This seems like a reasonable price...

Yes, that would be Bush's black beans for the amazing price of $5.50 a can. BEANS! Black beans are  very hard to come by in Darwin. I bought a bag of dried black beans at a store once (the only other time I have ever seen them) and I soaked them over night then cooked them for 12 hours in the slow cooker and...they were still hard. How is that even possible?

The beans in the pic are from the gourmet food store. Last week I bought sliced turkey there for $25 a pound.  This place is not cheap. But it's next to my work, so I'm in that piece like everyday. And they have some really nice things in there, but you certainly are going to pay for it! I still haven't brought myself to buy the beans yet, even though I look at them like everyday.  I miss America!

I've started wearing my pedometer again.  I find it's a really good motivator.  The only thing is it's hard to conceal with a dress. Last year I wore one for a month straight and it helps to keep me on track. Also if I feel like I was really lazy that day, the proof is right there in the pedometer. It's crazy hot here, so I am not inclined to move often, lol. 

The lunch time gym session

I personally don't get how the lunch time gym session is physically possible, especially for women! I've heard that the gym I go to is apparently packed at lunch time. And in the one of the offices I worked at here, some chicks used to go to the gym during their lunch... But these bitches used to take the 1.5 hour lunch break because no one gave an f in there. Even still, I don't get it. I work out in the mornings. Work starts at 8 so that means I'm up at 5:45 to throw on clothes and proceed immediately to the gym. There's no time for mucking around, if I even have to attend to a bathroom situation there is potential to throw off the schedule. I drive 5 mins to the gym, do my thing and am back by 7 to get ready for work. The entire process takes 2 hours 15 mins! How can you get all this done on a lunch break?! What about hair and makeup for us girls?? Do you go back to work with sweat hair?

Mind boggling. Even further, then when the hell do you eat lunch?! There's no way you can work out, shower, and eat lunch in an hour. Nevermind the time to get to the gym.  If this was possible I would be all over it, because you know waking up at 545 is not my thing!

21st century issues

Since the introduction of Napster, iTunes, limewire etc I must have downloaded a bagillion songs. Only recently am I noticing how many key songs have not made it though all the transfers of devices from different laptops to computers to iPods and iPads and iThis and iThat. Well you can imagine my I immense disappointed when I had the urge to listen to Eddie Murphy's "party all the time" today only to discover it didn't make it though the last transfer! Not only no song, but I had the video downloaded! Also missing, "big pimpin" spending cheese. How is this possible?!

In other 21st century news, a few days before Miley Cyrus did her thing on the vma's, I asked Jason, because I am old and out of touch, if he knew what twerking was. I kept seeing it and I figured he is younger so he should know. His response was, and he was dead serious, "that is what they call going on twitter while you're at work, you know, tweeting at work, twerk." Lmao! 

$25 lipstick

Alright bitches I'm back in action! Enough effing around, it's time to bring this blog back for real!

Of course lots has happened in the last 6 months but I will get around to all that eventually. First off, I need to complain, because what would my blog be without complaining? So... Pinterest. I am on that shit as much as possible, it's an obsession. I even critique other people's pins in my head, people I don't know, especially the clothes and food ( such as eww who eats that etc). It's totally replaced magazine reading in my life. It's the main reason I don't blog.  I changed my hair color the other week and I must have spent 20 hours on effing Pinterest in prep before deciding on a pic of Hillary Duff to bring to the salon lol.  Side note, my hair didn't come out looking anything like Duff's....

Anyway, Pinterest brain washed me into needing a nude lip color immediately. As in I could not go to work the next day if I didn't have it.  There's obvs no Sephora in Darwin (actually no Sephora in Australia so can't even order online wtf?!) but I can order mac at 2-3xs the price of US.  However, in this emergency situation, I HAD to have this lipstick, so I roll into the drug store (called the "chemist" here), pick out the lipstick and also needed deodorant, proceed to pay and am asked to produce $35 because yes the lipstick is $25!!! REVLON LIPSTICK!! YES REVLON! There are obvious problems with this. 1. that I was buying revlon at all because I am a bit of a make up snob and 2. how the f could it cost that much?!?!? Appalling really.

So recently all over Pinterest in coconut oil. I was thinking, shit they don't sell that shit here except in the one one extremely expensive store and I don't want to pay $100 for it. But suddenly, this week, coconut oil has taken darwin by storm!! 2 stores have had coconut oil displays, darwin is so hip! I managed to pick up a jar of organic virgin coconut oil for $5. When I bought it, it was white because it was at room temperature. However, I just took the jar out of the cabinet and it's totally clear now because my house is obvs well over "room temperature." It's fucking hot. Anyway, that doesn't matter. Another thing I do is see something on Pinterest and then google it to see if a better version exists (I have no life). I googled coconut oil extensively, I don't quite believe everything they are saying about it, but I didn't decide to give the face scrub a try... And wow my skin is sooooo soft! But not oily. It actually feels amazing! I made a small jar of equal parts raw sugar to oil and added a good squeeze of lemon juice because my skin is naturally oily. It looks exfoliated and feels so smooth. Uh oh, drinking the coconut oil kool aid! Will it replace baking soda as my new fav? I will try cooking with it this week and see how that goes.

Glad to be writing again. As I've told some people, I started a new job in July and it's pretty serious... By pretty serious I mean I can't gchat. That's the most serious thing about it. It's an open office concept and I sit right in the middle. Grrrrr. So I will be writing more to keep in touch better.  So holla, please! 

Blog will be back soon

I'm having technical difficulties!!  I think I mentioned my comp shit the bed this 2013, so I have replaced it with an iPad.... Which is cool but it it might take me 1.5 years to type on this shit. Actually  now that I am typing it's not so bad, but I'm using 2 fingers.  Anyway, I still have 2 other comps but they aren't connected to Internet now blah blah.  When I get this bizness all sorted I will be back in action sans this damn autocorrect shit it's doing.  In the meantime holla at me on gchat! I'm always on!

Australia: The land where everything costs more

Darwin:  The land where everything costs ALOT more.  It's been well over a year now and I am confident I will never get over how much everything costs here.  Food is obvs ridiculous, I paid almost $4 for a small bunch of radishes the other day.  Fucking radishes! $5 for a loaf of bread.  BREAD!  Then there are the taxes.  Alcohol is taxed to the ridiculous extreme that Australian wines are generally a lot cheaper in the US than here.  Wine is not as bad as beer and liquor though.  Expect to pay $50 for a bottle of Absolut or Jack Daniels (uhh regular size bottle).  Forget something like Grey Goose, totally out of budget.  Beer is INSANE though.  The other day I saw a case of pale ale at the store up the street for $110!!! Others were hovering around $90.  And lucky I dont smoke because cigarettes are around $22 a pack.

Living in Darwin, you get especially screwed over because they up the price of everything because "it's a remote area and they have to truck everything in from down south" yadda yadda.  Basically, I think it's store owers saying, "You dont want to pay this price?  Try and find it somewhere else, bitches! Suck it!"  Another perk of living in Darwin is you get to pay a whole shit load more for electricity too! This is really fucked.  It's hot here, really hot.  So hot the heat makes you sick.  You have to use an air conditioner or it's just too hot to sleep.  Our electricity comes from the Power Water Corporation.  It took me about 6 months of living here to understand that Power Water is a government institution.  I was thinking it was like National Grid, but it's not, it's a department of the Northern Territory government.  Anyway, you've heard me bitch that there was an election here last year and a new party took office.  They allegedly uncovered all this eradict spending the previous govt had been covering up and made all kinds of cuts (like my job!).  Additionally, they decided it was absolutely crucial to raise power bills to help balance the budget.  Now, I couldn't imagine power bills being any higher than they already were.  We are billed quarterly and the bills are normally around $600-900!  Yes, $900 for 3 months of electricity when no one is home all day.  I obvs have been bitching to them  for a year now but their only response is to accuse me of "overusing" my air conditioning. 

The price increase is really out of hand.  We just paid our last bill which covered over the Christmas holiday season.  $650 for a 3 month bill of which no one was home for 7 weeks!  The only thing that was running was the fridge! Obvs we bitch again.  This time we tell them we suspect there is something faulty with our meter causing power to be running even when everything has been turned off.  The customer service agent says, "That may be the case.  If you'd like us to look into it, it will be $120 to send a technician."  !!!!!!!!!!!!  $^$%#$&!!!  You have to be kidding.  Then what?  The technician says it's fine and we just keep paying?!  So today is the day.  We fight the man.  Not taking no for an answer.  Calling Power Water today and getting to the bottom of this, without paying $120!  All fired up!

Party all the time

Ack!  Cant believe I forgot to talk about this because it had me all seized up last weekend.  Remember when I said the Michie Ct had become a little quiter this year?  Well all the military peeps are back (it's not just army living here, there's navy, airforce, etc) and the pool parties have resumed.  FMFL.  Seriously.  Saturday was Australia day and obvs I was predicting it was going to be bad news. Most people have BBQs and since I have no friends I was holding my own 2 person BBQ here, complete with beer pong :)  Before the BBQ, we decided to go to the driving range to practice our swings (oh yeah, Darwin golf is back!).   Come home and there are a million douches in the pool, complete with blow up doll and other things douches like.  They are jumping off ledges (with the blow up doll), smoking in the pool, throwing around glass bottles, etc.  In the meantime, I am hungry and want to start my BBQ, but the ledge they are jumping off is so close to my balcony it's almost attached.  So I said fuck this, calling police.  I call police, tell them what's going on, say I have kids here etc and police say they dont take noise complaints until after MIDNIGHT!  Omg! It was 4pm!  We knew there was a manager (or body corporate, as it's called here), living somewhere in the complex because they leave us notes if we leave our shoes outside (lol).  So Jason decides he will just ring every doorbell until he finds them, which actually works.  Now here is the real kicker!  They are ALLOWED to have parties in there.  She said she would go out there and tell them they couldnt smoke or have glass, but those are the only rules!  That and it had to end by 1030pm.  Wtf?!  How can it be allowed to have huge parties in a shared swimming pool? Grrrrrr.

In golf news, before Christmas we drove 1 hour to get to the only mini golf course we hadnt been to around here.  This one was a real classic.  It was part of a hotel out in the remote area.  We roll and in and immediately start arguing about who is going to go into the hotel and ask about the golf.  Obvs it ends up being me.  Theres no one there so I had to ring a bell - I say, hi I would like to play the mini golf and woman looks at me like "seriously?"  hahaha.  At this point I had no yet seen the course.  So I say yes, 2 please.  She tells me where to go and we are off down this path a little ways past the hotel.  Talk about extreme mini golf!  First off, the course is made from concrete.  There was no turf AT ALL.  Trying to putt on concrete was hilarious as obvs the ball just rolls.  Second, there were 4 holes that were "unplayable" because the entire thing was underwater.  Third, we may have been the first peeps to play on this course in quite some time because there were fallen branches and sticks everywhere, adding extra obstacles to the holes!  Finally, there were green ants (vicious biting ants), mosquitoes, migees, etc EVERYWHERE, so as you were tying to putt, you were getting fucked up by these insects!  At the same time, I was laughing so hard I was crying! Classic Darwin.  Here are some pics:

 

An aerial view of the course

 

An example of the extra obstacles.  Makes it quite challenging.

 

Enjoying all the fun!