Good News and Bad News

It has been a long time! I'll admit I've just been lazy. Some days it's hard to motivate yourself to do much of anything!

On June 3rd Matt and I had finished all our paperwork to apply for that townhouse with the pink carpet. I e-mailed my gigantic PDF's but kept getting them sent back so then I had to send the documents via Google Drive. Later they called me to say they couldn't open them, but were willing to give me till the next morning. As I painstakingly was rescanning the documents and trying to convert them into smaller files they gave me another call the next day saying they were able to get the documents in the end. After all that I wasn't at all motivated to try and look at any other places or fill out other applications for a while.

In the meantime the first week of June I had my last classes. I had a presentation to do on Monday and two other huge assignments. My working group proposal assignment I had worked on till really late just so I could have my teacher look it over, and luckily when I got it back there wasn't any huge editing left to do. However my 60% of my grade literature review in another class was creeping up quick and I hadn't even started writing! After staying up past midnight on Tuesday reviewing articles and then again writing all day on Thursday I was able to send a terrible 11 page draft to my supervisor. He was able to get it back to me quickly, but I had some major problems to fix (no surprise there). Again I worked on it all day Saturday fixing it and resubmitted the draft to him. Luckily I have an awesome and committed supervisor for this project that I don't deserve and was willing to edit my paper on Sunday and get it back to me once more for edits. While making my final edits I lost track of time and nearly missed turning it in on time although I hadn't really finished everything. Many things I had to leave even if they didn't make sense because there was not time to figure out how to reword or restructure some things.  In the end, I'm glad it's over, but I'm ashamed to say it's not my best work: partially because I didn't start writing earlier, and partially because the topic was very difficult to write about in the end.

Some good things happened amidst all the late nights of paper writing. On Wednesday night I went to the State of Origins rugby game with my friend Kaytlin. Perhaps not the wisest use of my time, but it all worked out. For the first time ever I got to go to the Olympic Stadium! We ate at a ritzy place nearby - McDonald's, who didn't understand me when I asked for ketchup (tomato sauce here) and then still didn't give me any in the end. The McFlurry was awesome though! This rugby game was the first of three between New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland (QLD) and is sort of like a super bowl for rugby fans. I won't go into all the details of rugby, but in general its a pretty awesome game with something always happening. Sorry American Football fans but rugby and Australian football is so much more entertaining. I was watching one of the QLD team players get up after being held down and as he was getting up the guy from our team (NSW) pushed him back down. I kept watching these guys instead of the ball and suddenly a huge fight broke out and half the team members on both sides starting rushing at these two guys. Not everybody saw what happened so they showed it on the big screen where the NSW team member totally decked the QLD guy twice in the face...nothing quite like watching that in slow motion! Apparently fights are quite common for these two teams. In the end NSW had a total victory of 14-6 and it was an awesome game to watch!

Friday afternoon I got some great news that I didn't expect! The real estate called me to say that I got the townhouse I applied for and they are going to let me have my cat!! On top of that they are going to let me move in on the 24th which means I'll have only one week where I am paying for two places at once. This was a huge blessing. The location is only 10 minutes away from Brock and Kaytlin and the nearest shopping center and its right off of a main road so its easy to get to things. Uni is a one hour bus ride away which isn't too bad since that gives me time to read for class or pleasure. The only downside is that its pretty far from my current LDS ward so I'm not sure what we'll do there. I've been told I can stay, but I'm not sure if we should make the commute. Unfortunately we are about 10 blocks away from being in Brock and Kaytlin's ward so I'm not sure what the Lord wants us to do. No matter what, I'm just happy we have a place.

My excitement for our new place kind of died by Saturday when I got really sick. Kaytlin had been sick when we went to the game and apparently all the stress and late nights I had been going through made me a prime target. It started with my throat being really sore and after a couple days of rest I thought it was getting better. Tuesday June 11th my roommate Sameera (right) and I got Pizzahut pizza and watched a cheesy movie and other than my throat I seemed fine (sidenote: Pizzahut is way better than Dominos here). It turns out the sore throat was just the first stage which then progressed to dry coughing, lack of energy, sometimes a fever, and then finally coughing up phlegm. The whole rest of the week I studied for my stats exam while doing everything possible to get over the sickness. The only thing I didn't try was VapoRub on my feet because I was too sick to go to the store. Finally, today I feel a lot better! I seem to get really crappy at night and sleep sucks, but during the day I am doing well again. This is good timing too because my Stats exam is on Tuesday.

I won't bore anyone with more school info, but needless to say I'm likely not going to do well on my Stats exam. So wish me luck that I won't bomb it! That's it for the last two weeks!

No Pets Allowed

As school is rapidly nearing the end of classes, so has my stress level. Naturally, I have not taken time out to write a proper blog amidst all the assignments. 

Over the last couple of weeks I've mainly been working on some big assignments so I've had to stay up really late trying to get as much done as I can. At the same time I have also had other tasks to attend to. Last Monday I got my birth control implant taken out. It was a quick 15 minute procedure where they put in some anasthetic and then pulled it out. I now have a nice little scab to remember it by. Unfortunately I have not had any immediate effects on my skin, but I feel I'm not really getting anything new. I've just got to learn to leave my skin alone! The fun part of all this is that the oral contraceptives need to be started on my next menstrual cycle in a month, but it takes two weeks for them to be fully effective. I'll be with Matt during that time so he'll just have to deal with the inconvenience. I really should have done this earlier. Also, I should add that the medicare issue has still not been fixed. 

This last week I have also put a lot of effort into finding an apartment for Matt and I (and our cat when he comes in September). There are lots of properties available in our budget range right now and I realized that if I found something I really liked I should move on it now. I made a spreadsheet of all the properties I was interested in and highlighted the best ones. Then I called all the real estate companies for the appropriate properties asking if pets were allowed. The majority said no, some didn't answer, and only four said it depends on the owner and I'd have to show up at the inspection on Saturday. I never knew this would be so difficult! It turns out that the government has very strict processes for allowing pets on any property and some areas they simply don't allow pets at all. Individually owned properties depend on the owner, but even if they say yes it's a complicated process to do all the paperwork for the government organization (Strata). Luckily, I am looking early, have already gathered the majority of the application materials, and can deal with the Strata paperwork for pets after I move in somewhere since I won't actually be able to have my cat until October. 

On Saturday I went to look at a few properties. The first one I absolutely hated with its brown carpet and small closets, and dirty looking shower. Surprisingly the apartment just below it was also open to see and it was nice with hardwood floors and a big kitchen, but it doesn't allow pets of course. Next was a townhouse that I liked from the moment I walked in. The layout was nice, it has a small yard in back, a nice kitchen with a good stove (some stoves I hate here), a big laundry area so we could easily have a dryer, two toilets instead of one, and the rooms had nice large mirrored closets (click here to see the listing)! The only major down fall was the horrible, overly worn pink carpet (so worn it's matted), but it's a small price to pay for other good things. On top of it all the woman showing the property was very nice and told me that if I was likely going to find a place that might allow pets it would be this one. I got an application and have been working with Matt online to get it all sorted. The applications are a pain requiring all kinds of stuff like rental receipts, your phone and electric accounts, pay slips showing proof of income and more. I think we've got it all sorted the best we can and we'll see what happens. There's another property that definitely allows pets in a better location that I won't be able to see until later this week so at least I have a couple of options. It will all work out somehow, but I now know that if you want to have a pet in Australia you should plan on having a house and not an apartment.