Olympics and stuff

Right, so still stressing seriously about the flat situation. A great pair of pommy girls came round last night and they were awesome...both working at the hospital, really super lovely.

But they had another place to look at too, and i really really want them to move in. At the current rate of room interest, i will seriously struggle to find others to fill the rooms. 

I haven't heard from them yet. I text them after they left saying how i'd love for them to move in if they'd like the rooms....now whenever my phone beeps it makes me sweat and gives me butterflies because i'm worried it will be from them saying thanks, but no thanks. 

This flat has been no end of trouble. horrible flatmates, not being able to find flatmates, giant powerbills...when will it end? when will my penance be done? I'm not even sure what i've done wrong...it just saps all my energy and i can't seem to make it better no matter how hard i try. If i hadn't given my strongest assurance to the landlords when i signed the lease that i would certainly stay out the whole 12 months, i would give up. I have no idea where i'd go, but i would. But i can't go back on my word. 

and i don't want to get my hopes up for the pair of poms, because i don't want it to be even harder if they say no.

On the other hand i've been throwing myself into Olympics watching. I love it. I love watching everything, i find it so fascinating. The bodies of the athletes amaze me...and i can't help but be utterly attracted to Michael Phelps...his swimming muscles make me melt, just a little. Too bad he's american. Hey now that i think of it, he's only a year or so younger than me. Maybe i have a chance...haha

Just 'cos

More of the same really - pottering along, work isn't too crazy at the moment which is wonderful - i've been coming home lately not feeling totally stretched to the limit and wound up. So I can just potter around and bake chocolate cakes. And spend too much time on the net. 

Am trying to sort things out so i can go on a date tomorrow (is it a date? not sure. hmm) without having to come home after and stress about all the things that need doing before i go to Taupo for the weekend and a newbie moves into the flat on Saturday (while i'm not here! uh oh!).

Confused? Me too. 

I'm also really bummed because i'm missing THREE fairs by going away this weekend. I committed myself to the trip before i realised. So to anyone who goes to Aro Street Market, Mighty Mighty Market or Kilbirnie Fair, have a great time for me!

I am tired.

We spent all weekend moving and cleaning. We got it all done, except for some of the unpacking. Feel my enthusiasm for having our own STUDY! At the moment it's full of boxes, and we have no desk for the computer or sewing machine, but we'll get there.
It took us 4 freaking hours to clean our old flat, it was so painful. Then, to prove how fantastic (not) our old tenancy agency is, I was told that we would get a full bond refund because the place looked amazing, then when tim went to get the paper work signed off the same guy tried to weasel carpet cleaning costs out of him. Um, no! Especially after telling me i'd get a full refund. Clever. Glad to be rid of them.

Was way too busy to get back to the Fabric Warehouse sale, which is a good thing, as i've literally just scored myself a set of printing screens and squeegees for an awesome price...bring it on!

stashtastic

Well, the Martinborough fair didn't go quite as well as we'd hoped, but we still came away with a small profit, and we got a really good response to our ipod covers. We think our target audience is  a little narrow, so we're going to expand our range of products for the next one in March. Which means i got to expand my stash at the Fabric warehouse sale today. If you love fabric, GO. It's on till the 10th of feb. I think i may go back yet...there were so many beautiful silks and things that i would love to just have...(in my new sewing room, woop woop!)

Just randomly - a painting i picked up at the statue barn. So much wrong with it, but i love the colours, and it's so nice and homey.

Pre-stash expanding, we had our first try of the new(ish) Zarbo's on Chaffer's dock. Man, does it really take 20 minutes to make a coffee? It wasn't that busy...but the wait was forgotten with one sip - my hot chocolate was divine and tim was in palpatations over his long machiatto. All is forgiven Zarbo's. 

Now all is go on packing - we got ourselves a loverly french couple as our flatties. Think my french may improve this year...So our lounge is a mess and i have my recently engaged friend coming over to lemon crunch muffins at 3...better get to it.

so much for not posting

haha yeah i think i'm procrastinating. 

And excited! We just acquired ourselves a lovely french environmentalist couple for our new flat - could it get any better? Pas mal ma francais est merde. but it should get a gazillion times better now right!

Can't wait to move in...it's so sunny, and big and has the best indoor outdoor flow thing going on...

but i better get to thinking about dinner, and work for tomorrow. Tim has abandoned me for the evening (because it wouldn't have been really good to have his help).

not of the happiest frame of mind

I am extremely pissed at my tenancy agency right now. Heck, why don't  i just name them - Full House. Our really fantastic (gee, is that sarcasm) agent decided that she would tell me, mid afternoon today, that she has just put in all the advertising for tomorrow, and the viewing of our flat will be at 2.15. And i assumed, oh she must mean saturday, because giving us less than 24hours notice is kind of illegal... but no, she meant tomorrow. Oh and the only reason she emailed me was because i emailed her at the end of my tether being told by her voice mail not to leave a message as she's too busy. 

Which lead to a call to Tenancy Services to see if i had any rights there...and he said, well, you can't unreasonably withhold consent for them to come on to the property...so basically if i say no and they take me to disputes  i could be told that i was being unreasonable. I think the least the agent could have done is ask me if it was ok BEFORE she put all the advertising in. Now in one night i have to make sure my house looks presentable enough that people aren't going to think i'm a total slob who doesn't know how to clean. Along with nursing tim through his cold, working on craft stuff, and playing indoor netball. How, in fact, would she have known that I was back from holiday if i hadn't emailed her in the first place? what rights would i have had if they had just bowled through the house while we were away? Probably a small amount, and really, what would we get from going through disputes? Probably nothing. I feel as if i've been intruded upon and they haven't even got to our front door yet.

So after that, I could not concentrate on work at all. But i did everything through email so i have a written record...just in case. I am so, so happy our new place has great landlords who are just a ma and pa couple who really are lovely. So that's my rant. Oh except i had an irate lady who has absolutely no idea who i am, tell me off for answering the phone with the shortened version of my name. Well, lady, just so happens that practically noone calls me by my full name, and who on earth are you to tell me how to conduct myself?! 

off to clean the freaking bathroom, i s'pose.

goodbye, Sir Ed

Silly me, i did know when i posted yesterday that the wonderful Sir Ed had died. Not quite sure where that information went when i was writing. I hadn't previously known that much about him, but when we were on holliday, the Mt Egmont/Taranaki information centre (the one up the mountain) told me that he used to climb that mountain all the time. And i've learnt more about him over the past 36 hours, obviously, with all the obits flying around. What an amazing, humble person. How fantastic would it be to achieve either just the mountain climbing or just the humanitarian work that he managed, in one lifetime. Goodness.

I really wanted to try and post a photo with every entry, but i went to take today's and realised that i had just insisted tim take my camera with him to the stock cars. Gutted.

Today was great fun. Not. Oh my god the amount of mess we saw. How is it that some people managed to live in total and utter tips? I saw two bedrooms where the floor was not known to exist. I saw a kitchen that had piles of breakfast and dinner remnants plus the dirty dishes used to make them(it was 3.30pm). I saw socks lying in hallways, didn't even go close to looking at one bathroom that i doubt would have been cleaned in the past year. The most incredible thing was that the worst flats were ones being shown by tenancy agencies. I felt embarrassed for them, some of the places were so disgusting. 

Out of the six or so places we trooped round to today, we filled in one application form. And oh, how i want that flat. It is perfect. Well, i lie. the bathroom could be a little nicer, but everything else about it is wonderful. It felt so nice and homey. Unfortunately the old flat hunt game is starting to resemble more and more what it was like for us in Melbourne - competing with a mass of other people for the few good and reasonably priced flats. So you have to be chatty for as long as possible with the decision maker so that they remember your face when it comes to the crunch. How on earth would a person decide who is going to look after a house the best from the questions asked on an application form, really? There is essentially nothing to differentiate, except for maybe handwriting. 

My fingers and toes are crossed. But we do still have a couple of weeks to find somewhere and we are lucky enough to have a back up in case we lose out on all fronts. The bonus of the back up is that we can be fussy...but the longer we wait to find somewhere, the harder it will be to find flatties.

Crap how did it get to be twenty past 8? Time for more work of the crafty kind while the boy is out being a bogan. Woop woop.

the latest obsession

well, other than flat hunting anyway. But how about i fill in the flat hunt progress to start?

I had a great big stress last night. It had been two straights of very below average too expensive flat listings on trademe and i was irritable. Disputes ensued. Then relatively solved. Just before i headed off to bed i checked one more time...and found another place, in Kilbirnie, with great potential. So i've jacked up to see that place tomorrow. Am feeling quietly confident...

And we went to see the previously mentioned excitement creating looked really amazing flat this afternoon. Hmm. Well, it was nice. But not amazing. I had to force myself to envision it without all its studenty overcrowding furniture and see it as i would have it...but it was still nowhere near as big as the photos lead me to believe. I think a wide angle lens was at play there. So we chatted and got on well with one of the current tenants who was showing people around, and the person who decides who gets the place, and we completed our application first. In a very hilarious few minutes, a girl was stressing completely next to me, trying to get hers filled out before i did. Her tension was ebbing out all over the place, it was very hard not to smile. Apparently decision is on tuesday. If this other place tomorrow arvo is better, i'm going to push the guy to let it to us. Wait and see for now though.

The other obsession is more creative and has been curing for a while now. In fact, it began when the boy and i were living in Methven, and i found the coolest girls' annual. They have simply the sweetest and naivest (is that a word??) illustrations. And no ten year old girl in our time would take any of the stories remotely seriously. But they're great fun ... I managed to pick up 3 for $2 on our way up to Taranaki, and Tim's dad had some lying around that ended up in one of the many boxes that got passed our way. Which all means - another project! Hopefully i'll have it ready enough for Martinborough, but if not, it can wait til the March fairs. 

Meantime i have been doing plenty of sewing and embroidery for ipod covers. And mooching around earlier trying to come up with a grocery list i came up with yet another thing i'd like to do this year -try and cook as many different dinners as i can, and actually make proper use of all the Healthy Food Guides and other random cookbooks i have. Gee, how bout i over commit myself yet again? Plus i've come up with yet another small business idea..well, actually, three, but only one is actionable with not a whole lot of capital. Possibly more on that later.

dreaming flat out

something is a bit screwed up with the date setting on here, and it's annoying me. Hmm.

I think i have found the flat of my dreams, in kilbirnie. It is perfect in every way, except it's not ours (yet). I even dreamed about it last night. The gutting thing is that it seems everyone else knows it's freaking great flat for a great price so i'm stressing that we won't get it and won't find an alternative place that fits our criteria so absolutely perfectly. I do, however, have a plan of attack. I have already talked to the landlord and she knows i am in love with it, so hopefully that works in my favour. Fingers crossed...

but as usual all this flat changing stuff ain't cheap. At the rate we're going we'll probably end up setting up our own flat rather than going into an established one, which means organising things like a fridge, washing machine and couches. We have everything already except those rather major white ware and furniture things. And what with the wedding, and the fair, and after our holiday...well, i'm going to be beyond broke by the end of it. And then of course i'll make a squillion dollars at the martinborough fair and all will be hunky dory again. 

oh, and i'm going to apply for craft 2.0. And the newtown and petone fairs in the next few days i hope. That'll keep me busy!