Long Entry - Travel, Visa, This and That

The last month and a bit has been quite busy for me and William.  We had a house inspection right before we took a trip out of the country, so we had a few things to worry about.  So, that's why my posting has been skimpy again.

The house inspection went well - it was quick and easy, and the house wasn't as messy as I'd thought it would be.  The only problem I am concerned about at the moment is some mold that seems to have accumulated near the shower, on the ceiling.  I'm going to be looking into some good mold killer that I heard of, so... hopefully it will work.

There is some good news to share - my visa was given the go-ahead, so last week, Will and I took a trip to New Zealand so that it could be approved (since it was filed off-shores, it makes sense that I needed to be off-shore when it was granted).  So, I'm a resident of Australia now!

Travelling wasn't the best.  The Chilean volcano that blew up a few weeks ago unleashed an ash cloud that travelled our way and cancelled a bunch of flights from Qantas and other airlines. Luckily, Virgin/Pacific Blue was still running flights to New Zealand.

We had trouble getting out of the country because my new passport did not have the visa label stamped into it, so we had to have Will's parents take a 2 hour ride out to the train station just to bring my old passport to us.  I am so thankful that they are so kind and willing to help.

We missed our first flight because we needed to wait for the old passport, so after we got it, we ended up taking a flight from Sydney to the Gold Coast in Queensland in the afternoon.  The flight was a bit bumpy near the end - we flew through a storm or something, and the entire right side of the plane seemed to drop out from under us, it was quite a shock.

We caught our flight to New Zealand, arrived at 1am, and checked in to our hotel.  The trip was alright; we walked around a bit, saw the city.  We visited the Auckland Zoo, Sylvia Park (a shopping center, it was pretty interesting), and meant to get out to One Tree Hill and Mt. Eden, but the weather begun to take a turn for the worse before we could get out there.

On our way back, we had a bit of a scare with my passports again; my visa had been granted to the old passport, and it took a little bit for them to change it over to my new one.  It was a bit scary after waiting in the line for 30 minutes, but we got through it and made our way to our plane, which had already begun boarding by the time we got there.  We got our seats and the plane began to taxi a little later.

Before we hit the runway, the plane stopped (meanwhile, we were noting how much it was raining and how strong the winds were). The captain came on the speaker saying something about there being something wrong with the steering for the plane.  Um, yikes.  They called an engineer out and they fixed it luckily, and I am glad that they found that problem before we were in the air.

There were two 3-4 year old kids screaming next to us for a fair chunk of the trip, the take off was really bumpy because of the heavy rain, and the arm rest between me and Will refused to move up, but other than that the trip back was mostly uneventful.  The train was relaxing.  We hung out at his parents' house for the majority of the rest of the day.  Back to the routine, I suppose.

Since then we've been spending a great deal of time either hanging out with his parents or with each other, watching movies or documentaries.  We've been having discussions about what's in our future (we're thinking a cat, so we've asked permission to have one on the property).

Will's back to work now, and I've also been considering what I can do for work.  I'm hoping to be able to find something that doesn't require too much customer service or serving, as I really don't care to fall back into that line of work again.  Frankly, people annoy me.  And, Australian money is still weird.

I pretty much just want to find a way to get a little bit of money to help jump start a new hobby for me to do.  I'd like to try candle making.  It sounds fun, interesting, somewhat profitable perhaps... And who doesn't love candles?

Yule was the other day, I feel pretty guilty about not really celebrating this year.  I've just been so worn out since the trip, I feel I just need a little bit of recovery time I suppose.  Hopefully I'll be able to slip into some sort of a routine soon.

Well that's it for an update I suppose.  A bit long.  Hrm.

Updates!

Levielle, my Paladin. Ain't she cute? :P

Time seems to be going by fairly quickly.  It's strange to think that in just two months I'm going to be changing my name as a result of being married to the most wonderful man on the planet.  I'm happy, anxious, excited, everything that someone should be when such a big life event is approaching.  I am ecstatic that I'm going to be spending the rest of my life with Will, the guy I met while questing in the Arathi Highlands, haha. :)  Now we can get into some other fun things that have been happening lately:

There seems to be a ghost or a spirit in our house. Yes, weird I know.  I've seen something before, a vision of a man in the back seat of my car once when I was driving in Silverdale. Our eyes met through the rear view mirror for a second, and in that second I gathered a few details of his face, but once I physically turned around to see him, he was gone.

I didn't see the spirit in our house, though.  Will and I were laying in bed together (as people do when they're sleepy), and I got up for a moment and started walking to the other room.  Before I could do anything else, I heard Will in the other room gasping and failing to complete whatever sentence he was trying to say.  I walked back into the bedroom and asked him what had happened, and after a moment he replied that he had seen something walking through the hallway behind me while it was still dark.

He described to me a figure that seemed to be a bunch of rags chucked together in the shape of a person (in his own words), with a faint dark green glow to it.  It seemed to glide to the right down the hallway.  I didn't see it, but I believe him.

Since then, we've had some weird things going on.  A pair of hands left marks on the inside of our shower (neither Will nor I recall doing it ourselves), which was pretty creepy.  We also discovered a can of corn that was left open on the counter.  Neither of us had opened it, and to our knowledge, we don't sleepwalk.  So... yup!

We also have had a problem with our Visa.  The wrong sort of application got sent in apparently.  Long story short, we're coming to America to visit!  :D

We're planning to come by around November 22ish, just in time for Thanksgiving, and will be staying til about Decenber 13 or 14. During this time, we'll be spending time with my family, which is really exciting.  I'm happy Will is going to get to meet everybody, and vice versa.

We're going to be setting up a website for our wedding (even though it's going to be EXTREMELY casual and in our back yard), with a donation paypal account attached.  We have been living together for a while and so we don't really need a lot (aside from a washing machine, but we're going to manage that on our own I think), but would like to have some money for our (horribly expensive) trip to the US.

Anyway, that's about it for now.

-Manda-