A week later!

And it's been quite a week!

 

Various reasons, too many to list.

Work is still dull, but at least I've been getting things to do which is nice.  Right now I've got not much to do:  waiting for HBBM to proof-read a letter that I will then print onto letterhead and scan to email from his PC.  And some filing for a colleague.

I've been scanning up quite a storm.  I have about 200 photos left to scan (excluding Mom's odds&ends).  I want to keep my head against the grindstone this week so I can be finished by Friday - we're having the usual meet-up with M+J, sis and her-G.  Saturday is chores day, probably, and I have to clean the fishtank.  Sunday we're going for all-you-can-eat Indian lunch!

We completely rearranged the study on the weekend.  The mostly-empty freestanding wardrobe was moved from the bedroom to the study, and now everything that has to be sorted and tidied and 'culled' is in the study ONLY, and not anywhere in the rest of the house.  Or that's the plan.  There are some clothes we need to drop off (donating them to charity), I have a whole batch of wedding/honeymoon things to scrapbook (but at least it's a finite collection), and I've got some Cosmo magazines to go through too, but that's about it for the rest of the house.  It's so much neater in the study now, the books are all in bookshelves, non-books that were hogging bookshelf space have been put into the wardrobe and the luggage/bags are now in/on the wardrobe too.  So now there's actual floorspace to walk around in there.  It's a false-tidiness though, as we're going to have to go through everything that's been packed away and 'cull' it, but at least it's not CLUTTERY and irritating to look at.  It's liveable now. 

I'm actually quite amped to do the sort-through, but it'll probably only be at the end of the year (when I'm on leave for 3 weeks).  Sadly now is not the time to unpack things and allocate a permanent-place to them because we simply don't have space... THAT aspect of the tidying-process will have to wait until we move into a long-term/permanent home in Aus.

ACS still haven't made any 'moves' on the status of our appeal.  It's getting EXCRUTIATING now, because we are READY TO APPLY for the visa but cannot.  And in light of recent changes and impending overhaul of the entire visa system, we're quite 'eager' to at least get our foot in the door so that we are at least in the queue!  At present, DIAC says our visa should take 12 months or less to be processed.  So, NOW IS THE TIME!!!!  Now, while there IS a guideline time-frame!  Nothing for it but to keep looking in the postbox, even though the website should show any status changes AND G should get an email saying we can expect the letter to be sent soon.  *sigh*

I had quite an exciting stint on eBay this weekend:  I found a LocoRoco beanie and a hanging-advertising dangling-banner kind of thing.  The hat was an absolute steal (including shipping etc it's come to under R150 - considering how much you could expect to pay for a big-name-brand beanie, a hard-to-find, promo item like this for that little is BRILLIANT!!).  The ad-thingie wasn't expensive either, now just to hope and pray they actually GET TO ME and don't go AWOL in the post.

It's nearly lunch.  This Thursday is my no-switchboard-duty day so YAY!!  Small joys so sweet.

Sometimes I just cannot understand HBBM.  This morning, he comes to me and asks me about renewing his car license.  How does it work.  I say that if I recall right, if his license has expired (which it has) he has to go there to the traffic dept/licensing dept.  He throws his hands in the air and moans 'I CAN'T GO STAND IN THE QUEUE FOR 2 HOURS... GOD HELP ME, I'll have to get (messenger guy) to go do it for me!  God, I can't spend half my day there!  No way!  There must be some other way of doing it'.  So I um and ahh a little bit and then remember that I'd researched all this shit LAST YEAR too!  So he finds my note in his file.  You CAN renew it 'remotely', by phoning their call centre, getting a ref. no., making a deposit using said ref. no., and then they post it to you which takes 3 weeks.  They CAN'T do it, however, if it's already expired (as you'd be driving without a license for 3 weeks).  I wrote a whole story on a piece of paper for him, so as to avoid this scenario in future, but obviously it hasn't helped. 

But what gets me is the TOTAL INCOMPREHENSION, the inconceivability!! that he'd go stand in the queue at the traffic department!  No WAY!  Jees, dude, grab your big boy handbag and deal with it!  You're a citizen too, it's YOUR car, and YOUR slip-up.  You deal with it!

 

ANYway, it is now lunch!!  I have 43 working days left until I'm on leave!  Yay!!!