Update for... October 1st.

Nat the Cat

Nothing really to report, I have to say.  We bought a fairly large TV, and a book shelf for the living room.  Willy got me a Kindle, so I can read books that I've had in PDF format for a while, and not have to strain my eyes against the computer screen, haha.  Early birthday present, for which I am very happy to have received!  So, thank you, young Wykes-walker.

I've been spending a lot of the last few weeks writing and stuff, trying to get my ideas out in words.  I've been working mostly on The Rising, which you can take a look at if you are so inclined.

I've been thinking about making a blog for it, since I'm kind of at a bump in the road.  I like making blogs (but not updating them, it seems).  Maybe I will do it. Probably not, haha.

The TV, with our computers next to it.  One of the Jurassic Park
movies was on... :D

We're marinating a leg of lamb in the fridge, so every time someone gets something to eat, the house fills with the smell of garlic.  At least it'll keep the vampires away, I guess.

You know, I took the clothes off the line too early because I thought it was going to rain.  It looked like it was going to rain. The clouds were grey and thick.  I was absolutely convinced that it was going to start pouring down.

It hasn't rained yet.  It's just looked gloomy and mean outside all day since 11am.  How annoying is that? Nobody likes soggy socks.

Nat the Cat has been very naughty lately.  She's a nightmare.  She sprints around the house at breakneck speeds and rips up and down the furniture with her dagger-claws.  She jumps under curtains and tries to climb up them, dashes out from under jackets hanging on chairs, and climbs up your back when you're cutting meat.  She loves scaling the metal mesh security doors, doesn't cover her poop in the litterbox, and gets her kicks by pantsing whoever she can.

Yes.

Our cat jumps up on our pants and pulls them down.  SHE IS A BULLY. Nat the mean Cat.

Well that's it.  :|

3 is the magic number.

I try not to write sad posts.  But I'm pretty sad at the moment, and this is my blog, so I'm going to write.

August has been a fairly challenging month for me, at least more than the last year and a half has been. Yes, I have it very easy - a husband who loves me and provides for us, food on the table and a roof overhead, a new pet kitteh, a permanent visa so I can live in Australia, lots of family, and effin snuggies, man.  However, despite all of these bonuses, I feel pretty down in spirits.  So, in the last month, I have come to realize three things:

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.

Samhain and Stuff

Well as I write this, I'm waiting for ze husband to return home.  Tonight's Samhain, we've been burning some candles in memory of loved ones who have passed from each of our families, since we're just keeping it simple this year. We also are going to have a nice simple little dinner with some autumn-ey veggies and fun stuff like that.  Oh, and my adequate apple pie.  It's not amazing because I forgot to put the nutmeg and cinnamon in, but it's edible. It's a little tart, because I used the granny smith ones.  They're my favorite though. Next time I'll use some sweeter ones.

My legs feel really shaky.  Wanna know why? It's because I'm dumb.

I forgot that some of the apple pie stuff had oozed out and gotten on the bottom of the oven, and then tried to cook dinner.  The kitchen got all smoky and the fire alarm decided to go off, at 11pm.  Haha.  It was pretty funny, me running around the house frantically, turning on the fans and trying to turn the damn thing off.  It was really loud, too, so I guess that's good, in case we do get a fire someday.

I stopped it once, then it decided to go off again, for a few minutes that time... I tried everything I could  to turn it off - I pushed buttons, etc.  It just wouldn't stop!  I called hubby and it sorted itself out, but my legs and ears felt like jelly afterwards, and they still do, haha.  Well, these things happen I suppose.  I just hope it didn't wake anyone up.  And no, the fire dept. didn't show up, so that's good!

I've got our pumpkin bake ready to go, it's in foil and on the counter, but I'm not putting it in the oven until ze husband returns from work.  I'm not saying I'm scared the alarm will go off again...  ....

Ok I am. Haha.  I hate that thing!

Fuzzy Socks and Chai Tea

I'm sitting here drinking chai tea and enjoying my wonderful fuzzy socks, just as the title of this entry implies.

I should be in bed. But I keep on thinking.

My visa situation is moving along.  I have booked an appointment for the required medical exam, and am almost finished getting my paperwork together for my new passport.

I keep thinking to myself about how far this has come.  I've been in the process of getting this sorted for over a year now.  There have been lots of ups and downs, lots of money being spent, and many other hoops that the husband and I have had to jump through just to gain the credibility we needed to get this far, like opening a bank account together, renting a house together, etc.

My husband is a champion.  I'm so lucky to have him, so glad that he's been right there with me every step of the way.  Things are beginning to fall into place, and he's kept strong -- and kept me strong, the whole time.

Small Update of Sorts

A lil somethin somethin I brought home from the US :) 

Things have been pretty unexciting lately, which is good I suppose.  I'm looking at taking an art course online, from the same people that Will is taking his course from.  Hopefully we'll be able to pay for that soon, but I don't mind waiting if it means we get out of debt a little faster.

I've been trying my hand at writing again, mostly on the back story for my little game project I've been playing with.  I'm considering picking up writing my other story, as well. I'd nearly forgotten all about it.  I'm finding it quite difficult to write though, I get caught up in tenses and my newly attained inability to describe things the way I want to.  It's been getting worse, my frustrating sense of "OMG this has to be perfect".  I wish I could just let go for once and let myself learn to write again.

Made a couple of things since last posting. I'll share them here.

A little box made of newspapers

Bottom View :) 

Finally, something to use the
 empty toilet rolls for.

Visiting Home

This is gonna be a short one.

We're visiting Washington now! We landed in Seattle on the 21st 'o November.  The next day, it started snowing like crazy and then eventually the power went out -- and stayed out for a few days.  It was fun, really.  Husband had fun in his first snow, and last night we got to go to a family Thanksgiving dinner. It was nice. :)

We've also met our youngest nephew, Ethan. He's my brother's son, and he's absolutely adorable.

Anywho, we've been busy hanging out with the family, so until something exciting happens, there may not be any updates. :P

Dreams and Irritation

Lately, I've been able to wake up remembering bits and pieces from my dreams.  Lately they've been fairly mundane, things about walking to places, memories of high school, and stuff like that.  Last night was a bit different, however.  It may be just because I slept for so long, but who knows?

Dreams feel so normal when you're in them.  It's like how the movie Inception  is, in that you suddenly are in the middle of it all, yet it feels completely normal to you despite you not recalling how you got there. Or at least that's how you remember them after you've woken.

What I can remember of last night is vague, but there were a few key things to note.  The beginning (of what I can remember) took me through the world in first person, and for some strange reason, it reminded me of Fallout. I ended up going to several different places, including a gas station and a store.  It appeared to me that I was in the United States.

Weddings, Beltane, and decorating, oh my

There's us and to the left is Janina, who was our lovely celebrant.

Good news, everyone.  I got hitched! Will and I got married on the 22nd of October.  We are excited to finally have entered such a wonderful stage in our lives together.  Once we started talking to each other those three years ago, I remember distinctly thinking: This is it. He's the one. And yup. I was right. :)  I'm the happiest I've ever been.

Also good news: not too long until Will and I get to go to the US! I'm super excited to introduce him to everyone in my family stateside, as well as my friends.  He's looking forward to the trip as well - though he insists on getting the majority of the window seats on the flights...

Even more good news: Beltane is coming up (for us down under), Halloween as well, and I am super excited.  Growing up, I loved Halloween, it was my favorite holiday.  It still is.  Though now I am preparing to celebrate Beltane, a majority of my 31st will be taken up by watching some good ol' scary movies with my husband and hoping some Trick or Treaters drop by.  I even bought a little witch hat to wear, ha ha.

For Beltane I think I may encourage Will to drive us out to Wangi for a little bit of a walk in nature.  I'm not used to Aussie seasons yet, and I have to say this winter felt like an autumn or a spring to me.  I mean heck, my neighbor's flowers were blooming all winter.  But I am beginning to notice the little things - really gorgeous flowers were blooming on the side of the road today, it made me want to pull over and take a look but we needed to get to Tuggerah to get my ring resized before huge amounts of people started arriving for late shopping night.

I have been thinking about what I want to do with the spare room now. I think I want to add some colorful cloths, lots of pillows, some small tables, assemble some speakers there, and turn it into a place for relaxing and meditation.  I've been feeling the need to find a comfortable place to do that for a little while now, and Will doesn't seem opposed to the idea.  A little bit of color and rope lights would make that place so much more welcoming and comfortable.


☽☉☾

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-

So this is what I've been doing lately.

A couple of nights ago I decided that I wanted to learn how to create Mods for Oblivion. And so I looked up a few tutorials, a handy wiki, and bam. Here I am, two days later, creating custom NPCs, adding dialogue, and whipping up fancy houses with neat stuff inside.

It's not a lot, but I'm still very proud of myself.  Usually with tough stuff like this, I give up.  But I think that I can dedicate myself enough to get through this, and at least gain a basic understanding of modding for Oblivion.

I'm thinking of what sort of things to put in there. One of the ideas I've had is a small little town, with cute little quests and stuff, just as a little bit of a trial and error sort of thing.  Hopefully I don't mess up the game, haha.  Another idea is something crazy and detailed, definitely something that I'd have to spend many many hours on.  I'm going to give that some time, and allow myself room to learn new things before I attempt to take on any huge projects yet.

Aside from crazy amounts of Oblivion, I've been doing nothing much... I made a tuna bake last night... it turned out alright.  I have been freezing my butt off all night, for the past few months, and it sucks.  It doesn't matter if I have the heater going, my hands and fingers stay like icicles and I'm shivering and shaking the whole time.  At least spring is on its way.  I hope.

Imbolc was a few days ago.  I didn't really do much... Mostly just spent some time alone thinking about things.  Being thankful the sun will be around more often, and that I will soon feel a bit warmer.  Wondering how things are back home, thinking about where I am now... You know.

Got the news a few days ago that Will's sister thinks she's preggers again.  Yay! I'm happy for her and Ewen. :) My brother seems to be doing well in his military school thing. I saw a few pics that my Mom sent me, he looks very intent on what he's doing.  I'm happy for him, too.

Jeez I am freezing.

I had a very strange dream last night... It was very lengthy, but a few things stood out to me.  One was the presence of lots of people from high school.  Another was a man collecting different colored dice.  There was a very strong theme of death and danger in the dream... A few people got killed, some got squished in a sewer by a trap wall, some impaled, some drowned, or got devoured by flesh eating fish.  Someone even got electrocuted at a station (much like stations on the bridge of Star Trek episodes, haha). Apparently Will is a tall, fat black dude, because my fiancee died as well in the dream, but it wasn't Will.

I saw old crushes from High School as well... They asked for hugs after I told them I thought they had hated me. I also talked to people that I associated as "in band" in my dream, and we sat on an island near a street, in metal foldout chairs, all facing North West.  At the end, young and elderly women alike danced and skipped widdershins around tables, holding their skirts out so as to create the illusion that their skirts encircled the entire table.  And then at the end I was a mix between Robert Pattinson and Keanu Reeves, and some other famous guy came up to me, we took off our movie costumes, and then laughed because we were finally free of all the fangirls.

Yeah, it was a strange one. It's full of lots of juicy stuff though. I'll have to think about what it meant.

In other news, my neighbors/the previous tenants of the house William and I are renting still haven't updated their addresses. I am getting letters for them about 4-5 days out of the week.  It is getting ridiculous.  I am very tempted to horde their mail until the end of each week.  They had a slip of paper in my mailbox that let the owner of the neighbor's dogs know that one of them had been picked up, that the phone number on its chip was wrong, and that they would have a several hundred dollar fine for it. I gave that to them as soon as I could, I couldn't bring myself to not give it to them.

Anyway... I guess that's enough of an update for now.

Ta,
Manda

Woot! A Quick Update

Our immigration agent sent our visa application this week, and when I last checked, it was on its way to its destination. Yay! I'm so happy to have all the paperwork and stress of that off my chest. Now the most we've got to worry about is the approval of the visa application and repaying the loan we had to take out to pay for all of it while staying afloat with other stuff.

We discovered a book store in Sydney by Central when we went to pay off our application fee. It's called "Basement Books" or something to that effect. It's under the street, in a pedestrian tunnel thing that go to the trams I think. I don't know for sure. But the prices there on books were AMAZING. I bought a new book, The Complete Illustrated Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Practical Magic by Susan Greenwood and Raje Airey. I found it laying amongst books about dream interpretation, and figured that it would be a good read.

It's been a while...

It has been quite a while since my last post; several months in fact. I've been pretty busy with things lately, as you might have guessed... But I suppose I should start updating this more often, so here goes.

In March this year I took a flight to Australia again (hooray!) and have been living here in NSW since, with my fiancée. We have our own place (finally) and our prospective marriage visa application should be ready to send in by the end of this week, so that's exciting! We've got to head into Sydney to pay the $2,525 fee that it costs, and then afterwards we've got to bring our receipt back to our awesome agent E., and then he can send it in via courier.