Winter’s log, earthdate 201510.12

Goodness, I’m starting this late tonight! It’s 10 past five, and we’ve only just got home from our “errands”! Clarke came this morning to collect the rubbish that had been left behind after he and Paul installed our two doors, but didn’t bring the laminate sample – he was going to bring that tomorrow, but as we won’t be home in the morning he’ll just put them in the letterbox, so that should be alright… Now, we were going to be going off to take all my name change paperwork to the Justice Centre, but by the time I’d re-filled all the forms in (I’d filled them all in months ago, before we moved, and as you can probably imagine, they were starting to look a little bit “tacky”!) Julian decided that we’d go in after lunch, about two o’clock, so that we’d miss any sort of “lunch time rush”. So I sat back down again and played a bit of Rift… (what else?! 😉 ) Anyway, we had lunch at home, and I managed to get my lunchtime hill-climbing done, and then we headed off to the Box Hill Justice Centre, which is in Station Street, just past the corner of Whitehorse Road and Station Street, on the Doncaster side. Parking, of course, was impossible – not only is it a very busy area, but they, too, are building apartments, businesses, and what will probably be additional annexes or buildings for the Box Hill Tafe (is it still a Tafe? or has it assumed the title of university now? I can’t keep up with all the changing terms and titles!) Luckily there was one (one!) Disabled Parking spot opposite the Justice Centre, so we took that – and were very thankful that it wasn’t raining, as it probably would have been if we had gone in the morning! So off we went, and almost got squished by their automatic door on the way in – apparently there’d been a power outage earlier, and the door’s brains had got a bit scrambled by it – it didn’t want to open – a button inside the building had to be held down for that to happen, and when it did open, it was only opening about three-quarters of the way, when it would immediately try to slam shut again (which is where I nearly got squished!) We must have hit the sweet spot though, because when we arrived we were the only people there. We spoke to a very nice and helpful lady called “Amanda”, and she went through all my forms – I think we impressed her because we had so much documentation with us – she kept telling us “we don’t need that”, and “you’ve brought us too much!” She told us that she’d done lots of these name change thingies and that there shouldn’t be any problems with mine – she said that they may want a credit check of my first marriage done, but she doubts it (and which would be rather pointless, as they don’t keep those sorts of records for more than seven years, and Julian and I have been together for 29 years, which is longer than the statute of limitations, anyway!) (so now I just know that they’re going to demand one, and hold the whole process up for months!) Do you know, it takes 41 business days for them to process change of name applications?! 41 days! However for a sinfully exorbitant price, you can have it “fast-tracked” to five business days… So we paid the sinfully exorbitant price, and what’s more, we also paid to have it express posted to our PO Box address – I’m really sitting on broken glass about this – so by the end of next week I should know if I got my name change or not. I’m so nervous! What if they say “No! You already have enough names – you can’t have Winter as well! (so there!)” or something?! 😐

Well, we were planning on going up to Knox City to pick up our cupboard drawer thingy from Howard’s Storage World, and to see if we could find a Swatch Watch for me – but by this time it was starting to get a bit late, so we changed our schedule and went to Doncaster Shoppingtown instead, because it was just up the road and a lot closer. I could have gone without a watch for another day I suppose, but I had a prescription to get filled, and we also wanted to get some more toothbrush heads from The Shaver Shop (and if I’d been thinking properly, we also wanted to go to T2 to have a look at the special jugs they have for making iced tea, but I forgot!) Do you know, no-one sells Swatch Watches any more? You can buy them online – I even had a look at a few of them last night – but their site was as slow as a broken down bus, and there were no real close-ups to show you any details in the (so-called) patterns on either the dial or the bands (so you can’t really see what they look like, or how they’re going to suit you) Or if you’re really desperate you can go into Melbourne Central, where they’re supposed to have a shop (and there are two chances of us doing that! Buckley’s and None!) We did the Grand Tour of all the jewellery shops that sold watches on the ground floor of Doncaster Shoppingtown – we should have done upstairs as well (we probably wouldn’t have forgotten the toothbrush heads or the T2 iced tea jugs if we had, though I wouldn’t swear to that!) but we were really running late by this time, and we were both getting quite desperate for a cup of coffee, so when we found a black plastic Casio watch, with a plastic buckle at Proud’s, we caved in – it was even on Sale, so with our tongues hanging out for caffeine, how could we resist?! And I can now tell you (with but a single glance at my right wrist!) that it’s precisely twelve minutes past six o’clock in the evening, give or take a few minutes, and not just a patch of bare skin, which I’ve been hopefully looking at for the last day and a half, as if hoping that it would tell me what time it was!

Weigh-in this morning. I knew it, I knew it! Yes, I’m in the ruddy see-saw event at the end of the kilogram zone! Back up one point! from 72.1kg to 72.2kg! Over the past five days I’ve gone from 72.4kg to 72. 5kg to 72.2kg to 72.1kg to 72.2kg – what will it be tomorrow, I wonder? Oh well, about another two days should see me past the effect of the fluid-retaining pills (I hope!)

Waiting at the traffic lights on our way home from Shoppingtown, I was idly looking around, and I saw these two guys – they were obviously friends, they’d crossed the road together, and were standing on the corner together, each one busily texting away on their phones. To me, this looked stupid enough – but then they started walking off, side by side, together, both of them still busily texting with both hands. I said to Julian “I wish I had a magic wand! I’d magic a hole in front of them so that they’d trip over it!” Julian laughed and said I was mean. I said “Why? It might wake them up and make them take notice of the world around them! Look! There’s blue sky, and heavy grey clouds! There’s traffic, and trees, and people! And they’re head down, both thumbs busily pecking away at a minute keyboard! For goodness sake – if they want to communicate with someone, why not talk to them – then at least they could observe the world around them while they were walking and talking!” To me, to see people behaving this way is the epitome of idiocy – they obviously can’t know how deadly dull and stupid (“zombified” might be a better description!) they look while they’re doing this, or they wouldn’t do it! Do you all think I’m mean too, for wanting to wake them from their zombified trance?

So tomorrow I’ve got my visit to the Prosthodontist, Wednesday’s free, because my favourite eldest daughter is off to the hairdresser to have her hair coloured – but she’ll be over on Thursday, so that’ll be good! I’m not sure what’s happening on Friday – let’s just say “To Be Announced” 🙂 And that’s really about it from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night – find out all about my visit to the Prosthodontist, and what I think of the laminate sample that Clarke said he’d put in our letterbox for me (it’s the laminate for my vanity unit in my new bathroom, and is (supposed to be!) a deep sort of plum!) I’ll also fill you in on how my weight’s behaving, and any other interesting little tidbits from the day’s doin’s! Until then, do bee good, remember that dreams come true – without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm – but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂