This afternoon we took a picnic blanket and some pillows and went to the local Lisgar Gardens. Relaxed under a shady tree for a while. Then went for a walk through the ‘bush’ part of the park. Halfway through my walk I noticed I’d picked up a hitch hiker. A leech had attached itself to my foot. And it was stuck on firmly. I decided to let him finish his meal so then he’d drop off by himself. The bugger sure took his time about it; 1 hour 40mins later he finally came off.

The leech feeding on my foot

The leech after it had finished feasting on my blood

I was amazed how quickly the leech could move. Even after feasting on blood it was still able to move very quickly. No wonder these things latch on quick before you realise it. Actually within two minutes of the first leech coming off, I noticed a second leech on my shoe trying to have a go. I wasn’t willing to wait another hour and 40 minutes though and flicked it off into the garden.

Below are some photos from the garden

Last night we went to the Sydney Latin Festival; formerly the Sydney Salsa Congress. The evening schedule was as follows:

• 7.25pm arrive at venue and buy tickets
• 7.30pm join line and wait to go inside
• 8.10pm doors open and we go inside
• 8.40pm show starts
• 10.40pm show finishes. Party begins.

I didn’t go last year as I was dying from the flu. But the number of people attending last night definitely seemed to be down from when I went two years ago. Although maybe I remember it wrong. Everything just seemed to go more smoothly. Even once the party started the dance floor didn’t seem as crowded. The shows were mixed. Some were dull. Some were good, and some where fantastic. The best were the current world champion west coast swing couple. Their display was just amazing. Funny enough I found most of the ‘salsa’ displays to be dull. I really don’t care that a couple (or team) can do a choreographed routine at a hundred miles an hour. That’s not entertainment. The displays that the crowd liked were the ones that had something different. Something funny.

Time for a new mobile. My old Motorola Milestone is now about 25 months old and annoying me more and more with its slowness and errors. I’ve been keeping an eye on the price of a new Samsung Galaxy S2 but at the moment it’s about $569. More than I really wanted to pay. But I checked with Virgin Mobile and they had the phone included in a two year contract at $49 per month. I’m currently paying $39 per month so over two years its only (24*$10) $240 for the phone. The plan details are the same as my current plan. So time to commit. Last Saturday morning I ordered the phone with Virgin and today it arrived by courier. I’ve been playing with it for a few hours. Reinstalling my programs and setting it up the way I like. So far I’m impressed.

Today Linda and I did a day trip to the Mount Thomah Botanic Gardens. The thinking was if it was another horrible 33 degree hot day in Sydney, at least at the top of the mountain it would be a bit cooler. It’s about a 1hr 15 minute drive from home to the gardens. When there we walked around the gardens, making sure to step around the hundreds of little lizards that were out trying to catch some sunshine.

At the beginning of the month I signed up for a photo scavenger hunt through a group on Google+. The rules were simple. Take 10 photos, one for each topic. The photos must be taken in the month of January (no using old photos).

• Orange (the colour)
• Flower
• Water
• Skin
• Love
• Cookies
• Whiskers
• Secret
• Weather
• Joy

Here are my attempts. The only editing I’ve done to these pictures is cropping.

Orange (the colour)

This was the first photo of the collection that I got. I was in a park (looking for wedding venues) when I noticed a scraggly bush in the garden which had beautiful orange flowers. Luckily I had a camera with me at the time so spent a few minutes getting this picture.

Flower

I took a few flower photos during the month but this ended up being the pick of the bunch (pun intended). This was taken at the gardens next to old Parliament House in Canberra.

Here are the other flower photos I took that I liked.


These two photos were also taken at the old Parliament House. It was a rush to get the picture with the two bees in it but I’m glad how it turned out.

I really like this photo. I took it at the local park near home. I love the fly on the flower.

Water

This picture was taken of a ‘rainfall’ type water feature in the city. I still don’t know if I like it. It’s interesting, seeing the water drops stopped in motion. But I’m not sure if that’s enough to make it a good photo.

This was a runner up picture. A fountain in the city. I just like the shapes that come out of the water.

Skin

I decided to do a self portrait for this category. I was aiming for a more gritty photo. And tried to use light and shadow. To add a bit more interest I also used a dragon tattoo (yes its a stick on).

This was the other photo that I considered.

Love

This was the hardest category for me to come up with a photo. And its the photo I like the least. I find it boring and don’t think it has much interest as a photo. But at least I crossed the category off my list.

Cookies

Whiskers

Our two toy cats got their moment of fame.

Secret

This photo was fun to make. My friend Linda is in town visiting so she helped out by playing the ‘victim’. A mixture of corn syrup, water, food dye and chocolate sauce gave us the blood. The key was a souvenir that Julia had from Dubbo Gaol last year.

Weather

I thought I was going to have a dull sunshine picture until about midway through the month when it started raining. This picture from our balcony at home.

Joy

This was another fun photo. Linda agreed to jump from a chair on our balcony. With the right angle the sky was the only background. I would have liked more light on Linda’s face to brighten it a bit but I did the best with what I had available.

So that was my January photography. I really enjoyed doing it as it got me back into using my camera. I find the hardest thing it thinking of what to take photos of and this scavenger hunt was a great solution for that.

I got a call from work at 9.00pm last night with a problem with a server. At 10.40pm I went to the office so I could access things I couldn’t get to from home. At 11.30am this morning I went home and crashed into bed. Yep, worked all night. A very very very long night.
But amazingly while I was working I wasn’t too bad. I think the fact that I was doing something all night kept me going. If I’d had to stop for an hour or so I might not have made it.

This is our wedding day, but I’m pretty sure this is how jokes start: An Australian and a Russian get married in Chinese gardens on St Patrick’s Day….

We’ve found our wedding rings. Another thing to check off the wedding check list. I decided to get a yellow gold, flat, 6mm wide plain band. My dad had a plain wedding band and I always liked his decided I didn’t want anything too fancy. Also last year Julia got me a ring for my birthday which now has minor scratches all over it. So I figure if I get a plain band it will be easier to get it polished and cleaned.
Julia got a fancier wedding ring; one that matched her engagement ring very nicely. Yellow gold, a few small diamonds, and the ring has a ‘V’ type shape in it which fits around the diamond in her engagement ring.

I just found out, because someone told me, that the date we are getting married, 17th March, is also Saint Patricks Day. Fiddle de de. It least it should be easy to remember our anniversary.

Also my full birth certificate that I ordered last Friday arrived today. Yay! Now I can complete the paperwork for getting married.

This morning I was going to water the plants on our balcony but I couldn’t find the blue bucket I use for that purpose. It wasn’t in the laundry where it normally lives. Julia thought it was so funny that I couldn’t see it that she took this picture. See if you can see the blue bucket.

Damn sneaky bucket! The yellow bucket has a hole in it so I can’t use that

Yesterday we checked out of the hotel and made our way to the National Gallery of Australia to see the Renaissance exhibit. There were a people at the exhibit but it wasn’t so crowded that you needed to push people out of the way to see the artwork. Most of the artwork was about ~400 years old. I think its just amazing looking at something that was produced by someone so long ago is still around today. And the colours on some of the artwork was still bold and bright today. As for the content of most of the pictures, I didn’t really care for. Lots of picture of Mary and baby Jesus. I don’t know why but all the proportions of baby Jesus just looked wrong. And made the child look warped, or evil in the paintings.
After the gallery it was time to leave Canberra. A quick stop at the Big Merino in Goulburn and then drove all the way back to Sydney.

The main purpose of our Canbeera trip was to take a nine year old to the Questacon for the first time. We spent severals hours there. The kids thoroughly enjoying it more than the adults. But the adults ejoyed it more than they’d like to let on. After Questacon we went nearby to the Old Parliament House. We didn’t actually go inside but instead went to the beautiful flower gardens next door. The flowers were out in bloom and looked amazing. So many different types of roses and several beds a large happy looking Daisy’s.
After the old, time for the new. We went to the Parliament House.This visit we went inside and went for a walk around the building. When we were leaving I read a postcard of information on the Parliament House. It cost 1.1 billion dollars to build. The flag is the size of double Decker bus. The flag pole on the roof is the largest stainless steel structure in the southern hemisphere.
In the evening we caught up with locals Trevor and Linda. Before dinner we walked through the mall and came a show that was a cross between roller skating, and the lion king set to pop music. We watched for a while but there weren’t enough falls.

At 3.00pm we left the city of Sydney on the road to Canberra. A 3.5 hour road trip later and we arrived in our Nations Capital.  We checked into the Rydges Lakeside hotel and then headed out again for some dinner.  In October last year when we were in Canberra we had dinner at a restaurant called Zeffirelli (55 Woolley St, Dickson) and we were keen to try it again. Once again the italian styled meals were delicious and pretty well priced; $17 for my HUGE chicken schnitzel and chips.  Julia also loved her pasta marinara with freshly cooked tomato sauce and no large amounts of oil at the bottom of the dish which is what usually happens.  Julia also had the pannacotta for dessert which she said was delicious. We’ll definitely be coming here when back in Canberra.

There is a bit of paperwork that you have to do when getting married. They should provide some sort of FAQ sheet on the process because I have no idea. I found out I needed a full birth certificate to lodge a required notice of intent to marry form. Fine and dandy except I don’t have a full birth certificate. I think I may have had one once. I have a passport and I think you need a full birth certificate to get that. But I got that years ago and if I had a certificate then its since been lost in time.  So I downloaded the form to request a full birth certificate.  However three forms of identification, certified by a justice of the peace, are required with the form.  An internet search showed that the local library had a justice of the peace there. But when I went the JP hadn’t shown up. I ended up finding a JP at a real estate agency who was kind enough to verify my identification.  I packaged up the paperwork in an express post envelope and sent it on its way.  I hope it gets back to me quickly.

Well a wedding date has been set for Saturday 17 March 2012, which is only about 66 days away. We found and booked a venue and have arranged (initially) a celebrant to do the ceremony. Unfortunately we’ve had to limit the number of guests to a very small number, about 20, to try and keep costs under control. It will mean I won’t be able to share our special day with many of my friends and family which is definitely disappointing.
Its one of those rare times when Sydney disappoints with everything being so much more expensive than my little home town. For example if we were to get married in Townsville catering would be ~$40 per person, while in Sydney its ~$130. A wedding photographer in Townsville would be $650. In Sydney we’ve received quotes of $3,650! Needless to say we won’t be getting a professional photographer for the wedding.

The Christmas tree that we purchased back in December came to an end today. The green was fading, being replaced by brown. And it had stopped soaking up the water from the bowel. Yesterday was Russian Christmas, so the tree managed to survive two Christmas’ which was pretty good. I had my doubts it would even last until December 25. I got out my little saw and cut off all the branches and then cut the trunk into 3 pieces. Put it all into rubbish bags and then put it into the rubbish bins. Kind of a sad way for the tree to end.

So we’re getting married. And we’re going to have a wedding. A small wedding. So we need to find a venue. Easy? Not by a long shot. It seems in Sydney that the minimum number of guests they will cater for is 60-80, depending on venue. And the package prices put that minimum at around $8,000. And thats only the reception. The cost of a ceremony location is on top of that.
Google searches are a good way to find venues, but the websites of the venues themselves are often lacking. With either no pricing online, or they provide pricing and say there are ‘minimum numbers required’ but don’t say what those minimum numbers are.
Some of the wedding forums are obviously in a different price range to me when there are comments like; we had an intimate wedding of 500 guests at a cost of $80,000.
The search continues…

Why didn’t they just say ‘No cars allowed’?

A last minute decision on new years eve had us boarding a 10.30pm train into the city last night.  The train was pretty much empty when we got on but there was a crowd getting off at Milsons Point near the city.  The police/train organisers had closed off one side of the train station and were herding everyone around to the park under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  Before getting into the park we had to go through a bag search as no alcohol was allowed into the park. It only took a few minutes to get through. Once on the other side of the bag check we made our way down towards the water. However we didn’t get too close as the crowds were huge. And the people were pretty pushy and shovey.  We found a spot where people weren’t moving and waited the 45 minutes until midnight. Our position was side on to the bridge so wasn’t that great.  But when you look up you could see a lot of the fireworks. The fireworks lasted about 15 minutes with crowd going goo goo over the show. I thought it was just average but I’m not a huge fan of fireworks.
After the show we made our way back to the train station.  Because we’d been closer to the back of the crowd during the fireworks, it meant we were at the front of the crowd when everyone turned around to leave.  It only took 15 minutes and we were on the train heading home. I had expected the train to be packed but it was practically empty when we boarded. We must have been quick enough to catch the train before the crowds.  I had expected to be in bed before midnight, but we ended up going to the city, watching the fireworks, and getting home after 1am. Not how I expected to see the new years eve in, but it was a night of good memories.