Alex

According to LJ I haven't posted here in forever. Oops. I keep resolving to post more often and every time that goes out the door.

Things are going good. Life has pretty much consisted of work - what's new - but we're starting to get closer to moving into the house (it LOOKS finished!!!) and the wedding is looking scarily close. So... y'know, that's getting there.

Had a few stresses at home, mainly about money. We're not struggling - Glenn is under the impression we are fine however our $4000 credit card bill says otherwise, but at least we haven't maxed out anything (yet) and we still have some savings for absolute emergencies. It hasn't helped we've had about $2000 of his medical expenses, plus about $1500 of car expenses that we weren't anticipating - on top of various house payments, and wedding stuff, it's starting to add up big time. So hopefully we are through the worst of those (just waiting on one bill which hasn't come yet... need to call about it), and we can work on a) paying off the credit card; b) building up our savings to a decent fund; and c) start putting money towards the loans.

Kidney stones are expensive, y'all.

I've spent the last couple of days off trying to sort through the mounds of paperwork we have at home and have a ton of stuff I threw somewhere and have to actually action it.. sigh. But at least most of that is sorted out, think the next days off will be dedicated to cleaning up and trying to toss some crap on eBay, the money would really help atm and also I just want to get rid of half of it!!

Also been thinking about what name to take when I'm married, the following are the options:
Alexandra Lynch (current name)
Alexandra Hulett (Glenn's surname)
Alexandra Lynch-Hulett
Alexandra Hulett-Lynch (which sounds a lot like Hewlett Packard, as my friend has pointed out).

I was thinking of going Lynch-Hulett, but it's a bit of a pain in the ass and long, so I'm actually thinking more that I will change to Hulett. It's weird though, since I've been Lynch my whole life... even just getting used to it will be weird. Mind you, I've been getting bills as 'Mrs' already for the new house, haha. Let me tell you though, I am not looking forward to having to change our address in June, and then my name in November. Thankfully all the unchanged stuff will go to my parents', so they'll pick up any that I haven't changed the address on.

Waaay too many things for me to keep track of. I miss the days when everything was simple and done for me!! 

It's also been a year since I got back from Africa. Which is reminding me that I have been incredibly lazy about going through my photos, I haven't even uploaded most of them to FB and haven't even sorted through them. I had a massive freak out a couple of weeks ago and thought I'd lost the memory cards with the photos which I hadn't backed up. Okay - I am 99% positive that I have lost them, but thankfully I had transferred one to my computer, and the other to mum's. The third is still in the camera. Thank god for nagging mums who want a copy of the photo, that's all I can say.... I'm gonna wait until we have some spare money saved up and when one of the stores has a digital prints sale so I can go print them off. 1500 photos (before sorting through) is a shitload of photos.

Been trying to get back into the survey emails, I keep going through and doing a couple of days then getting bored again. Which sucks because I am missing out on a bunch of opportunities. Considering just clearing the lot out and starting afresh. I've had a couple of my twitter friends ask for the links, so I need to sort THAT out too and give it to them, stupid neverending lists.

Aaanyway, I think I have sufficiently rambled on enough. Will post a wedding update later, when I get around to it.

To do list...

Wedding
• Confirm flowers
• Sizing for bridesmaid dresses
• Invitation mockup
• Finalise guest list
• Finalise bridal party accommodation
• Email people about other accommodation
• Write up supplier list with deposit/payment/status

House
• Contact council for owner information of 116 & 118
• Get fencing quotes
• Start pricing furniture we want
• Look into blinds options
• Start pricing lighting for main areas

Other
• Sort out all wedding paperwork
• Sort out all house paperwork
• File other paperwork
• Start tax preparation for 2010/11
• Empty out survey email account
• Create list of survey accounts on del.icio.us
• Find Africa photos and sort through them
• Empty/sort through wardrobe
• Empty/sort through clothes drawers
• Empty/sort through desk drawers
• Catalogue all DVDs
• Catalogue all games
• Sort through all books
• Update Kobo with new books

I'm fairly sure there's a hundred things I am missing from this, but I thrive on lists and crossing things off (I constantly put on things that will take me 2 minutes to do just so I can CROSS IT OUT), and I am very disorganised lately.

My knees have been killing me like crazy lately :-(

First it was the right knee... a couple of weeks ago while I was standing at work it randomly gave way and collapsed from under me. That was sore for a few days and I was bandaging it, it was nearly better, but then the other one started hurting (I'm guessing from the extra weight).

Went to the doctor to get it looked at, turns out he suspects BOTH knees have a 'subluxating patella'... I think the most basic way of explaining that is that my knees want to spontaneously dislocate themselves. So I have to do stretches to strengthen my quads, which I have been doing but doesn't seem to be helping, grr! I also had to have x-rays to make sure there was nothing else going on... get the results from those on Wednesday, I'm hoping that there's nothing underlying because I really can't afford that right now!!

And now I have had problems with my left knee.. actually, both of them decided to give way at different times tonight (!!!) which was not fun and it is killing me, I have been home for 3 hours now and it is aching like a mofo, even after icing it for ages and elevating it. Driving is particularly fun as the motions are not helping, nor is the fact there are a bunch of stairs at home and at work to deal with.

I suspect if they do not improve I will have to go to a physio- more money, yay - and apparently the worst case scenario is surgery to pin the patella in place, scary stuff :-/ Have just looked at my health insurance and I don't even think they could do that til mid-Feb next year, as while there is a 2 month waiting period for hospital cover (I only upgraded a month ago), there is a 1 year waiting period for 'pre-existing conditions', which is described as existing in the 6 months prior to getting hospital cover. Although it's only been a problem the last fortnight, it's probably been "pre-existing" before that, BOO.

So, fingers crossed that my knees decide to play nice, I guess? I already have other work drama to deal with (will rant about that later) so would appreciate my body co-operating!!! *sulk*

Partially for my records, partially so I can share with you guys! (The days to go is from The Knot, I am too lazy to work it out on my own).
( Under the cut - it got longCollapse )

Anyway, that's where I'm at atm. So it is slowly getting there, major things have progress and I have plans for (most) of the other stuff. It helps having it in a to-do list, I am very much a list person and love crossing things off, haha.

I also need a wedding icon. Should look into this...

Update time, because once again I fail at updating on a regular basis!

1. House

Very very excited!! We have a (half) frame in the house!!! I am currently too lazy to upload photos so you can see them on FB here.  I went out there today at about 5pm and the carpenters were still there.. so I wandered around and had a bit of a look at the other houses, a few minutes later they started packing up so I camped out in the car waiting for them to leave so I could run around and take photos hahaha. There is another two houses by our builder down the street so I was looking at those... wanted to see the inside of one of them (there's no temporary fencing up as it's not required by the council) but figured that was slightly creepy not to mention illegal to walk through someone else's half-built house, I wouldn't like it if it was mine.

After MONTHS of waiting for settlement, finance, and council permits it's sooooo good to finally see some action on the place! The slab was done late last week, and the timber delivered yesterday - half the frame has been done in just a day! I think next is wrapping the house and/or roof tiles, then bricks, I'm really interested to see how our colour selections work out since we selected those in early September last year!

2. Wedding

Going to make a separate post about this (also for my records) with progress but the majority is coming along.. the guest list keeps growing though :/ Going to have to stop that now, especially as money is a little tighter atm. All the major stuff is done, just got my invitation sample a few days ago - definitely going with the company, just got to sort out numbers/exactly what we need before ordering, and I'm going to try see if I can get a discount on the shipping because it should seriously not cost $100 to post some card overseas.

3. Family

Dad lost his job yesterday. Apparently the bosses were being stupid and having unrealistic explanations above what was told to him when he got the job. So, that's a bummer, especially as he went through this a year ago. This time around at least he has the training certificate he did between jobs - he's not sure what he's going to do but him and mum are a bit stressed out (understandably). I have my fingers crossed that he finds something, in a way it's a bit easier though as last time he was spending a lot of time looking after my grandfather which was distracting him so at least he has a bit of a clearer head.

Uncle douchebag is still that, I don't actually think dad has spoken to him since The Letter. I certainly have no desire to do so. I think we're just leaving things and seeing what happens. Quite frankly I don't care what happens, he's been an ass about his ex-wife for years (I didn't see my cousins except for family events for about 3 years because of their divorce) so what the fuck ever.

4. Other

Nothing much else to report.. I have been running around doing "adult" things and forgetting important stuff as usual. Been sorting crap out on my http://del.icio.us because there are a million bookmarks in my computer, so that's done. Also went through and deleted a crapload of LJ friends & communities, haven't done a cleanout for about 3-4 years. Looks so much nicer now!

Am going to do a FB friend clean up, I have people added from uni who I wasn't even friends with back then, I don't even know why I have them added. It's bad when Glenn got a random friend request, there were mutual friends (as a few of the people at my work and his went to my uni) and he asked me who it was, and I didn't even know!! "They're friends with you?!" "...so?" I am waiting til I get to 500 friends, currently at 499 friends haha. Getting sick of having so many people on there, I'd rather just have people I actually know or are interested in seeing what they're up to.

I'm trying to get back into reading more, now that my Kobo is finally fixed (and oh god what a saga that was, had to blast the poor customer service people AND bitch on Twitter). Going through a couple of e-book communities for new books, as well as re-reading the HP books (yeah, I was trying to read them all before HP7 Part 1 came out - I clearly failed as I am 75% through HP6) and another series I adore and have read about 6 times already.  Also have 2 books I got in South Africa which I need to read - Nelson Mandela's autobiography, and a book written by one of the rangers from Krueger National Park, but I just haven't gotten around to those yet.

Annnnd speaking of that I have just realised that nearly a year on, and I still need to go through my photos to put on FB and also to print them out - or at least to have ready when the stores have sales on prints. Alex fail - I seriously need to write myself a MASSIVE to-do list and allocate myself one task a day. I do fine when I have a couple of things to do each day in my diary, but not when I have heaps to do. Any suggestions for how to make myself do jobs?! :( 

I need a new twitter name.

Possibly also a new LJ name.

I'm getting a bit sick of the 'alexthedevil', I made it way back in high school and it's not so 'cool' etc. anymore.

Any suggestions? I was trying to use some variation of alexlynch for twitter, but it's taken. Not so much my full name for LJ..

I can't come up with anything that doesn't either use numbers or underscores :(

ETA: Yeah, I'm a moron, I searched for everything BUT @AlexLynch, so now I just need a LJ name.

I swear, I am the most useless bride to ever exist.

We went to a florist today, because I wanted to start getting quotes for my flowers - I really want to get as much stuff sorted out ASAP because I'd like to not become bridezilla, thanks, particularly as *fingers crossed* my house will be ready about September and I don't need more stress.

In short = I am useless. I have no bloody idea what I want - was thinking purple, but now leaning towards deeper red colours for the flowers. What kind of flowers, you ask? Oh, I have no clue. I don't know. I'm not sure what colour I want for mine ("What do you mean, what colour do I want?"), or what style of flowers, or what's even in season.

Cue the magazines coming out. I will be buying more of these in the future, let me tell you Internets. My coffee table is currently a mess of bills I was paying today - and a bunch of pages ripped out of a magazine.

We do have progress on the invitation front - on Tuesday we popped into a few stores and while I still don't know what colour scheme I want (yes, I am useless), I do at least know what STYLE I want.

I want something like
( thisCollapse ) mostly because I also have a bunch of info (directions, accommodation, RSVP) and I think it'll fit better.

I have found what seems to be a great website with good reviews - cardsandpockets.com - which is based in the US. I've just ordered a colour swatch thing, because they have a million different colours, and a printer test kit which I am also going to use as a mock-up for the invites.

Was also going to order some leaf tags to get an idea for the guest gifts, but changed my mind when I saw how much shipping was. It was a $30 order (without them) and free shipping because they were both samples. With them? $35 order.. and $32 shipping. Screw THAT.

I hate living in Australia sometimes!! :( It's good to shop online because shit is a lot cheaper but then I have to factor in shipping costs. Did quick calculation and I can do 80 invites for ~$200 all up - but shipping is $100 ON TOP. I don't even know if it's worth shipping to one of you guys and paying you to ship it onwards to Australia. Damn living at the bottom of the globe. All the options are 2 or 4 day shipping.. and if I order in March, I really don't need them OMGRITENAO, so I think I will email them and see if they have any cheaper options that take longer.

Anyway, stay tuned for more episodes of "Alex doesn't know what the bloody hell she wants for her wedding, why can't someone just decide for her", because this is a loooong saga.

Long time, no post. I fail at this whole "paid account which will encourage me to post more often" thing.

So, updates...

1. Wedding

Went shopping yesterday with Ellie (best friend/Maid of Honour) and Liz (my bridesmaid in another state) for bridesmaid dresses. Sadly, there are not a lot of cocktail length dresses out there, what the? We probably looked at about 35-40 stores, and found absolutely nothing - we've come back to the original dress Ellie first found when I was trying on my wedding dress.

We're going with this dress (under the cut), except altered so it's about knee-length, and in hunter green:

( Dress..Collapse )
But the dress looks good on both of the girls, and makes them both look amazing - since they're the two most 'opposite' body types, my other two should be fine. They need to try the dress on still, but we have time. Bonus is that the store will give us 10% off because we're buying 4 dresses =]

2. House

Still hasn't started building. First we had our developer approval rejected, because someone on our street had the same facade. So we have had to pay an extra $500 to change the front bedroom windows to 3 vertical instead of 1 larger one. Personally I do think it looks better (I'll scan in a copy of the plans later) but it's annoying because now we have to reapply. They're applying for our building permit now, so I am really hoping that we get to site start soon. I'm waiting for a port-a-loo to be put on our land (as this is typically indication that they're building), how sad!!!

3. Family

Some of you may have seen this on FB, but my grandfather passed away on the 9th of January. He was peaceful and sleeping, and we all got to say our goodbyes, so I am doing okay.  I still have some sad moments especially when I realise he won't be at my wedding - I knew this was very unlikely but now it's reality - but I'm doing as well as I can, I guess.

In other family news, my uncle is an asshole of giant proportions and has been uninvited from my wedding. He's been picking fights with mum for a while now and making her look like the bad guy, she was the bigger person at the hospital & funeral and thought things were sort-of okay, and then she got a very abusive, aggressive, and accusatory letter in the mail from him this week.  She's been understandably upset about it (it did NOT need to be sent), my dad is fuming - and he's not the kind of guy to fume - and I am just pissed on their behalves. It is up to Glenn and I whether we want him at the wedding, but I don't want someone who's going to send my mother letters about shit she didn't do and doesn't deserve, so he's off the list.

4. Work

Not much been going on except that it is finally getting busier again. We had an asshole of a guest staying - who is sadly, still here - who apparently reported us to the police for fraud. Except, y'know, we have a signed registration card saying we're allowed to authorise his card (he was refusing to pay in advance, but also fill out a form so we could charge him weekly) - so we are totally covered. Incidentally we haven't heard from the cops, wonder why!

My manager told me I need to talk to Nicole (Glenn's brother's gf, who I got the job for) and make sure that the boundaries are clear, because he doesn't want me to be put in an awkward position. It's tricky, because I am her friend - but at work, I'm her boss and apparently she wasn't realising this too much. She was doing a few things and explaining it away as "Oh, Alex or Sue (manager) or the other supervisors did it..." which doesn't fly. Also because if she fucks up, I get questioned about it, as it's my shift. And I'm paid to make those decisions that I might get in trouble for, but if my staff fuck up and make decisions they shouldn't, I get in trouble for them doing it. So fingers crossed this talk isn't insanely awkward (I'm going to go with at least "a little awkward").

5. Other

Not much else has been going on, I've been addicted to Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 on the Wii lately, as I bought it about 3 weeks ago. I've actually almost finished it, I'm at 94% or something, but I'm stuck trying to find a lost person (have 49 out of 50, grr!) so I am going to go back and roam the 'castle'. Not sure what I will do after this - probably go back to Donkey Kong Country Returns.

Internets, I have so many damn Wii games that I have either not played, have started and not really got anywhere, or a couple that are nearly finished but I've put to the side. I should really go through and make a list of them all because a) this is ridiculous; b) I don't even know what games I have anymore; and c) I keep buying more games which I should Stop Doing.

Just got home from seeing Black Swan tonight - brilliant movie, but incredibly trippy. I mean, I'd heard reports that it was full of the crazy, but I didn't realise Just How Much. Loved it though, I can definitely see why it was nominated for so many awards. I'd still like to go see The King's Speech, because I have heard a lot of good things about it, but I may wait until it comes out on DVD.

In the next few days I have a shitload of things to do: Get flower quotes, call the moron at the hotel we want to stay at for the wedding, finish invitation research so I can buy some samples and play around, call up and get health insurance quotes, call up and get our rates notice fixed (our council thinks Glenn and I are already married?), call up and get Glenn's car insurance quote, pay his car registration, pay our solicitor, and a bunch of other things I think I have forgotten. I hate being a grown up :(

Well, I was going to post a general update, because once again I fail at updating this damn thing, but I have wedding news!

I went shopping with my mum and best friend yesterday (who is my maid of honour), we went to two stores. The first one we found a dress that was pretty and I did like a lot, but we had also made an appointment at a second store (which had a larger range of designers) so we went there as well.

The lady helping me with the dresses was such a stereotypical old Italian grandmother, haha, but she was lovely! I tried on a few dresses (and oh my god some of those are heavy and a pain in the ass to put on, we're talking 5+ minutes minimum) and then we found... THE ONE.

It is absolutely freaking gorgeous, I adore it to pieces, AND it came in under budget (barely - I'd set a limit of $2000 and this was $1960) which is always handy. They only needed 20% deposit too - the other store wanted 50% - so I will need to pay up to 50% before they order it, thank you credit cards <3

Kind of funny trying the dresses on - because I'm so tiny a lot of the dresses were too big for me (I was a size 6-8 and the dresses were 10-12), so I had a bunch of pins in while she tried to show me what it would look like, and even some industrial clamps (like the kind you use to jump start your car?!) on me. I tried on a size 10, and they've ordered me a size 6.. which is the smallest they make. I am going to have to get a whole bunch taken up, damn my shortness :/

I am keeping the dress a surprise from everyone except for a couple of family friends and my bridesmaids but here is a pic for you guys of the front and the back - please forgive the watermark on the second, it was a PITA to google good quality pics and  I was having issues print-screening the website.

( Read more...Collapse )

It's going to take 6 months to order (once I pay the 50% deposit) then I have to allow 2 months for fittings, I am already impatient about trying it on in my actual size!!!!

• Land has FINALLY been registered. Settlement is on Dec 13th. Just got to wait for then and then I will officially own my land. Won't be building til next year because they still need to do the soil test and get estate and council approval, and they take a break over Christmas/early January. Bloody builder isn't returning my emails, so I am going to call her on Monday. 
• Insurance claim is sort of sorted... i have the repairer, went there and they've taken photos, last I heard they were contacting my insurance to get their quote approved then were contacting me but this was last Monday so I need to call them again tomorrow as well and get them to hurry the eff up.
• Trying to sort out wedding dresses. Thinking I might go somewhere on Wednesday to look but I forgot to call and make an appointment. They close at 5pm today so I might try that actually... the other place is closed on Wednesdays (boo) so I will have to try and find another time... hospitaltiy hours are not good trying to coordinate with my mothers hours.
• Booked the DJ for the wedding, so that's one less thing to worry about. Yes it is a year away but I would like to have stuff finalised also so I know how much I have to pay everyone.
• Left work early today for my grandfather's birthday lunch. About 30 mintues later the fire alarm went off and the hotel evacuated. Haha, suckers. I hate dealing with evacuatiions for false alarms, it's so much paperwork.
• So, it's hard waste in my area at the moment, where everyone chucks their crap on the side of the road and the council collects it. someone put a mattress on the road overnight and I didnt see it until AFTER I drove over it. Those things get way stuck under cars. Thankfully there was some lady going the other way at 6am so she was able to help me ("drive forward *pull* okay now drive back *pull* " rinse and repeat).
• Work Christmas party is on this Thursday. Invitation says 'As this is a work function, please drink responsibily", lolz.