape them along the most direct route. Use cable ties to hang em off the sewage pipes. Leave power lines just lying around. Dodgy dodgy dodgy!

Had a really good day at work today. Got lots done, and solved a few problems that had been nagging us for a while. Even solved a crazy javascript problem by changing "value" to "text" .. go figure! Jim did a demo to the powers that be in the faculty office and didn't get any complaints, so it's getting there.

Then hung around for a bit and finished off my flight from DC to LA in 2000 on Google Earth, finding every one of my photos, even one I'd given up on during the last effort - a freeway interchange somewhere in Pennsylvania I think. The only photo I haven't placed is somewhere over Colorado or Nebraska, and as you can see, the whole point of the photo is to show what a whole lotta nuttin is in the middle of the country.

Got home late and didn't do much. Still haven't cleaned up the kitchen from cooking on the weekend. Maybe I'll do it tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

Di has had a couple of posts recently about online dating. She personally doesn't like the idea. But she qualified her posts to note that she is not opposed to the idea of happening to meet people online, she just doesn't like the idea of pigeonholing people and thereby limiting the chances of finding love in an unexpected way.

I personally have never used an online dating agency (although I did browse through a Christian one once). Partly I didn't want to spend the money, partly I think it seems a little "desparate", partly meeting people is rather a tedious business - there's all the boring small talk of "where do you live" and "what do you do" which I hate having to go through over and over again. I can see their uses - it'd make it easier to find people that have similar interests and goals in life, but I'd still want to meet the person in real life pretty early on before taking anything too far.

So over the last couple of years I've been semi-actively looking for blogs of people that I could conceivably have an interest in. Mind you this wasn't a terribly effective method - I don't actually read any blogs of single guys in Sydney! heh. But blogging suits my style of meeting people. I can read all about what they have to say, without having to say anything myself. Sometimes I will respond to a post, and people may come and read my blog. Or vice versa, people start reading my blog. I figure if anyone is interested enough in my life to read my blog and comment on it, then what they say in their blogs must also have an interest to me. And so I read the blogs of quite a few students, and other people that I wouldn't necessarily have gone looking for. And I end up reading a very ecclectic collection of world views.

In April, a guy named Aurelius began leaving comments in my blog. I went over to have a look at his, and was intrigued by the location tag that said he was in Rome. But in the early posts I began reading he said he had just moved to Jerusalem. It didn't take me long to realise he was actually an Australian living in Brisbane, but his blog intrigued me enough to read it from the very beginning, something I rarely do. I also began to read the blogs of Pinky (his girlfriend at the time) and Stu (his best friend).

A few weeks later, my parents were planning a trip to Queensland and I was to tag along. So I left a message on Stu's blog that it would be cool to meet him and Aurelius. Several emails went back and forth, and on the way up a few smses. I thought for a while that I could end up meeting them without a word being spoken on the phone, but Aurelius called me from a landline because he had no credit on his phone, and plans were finalised for a Sunday night dinner at a cafe. And so we met. As the evening was drawing to a close, the plan was that Aurelius was to take me back to where I was staying, but Stu said "awwww". And I knew there was something there. Something that had potential. Not only did it tell me that he was interested in me, but it kindled a similar reaction in myself. I wanted to spend more time with Stu too. A couple of days later, when were staying on the Gold Coast, I wanted to go to Infinity, and was wondering whether my mum would want to come along. And then I had a thought - I wonder if Stu would be interested in coming down. So I smsed him, and he was. Several smses back and forth later and plans were finalised. And so we had a lovely night. I was starting to like this gentle man, but in my head I thought no, don't do it, bad idea, he lives a thousand kilometres away! But even as I was travelling home over the next couple of days, I was smsing him, and once home we began to spend a lot of time online chatting.

And so that's how it began. Completely and utterly unexpected. Something that would never have happened without the internet. Without Vic telling me I should write a blog two and a half years ago. Without Aurelius happening to find me and post here. And at a point in our lives where the both of us had resigned ourselves to being single forever. As Stu would say "it's a funny old life".

These are 21 things that I want in a lover
Not necessarily needs but qualities that I prefer
      - Alanis Morissette

Or so the song goes. I thought about this entry on the way back from Queensland (when you're in the car for hours on end with nothing better to do). I thought of the first few things but hadn't thought too much about it since then.

Now as I procrastinate over doing USA pictures, I thought I'd put this together. No particular order (although the earlier ones are probably more important).

The Great Outdoors went to St Moritz tonight. The problem with travel shows is that they give me a huge longing to travel, and a huge ache that I have noone to go with.

Does anyone want to skiing in St Moritz with me one winter?