Pics as promised

These are pics of my neighborhood, Bayview :-)  It's a very nice place to live among the millionaires!  Now if only there were no douches or midgees...

Welcome to Bayview :-)

Those apartments are the Michie Court!!

This is the running path.  Bayview is a circle.  Start at Michie Court and then I run down 

this path for half a mile.  

The marina is in the middle of all the houses.   I run the path then take 2 little bridges and end up here.  

Here's a shot of the marina without the sunset, a little further down the circle.  

Typical massive Bayview homes.  Everyone pulls their boat right up to their house.  

Sigh, how the other half lives...lol

Now turning back towards my place.  Idk if you can make it out, but this hill over looks the Darwin harbor.  

And right back near home, the start of the marina at sunset.  

Just cause, here is my balcony with some of my plants.  My mom says I look like an old Polish woman, whatever that means.  I think she is referring to the number of pots with struggling plants...

Baking Soda!!

I'm obsessed.  I saw on damn Pinterest that you can wash your face with just a paste made of baking soda and water.  Obvs I tried it tonight and now I am officially obsessed with baking soda!  My skin feels awesome!  I washed with the paste, left it on only a minute and then followed it up with a moisturizing mask.  However, my research has shown me you can leave it on overnight!  I read tons of reviews because I was nervous and the only negative I found was that it dries your skin, so make sure to moisturize.  I love baking soda!

There are tons of other uses for the BS.  I found this article very interesting:  http://voices.yahoo.com/25-amazing-uses-baking-soda-youve-never-thought-11585.html  


Try it, it's great :)

Quinoa

Over the course of time I have finally eaten a one pound bag of quinoa.  I tried to REALLY hard to like it, but truth is quinoa blows.  It's so bland!  Today I made baked quinoa with broccoli and cheese.  Obvs I want it to be mac and cheese but instead it's quinoa and low fat cheese made with skim milk and no butter.  Not delicious.  I found this shit on Pinterest.  I clicked on the link to see the recipe and reviews.  Lots of people say they love this, but much how mashed cauliflower tastes nothing like mashed potatoes, quinoa and "cheese" is nothing like velveeta shells and cheese :-(  People who say it's delicious are lying to themselves.  

Back to Pinterest, it irritates me that when you look at the women's apparel section, all the bitches on there are so skinny.  Then you look at the food, and so much chunkaaa food!  I am an emotional mess!  LOL  but seriously, neon and bright colored skinny pants are all the rage right now.  My question is how skinny do you need to be to wear these? Soooo tight and soooo bright, if you are bigger than a size 2, can you rock this look?  I tried on some burnt orange cropped pants today, not even that bright.  From the front they looked ok and then I saw my butt!  Not a good situation!  I saw some posted on Pinterest and bitches that wear this shit have legs that are small as arms.  Can I rock the bright pants or do I leave that to the supermodels?  

Oh the shame!

Guess what I JUST did?  I bought a Nicki Minaj song on itunes...  I AM the problem!  But ughh, that Pound the Alarm song is so good for running.  I am not admitting it's good, it's just so upbeat!  Don't judge me, I will still continue to hate on her!

SPEAKING OF HATING, I finished "50 Shades" this week.  Only took me 6 weeks.  I was telling my mom about how much I hated it, to which mom replied, "Alexandra, I don't have to read that book to know that it sucks."  Mom is so wise.  Still, I am happy I read it just so that I am not in the dark.  Happy to have read it, sorry that I paid money for it.  I read Eat, Pray, Love for the same reasons, but managed to get that one from the library.  The worst is people on my facebook who say things like, "Trust me your husband is going to thank you for reading it" and then I cant help but think of what that means and the mental pictures that follow!  WHY?!

So Jason has been gone again for 2 weeks now.  I hate to be one of those girls who whine about missing their boyfriend, but c'mon this is ridic.  Gone 2 weeks and still another 6 to go (on top of the 2 months he was already gone for).  What makes it less bearable is that we cant even talk on the phone...  no phone, no email, no communication at all.  And since he is still the only person I know here aside from work peeps, it especially blows.

Good things are work is busy, so the days go by quickly.   Looks like things are only going to get busier in the future.  Most days I enjoy my job, although there are of course those days when I want to die.  As I have mentioned before, as busy as things are, you're never expected to work overtime.  I am out of work before 430 and I love it.  So we'll see how things go there in the future, but I am thankful to have this job while I am in Darwin.

And most importantly, I have a VACATION coming up!!  YESSS, the DAY Jason is back, we are going to Malaysia to RELAX with good friends Scott and Brandon.  It has been wayyyy too long since I have seen all 3 of them and I couldnt be more excited for this trip!  :)

crock pot?

Soooooo, I really, really like the idea of a slow cooker.  I have one, but it is soooo rarely used.  I make pork in it for carnitas, which comes out nice.  I made chili once and that sucked.  I also will make beans on occasion.  Beans with chopped veggies is prolly the thing I make best in it.  I like throwing a bunch of shit in the pot and not having to do a damn thing until I eat it 12 hours later. The problem is, whenever I search for crockpot recipes, they almost always include a can of cream soup or sour cream or some other foul ingredient I would rather die than eat.  C'mon, how white trash is canned cream soup?  Who knows what they put in that shit!!  Well, my point is, if you have good slow cooker recipes that do not contain cream in any form, please send them my way!

I am still reading 50 Shades of Grey.  I hate it so much I go out of my way to avoid it.  But I am determined to finish.  I am now at the point where Christina (typo, but it stays) confesses something like "the woman who birthed me was a crack addict, Anastasia!!"  WHOA the drama.  As if you couldnt see that coming.  These 2 suck so bad.  This book blows.  "I will teach him, I am not going to ask for my panties back!"  The defiance!  Ughh, why did I buy this book?  Even the people at the book store told me it was good!  The chick that sold it told me to sit back with the air conditioning on and enjoy!  She also said I would be back in 3 days for the 2nd book.  I should go back and tell her off.  I'm pissed!

Next week I am going to go around downtown Darwin on my lunch break taking some pics.  I think peeps have the wrong idea of how Darwin looks.  Yesterday I attended a conference session at the one of the hotels on the waterfront.  A coworker of mine said, "It feels like Miami down here."  I laughed out loud --- not quite Miami :-)

Ni hao ma?

Did facebook just become even more stalker-ish, or I did I click something weird, because I now see EVERYTHING you do!  Every time someone likes a status or a photo, writes on someone's wall, etc, it's in my newsfeed -- not just the ticker, the newsfeed!  I dont want to see this shit!  So now it's like annoying pics and statuses x100.  If I didnt live abroad, I would delete my account.  But I already feel like I have lost touch  with so many people, I keep it just so I dont feel so out of the loop.

I am watching America's Hardest Prisons right now.  They must mean all the Americas because this prison is in Mexico.  Omg, you do not want to go to jail in Mexico!  There is one American dude in there who had to have his leg amputated.  Idk what the deal is, but dude has a prosthetic leg that is held together with duct tape and a string he holds in his hand when he walks.  So when he walks, he picks up the leg with this string. Not like some medical device, the string is part of the duct tape...it might be a long piece of tape even.  Dude is fucked too, he is serving a 22 year sentence.

So terrible news of the day is Chinese level one ends next week!  I assumed I would continue right into level 2, but there is a break in between.  A 6 week break!!  So after next week, no Mandarin class til August!!!!  WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY TIME?!  I look forward to class every week and I study during my lunch breaks. What do I do now?!?!  Dont they realize I have no life and I dont need a break?!?!  WHAT DO I DO NOW????

Speaking of the word 'realize,' I now type words like that wrong all the time.  When I say wrong, I mean I am in the habit of using the Australian English spelling now...  'realise.'  I automatically type it like that now and have to correct myself when not at work.  Realise, familiarise, organise, colour, neighbourhood, favourite...  GRRRRR.  And the other day I asked someone if they had acclimated to the weather and they said, "Dont you mean acclimatise?"  Huh?

Facebook rant of the day!

How could I forget?!  Seriously, I want to punch everyone on facebook (and pinterest) who says NOM NOM NOM or OM NOM NOM!!  What is with this phrase?!?!  All I ever see is some version of nom nom.  You are not cookie monster!

I know it's that time of year and I am at that unfortunate age, but if it wasnt for pics of weddings, kids, and food (with nom nom captions), my newsfeed would be empty.  The wedding pics are nice, but I hate kids and I am tired of looking at kid pics.  I didnt sign up for this!  Save those kid pics for emails.  Or the xmas card.

Ok, back to watching "Embarrassing Bodies."