Solitude Standing

• Mood: frustrated
• Music: “Foxy lady” - Jimi Hendrix

Honest to God, I am so sick of my management assignment right now, I feel like screaming. I spent about 4 hours this morning looking for the journal articles I need, only to find that most of them require paid subscriptions to various academic databases that I’m obviously not willing to pay for. So I’m not a very happy camper right now. I’ve only got 4 days before it’s due and I haven’t even finished the research part! Gah. I also have my career development assignment due next Thursday, but that’s a pretty small assignment so hopefully I can knock it over on Wednesday once my management paper’s handed in. I’m so angry with myself about all this because I’ve had weeks to be doing all this stuff, but I keep procrastinating and getting distracted and now there’s less than a week left before the due dates and I’m running around like a headless chook trying to get everything done. Bad Aly, bad!

So virtually all of today’s been spent chasing up journal articles for my assignment, but luckily I got to take a break for a few hours this evening when my dad took me out to dinner. We went to the bistro at Easts, and I got a yummy steak and salad sandwich…mmm. I didn’t even eat the mountain of fries they served with it, so I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself about that since I usually love fries. I’m trying to be good, I really am! Lol. Then after dinner we had a couple of drinks (actually, I wasn’t drinking, I just had water and a coke) and before Dad dropped me home we called into Westfield Carindale (a nearby mall) so that my dad could buy -get this- underwear. *groan* There’s something incredibly embarrassing about watching your 53-year-old father pick out undies, so I just wandered around the store and pretended to be invisible, hehe. I actually ended up getting a pair of running shorts there (and yes, it was a menswear store we were at!) because I needed something to work out in and I don’t like women’s running shorts because they’re too short in the legs - seriously, I tried some on a while ago and the damn things barely covered my butt! And if you can picture my fat white legs, then that’s major ewwwness. Lol. Then my dad decided he needed a new toothbrush (wow, what exciting shopping trips I have with my dad!), so we went into the pharmacy to get one, but they’d sold out of the cheap ones and my dad’s too much of a tightwad to buy the $5.79 flexi brushes, so we had to go all the way to Big W (aka Aussie WalMart) to get a less expensive regular brush. Hehe. My feet are still covered in blisters from yesterday too, so I wasn’t too happy about having to wander all over the place just so my dad could save $2 or so on a toothbrush. =/

Now I’ve just finished entering all our Avon orders into the online order form, so I’m just chilling out in bed now (propped up on a pillow with my laptop, hehe) while I wait for my mum to finish making her fruit cakes. Yes, that’s right, my mum, who avoids cooking like a plague, is BAKING. Normally I’d be extremely worried about her in this strange state, but she’s told me that she wanted to have a home-made morning tea for her and her boyfriend tomorrow, so it’s starting to make a bit more sense. My mum can be a bit weird when she’s in a relationship, and considering how besotted she is with her current beau, I’m not as surprised as I was at first. Too bad I’m on a diet and can’t eat the leftovers.

Anyway, that’s all for now folks. Must get an early night tonight so I can get up early again in the morning and do some more work on my blasted assignment! Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other.

My lovely commentors: Simply Precious. <3

• Mood: hungry
• Music: “Bad reputation” - Joan Jett

I’ve been on my diet for only one day and already I’m craving chocolate. What I wouldn’t give for a nice box of Guylian chocolate seashells right now! Lol. I think part of it’s my brain going into panic mode at the thought of having to eat healthy food, that now I’m craving junk more than I did before I started my diet (which was oh…YESTERDAY!). I’ve been good today though, eating healthy food and doing a bit of exercise. I’ve decided to keep a journal of what I eat each day, just to monitor my progress. Today’s entry:

Breakfast: Diced rockmelon, tub of low-fat yoghurt & 2 cups of black coffee (and yes, I do have sugar in my coffee still, but I cut it back today by half a teaspoon…I’ll get there eventually!).

Lunch: Egg & lettuce sandwich on grain bread, and a small fruit juice.

Dinner: Caesar salad & 2 glasses of Aqua Pura fruit splash water.

After-dinner snack: Handful of raw pistachio nuts & another cup of black coffee.

So aside from the sugary coffee, I think I’m doing ok. I also had 9 glasses of regular water (ie. not the bottled or fruit splash stuff), and I haven’t even touched the last of my vodka mudshakes. Go me.

Besides starting my diet today, I haven’t done anything much productive except a bit of shopping. I went out to Garden City (our local mall) around lunch time and picked up a few things for my mum for mother’s day (not saying what they are in case she’s reading this, hehe) since I don’t get paid again until May 14th and mother’s day is on the 11th. I also got a really cute pair of flannel PJs - they’re pink with owls all over them, and they were only $15! What a bargain. I’m wearing them now because it’s been getting cold at night lately, and they’re so snuggly and nice. <3 Unfortunately I made the mistake of wearing a new pair of shoes today while I went shopping, and after about 2 or 3 hours of shopping I had huge horrible blisters all over my heels and the sides of my feet. Ouch! It was so bad that I could barely walk and had to buy a pair of thongs (flip-flops that is, not thong panties!) to put on until I got home to soak my feet. I ended up carrying my stupid shoes around in a shopping bag and I’m sure I looked like a total loser in a pair of purple thongs that were not only cheap and tacky (well I wasn’t going to spend much money on them considering I hardly ever wear those sort of shoes and I only needed them for an hour or so until I got home) but didn’t even match my outfit. Gah. I think I need to start wearing my shoes in around the house before I go out shopping in them for 3-4 hours.

So…that brings me to the end of this post. Exciting stuff, huh? Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other!

• Mood: cold
• Music: “Even better than the real thing” - U2

Seriously, it’s absolutely FREEZING here right now. I’m bundled up in 3 layers + a singlet and I’m still indoors! I nearly froze my ass off when I was walking up to the fish and chip shop an hour or so ago to get dinner.

My assignments for uni are going…well, not so well. I’m having a hard time motivating myself and combined with having only gotten up at 3pm this afternoon (I know, I’m terrible, but I was soooo tired!), I’ve hardly gotten anything at all done today. I have to put in a really big effort tomorrow, because the management assignment is due one week from today and it’s nowhere near complete. Gah.

I’m still toying with ideas for my trip to the USA, and my dad (who’s coming with me) and I decided that we’ll probably just do the West coast (namely California & Nevada) this time with a side trip to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby in early May. We’ll most likely go back a year or so later to do the East coast, so I’ll still see New York and places like that eventually. Already our itinerary is looking like at least a 2 week trip + travel time, which is a bit more than my dad wants to take off work, but we’ll figure something out I suppose. So far we’ve planned a week (or is it 8 days?) in Los Angeles/Anaheim, 3 days in Vegas and then another 4 days in Louisville. While we’re in California we’re also going to take that day tour to Tijuana in Mexico, which looks really cool. I’m so excited already, I can’t believe it’s going to be a whole year before we can go!

A much closer holiday however is the 3 days I’m going to be spending at Q1 on the Gold Coast next week. Mum and Sean (my brother) are coming too, and we’ll be staying for Thursday and Friday nights, then coming home Saturday afternoon. I can’t quite remember what prompted this mini getaway, but my mum’s paying for the hotel, so it’s all good. We probably won’t do anything touristy since we’ve already been to the Gold Coast a bajillion times (it’s only an hour’s drive away from where we live, so it’s not exactly a long trip to make on a weekend or even one evening for dinner or the beach or something), so we’ll probably just hang out around the hotel (it’s got some nice facilities, or so I’ve heard) and maybe go to Jupiter’s Casino (our favourite Gold Coast past-time, hehe). Ah well, it’ll be nice to get away - and I will have handed in my management assignment by then, so I’ll be free to actually relax and not think about uni for a few days.

Anyway, I’m going to try to get warm now. I wish we had a fireplace to warm up in front of. I might just have to settle for gloves and a dressing gown though, lol.

Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other!

• Mood: exhausted
• Music: “What is life” - George Harrison

…And not in the “I need a break from studying” sense. I mean a really good overseas vacation or something. At the moment I’m thinking very seriously about saving up the money to go to the USA next year, to do a tour of L.A, Vegas and NYC, with a side trip to the Mall of America. I’ve wanted to take a trip like this for years, but I’ve never been able to motivate myself to save enough money. I estimate the cost of this vacation will be about $8,000 - $9,000, so I have to start saving ASAP! I was thinking of going in late June/early July so that I could be there for the USA’s 4th of July, but I think that’ll probably be too busy with all the domestic tourists because it’ll be summer vacation at that time (I think). So now I’m considering April, maybe early May before the schools let out. It only gives me 12 months so save, so I’ll have to be very frugal!

Not much else has been happening here; I’ve been working a little tiny bit on my uni assignments, but not enough to have made much progress. Gah, I need to motivate myself a bit more! I have classes at 8am tomorrow (Monday) morning that I’m not looking forward to, but then again, I never am. Even though I like my management concepts class, I hate having to get up so early! Lol.

I’ve also decided that I need to lose weight and get fitter. I’ve started walking a bit lately, and actually went for a fairly lengthy walk today, but I felt so exhausted at the end of it all that I thought I was going to keel over! The streets here are a bit hilly too, which certainly makes walking the streets a lot harder. At least being in pain means that it’s actually working, like my muscles are working and stuff, haha.

I have a quiz tomorrow in management, so I’d better get going now and start studying. It’s the last one for the semester, yay! I’ve hardly studied at all though, so I have to have a big cram session tonight. Blergh. Anyway, adios amigos. Be excellent to each other!

My lovely commentors: Simply Precious. <3

• Mood: cranky
• Music: “Love today” - Mika

Not much has been happening these past few days, so forgive me if this entry is a little boring. I’ve mostly been bumming around online, posting on forums and playing around on Facebook. I rejoined Ecstasy MB the other day and went on a big posting binge, and I’ve been posting again at Vertigo MB a bit too. *waves to everyone at both forums*

Tuesday I got some back-dated pay from a few weeks ago, so after I paid my Mum back the money I borrowed from her last week, I went into town for a few hours and picked up a few odds and ends. My first stop was Groove Accessories, where I got a necklace made of several strands of tiny beads, and a pair of earrings that I thought would be a close enough match. I also got 2 cheap bracelets and 2 pairs of basic hoop earrings from the clearance shelf ($1 a piece, bargain!). After that I was just about to get in the elevator when I ran into my best friend, who had come into town to apply for a Visa for her upcoming trip to Europe. We ended up getting brunch together, and then we killed another hour or so looking around at a few stores while she waited to meet up with another friend to have lunch. After she left I shopped for about another hour and got a few more things - I picked up a copy of the latest Justim Timberlake CD for my doofus brother since it was on sale for $10, and for myself I got a pair of granny slippers (hehe) for the upcoming winter and this cute pair of ballet flats that were black and grey with a buckle over the toes, as well as a couple of other smaller things.

Wednesday I spent most of the day bumming around online, then my friend Marissa (same girl I ran into the day before in town) was supposed to come over for dinner, but she had to cancel because she was sick. Boo. Today I’ve been doing a bit of work on my management concepts assignment, as well as going out in the morning to buy groceries and a new el cheapo MP3 player. The MP3 player is a Base something-a-rather that was on sale for $39.99 at Target, but for such a cheap one, it’s pretty good. It stores about 2 gig (which I know isn’t much compared to most, but it’s enough for the small amount of music I have) and it’s got a built-in radio, video player and picture viewer. I had a bit of trouble getting it set up because I’m a bit of a retard like that, but I finally got it working this arvo and transferred all my music. Yayness.

At this moment though, I’m not in a very good mood. We’re all fighting amongst ourselves here over dinner - Mum wanted to get fish and chips for dinner so that she wouldn’t have to cook, but she refused to go and get it herself, so it was up to either Sean or I to get it. I couldn’t really go and get it (on foot) because I’ve pulled a muscle in my leg this afternoon while exercising, but Sean also reckons he can’t get it because he’s “sick”. Sean’s sick virtually every day according to him (he’s seriously the biggest hypochondriac in the world), or at least until he wants to go out, when he makes a miraculous recovery. It’s so odd how he’s never sick when his mates invite him out or there’s a football game or race meeting. *sigh* So anyway, the whole “who’s going to get dinner” argument ended up blowing up way out of proportion and my mum’s going berserk because she says Sean and I are both too selfish to do anything she asks us to, which is bullshit on my end anyway because I’m often cooking dinner or doing other things she asks me to. It’s true for Sean though, because he won’t even do anything for himself, nevermind anyone else. He’s such an ass. *glare*

Aside from the tension going on here right now, nothing much of interest has been happening so I’ll end up entry here. Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other (or at least more excellent than my family’s being at the moment). *sigh*

My lovely commentors: Julie, Simply Precious & Angel. <3