Ouchie

$10 for canned pumpkin!! Same store, all the specialties! Only place you can get this though so I bought it!! Pumpkin choc chip cookies for Halloween :-) 

The heat is on!!

It's probs a million degrees in darwin these days.  This is no joke.  The air is so thick it almost hurts to breathe it in.  Ok that's exaggerating but the humidity is about 85% and it's around 100 degrees in the afternoons. Love the tropics!! Love even more when my dumb ass ford fiesta shits itself on the side of the highway on sat and jason and I had to push it home in this ridic weather! The silver bullet is out of commission! Tomorrow it gets towed to be fixed.  Ugh, always something with cars around here!

Today I am complaining about student loans and how paying them is like throwing my money away! I have a pretty decent job here and I actually apply stuff I learned in grad school to my work.  However, the degree didn't help me to get the job and it prolly won't do much for me in the future either as long as I am in Australia.  See, you don't need a degree to work in the public service in aus.  In fact, for most positions, they aren't even allowed to require a 4 year degree in the job description.  Even for management positions!! You don't even need a planning degree to be a town planner!  It's crazy to me, but it's the way it is... And I am the only sucker at my work paying off student loans while everyone else is buying cars that don't break down!

It's not just the public service though, you can have great career  without needing an advanced degree (and all the debt that comes with it) in aus.  Even law school only costs about $20k here!  Basically the crappy jobs that us Americans take when we're fresh out of college go to peeps fresh out of high school here.  Then they just work their way up.  You can easily be making serious money by the time you're 30 without a cent of student debt.  Of course, then you missed out on college life, but at least you have money!  Many Aussies will put large amounts of money towards travelling as you get about 2 months a year off here between vacation days and the many public holidays. Ugh, if I had only known... 

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!