Checking in

Happy Australia Day! (26/1) Three day weekend!

On Monday, I'm going to Ferntree Gully with some people from my class (or without them, if they can't go) to do the Thousand Steps. Apparently, there are just short of 800 steps, but I reckon by the time you've done the entire 5km walk, it'd feel like 10,000. My first big training challenge for 'The Trek'.

Somehow I've also managed to get myself roped into doing a 14.2km run at the end of March, for charity, with my class. With the debacle of my brother's run in the back of my mind, I'm wondering what I've signed myself up for. But I have 8 weeks to train. Hmmm...

I've been busy setting up a blog for donations to raise money to get our airfares and equipment for 'The Trek'. I've also set up two fundraising pages for the charities for whom we want to raise money. Be forewarned - I'm not posting details here, so there are no link backs or search engine hits, but I will be spamming everyone I know with links to the pages. I hope everyone will be kind enough to forward the links to anyone they think might want to help in some way, or at least come up with ideas to help me promote this thing (keeping in mind I'm time and money poor right now). I've not done anything like this before, and it's a little overwhelming at the moment. But...I'm determined to get what we need, get ourselves there, and raise as much money as we can in the process.

I almost had to use my newly acquired first aid knowledge this morning. I was reading my book on the tram and half sleeping, when a girl across from me suddenly stood up and said, "Oh shit!" Across the road, a guy was lying face down on the footpath. He moved just slightly, like he was shaking, but then just lay there. The girl got up to call the emergency line and the girl beside her went to make the driver stop. I got my shit together to get off the tram. It's funny, my mind was racing, but I played out in my head exactly what I was going to do without having to think about it. As it turned out, I didn't have to get off the tram - and I don't know why, but the driver didn't open the doors or stop anyway. Three people on that side of the street ran over to help the guy just as we were working out whether to jump the tram or not. Still, my heart raced for a while afterwards. It was interesting - and disappointing - to see the lack of concern from most people on the tram. We were only two blocks from a major hospital, so I'm sure the guy got whatever help he needed. I've seen much, much worse, but the feeling in your stomach is always the same.

I finish my temp job on Tuesday. I'll have money to pay the rent, which is good. Also good is that I have an interview with the head office of that company on Wednesday. They sent around an internal email about an admin job. I enquired about the salary and got the usual 'depends on experience, send us your resume' response. I did, and I told them the salary I wanted and that I assumed it was a lot more than the position is offering. They replied back asking to see me. That can only be positive. And it's in the city. And it's close to school. And it's on the 9th floor, so I'll have plenty of stairs on which to train every day. I wish I didn't need something like this so much, coz I don't want to push my luck with the universe right now. Still, I'm hopeful.

That's all for now. I did a kickboxing workout on Wednesday night and now it's kicking my arse. Every time I moved last night, my whole body hurt, so I didn't sleep well. Laughing or coughing today? I felt like I'd been operated on all over again. Good pain. But it's made me tired. I'll be recovered just in time to hike on Monday. Lucky me, huh! ;-)

It's definitely happening

Dad and I are going to trek the military track at K0-k0-d@ (don't want my family googling and ending up here!) in August.

I have faith the money and means to get there will present themselves without too much hard work. I'm looking at being sponsored and raising money for a charity or two. If I'm going to put myself through that much pain, I may as well do it for a good cause.

Speaking of pain, the training is going to hurt (in a good way), so I'm starting now. The more I do now, the less it will hurt (hopefully!) when I'm there. That's the theory I'm working on anyway.

The first day of the trip? My birthday!

Yes!

I love, love, love my course. It's interesting, it's fun, the trainers are great, I'm learning an insane amount about all sorts of things, not just fitness, and the rest of my class are cool people.

I feel inspired and excited every time I go there. On Saturday, we're going to have a big debate about training techniques and opinions/theories that really get people fired up. That should be fun! This afternoon, before class, I happened to run into our trainer when we were in the city looking for something to eat, so we sat and had a really good chat for about half an hour on a bunch of stuff I'll post about another time. The best bit, though, is on Saturday he's bringing a whole lot of research he's done to back up why things (in the fitness industry) should or shouldn't be done certain ways. Because I'm a geek in a lot of ways, I have my own research to take along. It'll be interesting to see what's the same and what differs, depending on the sources.
Oh, and there's a guy coming in on Monday, before we start our session, to spend half an hour helping our class write specific resumes for the different types of jobs we're all applying for over the next few weeks.

It's all good. :-)

This and that

Ooooh boy! Hey, Jones, have you ever been to FF Platinum in the city? Holy cow! I got gym lust in there today. I checked it out with another guy in my class on our lunch break today. Man, I've never seen so many spin bikes in one place - or treadmills, or boxing stuff. Geez! There's even security to get in the damn door; the receptionist has to buzz you in. J and I had to sign visitor passes just to be allowed in to look around. We felt dumb when we couldn't find the exit, coz it was hidden behind some indoor plants, but the receptionist says that happens to everyone. We thought it was just a ploy to make people stay longer. Can't find your way out? Well, may as well do some more weights. We escaped with a couple of magazines, just because we could.

Speaking of boys, my brother is still in hospital. He ate and held down his first food a day or so ago, but the doc said something about having clots in his liver so he needed to stay. He was supposed to go home tomorrow, however that's now been changed to Monday. He's not allowed to eat beef at all and I think that's to do with not being able to digest it. I guess he'll tell me the whole story tomorrow when I visit him. (Jones, to answer your question, he did a 7km fun run in 40C heat. He passed out at the finish line and hit his head when he fell. He was so dehydrated that he screwed up his kidneys, liver and did muscle damage. Apparently, he also had some kind of intestinal bug that hadn't shown itself yet, which made things worse - and explains why he couldn't stop throwing up for a few days, even after they hydrated him. He had at least one blood transfusion, because he had hardly any platelets. That's the short version! And I read an article from our lovely major newspaper the other day saying there was no reason for people to drink 8 glasses of water a day. I think I can confidently say that's crap.)

Yet more on the subject of boys. I got a slightly bizarro email from my ex study partner's girlfriend, asking me what my feelings for him were/are, because she thinks I would make a better girlfriend for him than her and she couldn't do everything for him that he needs, but I can. Very strange. I replied that I didn't think that was a good plan (in a nicer, more diplomatic way). We exchanged a couple more emails. They're both still talking to me and each other (he emailed to let me know she told him she'd emailed me), so I guess it's all good. Just odd. Well, it's not all good. They have a number of things to sort out. I've just been taken out of the equation and that bit is good. Like I need to get into something that complicated!

Work is......aaaaaaaarrrrgggh! I have no idea how people do the same job, exactly the same thing, all day every day, indefinitely. I stuffed up a bank deposit slip, so my banking was out the other day by a couple of thousand dollars. It was easily fixed, but I was pissed off that I made a mistake - my first. Considering I've been having to balance a couple of million every day, and I've never even done this kind of accounts before, I was impressed with my run of no mistakes. That's one side of the job. There's also a lot of things that are super labour intensive. I have no idea who came up with the ideas and I've shown them ways to make life easier already, but damn, there are things I would have thought could be done with a press of a button in their accounting program, but noooo it's done in an excel spreadsheet and takes days to complete. Eh, I'm getting paid and that's what matters.

The people are nice. It's definitely going to be like leaving a full time job when I do leave. Temping a day here and a day there, despite having to learn whole new systems just to get by for 8 hours, is much easier. I'm a bit indecisive about what I want to do now, with regards to working full time - or not. I need to find a balance between earning enough money to survive, having a job that will provide that, getting experience in a gym (which won't provide the money yet), studying, and doing everything else I need to do each week, without burning out. It's been on my mind in the last week and I haven't come up with a solution yet. I'm confident that solution will present itself soon, whatever it is.

My diet at the moment is all out of kilter and I'm not sure why. I'm not interested in eating meat, nor do I really care for chocolate or much processed sweet food right now. I'm eating a lot of fruit and yogurt, some bread, and a whole lot of gluten/wheat/lactose free stuff. Maybe it's the heat, but it doesn't even occur to me to eat things I would normally eat. It's not good, because I'm getting tired and losing energy - and putting weight on (or at least not losing any, anyway). I don't know how to get around that right now. My life is a little unbalanced at the moment, so I suppose it's just manifesting in different ways, food being one of them. It's just frustrating.

I'm tired and can't think of whatever else it was I had to report, so I'll leave it here. I have a funny pic of how my cat chose to sleep in the sweltering heat the other night. I might post that tomorrow.

Update on my brother

The doc rang mum last night and said he's going to be ok, but it'll be a while yet. He had a blood transfusion, because he had a seriously low platelet count. He's done kidney, liver and muscle damage, but it's thankfully not permanent. He'll have a long recovery time, and will spend the week in hospital, but he'll be ok. Thanks for all the thoughts.

I'll say it once

Muscle does not weigh more than fat! Muscle is more dense, so if you're 70kg and mostly muscle, you'll look smaller than if you're 70kg and mostly fat.

1kg of feathers weighs exactly the same as 1kg of rocks.

And 1kg of muscle weighs exactly the same as 1kg of fat.

It's been a long 48 hours

My brother did a 7km fun run on Saturday in 40C heat (104F). He collapsed at the finish line was was taken by ambulance to the closest hospital. They didn't have the correct facilities to run tests on him, so he was taken to another hospital in the early hours of Sunday morning. I'm too tired to go into detail now, but we now know it was worse than what we were told.

He ate breakfast on Sunday morning and, for reasons I can't comprehend, the doctors let him leave, even though he could not hold any liquid or food. I went to see him at his fiance's parent's house last night and he wasn't doing well and was still throwing up. They said they'd take him back to hospital today if he hadn't improved. Not long after I left, his inlaws decided he needed to go back already. They took him to one hospital, which again couldn't do the tests required, so he was transferred to yet another hospital (the 4th and counting).

Now? They think he might have issues with his kidneys because they're still not functioning correctly and he's having a blood transfusion some time today. I'm not entirely sure why, but all visitation apart from his fiance and her parents has been disallowed for the next couple of days, so I can't even go to see him.

My brother is the one in the family who always has the best of luck, lands on his feet, meets cool people without even trying and for whom nothing seems to go wrong. I guess he's a bit like me; when he gets sick, he does it in style.

Any good health thoughts would be appreciated.

How about educating people?

This really pisses me off.

OBESE people as young as 14 would get free weight-reduction surgery under a radical Australian Medical Association proposal to tackle the obesity crisis.

The Opposition and health groups have backed the scheme for publicly funded weight loss surgery, which was proposed by the association in a submission to the State Government.

Full story here.

Yeah, let's allow parents to keep making their children fat, but hey, that's ok, coz they can have major surgery when they reach puberty and all will be well in the world. How about taking your kids to a park and letting them run around, instead of sitting their arses in front of a computer or tv all day every day? How about giving them a vegetable or two, instead of something out of a box, or can, or drive through? No, let's not try to avoid the problem. Let's have things become a problem, then quick fix them with lap band surgery while the kid's body is still not fully developed. Yeah, that's smart.

Surprise visitor

Mum sent me a text message this morning asking that I call her to help calm her down. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to see first thing, when you're only half awake - or any time, really. There were a multitude of things that could possibly have happened, and I wondered which it was. It turns out it was nothing I expected.

She got up early and went to the laundry to do a load of washing. She got part of the way through putting things in the machine when she saw one of these right beside the machine.

That guy is an Eastern Brown snake. Do they react to movement? Um, yeah. Are they venomous? One of the most venomous in the world. So, naturally, mum freaked...then phoned around for a snake handler to come and take him away.

She had to pay $50 (it was more than that, but that was all the cash she had in the house) for the guy to collect it. I get that he's a private person and has expenses (he had to drive from an hour away), but surely that kind of service should be subsidised by the local council, or something. But that's a soap box item for another time.

Anyway, mum's fine, albeit a little spooked. She was pissed at first, when I laughed, because I like snakes, but felt better when I told her how my housemate locked me outside the house with a massive spider. So we're even.

Non-grouch

This would be a grouch and on an entirely different blog, if it were not for the happy ending.

For reasons I still cannot explain to myself, I decided to check my credit card balance late last night, just before I went to sleep. It was a stupid idea in the first place. A $35 late fee for December caught my eye. Considering I'd made 4 payments in December, I was more than peeved. I didn't realise how peeved until I woke in the middle of the night thinking of how the phone conversation would go today. So positive affirmations as you're about to go to sleep don't always work. Check.

Each month, and always, I put at least 3-4 times more into my credit card than the required 'minimum monthly payment'. Since I didn't have that amount in December, I made weekly automatic payments so I'd at least be paying something. I was apparently $20 short of the minimum. For that $20, they charged me $35 and put my freakin' account on hold (I found that out while on the phone trying not to get irrate). Three times, I asked to speak to a supervisor. The woman refused. But I am smart and the bank has a complaints hotline. I told her not to worry about her lack of helpfulness, because I had another phone call to make and hung up.

The lovely Matt on the complaints line understood perfectly why I'd be pissed that I'd been charged a fee almost twice the amount I was supposedly short. I suggested that 'late payment fee' wasn't really an apt term when even if you make 4 payments in the month, you still get charged for not paying. He agreed, said he could see that all my payments till December had been consistently way above the minimum, so he made a couple of phone calls, got the fee and the hold removed. Nice boy.

So there, Yenni in customer service. You could be more helpful next time and I might write something nice about you, too!

How quickly things change

I just spent the last 45 minutes on the phone to my study partner. Former study partner. He's decided to stay where he is in north Qld and has a job starting Friday. I understand his reasons. I don't agree with them. He's running away from himself and trying to find himself at the same time. I know that place and it sucks. I did exactly the same thing when I was his age, except I came down here from up there.

I've seen him walk through the front door of his house and almost physically buckle from the stress of the environment he lives in, yet when he's away from there, even for a moment, he's a different, happy person. I get why he needs to be away. He acknowledges it might not be the best choice to make, because there's a child and a partner involved, but it's what he feels is the right thing at this moment. I told him I'd support that choice, even if I didn't like it, and I will. I'm both happy and sad for him.

So...the Plan changes slightly. But that's ok, too. Mostly.

Well then...

Sometimes, ya just want to say, "F-you!" I just had one of those moments. But when you're only half of an equation, you can't control the result; if it's not what you want, you can deal with it gracefully, or say, "F-you!" I'm choosing the former. Sometimes what you hoped was a horse turns out to be a stubborn mule upon closer inspection. Not much you can do about that.

As part of my new determination to be positive about as much as I can, let me say that I'm positive I do not want the job I started today as a full time position. I'm positive I would go insane if I had to do accounts for a living. I'm positive that by the end of the week, I'll actually understand all the terminology used in teaching me today. I'm positive I'll appreciate Saturday when it comes. I'm positive I'll save money by taking my lunch to work every day, because there is nowhere close by to buy food. And I'm positive I will fall asleep on the tram to work, every morning. I need that extra half hour sleep.

Actually, if I'd have taken my regular attitude to work with me today, I would have been pissed off early on. It surprised me that my resolve to stay happy, in spite of various frustrations, really worked. This job is a challenge. New terms to learn, a whole new computer program to learn, a new industry. It's good.

And my housemate cleaned and vacuumed the house while I was at work. When I got home, I sat with my feet up on the couch while he cleaned. I was smart enough to thank him afterwards! (And I bought him icecream yesterday, so I think we're even.)

Grateful

I have a lot to be grateful about right now. Ok, so I'm not too grateful about not having a regular job and being down to my last money, but hey I start temping tomorrow, so I'll be back on track again with an income from next week. Thankfully!

My short term goal is to get a job with the forensics (fraud) division of a certain company. I'll be emailing the HR person when I'm done posting this. However, I'm not sure they have anyone from that division in this city. It can't hurt to ask.

I start back at my course next week, in a new gym, in new premises, which I'm excited about. I was hoping to lose some weight and get a bit more fit over the break, but despite my efforts, nothing's changed, so I'm a bit frustrated. Just a matter of time...

I'm grateful for still having a study partner. He and his brother and another guy went out on a sea kayak in north Qld a couple of days ago and it started to leak. They got swept out and had to swim more than two hours back to shore, then had to walk another three hours, because they'd drifted so far, back to where they'd started on the beach. Apparently, he's pretty sunburnt, but I told him to invest in some burn gel from a pharmacy and he says it's helped a lot. He thought I was going to kick his butt for getting burnt, because I'd lectured him about it before he left on his trip. I'm just glad nothing else happened.

NYE last night was stinking hot. The hottest on record, apparently. There were less people out than last year and I can see why people would have stayed home. Even at the bar we were at, I think as much water was being served as alcohol. It was a good night and I'm grateful for the friends I've made. One girl reminded me that it was last NYE that we met.

I never would have thought then that I'd be here now, without a real job, without money, but with loyal friends, heading in a new direction with a new career plan...and being almost completely content. If I can have my niece and her girls here by this time next year...that would be icing.