part of procrastinating is talking about procrastinating and saying things like "you know, you can never procrastinate like there's no tomorrow, but you can procrastinate like there are many tomorrows". and then auntie pratma will go have a nap, and then i will buff my toenails and now look how shiny and beautiful they are!

god bless aussie journalists. they really have to find the pun in everything.

today started out ordinarily enough, except for the fact that even though it was extremely bright and sunny out, it was ridiculously freezeyourbollocksoff (if you had any) cold.

anyway after lecturebreaklecturebreak we were meant to go to a site visit at nida at 2pm, so like good punctual students we left uni at about 1.20pm and a friend said she'd drive us so we all hopped into the car. THEN someplace in surry hills or something, we stop at a traffic light and the car just dies. in the right lane. of a busy 2-lane road.

to the credit of all 4 girls in the car (myself included), there was no screaming or panicking, just mild confusion as to what just happened. turns out she'd run out of petrol literally one street away from a petrol station.

so 3 of us had to hop out of the car and push it into a side road which was comedy in itself because the road was on a slight slope and we were struggling a fair bit, then run off to buy a can of petrol from BP which took bloody forever because we didn't even know what the can was meant to look like, then spent even more time looking for a funnel because we didn't realize that the funnel was built into the can, then ran back to the car and wished there was a better funnel because it seemed like more petrol was ending up on the side of the car rather than inside the car, then drove to the petrol station to fill up the tank properly, then drove to nida where the ticket machine rejected all our coins, made a billion beeping noises, reset itself and spat money out at us. jackpot! by the time the frazzled four made it into nida, it was about 15 minutes into the tour and we weren't allowed to go into the workshops unsupervised until some kindly classmate came to retrieve us. and then by 3pm it was all over!

i doubt our car-driving friend reads this blog but if she does, she really doesn't have to feel bad about anything!

it was quite an adventure.

so as it is with everything we do, carting our new sofa home was the biggest drama in the world. firstly, because the lady we bought it from, J, said it would fit in the back of a station wagon (apparently the people who bought her other couch managed to do just that), we weren't too fussed that all the lamppost ads for moving vans had vanished off the face off the plan.

secondly, because J as so sure it would fit in a station wagon and mini movers was going to charge us $140 for the 10 minute trip down the road, we called up the taxi company to ask if a station wagon taxi would be willing to take us and the sofa. the first guy zoot spoke to said it wouldn't be a problem, and when i called up today the lady on the phone said it would be find as well.

anyway the taxi driver rocks up and takes one look at the couch and says "i dont think it's going to work", but then the seller's mother, P says to him "no it definitely can be, the people who bought our other brought it home in a taxi too" and he seems skeptical but finally hoists himself out of the taxi and opens the boot. obviously he doesn't lift a finger to help so craig and i are wrassling with this 1.5m sofa frame and manage to shove it into the boot only to be told that he can't put the seats down because of this thing that's been bolted to the backseat. GREAT! so we have half a metre of timber sticking out the back secured by some rope and then it turns out the frakking mattress won't fit.

so P looks at him in the most exasperated manner and gets her car keys out and in the biggest act of human decency ever orders craig and i to put the mattress in her car boot and she drives me home while craig goes in the taxi clinging on to the frame for dear life.

and of course it has to be absolutely pissing down the whole time. and of course the taxi driver has to take the route of most resistance leaving me and P in the car waiting outside the house for about 10 minutes before he arrives. and then craig and i have to carry everything up to castle anthrax. and of course we have to brush past every single bit of fauna along the way. and then of course we have to rid ourselves of every bit of greenery that nature has kindly given us once we're in the house, including the praying mantis who seemed to have the biggest crush on craig, refusing to leave even after he'd tried to evict her once. oh and of course the sofa frame is dripping wet too.

and now our house is filled to the brim with sofas.

our next challenge is to air the mattress and launder its covers so it's lovely and clean and THEN! we shall be ready for guests.

this afternoon, craig and i brought our couch home in the bucketing rain ...
in a taxi.

what an adventure!