assorted blahblah

Wow, Wednesday night already! 

The weekend was good.  We had a wedding on Sunday, which resulted in us taking public transport home, and much stumbling on my part.  I blame that tenth champagne.  Monday (which was a public holiday) was spent in bed, feeling like I’d been kicked in the stomach by a donkey.  Otherwise, no harm done.

Some fantastic news – my friend M confessed that she’s eight weeks pregnant.  She actually told me at the reception, when I picked she wasn’t drinking.  After what happened last year, I’m just over the moon.  And as M said, she and her sister L will be having their babies at the same time, which will be a great support for both of them.  So that was an extra reason to celebrate.

This week has been beyond busy.  I’m doing my Certificate IV in Workplace Training and Assessment, which will enable me to formally deliver registered training packages.  It’s dry, fairly boring, and a lot of work.  Bad combination.  We have to do a 15 minute talk on Friday.  Basically we have to teach the group something.  I wouldn’t say I’m dreading it, but certainly I’m not looking forward to it.  Plus, I haven’t started actually preparing it yet.  I suspect I’m going to be doing a rush job tomorrow night.

another sunday

Here it is, Sunday afternoon already.   Where on earth did the weekend go?!  We did sleep in today, admittedly; but then we made up for it.  The kitchen and both bathrooms are clean, the bedsheets changed and washed, and about six loads of laundry have been done.  Oh, and dinner is already slowly simmering away in the oven.  Meat and veg casserole – cheap, tastes good, easy to make, reheats beautifully.  It’s just about the perfect dish, especially for somebody with my limited interest in food.

Yesterday was a busy day.  We had different stuff to do, all in the morning, which resulted in a huge rush from 9am until midday.  We needed to lodge some mortgage documents for the latest purchase, then SO and I needed to go to different units – SO to hang some mirrors and check a sticky door, me to give some new tenants their keys, show them the meterbox, etc.  After that I came home via the shops, where I bought some much needed necessities like milk and bread.  (Yes, that’s how bad things had got.  So shoot me.)  After that, I did some paperwork, and washed my hair, then fell into bed for an afternoon nap.

I needed the nap because I had a hen’s night on last night. 

turning over a unit

As mentioned in this post, we had tenants leaving one of our units this weekend.  When I did the final inspection, the place was spotless.  They’d obviously worked really hard to get it spick and span, and it looked like it did when they moved in.  We’d completely renovated it and finished just before they did move in, so to all intents and purposes, it looked ‘brand new’.

And yet, despite all this, it took SO and I about three and a half hours to get it up to scratch for the new tenants. 

writing

All my life, I’ve written.  From an early age (five?) I had a diary.  I also always had separate notebooks for writing stories, poems, and plays.  I produced a fairly large body of work up to about the age of eighteen or so, when I discovered uni, alcohol, boys, and going clubbing.  Not necessarily in that order.

Together with my music (I played the flute for many years, and took music as one of my leaving subjects for high school) it formed the core of my ability to express what I was thinking and feeling.  I was that kid who would wake up in the night from a dream (or nightmare), think about it in the dark, then turn on the light and jot it down.  I was continually writing stories from about age six.  I was also always trying to hide them from my mother, who didn’t believe in children having ’secrets’.  Not that they were terrible or anything, but they certainly were personal.  My diaries were the worst, she’d find them no matter where I hid them.

petrona’s take on the highs and lows of personal finance

I was reading Get Rich Slowly, an interesting little blog about one guy’s debt to savings journey, when I saw this post.  It raised a whole heap of personal associations for me, so rather than let my mundane and ordinary observations sit unuttered in my brainbox, I thought I’d write it all out here. (Apologies in advance, dear readers.  If personal finance doesn’t interest you, feel free to move on.)

SO and I generally don’t disclose the fact we have four investment properties.  Our friends know, especially as we share with them the ups and downs of renovating property and handling tenant issues.  Some, but not all, of our immediate family also know.  Extended family (by which I mean aunts, uncles, cousins etc) have no idea, and nor do work mates (apart from a very few who we are close to).  

This is for a number of reasons. 

looong weekend

As this is the Easter weekend, we here in Western Australia automatically have Good Friday and Easter Monday off.  SO and I added to that by booking last Wednesday and Thursday off, too.  So for the price of two days’ leave, we really have six days off.  I think this is a great way to maximise feeling like we’ve had more leave than we really have.  So far it’s been great, of course.

Actually, so far it’s been a heavily real estate-oriented break. 

therapy

Wow.  I had the best three hours of therapy today.  It cost a fair bit of money, and it was exhausting, but I came home on an absolute high.  What miracle therapy is this, I hear you ask?  The best possible kind….. retail therapy!!

I very rarely go shopping for pleasure (ie. for stuff for myself or SO which are ‘extras’).  But we had a couple of gift vouchers which we needed to use up in the next few weeks.  Plus, I have a hen’s night in a fortnight which I didn’t have a suitable top for.  And I really needed some ballet flats….. Altogether, I ended up buying a new winter coat (dark grey, suitable for both work and to wear with jeans); a top to wear to the hen’s night; some classic ballet flats (which SO immediately called ‘nana shoes’); three shirts for work; a new winter dressing gown; a couple of gorgeous dishes (courtesy of one voucher); and a couple of divinely thick bath mats (courtesy of the other voucher).  In my travels, I also picked up a new fleecy jumper for SO, who loves them and wears them constantly around the house in winter. 

So yes, a very expensive, but extremely satisfying, few hours’ work.  It felt so good to just pick a few things up and buy them, rather than my default option, which is pick them up, admire them, sigh, and put them back.  I used to be an absolute clothes nut a few years ago, when I’d just started working professionally and didn’t have any debt.  Since then, we’ve been living on a reasonably frugal budget.  I actually moved in with SO because he lost his permanent job, and I knew he’d need help with his mortgage payments.  I was going to move in with him anyhow, it just speeded things along a bit.  Since then, we got a very large mortgage, then started buying rental properties, so we’re now used to watching what we spend and how we spend it.  But today reminded me of how much fun I have when left to my own devices.  I think SO will be chaperoning my shopping expeditions from now on.

grief

Losing somebody is a funny thing.  You think you’re doing okay, you think you’re coping, and then you get completely blindsided by something.  I remember a good eighteen months after my dad died, I was walking through town after work one day when I saw somebody similar to my father walking towards me.  It suddenly hit me then that I would never see him walking towards me again.  I’m crying now, just remembering how I felt.  How I feel.

indian

I love Indian.  Love it.  (Food, not the culture – although that said, the culture is also pretty cool.  Just not as cool as the food.)  I love the mild and spicy dishes, the predominate use of potatoes as the main vegetable, and mango lassis.  Yum.

We have a fantastic Indian restaurant a couple of suburbs over, which we visit about once every six to eight weeks.  Considering we almost never eat out, this is a pretty high strike rate.  However, while the food is to die for, it can be pretty expensive to get our Indian hit.  Every so often I give home made Indian a go.  This usually consists of perusing the local supermarket and trying to work out the best canned variety of stir through sauce.

I did this today.  We had rogan josh and and potato tandoori.  (One of the delights of Indian food is that you can add any combination of meat and or vegies to a sauce and it tastes unbelievable.  At least it does to us.)  It was so good.  The only disappointment was the naan, also from the grocery store.  It just didn’t taste right.  Otherwise it was delicious.  However, I think the potato tandoori was a fraction hot for SO – he turned purple and started gasping.  Maybe I’ll go the mild mix next time.

assorted

I put in a job application on Monday.  Similar but different work to what I do now.  I felt so proud of myself.  I really did a good job on the application, and I even got my lovely manager to check it over for feedback first.  However, I found out today (from my unnamed Deep Throat) that there were ninety applications submitted for the job.  This seems unbelievable for a government job.  Needless to say, I feel like the wind has been sucked out of my sails.

Still, it’s a bit like lotto, you have to be in it to win it….. I’ll find out soon enough if I get through to the interview stage.  Sigh.  I really need to get the hell out of Dodge with respect to my current job – I can’t stand the head of the organisation, who is a psycho hosebeast nutjob.  I understand most CEOs are, but I know the CEO of the agency I applied to is relatively normal.  I could handle relatively normal.  It would be a great change.

Otherwise, things are going well.  SO is behaving himself, work is okay, and life generally is good.  Oh, and we finally found out today that our finance was approved for the apartment we wanted to buy – yay!!  I love me a good project, and a new unit is a great project.   Now I guess I need to start buying more furniture….

We still have a unit on our hands that we’re looking to rent out.  It does bug me, going there regularly for viewings and nobody showing up.  We do always seem to manage to find tenants though, even if it’s at the last dying minute.

Anyhow, I’m not quite sure if there’s anything else to write about at this stage, so I’m off.