We’ll start with January’s numbat photo.
I reckon the Creator had some help from a graphic designer when he/she/it designed these. Same with loons.
loon
Existential crisis 💫
(She gets half a roll of toilet paper for her nest every week after I clear away the old stuff. Thankfully, she just likes laying on it. No idea why)
Memories of being a kitten in a paper nest with her mum?
The things we do for our cats 😂 she looks so happy!
Paper is warm and dry like dry leaves in nature
Sent off an email to the general manager to have a meeting face to face next week about the police check.
I expect to lose the contract, but I still have a little hope that I won’t.
Also I have a migraine😔
Goodnight everyone ❤️
gentle hugs and a cup of tea
Gratitude thread!
My sister bought a little studio apartment, after being dejected because she missed out at an auction a couple of weeks ago. I’m happy for her :)
I also had a lot to do at work today, so the time went by quickly.
I am grateful for washing machines. Without them our lives would be so such harder.
I can live without a dishwasher, oven, microwave, still don’t have a dryer, but the last thing I’d ever let go of is a washing machine. It’s a non-negotiable. life would be horrible without one
I’m grateful I found the motivation to go to the shops and grab a few things I’ve been needing for like 2 weeks. Even if that motivation was mostly because ice cream
I’m grateful for the roof over my family’s heads and for kids that enjoy spending time together. I’m actually rather grateful we’re not doing much this weekend as I need the rest. I’ll be watching the wrestling tomorrow with the kids and that’s about it. Physically I’m knackered, it’s been a tough week.
I just had half a donut which was very yummy.
Ooh what kind of donut was it?
Chocolate iced and filled with custard. Lots and lots of custard 😁
Grateful for my oodie and my warm merino socks, and for this absolutely rich and delightful chocolate cake left over from morning tea at work. A lovely pick me up while painstakingly working through all my deductions…
After jumping into the puffer jacket thread yesterday with a bold claim you need neither a big jacket nor a puffer…I succumbed today and am now one of the great Melbourne puffy community.
My fav little local store was having a sale so I got a proper down one for half price so just a bit over a hundred. I have to admit I am very toasty warm
Already only 6.4 degrees. Would not be surprised if it gets to 0 tonight.
I think I’ll head to the border for the night so I can smash out another 6-8 hours of my audiobook (Pet Sematary read by Dexter’s Michael C. Hall). I’ve been meaning to check out Yackandandah for a while so I can go by there as a detour on my way home tomorrow.
Plans: sorted. Well… nearly. I need to see if I can find a room up there.
Edit: sorted.
He’s got such a great voice! Enjoy the drive 🙂
Heading to a dnb/jungle/dubstep gig tonight. Gonna see how many lemons I can give away.
Just some rando handing out lemons to randos.
Used to do it in the before times and they all went so keen to see if that still holds.
In this cost of living crisis, they would have to have clinical brain damage not to take free lemons.
It’s a dnb/jungle/dubstep gig - clinical brain damage not ruled out.
As much as I want to feel offended you’re quite right :)
Was not trying to directly imply the quantity of psychoactive substances ingested to refuse the offer of free citrus ;)
Lol. The Beard is gone now. All of it.
He feels naked now.
and cold
He’s lost a couple of Arab points now lol
Hahaha. He looks 10 years younger and no longer a sheikh.
I remember when I got rid of my Arab beard a few years ago.
Never looked back.
You can feel like you’re having an affair for the next week!
Going to throw something controversial out there. It bothers me that virtually all advertisments feature a mixed races couple. It bothers me how virtually all media nowadays is so ultra sensitive to be politically correct that any white person plus white person combo is ‘blacklisted’ (lol).
I have no issue with mixed race relationships at all. But I do have an issue that all media seems to have started to portray the ‘typical’ relationship as a mixed race one.
Lol, why does it matter? I mean, it’s all capitalism anyway; media/ads are just doing it to grab a wider audience and make more money. People are more likely to buy from places that they feel represent them, and the companies profit.
Everything is shades of grey, friend.
Bingo.
I get it. It’s the same with tradie ads featuring women. Good, but not the norm. Woolies ads have the men cooking the family dinner. Good, but not the norm.
The thing is no longer will we see stereotypes because the marketing team will cast that net wider than previous attempts. It’s a good thing.
I feel the same about work training material. So much attention to including one of everybody that it may not represent reality. One group I work with the diversity is naturally true. The other very on paper.
Advertising has always been ‘aspirational’. Back in the 70s and 80s, the Womens Weekly was notorious for advertisements where the goods being advertised were clearly aimed at the newly prosperous new home owners and newly arrived people. The people demonstrating the goods were all white, anglo and upperclass or a good imitation thereof. The goods were such that white anglo upperclass people would not have dreamed of having in their houses - even in their worst nightmares, as too too bogan.
Also, look at homewares ads on tv & youtube right now - the houses, even those with small kids and pets, are INCREDIBLY neat and clean and all the surfaces are blindingly white or pale grey and everyone is neatly and cleanly dressed. This is not a realistic scenario for a busy household. Aspirational.
@Force_majeure123 @Seagoon_ representative media would include couples who are three percent Aboriginal, six percent chinese, half a percent italian, ten percent queer, sixty six percent working class etc. That would be representative. Pretty difficult to cast.
I’m generally in mixed race relationships. I hate pandering. That’s pretty much it.
Though I still get a mix of incredulous and or strange looks when I’m out and about with an Anglo partner. Usually from other anglos.
At the same time, worrying about what colour the people are in ads is pretty low on my list of concerns. Nothing personal.
How many drinks have you had my friend?
How about you respond to the posited scenario rather than attack the positor
Mixed race is how you can tell it’s undercover myki
because reality is that mixed race couples are still an exception
I told the man if he insists on keeping The Beard during Winter, then atleast trim it away from the top lip because sitting here whilst enjoying my dinner, I have seen some disturbing things.
do not make leek soup
😐
If it keeps up, he might be able to use it like whales use their baleen.
It’s been several years since my best Winter sleep period ever. Trying it again (sleeping with the window cracked). Think it went well last night.
This weird little weirdo is actually excited about it.
I slept with the balcony door open on my first night on the train to Mildura. It was nice, but that was in Creswick and it was a few c colder there than in Melbs. Woke up with freezing feet, even with socks and the blanket. The rest of me was happy though
Tax return lodged!! Of course my old employer’s income statement isn’t tax ready, they have ALWAYS been so slow at paying super, lodging tax details, etc. Meanwhile my current employers are on the ball - one is a huge org, the other a tiny firm, and they managed to get shit sorted. I didn’t bother waiting for the old guys, the sums correlate to my bank deposits. Hopefully it’s all in order, anticipating a decent chunk that I can put towards getting my car’s head unit replaced with one that does android auto.
There’s also small silver lining to my reduced employment over the last FY, should be getting $511 back as a tax offset. Overall, a huge relief vs my shockingly low tax refund last year of $250 or so
Happy to hear you managed to lodge yours in sooner rather than later.
Last year my employer forgot to push the income statements through and I had to call the finance department and ask what was going on and they forgot to action it and push it through to the ATO. 🤦♂️
They got it in on time this year so I just lodged mine in the other day. I’m glad that I’ll be getting back more than what I got last year by quite a bit but I think a lot of it came at the expense of travelling offsite and back constantly so I was able to claim back on that.
Now for the wait of it being assessed which hopefully won’t take too long and then win!
That’s really poor of your employer, surely one of the finance/payroll department’s biggest tasks is to ensure staff get their tax-related statements on time. I would’ve been so mad - thankfully it came through on time this year. I hear what you mean about the travel, I was looking through my past tax lodgments and one year I racked up thousands in claiming vehicle use for work travel, dunno whether it really worked out in the end with all the costs of maintenance and some expensive service items.
I’m keen to get something back before the end of this month if possible. It’s time for me to restore my savings balance to where it was near the end of last year before I quit my job. I’ll be due for a chat about my pay at my second job and going to negotiate as best I can…
Cheers! 🥒🍸
Chin chin! 🍹
For some reason I have Handel’s The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba in my head this morning and I just imagine… cats. Specifically, a glossy-maned cat of regal bearing sauntering into a room on an overhead ledge and looking down on us unworthy humans. I am a bit cat-starved. I have much more freedom to adopt a cat compared to past years, but wondering if it’s a good time when I might need to cut back on work for a year to finish my studies…
edit: I shall ponder about this some more while I knuckle down and start doing my taxes. Did not save a copy of all my payslips from my old job which was dumb. Zero interest in contacting them again, so I will just work backwards to figure out how many hours of work (and therefore WFH I did).
Also didn’t realise I could claim airfare and accom for my work-related conference last year as a deduction as well. Score!
There is fostering rescue cats - limited time commitment, big expenses paid for, and you get to help a cat learn that hoomans are good companions.
This is sort of where I’m leaning towards tbh. It also means I can plan holidays around fostering periods without needing to find someone to catsit. Last I looked a few places required written approval from the landlord. I’m fairly sure mine will be okay as this apartment is all floorboards and very low maintenance. I need to get over my partly irrational fear that they’ll use it as an excuse to increase the rent, though. I’m on a good wicket at the moment relative to the insane prices out there.
Queen of Sheba
Eee that was my old abbys name.
She also enjoyed heights to the extent she’d make sure you were looking and jump off the roof (2nd floor) for sport.
Logistics wise, unsure. But! A cat is the best study buddy. Mickey helped me heaps when I was at UniMelb, and prolly will again when I start TAFE. They just make it that much easier, even when sleeping on the laptop, pressing keys, or swatting all your pens. Good motivators but also good to remind you to take regular breaks, even if it’s a moment to pat them. Idk, it depends on your situation of course, but my mental health is so much better with a furry familiar
Oh, the mental health boost would be 1000000000000000000000000% there. But I know that on top of regular food I need to have an emergency fund for vet visits, etc, and just wondering if it’s a wise financial decision if I’ll be cutting my earnings (reducing my work hours) to study, not long after a period of already eating into my savings from unemployment and then travel and a car.
I also am not home a lot of the time and wonder if that’ll be good for the cat. At least having a WFH setup means that now even if I need to do a late day at work I can come home and finish off what’s needed and still feed kitty on time.
I will see what study leave options I can utilise at work to balance it all out. The truth is, on a single income, it’ll just take a rent hike to throw a lot of these plans in disarray. As much as I love cats I do not want to touch my savings again in order to afford having one…
