Kalliste

No one is going to mention the terrible sex scene where they appeared to still be wearing pants and there was a slow motion hair flip? I liked the introduction of Elektra but didn't really get interested in this episode. It (and much of this season to date) just seemed so slow. I liked the Punisher stuff but I'm not feeling this season anywhere near as much as the first. I will endeavour though and hope for the best.

The whole US election systems is so confusing. Given that voting is voluntary I feel like politicians like to keep it confusing so that only the fanatical will come out and vote (in theory, increasing their chances of being voted in). Over here an election is called and a date is provided. We get a bunch of propaganda up until that date (there is a black out period just before the election where they have to stop bombarding us with 'vote for me' crap) and then we go to our nearest school or voting place. We provide them with our name and address, confirm we have not voted at any other polling place that day and get given 2 pieces of paper with instructions on how to vote (there are also people outside the polling area with 'how to vote' paper for their particular candidate). You cross or number the boxes and then place your pieces of paper in a box thing and you leave. They start getting tallied pretty early and that night we have a new prime minister. Easy.

I thought of it like this too. Not that he pulled the trigger to kill any of them. I heard a lot of great feedback about this episode in particular but I didn't find it overly interesting. I did like the Frank and DD conversations but that was really it. The fight scene went far too long and was very video game-esque in style. It was basically wave after wave of 'baddies' . I have to say that so far this season hasn't hooked me in. Here's hoping it gets more interesting.

*whispers* broccoli is my favourite vegetable... well maybe after potato *whispers* I love how broccoli absorbs other flavours like in a stirfry, mmm. There is a place I sometimes go to that has a chicken and steamed vegetables (carrot, cauliflower, broccoli) salad and it was quite unusual to eat as the vegetables were cold. I got used to it though and now buy it fairly regularly.

I really don't think Sun was ever 'good' she just liked people to think she was. I was so sad over their reunion but also happy that they got the chance to see each other again. I don't mind them being killed off though, the stupider thing for me is Juliet getting jealous over Kate after being with Sawyer for years.

Thanks :) We got home about an hr ago. Last night was this series of misfortunate events (but not as bad as the books). We were staying in a room that fronted onto a pretty busy street so it was quite loud but the sound of the air con did a good job of covering it.. until it died at 11:30 just as we were going to bed and reception were basically no help at all. So we attempted to sleep through the street noise and then the guys in the room next door decided it was cool just to come in and out of their room which had music on, talking loudly, at least once every 30mins until 5am, at which point I got the shits and called reception asking them to fix it. Fortunately, at 5:30am the very perky (for 5:30am) Monica answered the call and told them to shut the hell up (not exactly in those words) and when I mentioned the AC had flaked she got that fixed too (if only she had been on at 11:30) and offered us a late checkout! Way to go Monica! So we finally get some sleep, get up for the buffet breakfast, get back to bed at 10am and are just about to go back to sleep when we hear this singing which starts getting louder and then it hit me, it's Good Friday and we're staying in a place that is opposite a church. There was a procession which I'm guessing was "The way of the cross' walk (which i didn't know was a thing until this morning) that happened to stop at this church on its way. They had closed the road for it and there were at least 100 people as part of the walk. Fortunately they moved on after about 10mins and we were able to salvage some of our late checkout. Now I'm home and it's very quiet here. re: ingredients in a salad, it's probably an unpopular choice but I chose cucumber.. I also wanted to choose onion,

It's my anniversary and my bf bought us a room in the nicest hotel I've ever been in and this is the view from the spa. Which is a good chunk of Melbourne CBD. Part of the perks of the hotel is free pre-dinner drinks at 5:30 so you know where I'll be.

Technically I do but not in the sense of a physical sign in sheet or anything. I get paid a 36.75hr week which only varies if I happen to work/get paid overtime. Given I rarely work overtime that isn't really going to happen :P What we do have in the public service is what's called a flex sheet. It used to just be a spreadsheet for me but now it's built into the payroll system we use. So basically every day I enter in the time I got to work, when I took lunch, when I got back from lunch and when I finished. It calculates the time worked and if I am over my 7hrs 21mins it gives me 'flex time' which is essentially just time in lieu (which, after a quick google I'm finding might not be a common term in the US. Let me know!) and allows me to take time off at a rate of 1:1 at another date if I wanted. I can start work anytime between 7am and 10am as long as I work the 7hrs 21mins and in most cases I don't need approval for it from my boss. Just turn up whenever. As an example, today I started at 9:05 (yup, exact) and I was going to finish at 17:05 but I donated blood today and felt a bit woozy in the afternoon so I left at 16:30 instead so I could get a bus that required less walking on my part. And as such I had some of my flex deducted. I wish we got all 3 instances of it off but alas, we do not :P wikipedia tells me it used to be in June to take advantage of the good weather (northern hemisphere centric) but given it's in winter every year (at least for me) I have no idea why it's in the middle of June :P

Hah, I've never heard it referred to as 8 hr day.. I don't even know what that means :P Tasmanian's are weird. Canberra Day for me :) and then a 4 day week at work and then the bf is whisking me away on a mystery holiday the week after for our anniversary and then the weekend is easter.. it's a good March for me :D eta: I clicked on the link and found out all about the 8hr day :P It's funny, because if someone told me I had to work a 48hr week now I'd tell them to shove it. At the moment I work the weird time of 7hrs21min a day. When our next agreement goes through (if it ever does) it'll be increased to the standard 7.5hrs but I do enjoy those extra 9 mins a day :P

three day weekend!

I used to have things on tapes too. When I was just discovering you could buy music and it wasn't just on the tv and radio most the things I bought were on tape because vinyl was old and CDs were non existent or too new. I forget when we got a cd player, maybe the mid 90's, my Dad had bought my Mum a cd for her birthday and we didn't own a cd player *hint hint* so he went out and bought a 5 disk changer which was pretty amazing at that time. My first car was a 1979 red gemini, which looked a little something like this. When I owned it in 2000 it had a tape deck and I was too cheap/poor to buy a cd player so I actually used tapes :P It looked a little something like this: I named it Ruby because it was a red gem. Anyway, feel free to share first car stories :P I wish I had a photo of my actual one. It was pretty done up, I'm assuming the owner before me was a teenaged boy and not a girl :P In relation to bad music, I don't know.. I used to listen to BSB when I was a youngen and I'd probably still sing along to Backstreets Back.. my friend and I used to listen to the album non stop and talk to each other on the phone about which of them was the dreamiest. I liked Nick, she liked Howie. We listened to this a lot: Then there is this, his debut album was the first I ever owned. Even at the age of 10 I was in love. and this left me positively flustered Does Love Shack by B52's count as cringeworthy? I remember singing it when I was about 5 and having no idea what they were talking about. I'd still sing it now and be happy to listen to it. In fact I am right now. You realise how long this song is when you decide to do it for karaoke, which I did when I was 18 On to something I am actually listening to these days and I actually am ok to tell you about. I found this band and I think the female lead sounds great. I listen on my way to work, it helps me to not get angry about the shitty traffic.

Wow, I would never send off my birth certificate and hope to get it returned. The solution (of sorts) to that here is either someone official sights it (in the case of the post office with my passport) or you have to get a justice of the peace (whose duties are different to the US version according to wikipedia) to stamp a copy advising they have sighted the document and the date they did it. And it does sound tricky to get a child's passport. I assume they do that so they know both parents are consenting to the child going overseas? I got a passport as a child but I don't even remember the process, I think I was smiling in the photo too which we're not allowed to do now. My current passport photo is like the worst mugshot ever :P

Oh, the passport cards sound interesting. I wonder if we have something similar with NZ. We don't need visas to travel there but seems like a passport is required (which is the main reason for getting one, planning on going there in Nov). You still need to wait a bit to get it though? I recently read a book where the main character was from the UK and popped off for a trip down to London came home the same day with a passport and I thought it sounded a bit far fetched.. if it is the reality though I wish it were like that here :P Also it looks like your name change was similar to mine. I was born with my Mum's maiden name and when my parents got married they gave me the choice to either keep it, hyphenate it (which my Mum did) or change to my Dad's surname.. I went with his name and given the fact that I haven't seen him in years, I wish I hadn't bothered :P

My passport has been dispatched! Now tell me, what is the process for obtaining a passport where you guys are? Over here you need to fill out an online form (well you can pick up a paper one too but pfft, who has time for that?) which you then print and you need a guarantor to confirm your identity, they can't live with you, be related to you or be a romantic partner and have known you for at least 12 months. They also need to either have a valid passport or have been enrolled to vote at their current address for more than 12 months. They then need to sight a passport photo and on the back write that it is in fact you. They sign it, you sign it and then you need to organise an interview through the post office (no idea why the post office got stuck with this type of thing). At the post office you need to provide 2 passport photos (including the guarantor one), your birth cert and any proof of name changes, your licence and medicare card and they go through checking everything is ok. If they deem it to be ok you pay them $254 and they send it off to be processed. They say it should take about 3 weeks for you to get it. So I went through that on Monday and it was dispatched on Friday so that seems quite good, they gave me a call on Friday morning which I missed and I was freaking out about what was wrong with the application. My biggest concern being that my named changed when I was 8 and the only proof I have of it is a little stamp on my birth certificate with the new name... it has caused me many a problem, this is why you don't let kids make these decisions. Apparently that delayed it a bit but didn't stop the process, they were just calling to say it would need to have my middle name on it... I don't even care, if they didn't tell me I would have just expected it to be that way. The service was good though, they sent me an SMS and I was provided someone's name and their direct phone number rather than having to call a call centre. Anyway, in about a weeks time I will have the means to travel overseas :D tl:dr - the passport process here seems to be long and drawn out. Is it similar or completely different where you are?

Does anyone else find the robots from Boston Dynamics to be especially creepy? They need to team up with the Japanese for their next model to make it look less scary :P In the future, the robots will look back to these videos of humans pushing them around and will enslave us forever.

The weirder thing was the cup to pee in was polystyrene.. It wasn't even the normal testing cup. I think I would have felt even weirder just holding my 1/4 full foam cup while waiting :P And on that topic, do you know how difficult it is to pee 'midstream' into a cup? And then only fill it 1/4 of the way! Especially when you've been dying to go to the toilet for more than an hr at that point. The good thing was they were able to do their testing straight away, I was surprised that work didn't ask for drug tests as there is a zero tolerance policy and we can get randomly tested without notice any time while at work. I have difficult veins too! I went to a dr appointment once and didn't realise I would need to have blood taken and I hadn't had anything to drink at that point.. it was not a pleasant experience. I also recently started donating blood more often (the mobile van is parked outside my work every 3 months.. it's like they time it! :P) and each time they need to attempt from both arms.. this time I'm just going to suggest going straight for the left (even though it's my dominant).. I'd like to say I do it for selfless reasons but I really just like all the treats they give you (they had the best cookies last time!) and I have no fear of needles so figure why not? The first thing I do after my alarm goes off is get up and take a shower, I then make my breakfast and once I'm sitting on the couch I'll check instagram, twitter and then gmail while eating breakfast. And no, no forwarded emails. That all lives on twitter through Vine tweets :P It might also be that my mum doesn't know my email addresses so she can't send me that junk :D On a whim I got a haircut after work today including a few foils. It's so much shorter and I'm so much happier! Long hair is the worst. This is the "I'm bored, I can't believe i have to wait 30mins for these foils to proccess" before me. This is the "YAY my hair is light and breezy and the hairdresser gave me little curls but I'm not going to look too excited because I'm taking a selfie at a busstop" after me

i had a pre-employment (even though I've been at work for 14 months) medical today. I was a bit worried because there was no information on what they'd be doing but overall the worst part was waiting to be seen. About 5mins before my appointment I asked where the toilets were and was told I'd need to provide a urine sample and could I wait a few minutes until my appointment. A few minutes ended up being about 45, I was sitting there busting the whole time and getting annoyed they were so behind on my appointment. On the plus side it came out fine with none of the bad stuff that could have been in it. And other than being overweight not much else was wrong. I am now cleared to sit on my arse in front of a computer all day! How unsurprising.

Oops :P Technology these days, getting everyone in the shit. I tried with Ancestory.com but i just don't know enough about my family to get anywhere. I can tell you the names of my grandparents but that is about it. Perhaps if i had a paying membership it might have been easier. I have considered doing one of those swab tests to see what my background is though, they seem interesting.

I kind of feel like many governments have been the same, granted as someone who isn't an American my knowledge of American politics would be less. But it mostly seems to be about power and paranoia, especially in times of war. I might check out the other books mentioned. I keep meaning to read Stepford Wives but never get around to it.

I just finished reading 1984. I thought it was a massive waste of my time. Most of the time it was putting me to sleep with how boring it was.

Still haven't seen Deadpool but I know of a guy who thinks it was terrible so I guess there are some people in the world :P I found the trailers to be a bit meh to be honest. Maybe I need to know more about Deadpool as a character to understand his humour.

Ooh that's very cool! I love how the show has so many hidden things, I definitely need to watch it all through now that it has (finally) finished. Even cooler there are 'adult' things in the show, some of which kids will understand and others they won't. I wonder if there will ever be another animated show on par with Gravity Falls.

The real journal would be neat. It would be cool if you could buy it as a special boxset with the dvds or something.

Yes! I can't wait for a boxset to come out and it better look like the journals!

Gravity Falls last episode was today.. there is now a piece of me missing. I can't believe it took them 3.5 years to get through 2 seasons and now, it's finished :'( I haven't seen Deadpool yet (I nearly typoed that as Deadwood, that I have seen) and I don't know if I'm interested enough to see it at the movies. Maybe when it is released later on.