Petrol @ MindSay 
money
It only cost me $50 and has a very useful basket on the front (as well as standard for China where they bought it fenders and luggage wrack). And importantly, for hilly Olympia: gears.
So i've been riding my bike now almost all the time, and saving loads on not buying gasoline! Although i did put some more in my car last week or so, but i'm hoping it'll last for the rest of the summer! Also i've been enjoying the healthy feeling of all the exercise the bike riding has provided! With an Aikido class every couple weeks thrown in for good measure. Hopefully i'll now have time for more of those.
Sadly, my part time theater work is over for now, we just had our final shows of the Rocky Horror Show this weekend. And the final cast party today. It was great fun while it lasted...
Getting closer to when I go away, which is cool. I still got to organise a passport.
Oh and I'm counting down the months to when I can drive my car by myself. I know petrol is oh so expensive, but I am so over public transport that never gets there on time and sometimes the one you were waiting for doesn't turn up till 8.06am when it was meant to get there at quarter to eight. That was yesterday and alas I was twenty minutes late to work.
If I drive my car I can leave at 7.30am and get to work at 8am. Inevitably getting home by 5pm. Or earlier if I am inclined towards getting up at 6am, which I'm not, so that won't happen.
Can't wait to drive my car! I just hate the learning part... Even though I can drive at 100 km's, I still find myself holding my breath for the first part.
Anyhow, I should be planning something before I go away. I'll email the details to people soon.
I'm writing this at work because mindsay doesn't work at home anymore.
Ciao for now
As some of you may know, I got my p-plates exactly two weeks ago today.
Up until now, I had never had any major problems with driving. Changing lanes on highways still freaks me out a little, and I tend to get lost sometimes, but I do alright.
However, today I surpassed myself. I had gone to Belconnen to do a bit of DVD browsing, and on the way back decided to put a little bit of petrol in the car (as Belconnen is the other side of town and I hadn't paid for a cent of the petrol I had used until today, thankfully).
I stopped in at the Erindale petrol station, which is about 5-10 minutes drive from my house. Now, while I had seen it done many times, I had never actually put petrol in myself, but assumed that it would be pretty easy.
What followed was a comedy of errors. Firstly, I parked in a bay only to find that the access door was on the wrong side of the vehicle. Luckily, there was no-one behind me so I backed out and drove into the bay next door.
Getting out, I walked over to the petrol pump and tried to open the door. There was no handle or keyhole, so I assumed eventually that it must open with some sort of control inside the car. I looked around near the steering wheel, but couldn't see anything that looked hopeful.
I decided to call my parents, but as there is some rule against using mobile phones in a petrol station (radiation or something? They never explain these things), I drove off into a nearby car park and gave my Mum a call.
Incredibly, she had no idea whatsoever (we've had this car for two years) and said that Dad was the one who filled up the petrol. She put him on the phone and he duly informed me that the lever was located under the seat. With a sigh of relief, I drove back into the petrol station to give it another go.
As the tank was about half full, I figured I could fill it with $15 worth and still only fill it up to about the three quarter point. I started pumping, but at about $8 it stopped. I should have realised this meant that the tank was full, but I kept trying to put more in. I managed to get it up to $10 but a little bit of petrol started leaking out. Hastily I replaced the cap, locked all the doors, and went inside to pay.
As I was approaching the car, I had a terrible feeling. I couldn't feel the car keys in either of my pockets. I jogged up to the car, and somewhat unsurprisingly, the keys were still in the ignition. All the doors were locked and the windows were up.
At this point there was already a car behind mine waiting for me to leave, but I didn't know what to do so I called my Dad and asked him to get to the petrol station as soon as possible with his keys. I explained to the driver behind me what had happened, and they found another bay, thankfully without giving me too much of a hard time.
Anyway, close to 10 minutes later my Dad arrived in the van, and exhausted, I finally managed to leave the petrol station and drive home.
The moral of the story: know what you're doing before you use a petrol pump for the first time. The lesson is, everything I did was wrong. I don't think I could have really done anything else wrong when I come to think of it, so at least next time I'll know what I'm doing.
Not that I'll be going near a petrol station in the near future.
If i could change I would, take back the pain I would, retrace every wrong move that i made i would- Hi agen. Only just got bak from pickin the new car up...we set off at 2:45 ish lol. But the car ran out of petrol...then wen they came wi the petrol it wudn't start cos the petrol needed to run through...so we were sat for over an hour waitin for the guy to come bak and wen he did it was with a tow truck. THEN wen he went to put it on the tow truck the car started lol. Ya just can't win..neway we're home now..was kinda worried cos it wer gettin cold and dark and shit like that. Well ByeXX
But on the bright side, I finally got paid for the photography work I did last month so $255 went straight to the credit card. I figure I lived without it for so long, I might as well use it to swallow some of the bill.
On other news, we had our work christmas lunch today at a little Turkish restaurant that's just opened a few doors down from us. We'd booked a table for 12:30pm but when we walked in, the guy seemed surprised and started rushing around to get our table ready. True, we were the only people in the place, but he was the only waiter (and I think chef too) so it was pretty funny.
We'd had a "kris kringle" or "secret santa" thing going where we all bought a gift for approximately $20 for one other person. Most of us put a lot of effort into getting a good gift - I spent a little more ($28) on a camping chair and table for Judy, our travelling sales rep who spends most of her time in a caravan around country Victoria. Most people put that kind of effort into it except Viktor, who bought my gift - a Borders gift card. Yes, I will use it and yes, I love books but you can't get much for $20 - most books cost $22 or up, so I'll put it toward something else. To tell you the truth, I would have preferred a gift with some thought behind it and not a quick car trip to Borders. But hey, nice anyway. Then the bosses had bought gifts for everyone too - I got a lovely handmade necklace which I love.
The food was awesome even though we ended up nicknaming our waitier Manuel (from Fawlty Towers). His phone kept going off and he'd back off into the kitchen, as though we couldn't tell. Then he was so keen to help us that when we asked if they had halvah he was like "no, but I can go to the turkish shop in the next suburb and get some." It was hilarious. We found out later that they had put our booking in for 7:30pm not lunch and that was why they were short on desserts and so shocked when we walked in.
Still, excellent lunch, good company (although there are some people who laugh like a banshee) and we left work at 4:00pm. Good day.
Showing 1 - 5. [ Next ]