So I am a bit of a gadget junky.  Some people in blog land might just start sending me voodoo spells after this post, but I pretty much love all things Apple. It started with the humble iPod.  Used it everyday on the way to work (and at work sometimes as well).  Then I HAD to buy a stereo for my car with an iPod adapter so that I didn't have to carry CD's in the car. Then came my first Apple laptop.  Pre-order of the Apple Macbook Pro (back in 2006 mind you).  God how I loved that machine.  Spent many a night cramming for assignments and exams with that baby. Next came the Apple t.v.  Don't ask me about that, that's the husband's domain, but let me tell you since having it we have cancelled Foxtel and don't watch free to air t.v. EVER. Next came an upgraded iPod (love you wonderful husband for that Xmas present) with the Nike kit as well. Along came another laptop, because lets face it 3 years is a long time to have a relationship with a laptop.  So upgraded we went. Then out came the iPhone! OMG I had to have it.  Think of all the space in my bag I could save if I had one device for a phone and iPod.  (The real excuse to get wonderful husband to get it was that it would save space in the nappy bag, plus he had one and wasn't sharing).  Still having a relationship with the iPhone but the iPod has now been delegated to storage. Latest purchase has been the iPad.  Yes I have one! For all those haters out there, this thing rocks.  Does music and games and surfing the net (particularly handy when trying to stay awake a night during those feeds!!).  Blog from it, read, you name it does it. My PSP and DS have now been retired because lets face it, this device is pretty awesome! Now I am anxiously waiting for the iPhone 4 to arrive on our shores.  Yes I am getting one even though they have a "signal problem".  If I know Apple, by the time the phone hits the market here they will have sorted it out, plus Australia has better telecommunications that the USA, so probably isn't going to be a big drama. What will happen to my current phone you ask? Well my 2 year old daughter will probably get it.  See she loves gadgets too, and likes to look at photo's and play games on my phone, so she can have it and I will get the upgrade! Oh by the way, my husband also has all of these gadgets.  Yes that does mean we have 2 Apple laptops, 2 iPods, 2 iPhones and 2 iPads in our house.  Hey what can I say, we love technology. We even converted our bestie's to the way of the Apple!! Evil I know, but hey once you try it, you will wonder why you ever bought anything else. So what about you? are you an Apple fan? Do you own any Apple products, or are you a Apple stalker, want it but not sure about buying it?  Would love to hear from you...

Dear Hoons, I am starting to wonder if you have anything at all in your life, like at all? something that entertains you and makes you smile and keeps you happy besides burning rubber through our suburb late at night? What is it about our suburb that is so attractive to you people? is the road smooth? does it have the right bends and turns in it? what is it?  When I find out what it is I am going to do everything in my power to change it because  I. AM. SICK. OF. YOU. Come on, 10pm last night we had Hoons doing burnouts and others on dirt bikes tearing through the neighbourhood.  And its not just on the weekends and its not just in the middle of the night.  5am on a Monday morning on your way to work, you feel the need to do burnouts. I am sorry but I am a bit of an oldie, might be that I have two small children that like to get up early in the morning, like mummy and daddy to be full of beans ready for action to go and do things and play and run around and ask for lots of energy. Not only do you wake me up with all your noise but you also wake up my babies. I am also figuring you either earn more money than you know what to do with, or you aren't very good with your money and waste it on rubber, because you must be having to buy new tyres on a very regular basis.  I am willing to show you how to save money so that you can buy a house, or go on a nice overseas holiday.  Somewhere far away from me. I am waiting for the night that you miss judge your car and end up slamming it into something, then your going to want me to help you clean up your mess and get your butt to the hospital because you have hurt yourself. Be warned hoons, I am out for your blood, well more like your oil.

Sorry for the disappearing act but I have been kinda snowed with the whole uni thing of late... Assignments, presentations, exams this time of year is a bit stressy in this house to be honest and its all because of mummy (how sad I know). anyway.... So those of you that don't know I am studying for my Masters Degree in Information Systems Management (not as scary as it sounds... ok wait some of it is!). The thing is that I am learning so much more than just my units at uni.  I am meeting these amazing people from all over the globe and getting the opportunity to understand their religions and cultures as well. My uni group is made of people from all over the globe.  We have people from Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Phillippines and India to name a few.  And its so interesting! Learning about arranged marriages, different foods and beliefs, some of the restrictions that they face in their country that we so take for granted here. These people are really brave in my opinion.  They leave their family and friends and come here to further their education so that they can provide more support for their families in the long run. Just imagine it for a second, you leave everyone you love and know, go to a foreign country that speaks a different (difficult) language, has different methods of education, the pressure to not only study but work to live (read that as don't work too much, you can only earn a certain amount while your here as a student). So so brave if you ask me.

I am starting to wonder if mother nature is trying to tell the world something. From memory the world has recently had a few earth quakes (Kalgoorlie, Adelaide, Los Angeles and I think South America?) Wild storms with flash flooding and hail the size of golf balls in Melbourne and Perth recently, plus the erupting volcano in Europe somewhere. I just think she is sending us some strong messages.  I think its time the world leaders stopped and took a bit of notice and made some serious decisions to get the planet back on track before there is no planet left (or at least no people left on it!)

So I was reading this post from Quioxtic Life and it inspired me to look in my hand bag, and guess what that lead to? me doing a bit of a life assessment and deciding I might just be a little bit vain! You see the contents of my hand bag is mostly made up of teeth / braces based things.  For those of you who haven't seen me in person, I have braces.  Yeap early 30's with braces...  So here is the story about how the braces came about. One sunny day (little miss still just a little miss) off to the Dentist for a check-up and clean.  Hmmm dentist says teeth are good (no fillings thank you very much) but the shape of your jaw at the back is not so great and it is causing a bit of decay on your back teeth (in reality your not cleaning your teeth very well).  Those wisdom teeth need to come out so that your other teeth don't suffer.  Ok no dramas, I'm a brave woman (with a whole heap of drugs and knock out juice thank you very much). So off I head to the maxiofacial surgeon (and yes she does also do face lifts and botox!!) anyway some x-rays later and the surgeon says wisdom teeth easy job, but that eye tooth has to come out...  Umm beg your pardon.  That adult eye tooth that is laying across the top of your jaw.  Now I still had a baby tooth in my mouth.  You see the adult tooth decided it didn't want to see the light of day and do its job but instead spend all of eternity just sitting in my gum or so I thought.  Seems the little / big bastard decided to move and is now pushing against my front teeth causing all sorts of damage to the nerves.  Surgeon says if that tooth doesn't come out you will be looking at crowns down the track because it is slowly stopping the blood flow to the front teeth.  Riiiiighht. Okkkkkkay. Alright ok take the damn thing out while your in there.  Well if I take that out your baby tooth is going to fall out and your going to have a great big hole in your smile.  So why don't you talk to the dentist about a strategy for fixing that.... Okay.... Get home and have a good look in the mirror and realise that that big whole is going to be really noticeable.  Right so the dentist's strategy goes something like this. 6 teeth to come out (wisdom teeth, rogue eye tooth and baby tooth).  Then you can have a titanium inplant put in with a fake tooth attached.  Right ok. Ummm is this going to send me broke?  Nah the teeth extraction will be on private health but the inplant will be $$$$ and so with the fake tooth.  Ok lets do it then.  Right well to do it you had better go and see an orthodontist about getting your teeth aligned so that the gap is the right size.  Okkkkkkayyyyy  (meanwhile the teeth are still in my mouth, we have had no action except a whole heap of appointments where everyone is telling me my smile needs fixing!) Right the orthodontist says no dramas we can put some braces on and move your teeth to make the gap big enough, plus while we are at it I will fix your overbite (my what, I have a what?) and I will straighten your teeth so that they are in the centre of your smile (ok so now my smile is wonky). So a lot of $$$$ later I have braces and all the accessories that go with it.  Electric tooth brush, springs (boy that was a fun time, imagine only being able to open your mouth a small amount and not move your jaw left and right), elastics (make talking so much fun, drooling all the time, and bedroom antics even more so), wax for the bits that stick out and into your mouth (tastes crap by the way so take it out before eating), little christmas tree cleaning things to get all the food out of the braces.  You know braces give a whole new meaning to the "is there something stuck in my tooth". I am half way along the path to the beautiful smile.  All the teeth are out and the braces have been on for a year and a bit.  Another appointment for the dentist to be scheduled for new moulds to start making the fake tooth and so the surgeon knows where to stick the implant.  And yes I will be getting my teeth whitened after all of this. what was the topic again, oh right... So the contents of my handbag is made up of emergency elastics, yummy wax,  tree thingo for cleaning, toothbrush and tooth paste and compact mirror in case of emergency. And my decision, yeap I'm vain I could have just had the teeth taken out and had a gap and used the money to go on a big overseas holiday with the family!

I know I hear you all gasping in shock... how could I hate something that my husband loves.  I try and be supportive of his love, but I can't, I just can't. I hate that damn coffee machine! My husband has a bit of an obsession with his coffee.  He has a coffee machine and grinder and all this other coffee related "junk" so that he can make himself good quality coffee's at home. Now I know it saves us anywhere between $5 and $10 a day because he now doesn't have to buy good coffee at work (so obsessed he has a grinder at work now so he can have freshly ground beans when ever the need arises). I know its something he enjoys and I try and support that, but the damn machine and its mess and its smell drive me up the wall. In coffee's defense we were never going to get along, you see I don't drink it.  I don't really like the taste, or the smell, and it does some crazy things to my body if I actually drink it.  Like a racing heart, and a mouth that won't shut up.  Basically coffee for me is like drinking a can of Red Bull. But the machine takes up precious space on my kitchen bench, and now the new grinder thingo is so heavy that I can't move it if I need more space.  And he is now wanting a "whole" draw in the kitchen to store more of the "junk". And don't get me started on the grinds, I find coffee all over the kitchen.  Today I have been greeted with coffee on my clean dishes! the clean dishes, you know the ones in the dish rack drying and waiting patiently for me to put them away... Well now I have to wash them again! ahhhhhh I love you wonderful husband you, but that machine...

Sometimes I like to have a chat to my beautiful single friend in Sydney about all her dating drama's.  I love getting caught up in the emotion she portrays and the way she tells the stories...Waiting to hear about the flashing incident on Australia Day for a good old laugh.  Anyway I don't think I need her emotional fix anymore after last night... I had university last night and the unit is Introduction to Programming.  Oh my god talk about hard. For me the world pretty much runs in black and white and I need things to be logical to understand them.  I am even pretty good with the airy fairy stuff that is management (you know all the feel good stuff that you have to do as manager to keep your staff happy).  This I can do its easy peasy but programming... Last night I learnt how to code a mathamatical formula with more than one equation to it. It took me a while to get it to work but when I did the elation I felt was unbelievable.  You know that feeling of achievement you get when you finally nail something? And then the rollercoaster came crashing down again as I attempted to do another formula, this time for joining text together from different places over the program. I know it sounds relatively simple when you think about what I am trying to get the program to do, but to the language and all the symbols and spaces and stuff have to be in the exact right place otherwise the program thinks your doing something different.  God its hard. I have decided that I no longer need to live vicariously through my friend to get an emotional rollercoaster, I will just do my uni homework instead!

Ok so my husband thinks this is really disgusting but I love to eat Nutella straight out of the jar. On a spoon. Straight.  Don't put it on bread or anything else.  To me its just like chocolate that has gone soft in the sun. So I went and did a bit of research on how Nutella was invented, and here are some of the things I found out.

• Nutella was invented in the 1940's in Italy, due to a shortage of cocoa during the Second World War. It was used to extend the supply of chocolate.

• It was invented by Mr Ferrero (as in Ferrero Roche).

• It was originally sold in a loaf that could be sliced and put onto bread, but it was quickly noted that the children were just eating the Nutella on its own without the bread.  So it was changed into a spread.

• It was first sold in the USA in 1983.  It is now marketed in over 75 countries.

• It is usually stocked with peanut butter in the supermarket.

And this is the best fact - It outsells all brands of peanut butter combined worldwide!

So at the moment I am a bit addicted to the Smallville television series.  And Superman is "hot hot hot"! Don't get me wrong I really like the series as well, but mmmm mmmmm he is a bit spunky.  Maybe I have a thing for tall, dark and handsome and the whole knight in shining armor complex. What is it with girls and movie stars characters / stars?  Who do you love at the moment?  Drop me a comment and let me know.

For those of you that don't know me very well, I am known as a bit of a book addict.  I LOOOOOVVVEE to read (you can read about it and other random facts about me here).  Not too fussy on the genre (don't do horror or sci-fi, hmmmm don't do horror or sci-fi movies either for that matter, bit of a theme running there I think)... anyway I digress. I love to read, I will pick books based on the author (have a few authors that I pre-order their new books how nerdy is that), the blurb, the cover and sometimes even the price.  I picked up my latest read by Maggie Alderson for just $4 from Borders. Borders by the way is a massive book shop in town, that I affectionately refer to as my own island paradise. It has books and international magazines, it has stationary, it has dvd's and music, plus comfy chairs and a Gloria Jeans inside.  What more could a book addict ask for.  I guess Borders is like Barnes and Noble in the USA, god I still remember how I felt when my friends took me to Barnes and Noble for the first time - like a kid in a lolly shop! Thanks Holly, Wade and Dang T. Anyway back to the topic, I enjoy reading chic lit (same as a chic flick just its a book), and my new book made me realize the real reason I like chic lit.  I am jealous of the heroine in the stories.  They always live in a major city like New York, London or Sydney, are on their chosen career path and seem to be quite successful at it, or getting there depending on the story.  They are terrible with their money (aren't we all) but always seem to be out socialising and soooo fashionable, and know how to shop of course. And this is where the jealously comes in. Take for instance an expensive pair of jeans (say $300 plus) and then team it with a $10 top from the local chain store, add some sexy shoes and trendy jewellery and ta da you have the heroine. I do not in any way have a good eye for style.  I can either get it right or sometimes really really wrong, but mostly I just stick with the basics.  I don't know how to work the fashion pieces for the season, but these characters seem to do it so well (think Sex and the City). The style envy mixed with the fact that I moved straight out of home with my boyfriend (mind you I was 26 when that happened), I just never did the "living with your bestie" thing and I sometimes feel like I might have missed out on something there. Team all of that with the fact that I didn't really know what I wanted to be when I grew up until I moved out of home I think adds to my love of chic lit. You should try it some time and see what I mean, live the fabulous life of some fictional character and experience all the things you wanted to for the small sum of $4! and the best bit is you can do it when ever and where ever you like time and time again!