Tales from The Ville

Ich sprech… huh??

Shezz — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:08:55 +0000

Come 6am tomorrow morning Al and I will be on a plane, on our way to GERMANY!!!! We’re flying ex Brisbane via China and Holland. It’ll take us more than a day (I think. We have purposely not added up all the transit times!!).

Photos upon return to this putrid weather :-)

FINGERS CROSSED FOR SNOW!!

Some days [are Tuesdays]

Shezz — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 03:48:16 +0000

Some days… we decide to build a house. Most days… we are whinging about how we have no money (mostly because we decided to build a house).

Some days I wish for my own company more than anything else, but most days I love getting to see my almost sister-in-law and her 2-year-old son pretty much all day.

Some days I get so claustrophobic in this tiny flat where there aren’t enough places to put stuff… It’s only 35sqm big. Most days I’m okay with it, because I know it’s only until our house is built.

Some days I have my car packed to the hilt with all my school stuff (because it doesn’t have a home yet). Most days my car is just full of other shit!

Some days are holidays, but many of those days are spent sick or feeling cruddy…. I seem to store up on all the sickness and stress throughout the term and then blast my immune system with it once I stop and relax :-(

Some days it’s only 2 days until WE GO TO GERMANY!!!! But most days that will not be the case… we never really travel anywhere far away!!

Some days I think about finding a little chapel somewhere in Germany while we’re there and getting married. But then I think about all the people we would miss sharing that special moment with and convince myself it’s not such a great idea… Plus, most days I am not that apprehensive about planning our wedding, and I know I will have people who will help :-)

Feel free to link up!

Build ‘em up

Shezz — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:53:34 +0000

Land contract signed.

Estate Covenant signed.

Building contract signed.

Finance application signed ….. or will be in about 7 hours…

Almost all done!!! And all before we go away :-) And it all comes in at less than $366,000. Of course there will be a few thousand for stamp duty, lawyers fees, etc. But the house itself? Well and truly within our budget :-D So, when we get back from Germany, we get to do all the fun things like choose colours – how exciting!

Hat trick

Shezz — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:20:21 +0000

Hat now complete. Parcel is packaged up ready for posting, along with the other family pressies.

The hat

Not quite reversible...?

YAY for recycling postage boxes :-)

I framed a copy of this poem I love for Al’s cousin’s wife….. and Al ended up getting a JB Hi-Fi voucher for Owen. Not the most creative gift ever, but at least he’ll be able to buy what he wants. It’s a bit hard when you are “secret santa” for someone in the family you hardly know. But at least it’s a good family approach to including everyone and not breaking the budget of anyone.

The poem I love. By a guy called Tomihiro Hoshino. He was almost totally paralysed in an accident and learned to write and paint with his mouth!!

This time in a week, Al and I will be in GERMANY!!!! Excitement plus!!!

Heart attack!

Shezz — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:22:43 +0000

Just gave myself a heart attack — realised I’d misjudged baby Mia’s age…. and thought all my effort sewing that little outfit would be wasted as she is actually going to be 5 months old, not 3 at Christmas. Eeek. Luckily the size I chose to sew still encompasses the average weight/height for a 5 month old. And I’m pretty sure she’s not a bigger-than-average bub. Phew!!

The hat is still a work in progress….

Unpacking 0, Procrastination 1

Shezz — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 03:48:28 +0000

Unpacking = fail. There is still a pile of stuff we need to unpack, while also packing again for our holiday next week. And not atypically, I haven’t felt like doing any of it. So instead, I have been sewing. Due to the copious amounts of fabric I have, I figured that sewing something would make an inexpensive Christmas gift for the youngest of the Horne clan… Al’s cousin Owen and wife Yumiko had a baby girl in October. All I have left to do is attempt the hat.

So cute!

.... and it's reversible!

I though the cherry blossom-esque pattern of the pink material was apt… after all, Mia is a spring baby, just not a Japanese-spring baby…..

One week left to finish getting Christmas presents for the family before we leave…. and to finish unpacking…. and to pack for holiday…. sheesh!!

Blank Canvas

Shezz — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 08:28:06 +0000

The hunt is over. Finally. It has taken us a long time but we did arrive at this point eventually. We are in the process of buying a block of land and building on it. We have also successfully negotiated the many display villages and builders to decide on one plan that we both like. It’s very frustrating when builders advertise a particular build price, but then once you include all the necessary “extras” like tiles… or paint… or doors…. that price isn’t nearly so low anymore, and these ‘cheap’ builders cost just as much as other builders. But we are really happy now, and assuming nothing goes wrong we will sail in under the $370k mark.

Artists's impression of the front facade.

We've extended Bedrooms 3 & 4 about 40cms towards the front of the house.

First Progress Shot: Our empty block.

Mid point

Shezz — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:11:04 +0000

The end of this week marks five weeks since Al and I became a two-household couple, and five weeks before we return to being a one-household couple. And can I say that living separately seriously sucks? I swore after the last one I wouldn’t ever do a LDR again… well that backfired on me, didn’t it? At least I knew it was for a determined length of time, not indefinitely. But…. yeah. Most of the time I just feel like curling up in a ball and crying. And I feel really pathetic for it, too — there are people (and people I have known) that survived seemingly easily through these situations before, yet I can barely hold it together. I really just want to hibernate and do nothing until it’s all over. Except if I was going to do that, I may as well do that in Townsville with Al. I think the anxiety about my job and the house is not helping, either. SIGH.

Anyway.

To update:

On the trying-to-sell-our-house front — with the market at the moment, there’s not a lot of interest here in CT. Perhaps may pick up at the end of the year / beginning of the year with people moving into town, but… I think we are just going to have to go down the rental route. Al is going to change his loan so that he is paying interest-only (for which they charge a $350 fee!!!), so that means that we should be breaking just about even with the rent we would be receiving. And the rental market is definitely a lot stronger than the buy-sell market. Typical of a transient town, I suppose.

On the buying-a-house front — we had notice from the seller’s solicitors that he has had an unconditional contract offered… instead of prolonging things for the extra week we had left (as there’s no way our house would sell in the next week) we have decided to terminate the contract. This means that we will get back the money we paid down as a deposit on the contract.

On the finances front — we spoke with our loan broker about what my borrowing power would be on a single income (so that we could take advantage of the first homeowners grant) — at the moment it would be around $300k, and with everything paid off (loans, GE Card etc), that would increase to about $340k. Amazing how $5000 can make such a difference to borrowing power!! We are now deciding whether to wait the year and save a deposit so that we can buy pre-existing house together based on our combined income… or take advantage of the $10,000 building boost and $7000 first homeowners grant (which would total the 5% deposit of a house-build costing $340,000 — works out nicely, doesn’t it?) based on my income. Decisions!!

On the where-we-are-going-to-live front — for the near future we are going to continue to take advantage of the cheap rent in Al’s dad’s downstairs flat. I know it is workable, and I know it’s not forever, but it’s just so… small…. Al’s sister and family might be moving out to rent their own place (though I don’t know how they’ll afford it until Kimmy gets a FT job) — in which case we would move into their bigger flat, which is about double the size of ours. We will just have to see what happens, which will depend on whether we start building, or decide to wait and buy pre-existing.. Argh! Hate not having plans in place!!

On the job front — still no news as to a specific school in Townsville, just that I have a transfer and it’s in Townsville somewhere. And the Bulletin reckons they’re screaming out for LOTE teachers. Really??? If that’s the case, then why the hell don’t I have a job yet?!?!?

Opening night tomorrow night for Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap”, starring…. moi! Well, not really starring – I’d really rather not draw attention to the fact that I am playing the unfeminine, butch, pants-wearing character (pants-wearing being so scandalous due the play being set in the 1940s). Because that’s so me in reality: butch and unfeminine. I just have to keep thinking, “I am a Jedi” to keep my voice lower and more regulated, lol.

Settling in

Shezz — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:25:47 +0000

On the weekend we moved Al into his dad’s flat – the temporary accommodation he’ll be staying in until we buy our own place. I’m staying here, too, but just for the holidays. I’ll go back to CT in a couple of weeks. So, instead of leaving the cat at home with free reign to destroy anything and everything inside the house, we packed him up and brought him, too. Took a day or so for him to come out from under the bed, but now he even tolerates our two-year-old nephew :-) Good to know for our own future kid-producing ventures.

Al’s dad lives in a double-story masonary block house. He converted the double garage into a small studio flat (one big room with a kitchenette), and the other storage area into another slighly bigger flat (also one room with a kitchen, but is L-shaped). The two flats share a bathroom, and the entire house shares the laundry.

To provide ourselves with some privacy within our flat, we cordoned off a corner of the large room with some furniture and a curtain made from some old sheets… this is quite effective, as the furniture allows for clothes storage. Yay!!

I think the whole set up will work well enough, at least for a temporary stay. I don’t think I could actually live like this for any great length of time. Having said that, if we had to, then I would adapt. Just so long as I knew it wasn’t going to be forever!!

Al’s first day was yesterday — seemed to go well. He works 7:30-4:30 everyday, but it’s a 9-day fortnight, meaning he gets every second Friday off. A few differences from BTC… staff and day students can’t eat the lunches provided for the boarders… at BTC they just had to pay and could eat. So he’ll have to take a lunch with him (or buy it, but we’ll be saving every penny, so a bagged lunch it will be!). His computer is an iMac, which runs parallells so that he can still run the Windows programs he needs. He seems to get on alright with the other fellas, and said it seems fairly laid back. But maybe that’s because it’s school holidays at the moment. I am just glad that he has the two weeks’ to settle in before kids and teachers come back and it’s all hectic again.

No news on the house front — ours has been on the market for a week now, but no nibbles as yet. We went up on the weekend with Al’s dad and uncle to have a look at the house in Bushland Beach again. No concerns with the house, but will have to investigate drainage of the yard, which we knew anyway. If we get the house, then we’ll wait until after the wet season to seed any turf so that we can see what drainage problems present with all the rain. It’s forecast to be a wetter than usual wet-season. Yay?

Eeehhh, grout?

Shezz — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 07:36:03 +0000

Today Al and I spent most of the day cleaning and whitening the grouting in our shower (it was a bit rank — and like that from before Al moved in). How it managed to get into that state in such a short amount of time, I’ll never know, as the house is only about ten years old! I can no longer move my arms, after the continual motion of wiping the excess whitener cream stuff off. But at least now it looks a lot less gross and stained. Now to just no-more-gaps the seal around the bottom again to cover up the gross bits that appeared when the top layer came off during our grout-whitening exercise.

[...later]

Grocery shopping done, washing is half-done, but there is LOADS of clean washing to put away. We need to make the house spic-and-span so that the real estate agent can take photos on Monday. We are going to meet with her and make sure she’s doing EVERYTHING possible to sell our house ASAP. The contract we have for the new house only allows us a month of ‘condition of sale’ of our current house (60-day settlement), so we obviously have to try and sell it as soon as we can. Otherwise, it’s try and scrounge the deposit from somewhere and get finance without having sold the house (possible….. but, not the best option), and hope like hell the dream house doesn’t sell in the meantime. The unfortunate thing is, even with a cheaper property we’d probably still be in pretty much the same boat. Argh, money sucks!!