Embracing the yucky sides of myself

On Friday night I went to the Canberra Centre with my housemate. We went to 'potter', as she put it. However, she recently got together with a guy in Sydney, and while I'm glad they finally quit their playig around the issue as they've been doing for the last 5 months, I can't say I'm super stoked for her to have a boyfriend. Even though he does live in Sydney. She talks about him ALL the time. Granted, they are in the infatuation phase, so it's understandable, but geez. For me the limit was on Friday when she wanted to shop for him - she just felt an urge to buy things for him. Including underwear. I played along, but inside, was not so keen, to be honest.

I guess it's been so long since I've been in a relationship that being in lose proximity to the overflowing giddiness and incessant need to talk, think, or do things for that person is a bit much. But I don't want to be the cynical, bitter, single housemate. That's not who I am. Really. I don't think of myself that way at least.

But, seriously, every single sentence out of her mouth these days is about him. Or how she's coping with being in a relationship ("It's just so wird to have a boyfriend"). Yeah. Cause I want to empathize with you on that point. Come on now.

Maybe I really am that bitter woman. Good times.

But, moving on... I actually have felt a mind shift the last couple of days. I'm feeling a little less blue, a little more at peace with myself, and okay with life over here. Most of you know that I've been having really bad acne lately - so much so that it's been afecting my psyche and my willingness or desire to go out, to talk to people, to even make eye contact with people. Even though my skin isn't any better, I've done all I can - I'm on antibiotics, have swiched my birth control, and have an appointment with a dermatologist (in 2 months, but apparently that's pretty good for Canberra). So, there truly is nothing else I can do. And maybe now that I'm starting to realize that I'm relaxing a bit about it? I still shudder when I look in a mirror and am not really keen to meet new people right now, but hey - anyone worth knowing would look past it, right? Yeah. Keep telling yourself that, Katie. But, it's just not worth it to obsess about it anymore.

So I can obsess about other things - like my housemate and her new relationship. And her complete inability to empathize, and her inability to focus on anything but herself. Hmmm... not sure I like this side of me, but hey - it's there and I'll embrace it till I figure out how to work with it. And my skin is obviously not going away overnight, so I'll have to embrace that too. YAY!

Oops.

I wouldn't want to be the journalism student driving this car. I've really enjoyed the couple of Halberstam books I've read, and have always thought of him as one of those revered American journaliststs that could (and did) write about everything.

When I was in Atlanta I used to volunteer as a driver for visiting scientists that were in town for conferences or meetings, mainly because the BFG could carry 5 people. I was ALWAYS super cautious when I would have all of Denmark's or Australia's foodborne disease specialists in my back seat. I can't imagine the grief this student must be feeling.

Say what?!

CNN reports on a high school in Georgia having their first integrated prom.

"The white people have theirs, and the black people have theirs. It's nothing racial at all."

Seriously, what year is it?

Sing out Loud...Sing out Strong

I really miss singing in my truck, or BFG, as I sometimes called it. BFG. Big Friendly Giant. Or, if the gas prices had gone up recently, the Big Fu&^%ng Giant.

The windows down, the sun shining, the volume turned up, me at the top of my lungs and dancing in my seat. Until I'm stopped at a red light of course. Then I'm just sitting there, calmly.

Singing out loud in the car is such a stress-reliever. And I could be whoever I wanted. No one was watching as I sang along to Ludacris or OutKast or Kelly Clarkson or Sugarland.

The BFG was my domain and I could be whoever I wanted to be when the volume was turned up.

Singing out loud on the bus is generally frowned upon, although I guess I could give it a go. And be that person.

And I've tried singing out loud on my bike - I get all out of breath and distracted - it's not really conducive to keeping one's balance since I can't sing without moving a bit too.

Free donut Friday

Now, I don't know if that's the official name of today, but it was for me!

I spent 2 hours at the local medical center this morning, waiting to get a referral to a dermatologist... seriously - my skin thinks it's 1990 or something like that. After my 2 hours witht masses (it is SO depressing in walk-in clinics like that, but every GP I've called isn't "taking new patients at the current time, call back in 6 months" Right. Luckily, I can go to the walk-in clinic and be seen, but I have to queue (!) up with everyone else.

Anyway, after waiting and getting my referral I walked back to work, right by the local Krispy Kreme. Yep, there's a Krispy Kreme in Canberra. (It really is Atlanta's sister city!)

I decided to treat myself (food has nothing to do with skin, right?). I asked for 1 glazed donut and received a hot one, free of cost! WIthout even asking, and without any flirting. (Well, it was an older woman so I'm not sure flirting would have done any good anyways). What a deal!

It definitely put a smile on my face, and hey, I've heard that free food is calorie-free too. Right?

so polite...

"Please wait whilst we process your request.

This will take a moment."

From the website travel.com.au, as I was looking up ticket prices to go home (CA and Atlanta!) in August.

Yellow Cheese!!!!!

On Friday I had a crap day at work. I apparently have hay-fever now, but thought it was a cold on friday, so I went home early. I'd sat at my desk for 2 hours trying to figure out how to analyze outbreak data. I couldn't do it, so I bailed on the day. I was in a pretty crappy mood and decided I wanted tacos. I knew they wouldn't be tacos like I REALLY wanted them. With no Herdez in sight, it's just not a taco.

But, I needed my fix. So I stopped at the store to get cheese and lettuce and shells. Now, I've complained about Aussie cheese before - it's just not the cheddar I'm used to, in taste or color. I don't care if the color is added - cheddar is bright yellow in my book. (Not the fancy cheddars, but regular, run-of-the-mill cheddar for things like quesadillas and tacos, is yellow.) That's just one of the truths of my life.

So, I'm persuing the cheese aisle, in vain. BUT. Then I saw a small package of "Red Russet Cheddar" that appeared to be the correct color.

I can't even tell you how much that lifted my mood on Friday. It's the small things, I tell ya.

See! Yellow cheese!



Now I just need my Herdez! I actually dreamt about it the other night. I think I need an intervention.

Baffled on a Sunday evening

I'm baffled. By a few things.

One. Is this sign difficult to understand?



I don't think so. But it appears to be written in Greek for all the good it does for the hoardes (a relative term, this is Canberra after all) walking by the lake. Come on people!

Two. BOYS. Just. Baffle. Me.

Seriously. Why do they have to act like it's grade school again?

"I'll tell a friend that I like her. Then we'll go out, I'll make her a few discs of a cool show (about epidemiologists and international outbreaks of things like camelpox crossed with Ebola - from Canada - called ReGenesis - check it out), have a good time. Then I'll go out with her again. Then I'll just ignore her. At soccer. At drinks. At pool. She can try to talk to me, but I'm a stone wall. Yep. A stone wall. She can even listen to my radio show but I'm not responding in more than mono-syllables to any conversation about the show."

Whatever. My baffled self is moving on.

Which side???

A distressing trend I've noticed lately: When I watch movies I'm constantly convinced that the people are driving on the wrong side of the road. If it's a movie set in the US it looks wrong to have left-hand drive and to be driving on the right side. That sort of makes sense, since I've been in a right-hand drive country for the last 8 months.

But last night I was watching a movie set in New Zealand and the right-hand drive and driving on the left looked totally wrong. So I convinced myself that the movie was wrong, and was feeling like I'd found a movie blooper, but my housemate had to tell me I was wrong, the movie was showing it correctly.

It's distressing to have no idea. I feel like if I got behind the wheel, either here or at home, I'd have NO idea what to do.

A 'Fully Sick' Easter!

"Fully Sick" means good. It's Aussie for wicked, cool, awesome. That's what this weekend was.

As I said before, Easter is sort of a big deal over here, Good friday AND Easter Monday were public holidays, so I joined Jen and 3 of her friends down in Thredbo for the weekend. Thredbo is a ski resort town that is taken over by montain bikers in the summertime. This is the traditional last weekend before winter hits, the last chance to enjoy the biking and hiking. It was pretty darn cold... its being autumn and up in the mountains... thank goodness Jen has doubles of all her cold weather stuff - I didn't bring too much with me. I guess I thought it was aways summer down here! I fact, if I were to keep up my streak I'd have to move BACK to the States right about now to be in spring/summer for a year and a half. Sounds sort of tempting, I must say.

Tangent... I've really been mising Atlanta today. I just wanted to be in my own truck, on my roads, with my old job, driving back to my own house, to my cat, to dinner with MY friends. I miss my people. Definitely a wave of homesickness. Probably beause I finished my taxes today and it just reminded me of all the stuff I left at home. Well, the house, mainly. You've heard of all those great tax-benefits you get for buying a house? Well, move to another country and have 3 months income from elsewhere and you can pretty much kiss those benefits all goodbye. Not completely, but still! Oh well. I'm happy to be here (most days) and I'm not coming back anytime soon. But I do miss the ATL VERY MUCH sometimes. Especially the people.

Okay...

Back to Thredbo... we got down there on Friday aternoon and went out for a ride, a cross-country track - my first time off the pavement (or bitumen, as they say here) with my bike. It was pretty damn cool. Not too steep and we were in some gorgeous country-side. (I've put the pictures up on Flickr - click on the Flickr picture pane in the right-hand nav-pane.) Here's me going through some water.



This was towards the end of the ride and I had FROZEN toes by the time we got back to our cabin. It wasn't really a cabin as much as it was an apartment out of an IKEA catalog - dark browns, creams, and reds, modern, white. Very swanky. Sort of an odd environment to 'escape to the mountains' in, but hey - I'm not arguing with a flat-screen TV in EVERY single room. hehe.

On Saturday the 4 of us, me, Jen, Rob, and Andy (the 'fully sick' guy) signed up to do a downhill initiation course. Yeah. Cause downhill even sounds like something I want to do to myself. But, I was in Thredbo to give it a go, so I signed up. Rob and Andy were totally stoked, testosterone definitely helps in this arena. In fact, when Jen and I were signing up for the course (there were about 30 people doing the course, 5 girls), at one point we were the only 2 girls in this small cabin where registration was and where people were getting fitted with full body armour (yes, you read that correctly, full body armour). There were about 15 guys in there, all very stoked and hyped up. Not that I'm complaining! But you could practically taste the testosterone. You could defintiley smell it. But, like I said, I'm not really complaining. There are some hotties that do the whole mountain biking thing. Especially the instructors! Maybe it's something to do with the fact that you have to really concentrate on everything they say, because it's important to the learning experience, and, oh yeah, SURVIVING as you are hurtling down a mountain on a bike, but it helps that they are good looking. Much easier to concentrate. Yeah right. :)

Anyway, I was definitely apprehensive going into this day - I'm not much of a downhill skier, I'm much more interested in cross-country. Downhill has too much speed involved. Note to self - listen to one's apprehensions! Anyway, we did some basic skills at the foot of the mountain, said we were ready, and climbed on the chairlift for the 14 minute ride up to the top. We get off the chairlift, listen to Will, our instructor, give us some last minute advice, and we're off. Onto a fire road that was seriously a 90% grade (ok. maybe it was only 10%. whatever). It was covered in gravel and I immediatley was in over my head. I stopped and walked my bike down the hill to the first meeting point. Not really a good start. As the group of us are waiting for others to make it own (I actually wasn't the last down, I was 3rd to last!) there are TONS of other bikers that go roaring past. So damn fast. And on the same track I'm about to crawl my way down. Nothing like a little motivation from behind to push you along. I didn't want to be in the way when one of them came down the track.

So, we set off on the next set.. and I'm again immediatlye walking. Good god. Way too steep, too many rocks, too narrow - I could go on and on. Truth is, I was seriously in over my head. I don't know that I'd even attempt to walk down this track, let alone strap into a bike and hurtle down. No way. When we got to the 2nd stop, one of the other girls gave up (having stacked twice (stack=crash)) and asked for a ride down off the mountain. As we were waiting for the car to get there, Will started to explain the next section. Bad idea WIll. That's the way to completely freak me out. I was good until he said it was way more steep than the section we just did and that at the end was a left hand turn with a steep drop-off, so we'd have to really be in control of what we were doing. Yeah. That was it. I swallowed my pride, my rising tears, and asked Will if there was room in the car for me too.

Yep. I bailed out. I was pretty hard on myself for the next few hours afterwards, but I'm now okay with it. There's just no way that was on okay situation for me, and I knew I'd reached my limit. I pushed my limits a bit, but knew I couldn't go anymore. I still felt sort of crappy for the rest of the day - I mean we're in a mountain biking town, having drinks with other moutnain bikers, and my story involves the words 'I bailed out'. Especially when Jen came back and had successfully gotten down the course, with a pretty spectacular stack that gave her a good war wound - a beautifully bruised knee. Now there's a story to tell the cute guys over a few beers! Oh well. I did okay... somehow I managed to find stuff to talk to the cute guys about. It all works out in the end, doesn't it? :)

On Sunday we did a bike/hike up Mount Kosciuszko (pronounced Koz-i-osko), the tallest peak in Oz. It was an amazingly beautiful day, and despite being more than a little dehydrated from the previous evening (I was certainly not drinking enough water to compensate for the altitude, the activities, and, oh yeah, the drinking. Whoops.) the day was great. The views form the top of Mt. Kozzie are spectacular. On Monday we did a short little cross-coutry track around the Thredbo golf course before we headed back to Canberra. This wa my favorite ride of the weekend, although I forgot my camera, so no pics of the track. But it was the perfect combination of uphill (my favorite), downhill (stairs, rocks, roots, but not too steep so that I felt out of control) and flat. Part of it was by the Thredbo River, so it was just gorgeous. And all that fresh air. Amazing!

Some of my favorite pics... check out the Flickr album for more:


The first of more than a few shots for our pool skills. I think this one was butterscotch - made by a local distiler, WildBrumby Schnapps.


Do I look ready to go???


Me and Jen


On the top of Oz, Mt. Kosciuszko!!

Dumdedumdedum

So, life in Canberra moves along. Not too much is happening over here.

Since it's Easter this weekend, we have a 4 day holiday and I'm headed to Thredbo with my housemate and a few of her friends. Thredbo is a ski resort south of Canberra that opens to mountain bikes and hiking in summer/autumn. Since I haven't taken my bike off road yet, I'm excited to see how it goes. I think I'll really like it. Jen and I are also planning a walk up Mount Kosciuszko onr of the days. I've been told it's relatively straightforward, and I'm hoping that's true, as I've done no 'preparation' for the walk/hike. I'll let you know how it goes.

Soccer on Saturdays is going really well - I've been 3 times now and really like the group. It's a group of people that I've met through my co-worker Jenny - they've been playing together for the last 5 years or so - just in their own league, casual-style. I really like playing with them, sometimes it's 6 on 6, last weekend it was 4 on 4 (on a smaller field). I feel like I actually have some skills out there!

On Monday after work I assisted my co-worker GF in coaching under-12 girls. It was the first training session o fthe season and there were about 15 under-12s and about 7 under-14s (who don't have a coach yet). I've agreed to assist GF when I can through this season. I had such a blast. It's really fun to be around kids that age - even if they do talk the WHOLE time! Once they found out I was from America, they had lots of questions. "What does America look like?" "Why are you here?" And my personal favorite, "Do you know Hilary Duff?"

'Cause in America we all know each other.

Cirque du Soleil

Last Wednesday I went to Cirque du Soleil's Varekai, which is in Canberra for a few weeks. They've set their tents up right on the lake, but the National Library, which is about a 10 minute bike ride from my house. On my bike ride home from work I watched the tents going up over the last month.


The show is AMAZING! I've never seen Cirque du Soleil live and it was worth every penny. I ended up being 3 rows from the stage, so my views were great. These performers blew my mind. Particularly the twins from the UK on the aerial straps. And not just because they were PERFECT specimens of the male body, although that certainly didn't hurt! And if they're going to wear a costume that shows me everything, I feel no shame in taking it all in. :)



There's an Emmy-award winning reality show, The Fire Within, about the creation of Varekai, and apparently these twins (the Athertons) [not that I googled them or anything like that] feature prominently. My only dilemma - do I buy a copy here that is encoded region 4 or do I buy a copy from Amazon that's encoded region 1? I will eventually be back in the States and region 4 can't be played over there (unless I get a region-free player)? Maybe I'll see if I can rent it instead of buying it. Now there's a concept.