I am now working on Saturday as one of my colleagues sisters' died. I don't think she was very old, only about 50 or so - I haven't heard any details though. It is sad, this colleague is one of the 'nice' ones there, she really is lovely.

That will be around an extra $150 before tax for me. My boss said he was sorry because he know we just bought the house and I would want to do stuff to it but he said just to think of the money. (actually, inside I was gleefully jumping up and down going 'money money money') It is not often I get extra shifts any more as I am a bit too expensive, especially in 'these times'.

I have not done any cardio this week, but I did do about 45 minutes of gardening (where sweat was literally POURING off me - being midday in summer and all) and about an hour and a half of pulling staples out of the floor at the house on monday. The day after I did that the back of my thighs ACHED.

Today I plan to go for a run, YES a RUN. I don't know why but I just felt very motivated this week. I gardened, I cleaned my car, now I'm running, regardless of the consequences to my shins...

Just checked my facebook account. I had updated my status to something about the house, can't remember, anyway and I got a comment on the status from a girl I went to school with, (whom, but the way, I have not seen in person since 2002). Her comment?

Congratulations, you deserve it! Allah shines down on you.

Ok, apart from the religious ... stuff... (I am use to it - she's a recently converted muslim and seems to want to ram it down everyones throats with a healthy serve of smiles and sunshine) the one thing that REALLY REALLY REALLY irks me is, how can she possibly know I deserve it? This mindset totally baffles me. You don't deserve something unless you WORK for it, in my books. She wouldn't know if I'd earned it, because I haven't seen her in 7 + years.

It's just not her I am mad at. Don't get me wrong, I know she is just being nice.

But honestly... there are so many people out there that say that to me. And I can't possibly think of anything to say to them back, I can't think of the proper reaction I am meant to have. How can you seriously tell a person they deserve to buy a house? It has absolutely NOTHING to do with deserving-ness.

We will see in 20+ years. When we have succesfully paid off our house, then I will be able to tell myself I deserve it.

This morning I logged onto our *new* accounts and the loan balance has hit. (It wasn't there yesterday or the day before). So I guess I have a very limited time to actually be excited about being in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.
Tell me honestly, what sane person is excited to have a balance on her account saying - $304 000.00????
I am an odd person, I will admit.

I forgot to mention, when DF picked up the keys the real estate gave us a bag (an environmentally friendly bag!) with some Brie cheese, crackers, chocolates, champagne, key rings, magnets, a one month newspaper subscription and a card that every staff member had signed. Isn't that nice?

Also when DF finally got to the house after picking up the keys, the previous owner was there, mowing the lawn for us and patching up some of the boundary. I am just astounded at how nice everyone has been. Of course, I'm not naive. I realise we have just given him $320k. But he technically didn't have to do anything. I guess it does sort of have something to do with the area as well. It's a town, as I've said. The main area we live in is full of suburbs, there are only a couple of proper towns around here, and you can really feel the difference. Suburbs, people are just wrapped up in themselves. They have their little 500m2 blocks and that's their world. The towns have a little more of a community spirit.

Anyway I will stop blabbing now.

I dragged myself in to do grocery shopping today (feeling uninspired about meals lately).
I got a great deal on Extra Virgin Olive Oil, $2.99 per 1 Litre bottle, so I bought 3 bottles. This brand is worth $9.99 per bottle normally! Last time I paid around $25 for a 4 Litre tin of a different brand. So we will be fine for olive oil now for quite a few months!
Next to coffee, I would say that olive oil is one of our higher priced grocery items.

Also while I was shopping, I accidently picked up a reciept for someone elses shopping which was in my trolley. When I got home I realised it wasn't mine, but I read through it anyway (am I the only one that likes doing this?)
$318 for 77 items. And you know, this person has spent soooo much money on cleaning and insect products. Amazing. I'm not going to bother adding it up, but I would say it's somewhere in the vicinity of $80. I would be quick to say it might be a 'bulk' shop, but the rest of the docket indicates this is a weekly shop. Gosh, I just want to find this person and shake them!

Well, yesterday while I was at work DF got the keys and he and his dad went in and started ripping up the floor. When I got there I took a quick couple of 'before' pics because DF had forgotten.

This one is of the spare room. Both spare rooms were added at a later date to the house, so a different timber was used for the floors. It's a recycled hardwood floor, so it's a bit crappier and not as well layed, but once we sand and seal it, it should look fine.


This one is of our lounge room. The lounge, kitchen, dining, office and main bedroom all have a mixed hardwood floor which is better than the recycled one and is going to look really great once it's finished. One of the worries is that the vinyl was glued to the floor, so that might affect it a little bit in the kitchen. (sometimes you can't get the glue off). Oh well! We'll see how it goes!


Sorry there's only two pics but there will be more once we finish!

Today is the day we finally get the keys to our house. Settlement is at 11.30am, so by midday or 1pm DF should have collected the keys. He is doing a pre-inspection at 10am - thank god everything worked out with his work and he was able to take today and tomorrow off. He is going to start ripping up the carpet and vinyl and the masonite that's underneath. We have a bit of a job ahead of us as most of the floor is lined with masonite and we have to de-nail it (if you don't get the nails all out it will wreck the sander). I am going to go straight from work to help.

The owners of our rental house came over yesterday to measure up some things. They are pretty nice people. They've told us not to worry about cleaning the carpets, as they will rip them up anyway (!!!). So that's a saving of about $130. If they hadn't of said that we would still have to clean them as most real estates, and this one in particular, are bastards when it comes to anything like that.

Also they said whenever we would like to move out is fine with them. So I think we tentatively said March 23rd or 24th. Which gives us 3 weeks from today, and is three and a half weeks earlier than our lease expiry. (So that's a saving of around $1470).

I have changed my bank details over at work, so my pay this week should go into our new offset account!!!

We have pretty much packed everything up now. We still have a bit of crap lying around. I think the next few weeks will be difficult. It is in our best interests to sleep at our rental house, but we will probably move everything as soon as we can to the new place. Card Games it is for the next few weeks!

I have decided to do a detox plan once we move into our new place. I read it out to DF and he said 'so basically, it's not a detox plan, it's how you SHOULD eat anyway'. But then I asked if he would do it with me and he said 'maybe'. *sigh*
This is it: