Rottnest Island Trip

What an awesome island! I'd been to Rottnest once before, but I was a lot younger and it was only for a day trip so we didn't get to explore too much. This year I went for 3 days for a short relaxing trip with Matt's family. We stayed at the Rottnest Central Bungalows, and spent our time relaxing and trying to see as much of the island as possible.

We took it easy the first day, and decided to spend it on the beach and finish it off with some jetty fishing. I'd actually never been fishing before so I was a bit worried about how I'd take the whole fish-murder thing. While everyone was still settling in, I had already baited and lowered my line. About 30 seconds later I had two herrings fighting for my hook! I managed to catch one of them and pull it in, and after about a minute of it slipping out of my hands like a bar of soap we had our first catch in the bucket. How exciting! It did surprise me a bit how difficult it was to get the fish in the bucket after it had been caught. I guess I just sort of expected it to give up once it was caught, but it really struggled to live which did upset me a little bit :( I'm glad that I saw it through though, and we ended up eating it the next day which made me feel very self sufficient!

That night we caught 4 edible fish, and a lot more aquarium fish. I caught a weird frilly black thing with lots of spines, and Elissa caught a pretty yellow and black stripy fish. Apparently I had a very exciting first fishing experience, because usually you don't catch that many fish, especially not so many varieties!

The next day we hired some bikes and decided to ride around to Mary Cove to do some snorkeling. A tip to anyone deciding to hire bikes - get the mountain bikes! It's only about $7 more expensive, but it just did not occur to us that it would make such a difference. Everyone got single speed bikes except for James, and he was the only one who didn't struggle up the multitude of hills.

It was an awesome ride with heaps of beautiful views. It took a while to get to Mary Cove since the wind was against us and the aforementioned one speed bikes whipped our asses on the hills, but it was certainly worth the effort. It was the first time I'd even been snorkeling, and it was amazing! The conditions were apparently quite bad because of the waves, so I can imagine what it would be like on a good day.

On the way back we stopped at a couple of the lakes. From the map I think we stopped at Serpentine, Pearse, and Hershel lakes, which each had gorgeous crystal formations of salt, and really strange red to blue gradients in the water. I'm not sure what causes the strange gradient but it was really eerie and beautiful.

We took it easy on the last day and played some putt putt at the Family Fun Park. It was another first for me, and I managed to come 3rd! I usually suck at all ball sports in general so 3/5 is not bad at all.

Despite the sunburn and bruised bum from the bikes, I had an awesome time. I'll definitely be going back even if it's just to spend the day on one of Rottnest's secluded beaches!

Painting the House

Over the Christmas/new year's break Matt and I painting the main rooms of the house. We'd done the bedrooms a couple of years back, and decided to tackle the rest of the rooms this year. All we have left is the bathrooms, then the doors and door frames, and our whole house will have had a nice new coat of paint!

We were a bit adventurous and used Dulux "Puddle" for the main colour in the front room. It's a bit dark (in fact we used it as the feature colour in the bedrooms) but the room is really big and we thought it would contrast nicely with the annoying pink of the carpet. We did a dark feature colour (Dulux "Baton") for the entry wall, and eventually we plan on plastering the feature brick behind the TV and painting that the feature colour too.

We actually decided to split the front room into two smaller rooms using an Expedit shelving unit from IKEA. Instead of being one long awkward room, it's now a cozy TV room and a small reading room, which desperately needs a long chaise chair :)

The kitchen and dining we did in Dulux "Crewelwork Half" which is nice and light, and we tried to separate the little lounge from the rest of the house by painting the whole room Dulux "Puddle". We were a bit worried at first because this involved changing colours on a convex corner, but we used painters tape which was absolutely amazing and meant the line was perfect!

We also painted the walk in robe, which has been really nagging me. The previous owner had obviously changed storage a few times, and so there were about a million drill holes in the wall and ceiling, whole sections of missing paint, and giant chips in the plaster. It's SO much better now and it's a real pleasure to walk in the walk in robe!

The best thing about all of the work we did is that we don't have giant drill holes all over the house. The previous owner was not shy about drilling, and she had a like of heavy curtains, tapestries, photos, calenders, etc. Even the bathrooms and toilets have drill holes everywhere!

Triple J Hottest 100 of 2009

My votes:

• Phoenix - 1901 (My obvious #1, the rest are in alphabetical order)
  
• Animal Collective - Brother Sport
• Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes
• Basement Jaxx - Raindrops
• Bat For Lashes - Daniel
• Big Pink, The - Dominos
• Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
• Peter Bjorn & John - Lay It Down
• Phoenix - Lisztomania
• Royksopp - You Don't Have A Clue (Ft. Anneli Drekker)

Would have loved to fit in:

• Bon Iver - Blood Bank
  
• Kid Cudi - Pursuit Of Happiness
• Little Birdy - Brother
• Mumford & Sons - Little Lion Man
• Muse - Undisclosed Desires
• National, The - So Far Around The Bend
• Royksopp - Happy Up Here
  
• Royksopp - Vision One (Ft. Anneli Drekker)
• Yeasayer - Ambling Alp

I Have Auryn

I was recently feeling nostalgic and decided to re-watch the Never Ending Story trilogy. Usually I try and stay away from watching films from my childhood because they're never as good as you remember (I recommend you NEVER watch Labyrinth again!), but NES #1 and #2 were just as good as they were when I was a kid! I actually hadn't seen #3, but it was absolutely rubbish and I'm just going to ignore it completely.

For some reason I decided to look into the Auryn, which is the necklace that Atreyu wears in #1 and Bastian wears in #2 given to them by the child like princess. Anyway it turns out that there's quite a few people that have made replicas as costume jewellery! There's quite a big range but I found one that I really liked and managed to pick up for $40AU (including postage) on eBay from a guy who also has an online shop. However he's selling them for $180US outright so if you're looking for one I suggest hitting eBay first!

I wore my Auryn for the first time on Friday night and one fellow NES fan went nuts! Turns out we both were scarred for life when Ortex succumbed to the Swamp of Saddness :( There were a few other people who asked about it because it looked familiar, and of course I was happy to explain, but I was surprised that anyone actually knew what it was! I'll definitely be wearing it again :)

Matt's Newest iPhone App - Pocketball!

Matt has been working on his latest iPhone app, Pocketball, for a little while now, and it's finally out!

It's an awesome physics game where you have to draw ropes that direct balls into their respectively colored pockets while avoiding things like boosters, gravity wells, and nukes that explode your ball up into tiny pieces!

It's a really fun and addictive game, and the app as a whole came together really nicely. The graphics are really shiny, the sounds (which I helped on!) are cool, and I'm so proud of Matt for putting the whole thing together from start to finish :)

It's out now at the AppStore for $1.99US, so check Pocketball out!

Waiter, there's a Bug in my Table

Okay so maybe it's not a bug, but there's something strange going on with our table!

About a year ago we bought a beautiful and massive Shesham table from Classique furniture. After a couple of months we noticed that it was making a funny noise every now and then, maybe once every fortnight for around 5 minutes at a time. We just assumed it was the wood settling, and everyone we told said the same thing.

I managed to get the sound on film a couple of times, and we started getting really worried that it may be something a bit more sinister, like a bug crunching away at our table! We had a few worried reactions from friends and family when we played them the sound, so we finally decided to go back to Classique and play it to them too.

They had absolutely no idea what it could be, and all of them said that they'd never heard anything like it! They assured us it wasn't a bug, since bugs don't make noise, and if they did, there'd be a lot of separate noises instead of just one. They also mentioned there's other signs like small holes in the wood, and sawdust on the floor that usually accompany bugs eating a table. Apparently this particular table is quite popular, and they said they'd never had any complaints about noise in the past! Regardless, they said they'd be happy to exchange it for a new one, so at least we won't have a crazy noisy table anymore.

If anyone happens to know what the noise could possibly be please let me know! Even though we're getting a new table it will still bug me for a while!

A Present from my Parents and Mina

Last Thursday I got a strange phone call from my dad saying that he wanted me to come straight home after work because my mum wanted me to see something. When I asked what it was, he said that it wont take long, and to just come, because "you know how your mum is". Kind of strange, but knowing my family, I didn't think much of it!

I was really exhausted, since I had been out on a field trial at Garden Island for work and was sunburnt, tired, and dirty from the day. So when I pulled in to my parents house and saw that there was an unfamiliar car there, I was a bit annoyed that my parents had company.

My dad met me as I was walking up the driveway, and when I asked who was visiting, he said nobody was, and that he'd picked up a new car! Finally! I was so happy that they finally upgraded the family car, since my dad drives the same car as I do (a 1986 Mercedes 190E) and both of them had given us quite a few problems over the years.

So we all went out to take a look, and my mum and Mina were really excited about it too. It's a beautiful dark blue 1997 C180 Mercedes - my dad certainly has a type!

My dad invited me to sit in the driver's seat to look at all the new fancy controls, but as soon as I sat down Mina handed me a card. I was very confused, but when I pulled it out and saw that it was a Congratulations card, I got a little worried! Before I knew it, I was holding the keys to the biggest present my family had ever bought me!

I honestly couldn't believe it, and my first reaction was to tell them I couldn't accept it. I mean, it's the newest car we've ever had in the family, and I just couldn't accept that it would be me that was driving it! I started crying and trying to figure out how to transfer the ownership to them, but after about an hour they managed to convince me that they really wanted to give me this present, and they were happy to know that I'd be driving a comfortable car that would hopefully not give my dad any trouble for a while. My mum said that crying was the last reaction she expected me to have!

My dad is actually looking into one for himself too, and plans to get rid of our two 190E's to help fund his upgrade. He'd been looking around for 2 months before he bought the one for me, so he got a pretty good idea of what's out there. I really hope he gets a new car, since he really deserves it, and our driveway is starting to look a bit like a car dealership from the 1980's anyway!

So thanks to my family, it's such a beautiful gift *sniff*