Possibly one of the most stressful weeks of my life

This is the first time in weeks I've had time in front of the computer to do something that's not work or house related. The title above refers to the confluence of the final stages of the house purchase, trying to organise Christmas, and a particularly difficult few days at work. Thankfully through a combination of sheer bloody mindedness, Dana's organisational prowess and some good teamwork around the office, it looks like things will come together for settlement tomorrow afternoon, or Friday morning at the latest and that we will meet a significant milestone at work.

In my previous posts about the arcane and entirely opaqe process involved in settlement, I indicated that I found it all quite confusing. Unfortunately, it seems to have proved quite confusing for the veteran players involved whose job it is supposed to be to make these things happen on a regular basis. As a first time homebuyer, it's been a truely signifcant challenge trying to get all these things together when we don't even know what they are and what has to be done, but if there's one thing to learn from it all, it's that you can't really rely on anyone else to make any of it happen. I hate being one of those people who has to push all the time for things to happen and harass people - after all, for the most part they're just doing their job - but that is what you must be in this process.

It's also one of the few times in my life where I've found it to be a real challenge to work through things calmly, where my emotional response has been so strong that I've had to really work to keep it under control and remain rational. Some aspects of it all still make me seethe a little bit just thinking about it, but as long as settlement occurs properly tomorrow or the day after, I think I'll be able to let go of it all. Plus I'll be off work for a couple of weeks, removing another annoyance, and it will be Christmas and I'm going to get to be around some of the people I love most in the world. This can only be a good thing.

I actually feel quite serene and positive about the whole thing at the moment. Things have quietened down at work, there is a beautiful view out of my window (see the picture below) the weather is finally better and I'm really enjoying Tame Impala's "Innerspeaker" album. The album really reminds me of the Beatles for some reason, and is excellent.

There's also been some really excellent things happening recently, in addition to all the annoying house stuff. We went to Melbourne for Dana's work Christmas party, which was super excellent, and also managed to catch some old friends while we were there and get all of our Christmas shopping done. I had a collection of excellent work Christmas parties as well (Team, Group and Department), one of which had some really excellent food.

Life is good. As soon as this house stuff is sorted, it will be super freaking excellent.

PS: OK, so this is going to sound super corny, but on re-reading this I feel I should add that one of the reasons that life is good is the Dana. This week would have been impossible without her, and I would probably not be getting keys to a house any time soon without her. Dana - you make things awesome.

My Blog-Fu is weak

Haven't fired out a post for a while, so I thought I'd throw some words together. After the flurry of activity that was Feb/March, things have slowed down to a more managable pace. Work has been pretty slow, and I'm still waiting to hear back about the job I went for back in March (which also happens to be the job I'm in at the moment) and the wait is certainly dragging on a bit. It has cast a bit of a pall over work generally, even though things are fairly interesting at the moment. But the less said about work the better.

On the house front, I haven't managed to get up to the site and take some good photo's since I last blogged, for a combination of reasons. These include builders working on the site (precluding a good ole fashioned fence jumping) and terrible weather when I've had time to visit. The end of daylight savings for the year has also made getting up to the site after work to take pictures difficult, as half the time it's already dark by then.

I miss daylight savings (and summer) already! Having made that slightly maudlin statement, the weather at the moment is pretty choice. Autumn and spring really are the best times of year in Canberra - usually lots of sun, but with a crispness to the air which I really enjoy.

Speaking of the nice weather, I've been trying to take advantage of it as much as possible recently, with several bike rides and some bush walking. I even managed to get Dana to ride her swanky bike all the way up to Gungahlin (around 11km from where we live at the moment) for breakfast the other day, which was a major achievement. I've also helped form a mixed netball team, which has been interesting and very confusing. We're called "Fonzy and the Shark Jumpers" which I've had to explain to many many people. Troglodytes.

To save me the trouble of explaining it again (and you, the reader, the embarrasment of asking) Wikipedia has all the answers and a you tube video of the original is below.

Waterskiing in a leather jacket?!? Will that crazy Fonzy ever learn?

And again!

I think maybe one of the reasons I've been caining the excercise recently (as well as the video games) is that I haven't really been enjoying alcohol that much of late. This may shock those that know me. It's also too expensive, and I'm saving pennies like nothing else to cover the stamp duty on the home, which is due in July, 12 months after we signed the contract. The stamp duty caught be a little off guard as well - I've had the deposit saved for ages, and in my mind the stamp duty was covered by the first home owners grant (and boost). Unfortunately, the timing of things means that this isn't really the case, because the stamp duty needs to be paid up front, before the completion of the house, and the grant/boost are paid as a rebate, straight to the bank, after settlement. This is not really a problem in terms of our ability to pay them, but it is frustrating. I had thought I had the majority of the scraping and saving sorted for the moment.

As a side note, I think the ACT is just about the only place in Australia where I would have to pay stamp duty; all the other states more generous exemptions for first time home buyers. However, the ACT have more limited sources of revenues than other states, so they're less generous with their exemptions.

But the Canberra property situation is for another post.

Anyway, what was supposed to be a quick post has now eaten through half of my lunch break, and I'm starving. I'm off to get some food and buy a dressing gown (the mornings are getting a chill to them). Hopefully should have posts on the house, bush walking, and netball soon, or at least when I can be bothered getting round to resizing pictures.

New TV!

Its my birthday this Thursday (hooray!) and I got one present early - a new TV! This is the first thing we've bought for the house in a long, long time, and its the first thing we've really bought that is for the new place. The main reason we've avoided buying anything is that we haven't really thought it worthwhile when renting.

The TV is a 32 inch Samsung LCD 5 series (I think it's this one) for the bedroom, and it's friggin hot. I've had a tiny little one in there for ever that I bought years ago so that I could escape my parents in my bed room. It looks pretty much like this:

So far I've just been watching TV on it - we don't have a DVD player for the bed room yet, that's another purchase for another day. Suffice to say, I'm enjoying having FTA digital channels and HD channels in the bedroom - waking up to the ABC breakfast show on ABC2 is SO much better than Kochie (the goddamn smugtron 5000) and Mel on Sunrise.