27.09.06

i've been meaning to write about what a lovely weekend i had but work has been crazy busy so far this week and now it's wednesday already! ah well, since i've been so busy the past few days have flown by and it still feels like the weekend was just yesterday. saturday morning shane and i went to look at a house in yarraville - great, great house but on a busy, noisy street, something we just can't live with. it had a lovely front garden and i just couldn't' picture myself doing some relaxing puttering in the front yard with large trucks and 6 million cars whizzing by. 1 more down but at least there seems to have been a jump in people listing this week and we have about TWELVE to look at this weekend! we then trucked up to the nearest Ray's Outdoors and bought ourselves some new fishing rods since we used ours literally to death on our trip around australia last year. it's supposed to be 22ºC this sunday so i think we may just have to give the new rods a christening. i headed over to Ikea for a few things to spruce up the apartment for an impending girl's night in and shane left for a visit to bendigo with sharpie. spent the afternoon tidying up and hangin with' baxter until the lovely friends i've met through work came over for a night of far too much good food, lots of cocktails AND champagne AND wine, and sex in the city DVD's playing in the background. lou and jose ended up crashing in the living room and it was so fun to wake up and all have toast and tea together in our jammies. cute. i was planning to run some errands on sunday but had left my lights on (again. that's four times in the last 6 months.) so my car wasn't going anywhere. the weather was miserable anyway so after a quick run with bax to get the paper, i settled in for an afternoon of sewing in front of the tv with the heater cranked. perfecto!

21.09.06

hmmmmm, went for my very first ever accupuncture appointment to try and combat my eczema this afternoon with one of my sister-in-law's good friends. it was really, really interesting and yes, hurt just a little bit here and there but overall a cool experience. she targeted aa few points in my neck that are supposed to help me sleep more soundly as well so we'll see how that goes tonight, i guess.

don't really know why i started writing this when i'm when i'm actually too lazy to write in any great detail - i'm feeling pretty chilled out after the session, a nice change after the relatively stressful and irritating week i've had at work (quite unusual). instead, look at some pretty flower pictures i took on sunday:

17.09.06

just a quick post while i wait for shane to get out of the shower and we can take bax to the park for a run around. we went for a lovely little drive yesterday, looking at some houses and checking out a few more neighbourhoods to expand our house search. at least if i have a few more areas to check everyday i feel like i'm doing something... on the way home we decided to stop at albert park for a walk around the lake and i was so excited to see HUNDREDS of black swans nesting, swimming, walking around and gliding along. i'm a big fan of the black swan and had to take a ton of photos to show my canadian audience, particularly my bird loving mom. here's a few of the many:


bax checking out the action on chapel street on the way out.




baxter, surprisingly, wasn't all that interested in the
swans until they started making warning noises at him.

11.09.06

ah, back at work after quite a lovely weekend. one of those good ones where we had absolutely no plans and just sort of went with the flow of what we felt like doing. saturday afternoon shane and i packed up baxy and headed over to the "taste of slow" food festival at the abbotsford convent. it was sorta neat but also a bit disappointing with a $12 entrance fee that got you um, nothing, a beer garden that was out of beer at 2pm, heaps of line ups and crowds around each little food stall (where you had to pay between $10 and $15 for a plate), a little dog that everyone wants to pat and talk about*, plus it pelted down rain at random 15 minute intervals throughout. still nice to have an afternoon outdoors though and on the way back to the car i spotted a sign that led me to the Natio warehouse, where all the skin and hair care goodies that i regularly buy anyway were ridiculously cheap. sweet! on the way home we picked up a few bottles of wine and some dvds to pass a chilly night away and woke up sunday ready to tackle Chaddy in search of some new shoes for shane to wear to work. shano is not what i would call a great shopper. he gets "over it" REALLY quickly and crowds make him (and me) a bit grumpy so it was pretty amazing that we got our mission accomplished and out of chadstone unscathed and unembittered towards it. i spent sunday afternoon sewing with a puppy at my feet while shane whipped up a new batch of pale ale in the kitchen and then we headed over to sara and sharpey's for a lovely and DELICIOUS mexican dinner. on the way home someone on the street behind us had left out a big box of magazines for the taking and i scored 5 back issues of burke's backyard - just the thing to start me thinking about future gardening projects should we ever, EVER find a house we like!


shane and bax at the abbotsford convent...


and chillin' on the couch.



*I wrote the other day about what a fantastic fit baxter is for shane and i and he is, in every way except for the attention he draws. neither of us are very down with the small talk with strangers at the best of times but answering the same 5 questions about our dog is tiring after 10 short weeks (yes, he's a "sausage dog", 4 and 1/2 months old, he's a mini, we think he'll get just a little bit bigger and yes, he IS very confident).

05.09.06

my mom has requested more baxter photos and who am i to deprive her?


so this one turned out a bit blurry but how hilarious is his expression????




running with a pig's ear that's almost as big as his head.

he's such a fantastically great dog. i know i've wanted a dachshund for years but i really can't get over what a perfect fit baxter has been for shane and i. he's small but tough, can play with the big dogs but needs a helping hand to get onto the couch, plays fetch like it's second nature, learned to sit in three days, loves to snuggle up and nap, loses his mind with excitement when either shane or i come home from work, trots along beside us on or off the lead, knows "NO" and is learning "quiet" as his protective personality starts coming out - he's started growling and giving barks to weird noises on the TV (a show on meerkats the other night nearly drove him over the edge) or out on the street. it's cute and funny because he's so small but we're aiming to get it under control while he's still young, don't want him barking every time someone passes by the door or he hears a strange noise. my big sis has also requested more pics with shane and i in them to get a better idea of baxy's size so we'll work on that this week.

04.09.06

a few weeks ago i took my camera along on my daily lunchtime stroll and snapped a shot of a seemingly classic aussie sign at the beginning of the path we take along the yarra that leads into some lovely parkland:



now i took this shot because i thought it was pretty funny and that my pals back in canada would get a kick out of the fact that here in australia i have to beware of snakes even in port melbourne on my lunch break.

then last week the lunch time trip turned up this little fella:



who, although we don't know for sure what kind it was or if it was venomous, really wasn't so little after all and maybe i'll take wildlife postings a wee bit more seriously from now on!

(snakes don't really bother me too much but the two friends i was walking with, who have grown up on warnings of deadly snake bites and "7 of the world's most poisonous snakes live in australia" were understandably more freaked out and cautious than i was - i mean, i stopped to take a picture!)