So eBay have had a couple of announcements in the last two weeks that freak me out somewhat.

The first was the announcement that PayPal and cash-on-delivery will be the only permitted ways of making payments for items on eBay (link). When I first saw this I thought it was an April Fool's joke. Except that it was April 10. eBay already rip people off with their fees, and now they want even more of the takings with PayPal fees. It's criminal!

The second is the Big-Brother monitoring they will be doing of accounts (link). If you list an item from a different computer, they may call you to see if it's really you. Now I can see the logic and security model of doing this, but I'd hate to think what could happen if they got it in their heads that you weren't who you said you were and they lock the account...

Seriously.  It's the best time of the year.  In Sydney it meant quieter roads and less traffic.  In Canberra it means a quiet and peaceful bus trip.  My bus this morning had two whole people on it when it got to my stop, instead of the usual 30 or so noisy kids. 

Bliss!!!

Got thoroughly demoralised at work today.  Feeling like I'm never going to figure out how everything works.  Feeling crippled by the "system" that makes it insanely hard to troubleshoot things.

There was a quote on House tonight that reminded me of someone at work and they way they interact with people...

"I've found you look a lot smarter asking the questions than dumbly not answering"

And I'm the one that can't answer cause I'm dumb :(

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 :(

Got a giggle over this, as seen on Boing Boing or ZGeek or something...

What would internet forums look like if people could travel in time...

Some days I swear I wish I could shoot people.

Like the woman on the bus who refused to move over to her side of the seat, forcing me out into the corridor where I'm bashed into with school kids' backpacks.

Or the woman who cut across diagonally in front of me with a pram and then just stopped, wedging me against the side of the walkway.

Or the idiots at the sushi train that dumped their lids back on the train, but jammed them in there so stupidly that they caused a train-wreck when it went around the next bend.

That was just today.

Then there's the lazy selfish people that couldn't be arsed putting fresh food they've picked up back where they got it from when they've changed their minds about it.  So seeing meat and cheese and fresh fruit just dumped amongst drygoods shelves to get warm and rotten.  Such people make me furious.  And not just once either, three times in recent weeks.

blah.

So recently I've been reading through the archives of Bête de Jour as recommended by Dave a while back. On one particular post I read through all the comments. First up I noticed a comment from Penelope who is a reader of Delmer who is a reader of Dave's. So not hugely surprising (since Penelope reads Dave's too). But much more surprising was seeing a comment from Suburban Hen. Surprising because I've never linked there, and yet she is there. So she would have found another path there. SH linked to some Javaira's recent posts and this morning I was reading "Patricia's" responses to them. It still spins me out how things people say on their blogs end up half way round the world touching other people's lives.

They say everyone is linked to everyone else on the planet by "six degrees of separation". I reckon it'd be much much less in the blogosphere..

Well the bulk of our invitations got mailed out today.  Still a few people left we're still trying to find addresses for. 

Now can go back to planning the *rest* of the wedding....

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....