Don't Be Fooled, He's No Prophet

Well well, long time no hot potato in your shoe. There's still not hot potato in your shoe? Ah, well, wishful thinking. If you do find a potato in your shoe, I wouldn't mind if that potato ended up in my shoe. I already ate mine....

This has been another good week in salt. During the someone brought a Portuguese Man of War to us from the beach. That's right it's jellyfish season!! Australia is famous for their deadly animals in and out of the water and now is the time when the jellies like to strike in full force. As far as I know there are no  super deadly ones around the sunny coast so you can just turn that little worry machine you like to call a brain right off.

Some point during the week I went out for a turtle release. Now you may recall the first and only other time I have gone out on the ocean I got very sea sick. You may be asking yourself why on earth would I go on on the boat again if I got so sick the first time? Well you see, someone told me that I would find a potato in my shoe if I went out on this excursion. *narrows eyes* Lies, all of them lies.  I was told it would be really flat. Unfortunately we left an hour later and it wasn't so flat. It wasn't so bad but it was enough to make me a little sick. We released the turtle and then went back to the harbor. Oh land, dry land!! Oh blessed it is to walk with certainty of your stability!!

On Thursday the zone leader of of salt invited people from work over to her house for dinner. She let me ride home with her, which was very nice, I took mom's salsa that I made several weeks ago and I think I was the only one that really liked it. Two other people had some but I had the most. YUM! Everyone brought some kind of dish. It was pretty good minus them talking down about the people that weren't there. One of them they really don't like and she quit but everyone is pretending not to know. I don't think this girl is too bad but no one really seems to like her. I have only been in Australia for almost ten weeks so maybe she gets worse the longer you know her. I don't know. Everyone stayed until about 9 before they headed home. That was a little bit too long for me but one of the boys from fresh was giving me a ride home so I had to wait until he was ready to go. I felt kind of awkward the whole time because I had nothing to say to their conversations and they kept making awkward comments about what I must be thinking and crap. I'm glad that I don't really work here. There is just way too much drama and I don't want to be apart of it. People who talk behind others back really makes you wonder what they say about you when you're not around. I wonder how much they all hate me when I'm not in the same room?

Saturday I went swimming and as I was about waist deep wadding into the wave, I saw these two blue blobby jellyfish riding the wave towards me. Having learned about how dangerous the jellies are in Oz I turned on my heels and began booking it back to the beach screaming "FLEE!! FLEE! RETREAT!!" in my head of course. I'm not as crazy as I occasionally am portrayed by Kelcie's stories. I looked around and no one else seemed to mind that there were jellies in the water. Everyone was laughing and playing, wave jumping, and enjoying the cool ocean water. Obviously Ozians have had one too many jellies wrapped around their noggin because I know I wasn't hallucinating, this time. I decided to brave the waters again, but near one of the crazy Ozians. There were no jellies there, but there were these weird roundish jelly blobs in the water everywhere. Leo, the Australian jelly expert, informed me that they were jellies even tho they had no tentacles because not all jellies have tentacles. Good thing he knows so much about the animals of countries he hates :) What a useful guy :)

After that I came back and I walked down the street with Maureen and Andrew to a neighborhood Christmas party. Maureen let her little deaf toy poodle, Bunnie, of the lease to hang out with the other dogs. Bunnie started going home and Maureen, with sparking wine in hand, started to chase after her. Maureen bent over to grab Bunnie but ended up face planting it into the street. She cut her nose and split her lip. Andrew took her to the hospital because she was really worried about it. After three hours waiting they didn't do anything and told her to come back tomorrow to get her nose x-rayed to see if she broke it. Her nose and upper lip are really swollen and she's getting a black eye. That was my weekend. 

Since I didn't get to see most of you Thanksgiving day I'd like you to know I am thankful for all the support and love you have given me over the years and some of you continue to give ;) I hope everyone had a great turkey day. Well, I'm peacing out. Ciao bella.

 

Random wooded area by my house

 Lawn bowls from the other week

Where Are You Now

Happy Thanksgiving......Morris's!!!!! I hope your celebratory Thanksgiving is so good, but not the best because that would be rude to have the best without me. That would give you all good reason to stop inviting me.....hmmmm.....Isn't it obnoxious when you bump into something and find out you have a random bruise. I think that there is some bruise sprit that goes about bruising people. Just of a sprit...*narrows eyes*

My first week in salt was pretty good. It's a lot of work and there's no down time. This zone has so many things that need to be done to it I always feel like I did nothing at the end of the day because the list of things to do is still so massive. It's good tho. I also like the zone leader, even if some of the things she says are sexual oriented. She's actually going to the states a a few weeks to visit family because her husband is american. Lucky duck.

It continues to get more and more warm here. I do not think I will suffer well thru the extreme heat. I don't know if my host family has ac. I hope so but I have a feeling they don't :( Earlier this week I was helping clean some alge out of a tank and this little cleaner wrasse was nibbling my arm, picking the dead skin off me. It's good the fish does it because I don't!! Showering is way too much effort!! Three times a week is good enough I think. It's not like there's anyone here I need to impress or anyone that will be smelling my hair any time soon. Or me for that matter. I have a very large bubble and I intend to keep it that way. Ramlbing on, so this fish was nibbling at my arm when it started going bizerk over a mole on my arm and bit me really hard. It felt like a needle in my skin. I looked down and the stoopid bloody bugger had made me bleed! I guess that's one way to get moles removed, via fish.

Later on in the week this big burly dude was telling me how he was at his girlfriends rollerderby game and these chicks asked if they could sit by him and this other guy but when they saw they were men they sat somewhere else. First off that's just plain rude and second, are they blind? How could you get confused about if he was a dude or not!? I don't get that one at all. I was laughing at this story when he told it and then after saying something funny about lesbians he looked at me and said no offense. I told him not to worry and that I wasn't a lesbo. He told me he wasn't sure with the hair cut and the big work boots. Very funny :)

I played lawn bowling today. It was weird but it's an old person game so what can you expect?!! You roll these weighted balls across a grass field and try to get your ball to stop closes to the white goal ball without hitting it. It was strange but fun. An now I am very tired so I bid thee fare thee well.

Probably my favorite Mumford song off the newest album :)

Firefly

Howdy hey there! So I'd like to start this blog off by doing a shout out to a few people. First, thanks to all those who have spent time to send me letters :) It's fun getting snail mail so thanks for taking the extra effort to send me something :) Secondly thank you to those of you who I keep in touch :) Even if it's just a short blip of a message I like knowing that this strange new planet I live on is close enough I can still keep touch with you all. Last of all, thank you Joss Whedon for your great tv shows :)

I have very boring news that nothing really exciting or interesting happened this week. I learned how to vac a lot of tanks, backwash sand filters, and now I know my a, b, c's!!! Yay!! I also caught a little red devil >:) which has earned me six, that's right six, carmel koalas :) I fed lots of frogs crickets, gave some mertins water moniters filleted fish, had fed some fish peas, and got squirt by archer fish. Those archer fish really like their crickets. It was kind of sad because this was the last week I was in freshwater creatures. I say creatures and not fish because they have a lot more than fish in fresh. It was cool but now it's over :( I'm going to salt water creatures starting Monday. Lots of scrubbing small tanks :( Poo...the gal in charge of the zone is pretty good, though she is pretty horny and is almost always making sex jokes or mentioning how she ravaged her husband the night before. Other than making my virgin ears bleed she's great :)

Nothing much going on this weekend. I've had an irritating itchy throat and this annoying cough with a side of throat rot. It tastes like something is rotting at the back of my throat. It's really unpleasant. It has rained all day today, Saturday, and if it rains tomorrow I'm not sure what I'll do but if it doesn't rain I'll go up to a little city called Noosa and bum about with this girl from work. She might bring her surf board and do a little surfing so if I can I'll try and mooch off her and try surfing once or twice, we'll see though.

Sorry I haven't been so good about keeping this blog as updated as many of you would like but what can you do about it?! I live on the other side of the world so not much!!!

Two Different Names

Hello everyone, I'm sorry I've been so bad this week but apparently not sorry enough to spend time on a proper post :S Oh well. 

So I had spaghetti on toast last weekend

This is what I thought of it before I tried it

And this is what I thought after I had eaten it

You can assume whatever you want from those pictures. The spaghetti was from a can. Apparently we have stuff like this at home but lucky for me I've never been force fed it before, if I had I surely would've developed an eating disorder. Last Saturday was also the night of Maureen and Andrew's ballroom dancing ball. Everyone got all dressed up.

The woman in black is Andrew's mom, she's a sweet old lady :)

I felt very underdressed and was glad when Andrew took me home

So I have the rare treat of sharing a picture of one of my adventures with the seals with you. This was the best picture I could get so I hope most of you with really good eyes can see it alright. What a goober I am!

The rest of the week was good. Not a whole lot happened and hopefully I'll talk more about the cool fish I have been working with next time. Friday I did go to a party for some people at work. It was alright but was kind of an outsider because I didn't drink. It was fine but kind of annoying because I kept getting people coming up to me telling me how they don't drink much. Kind of annoying when they start taking vodka shots....Saturday I went to a bbq and that was ok too. Geez!! I've been tired this weekend!! I'm going to bed early tonight in hopes of conquering this drowsiness. I hope you all enjoy the warmth left and have a fantastic week :)

The Car Of The Future, Today!

Sadly this news clipping was found in the local paper today..."Kaiya hasn't updated her blog in more then a week, she must be dead, did the giant turtles get here? That's what I imagined happened. Thinking she's so speedy then turn around and get eaten by a turtle for shame. All that speed walking for nothing. We won't have to get her a coffin either, the turtle will be excellent We'll kill the turtle and turn him on his belly and it'll be the perfect resting spot for Kaiya." -- The Deidre Post

I'm sorry to disappoint you all but there will not longer be any more post on this blog due to the unfortunate event mentioned above.

TWO, FOUR, SIX, EIGHT! What currency depreciates?! US DOLLAR! US DOLLAR! US DOLLAR! Luckily for me the Australian dollar is about equal to what we have in the states so I can't complain too much and have it be a legit complain. *snaps fingers* I do love a good ole legit complain! Helps even the best of friends have a reason to throw water on you.

This is the post of a new adventure because I started a new zone and I went to church for the first time, so let the tales be told!!! *takes the superman pose and flies to the story time lounge chair*

So I escaped from the turtle, luckily, but that's a tale for another time. I ended my time with the crabs (hallelujah!!!) last Friday. Which is good because I don't know how much more I could stand being bosed around by that zone leader *narrows eyes* but it's over being under her thumb all the time so it's all good now :)

Saturday I went to the Gold Coast. I didn't do much worth telling. I walked around a mall, which was boring and hung out at the beach the rest of the time. It was windy and kind a chilly. I wanted to go hiking but alas I had no way to the mountains so a hiking I did not go. I did however learn the valuable lesson of rising off after a swim in the ocean. Well, I didn't really swim in the ocean it was more like bouncing with the waves if that makes sense. When I was finished doing that I decided it would be fun to ride a big wave in to shore. Bad idea. I closed my eyes and was thinking 'weeee!!' just as I was slammed into the shore and tossed about. That wee quickly became an 'ouch!' and I realized I had made a terrible mistake ;) I laughed it off and dried off while reading a book. As it started to get cold I realized that the itch around my waistline of my swim shorts was because I had a good handful of sand in my swim shorts. Being nearly dry, I didn't want to re-wet myself and clean up so I did the next best thing and brushed as much of it off of me as I could and did my best to remove it from my shorts. What a fun three hour ride back home that was. Almost as nice as riding home on trax commando. Before we headed home they stopped at Andrew's friends house where I was dragged into this man's life and learned his wife and him had separated  They had two boys, the oldest being thirteen. The friend told us that the wife said she hadn't loved him for the last twelve years. So that was a nice comfortable visit for me. Oz man I'll never see again, I hope the best for you.

Sunday was Merlin. YAY MERLIN!!!! I love MERLIN!!! Morgana sucks!!! >:( She needs to die!!!! Why Merlin doesn't just sneak up on her and kill her I'll never know. It would save him so much grief from always protecting Arthur!! I also went to church and met some nice people. They all sing loudly and some sing loudly and off key so that's different from the whisper singing you usually hear at church. They also had a ysa (young single adult) sunday school class which was weird because it was a family ward. We'll see how it turns out. That was only the first visit so I'm just waiting to see how everything is.

Monday was my first day in my new zone but tragedy struck and I spend most of the day bare foot and in water. In the downstairs part of the freshwater zone the pump that pumps the water out and away from the systems broke because somehow a scrub brush ended up in it. So while all the water was being pumped into the system there was nothing taking it out and away so the system flooded. Because the floor slants, at parts the water was up to my knees. It was pretty bad. So I spent all but three hours of the day bucketing water out. Oh so much fun!! It really was fun to run around without shoes all day tho :)

Tuesday my real first day in freshwater started. There are some cool animals in this area. Fresh water croc and swordfish, frogs, turtles, and monitor lizards. Really cool :) One of the tanks is low and open and one of the guys in the zone was showing me what to watch and what did what when water suddenly hit me. I had been the victim of an archer fish. It had liked the metal on the clipboard I was holding and had shot water at it. Apparently they can shoot water at bugs that are 33 feet away and that's how they hunt. I got to feed the lizards today and that was cool. It's going to be a fun zone to work in :) To clarify for those of you who are confused at what I do I maintain tanks and the health of the fish in the tanks. So I'm learning about water quality and all the fun aspects of that. I'm learning how to manage aquarium systems, feed fish, treat for disease and parasites, and other marine biology things. It's pretty good :)

Wednesday was a crazy nuts day. Just as I was starting my first day of doing freshwater start up, checking all the animals and systems to make sure everything was alright, my manager and the dive manager come booking it up from down in the tunnel practically stripping. They said that our gray nurse shark, Joker, was down and so they were suiting up to see what could be done to help him. The last six months have been tough on this shark. Some idiot let him bit off and swallow the end of a feeding stick, he got a skin infection, there's been a disease outbreak in the tunnel, and he was transported into the tunnel with the broken stick in his gut. All that stress or something must have gotten to him because he just stopped breathing and had laid down and wouldn't respond to anything so the divers brought him to the locke where they could try and help him. Eventually nothing they did helped and he died. After measuring him and weighing him they did a necropsy on him. That was interesting to see what the inside of a shark looks like. It wasn't quite as interesting to discover what they smell like inside but I will say they smell better than a dead horse. and not quite as appetizing as a dead cat.

Gray nurse sharks look ferocious because their teeth are nuts and point everywhere but they are really very nice sharks. They are also endangered and so since we lost ours we won't be able to get another one. It's sad to have such a cool animal die like that but realistically they shouldn't be stuck in little tanks . The wide open ocean is where they belong. It's where they will be the happiest.

Friday, happy day!! And it was a happy day :) So to end my week of adventure and my first week doing freshwater, the two guys in my zone were both gone. I've never really gone thru all of the zone because of how crazy this week has been. It was a little sketchy getting thru it all today but I think I did alright :) In the middle of start-up this morning I got told I'd be working with the seals today because they were short some people. I ended up being the volunteer that get's pushed into the water by the seals. I'd be picked from the audience and then bending down a bit posing for a picture with a seal and it would come up behind me and push me into the water. Where I would grab onto the floating island and a different seal would swim around me like a shark with one flipper up in the air, the whole time I was wriggling my shorts off under water. After circling me twice it dove under the island where I would throw my short down and at the seal and push myself under water as if the seal had grabbed my pants off. The trainer would then have the seal give me back my shorts. It was a lot of fun and ended up doing it twice :) If I wasn't going to be pushed in for whatever reason I had to pretend to trip in, luckily I was able to practice both a few times before the show. I say luckily because my first time getting pantsed I went under the wanter before the seal dove to grab my shorts. Bad craic :( The first time I practiced tripping into the water was the worst tho. I was told to pretend to slip my toes off a step and into the water. Easy enough right? Nope not for this little idiot. When I went to trip, instead of tripping I just pushed off of it and pretty much jumped into the water. What did I win, oh yes, that's right the babbling idiot award. Ah yes!! For a moment there I thought I was undeserving of such prize, but I can confidently tell those second placers to back off because I will always, unfortunately  prove I am the first place winner. All in all it was a fun day. I swam with seals twice, using the cover name of Sam, and feed the fish in freshwater. That's pretty much all I did Friday :)

And so ends my tales for this week. What Saturday and Sunday hold for me I know not but wait to find out. Enjoy all your snow and cold weather, I think I'm going to go to the beach :)