'A memorable collection'

It was my birthday over a month ago and my beautiful friend Jade sent me this book, among other things. When I opened the package she sent, and I saw this i was so excited. I have read a handfull of Haruki Murakami's books and loved them so I was thrilled to add another to my collection. I am one to judge a book by its cover and I love the look of these books so much, thats why I started reading them. Shallow I know, but after reading the first I was hooked. I first saw them on Jade and Josh's bookcase and there were a few so i thought, well if Jade and Josh are reading them, i probably should to.. couldnt hurt. Im determined to read them all.

Birthday Stories is a collection of stories from all different authors and they are all based on birthdays. They arent all happy stories leaving you all warm and fuzzy inside. Most of them have you thinking long afterwards trying to figure it out. Im guessing that was Haruki's intension.

Love Jade so so much

She even thought of the bookmark- how could you not love her.

Ive almost finished Birthday Stories. 5 Short stoires to go. Once finishing, i will let you know which was my favourite and what Haruki Murakami ill be reading next.

Darwin is attractive

Hello,

The last couple of weeks we have had Ryans parents up. Rod and Lyne have been travelling in their caravan starting from Altona Meadows and have reached Darwin. They are planning to stay up here for atleast another few weeks and then head back home. There is so much to do, im sure they wont get bored.. Ive shown a few different people around and i keep finding new things every time- lots of attractions

We took them to the museum, here are some photos.

This beasts name is Sweetheart. It was huge. When Sweetheart was caught she was shot with a tranquiliser and it worked. But while they were trying to figure out how to get her into the boat and on land she was kept in the water. Crocodiles can stay until water for months without moving so they didnt see this as a problem. Except the tranquiliser stopped something in her body which allows her not to drown. And she drowned =-( Now she is on display at the muesum and she is massive.. A few weeks ago a croc maybe a tiny be smaller was seen on a crocodile jumping cruise. When you are here you will have to go on one.

This is the photo of Brutus. His huge.. but when looking for this picture there was a real and fake version. this is the fake version. the real version isnt that much smaller.. Cruisers are held daily to see jumping crocs. Crocs a big up here.

This portriat is called "Power Couple". I like their pants and the colours. Pretty cool

This piece is called "Dont judge a book by its cover" Its completely made out of book pages. It was soo pretty. I wasnt supposed to be taking photos but it was just so awesome.

The museum also has a Cyclone Tracy exibition. It has heaps of photos of before and after the cyclone hit and it also has a black dark room, where you stand and listen to a real recording of a christmas eve mass. You can hear just how loud the cyclone was, it was freaky as.. Another great attraction.

Then we went to the ski club and had some beers, headed to the mindal markets and caught the sunset. Magical

Love it.

Speak soon xx

Chad the mail/space man

Here at my new job, there is an old man who has been here for years and years and years. He knew the original owners of Perkins. Mr Perkins. His name is Chad and he does the mail run and fills the loos with toilet paper and stuff. Old man jobs. He must be 80 odd.

He comes in every morning and asks " having fun in the sandbox this morning ladies?" We say yes and he moves on and says it to the next office. Quite a cheerful old man. My manager warned me that if I got him talking he wouldnt stop and up until this morning i just said hi and got on with my work.

This morning my manager was out and I asked Chad what sort of hours he works and crap like that. He replied "Well i really shouldnt be working here, Im actually regarded as being as bad as Alkida" I just nodded and asked why, Chad went on to say, it was because he is involved with a planet in space. Its a million light years away and the planet managers and he once asked the managers of the earth if they wanted to form an alliance with this planet that his involved with. The managers of earth said that if this planet tried to make contact with Earth, Earth would then launch a nucleur war on them. When they were denied, Chad was upset and stuff, and he said to me that he didnt understand why Earth wouldnt want to be involved.

The whole time he was talking, Im trying to figure out if this old man was serious or pulling my leg. I couldnt tell. He then went on to say he married a princess from the planet and hasnt seen her for 31 earth years because he pissed off her father for marrying his 3rd youngest daughter. Chad has been to the planet hundreds of years ago- The planet has no name- and he doesnt have any photos because they were lost in the past. He also said that he has a house on this planet 3 times the size of Earth, and thats a small house. Chad said that the houses there are actually living beings. You live in them. Like something alive. Not a human being. But if you need assistance, the house would talk to you and sort everything out. He answered all my questions, I was just soo interested in what he had to say.

I asked him if his princess was human and he replied yes. They are all humans living on this planets. The men are the same as ours and the women are all the same exact they dont have any pubic hair. This guy said this with the straightest of striaght faces.

He also said that he cant wait to get back. He doesnt know when it is but he is hanging out for it. He said that he had seen the world when it was just dirt and giant spiders and he was in a space suit this one time and a giant spider attacted him. WTF!!!!!!!! He told me that in a single jump, the giant spiders could jump 90,000 times their lenght. In a single jump. He also said that he was scared of the palms that fall of the palm tress because they look like giant spider legs.

My manager finally got back and heard the tail end of him telling me stuff. After he left, she started laughing so hard with her hands over her face. I looked at her and said asked if he was for real. She said yes. He is 100% serious and really believes it. When my manager first started working here, she was told by her boss that if Chad started talking about space stuff to her, just ignor it. So he is been believing in this stuff for years and years. He even has a cowboy hat with a bronze circle emblem on it. So there must be something on the net. ill look it up and let you know. Im going to try and get some more info from him. Ive never come across someone like Chad. He told me heaps more stuff.

What I have told you sounds like something from a book but Chad was for real and it blows my mind.

Could he be telling the truth, or is poor Chad just nuts? :(

HASH HOUSE HARRIETTES

Wednesday night i was invited by my gym buddy Shaz, to go on a Hash run. I had no idea what i was in for. She'd been a few times now and loved going, so i thought i would go with her. I got picked up and we went to a house in a suburb id never been to before.

We got to the house which was about 15 minutes from mine and went upstairs. I could hear a lot of talking and giggling. Once I reached the top of the stairs, I saw 18 women from around the ages of 35-85 years old all dressed up in daggy wedding outfits and dresses. One lady was getting remarried and she had a madonna like wedding dress on with a vail and condoms tied to it. I felt totally out of place. I shook hands with a few of them and said hello to everyone else, paid my $10.00 and then was introduced loudly to the whole group and they all smiled and nodded politely at me.

The lady that's house we were at, announced that we were off and we were going for the HASH walk.. an hour or so walk around the suburb that i didn't even get the name off. The host would lead the way and I just followed and spoke to who ever would talk back. The walk was full of false starts, where we would be going in one direction and the host yells "FALSE START" and we would turn around in the direction we just came from. I looked this up on the net and the false start is for those at the front to go back, shuffle the pack and meet with the ones at the end. Its a great idea. They should do false starts for all marathons :P - as if that would happen. That's how i got talking to other people. Basically it was a bunch of ladies walking and gas bagging. You could drop off at any time of the walk and go back to the house, where you would wait for the rest of the group to get back. Anyways, so we got back to the house, had some drinks, most of the ladies were drinking wine, beer and vodka :-O . It was really funny to see. We had a yummy yummy dinner and then the meeting started.

Its a charity and they walk and raise money for all these different causes. Every Wednesday it is held at someone else's house, they make dinner, they all go for a walk and then they sing some funny songs that they have made up or got from other hash groups and they go through the events they have coming up and tell funny stories of what happened during the week to them. Jesus that was a long sentence- sorry. It was really good. This group is just for ladies and there was only like 18 but usually there is 30-50 and because the rugby was on there wasn't many at all.

I was the youngest there and felt so out of place but i want to go back next week. They told dirty jokes and had a steel hospital urinal, like a hand held male one. It was nice,clean and shiny like someone polishes it every week, and every week it is given to the host for next week. So this urinal gets passed around and everyone puts a little bit of their drinks into it and the host has to skull it while they are all singing this funny song. They made me do it coz i was new and i spilt it all over me :-O so embarrassed but they all laughed and apparently Shaz did it the week before and spilt it all over herself so that was alright.

It was very relaxed, so welcoming and really enjoyable. It was so cool seeing these grandmothers and stuff doing vodka shots and swearing like sailors. They also have funny nicknames for each other, and you get named when you do something accidentally ridiculous or it could refer to your job or your name, and the older ladies decide what your name is.

Here's some of the names
Ichy tit ( she had an infected nipple on time)
head job (she was a hair dresser)
plucka
postie
princess
ice maiden (brings ice every week for the esky)
hooker (she worked at lj hooker),
hoops
help me ( her real name is Rhonda) Beach boys song :-D
Madonna

I haven't been named, i think i will have to be there a few months before i do. They record how many runs you do and they go overseas and do runs. Its an international thing. Its huge and has been going on for a looooooooooong time.

It was a really fun night and I'm going to blog about it every week and take some photos. Such a happy bunch of ladies. They even have a website which isn't kept up to date to often but once Ive been there for a while, i will offer to look after it and update it weekly. Shouldn't be too hard. Check it out http://darwinharriettes.jigsy.com/

Now that i have changed jobs, i have access to the blogger site so i should be posting much more- so be prepared to be blogged people.

Catch yas next week for your update on the Darwin Hash House Harriettes

laters xx