No Sydney training for es… :-(
Arghh! It was roumoured that there would be some dexterra training in Sydney coming up. Well, they finally confirmed today who was paying for accom and flights (Kaz or Tesltra) but then went and booked the tickets before confirming with Brent or I that we were okay to go!
I was asked to fill out and return some forms this morning, and when I went to drop them in Jackie showed me the dates – 30th Jan to 2nd Feb!!!!!
Now, usually I would be thrilled, and I was very flattered that they were going to spend all this money on my training, even with such short notice, but Joanna Newsom (who I missed when she came out to Australia last year) is on the 30th and Roger Waters $350 ticket front-row seats is on the 1st/2nd Feb!!
They even wanted to fly me home early from the course, then I could go to my roger waters concert but I would miss out on Joanna and have been so axiously waiting for that angelic magical night!
Luckily Phuong is going to go instead, who recently joined our group and was wanting to do some training. They are trying to change the flights right now.
It’s also the first week of Arieh working at Rosebud, and I would like to be there to offer support and food 
Yes, we were finally offered a house! Arieh has already driven up to sign the lease, and I will sign it tomorrow. We are also going to the Howard Arkley exhibition with Arieh’s father tomorrow (yay! A whole gallery of Arkley! I can’t wait to be engulfed by those fuzzy glorious paintings), and I am meeting my dad at 2pm because I won two free tickets to see Stone (the Bikey movie) at ACMI.
Then Labassa open day on Sunday! I will have to brush up for my tour guiding. We had our first ‘Friends of Labassa’ committee meeting on Tuesday, which was very lovely to see everyone (and Felicity gave me a stack of old wedding magazines, including one from 1956 which her wedding dress is in!) but the events leading up to it were interesting and very lucky!
The bushfires knocked out powerlines, dropping victoria’s energy by 20%! There were blackouts all over the place. I got out of work, stepped right onto a train (although I noticed it was meant to be the train running half an hour ago), arieh picked me up, we got dinner, mum called me and asked if the power was out – Marong had lost it a while and was expecting to lose it for hours. I said we were fine and just the trains were dodgy.
We got home about 6:30pm, started eating dinner, put on the news, and just as the new reader lady started talking about the blackouts and asking people to turn their air conditioners off, our power went out!! You could hear the people in the neighbourhood coming outside and asking around about the power. It was nice to think maybe they would get together and have a big street party if the power stayed off!
Lucky we had dinner and all!
I drove down to labassa anyway – the power was still on there!Some of the traffic lights on the way were out (and no police yet) but some still working. The power came back on at about 8:30pm arieh said.
I will miss moving away from here.
I am meeting Irene tonight, in Acland St. I was describing things she could do on the St kilda foreshore, the pier & tea house, walk down to Luna Park and across to acland and I realised how beautiful and fun it is in St Kilda and how much I will miss it. It will be nice being near the beach still though, in Chelsea.
It is lovely to lie on the bed, reading a book, hearing people come and go from their homes, music, kids laughing and playing, playing instruments, parties in the backyard on a hot summer night…
okay gotta go meet Irene!
Lotsa love!
