August already!

Wow, it's 1st August already...

This week has been busy and eventful, starting with an early start on Monday as I had to fly up to Brisbane for work. Good to pass time at the airport catching up with my brother. Didn't see much of Brisy other than a couple of offices and my hotel room as I clocked up a couple of long days in my last week of juggling 2 jobs...

Weds I was tutoring for the School for Social Entrepreneurs (I do this as a 'spare time activity' - hmm!) and then in the evening took part in my first ever book group meeting - how I love being a thirtysomething cliche! Was a fun evening - group of women who all catch up over dinner once a month and then get round to talking about a couple of books for 10 minutes at the end of the night! Swapped a couple of my books for Barack Obama's first book and a New Zealand book about a homeless guy - a good way to expand my reading I reckon!

Thurs & Fri were pretty hectic finishing up with my job at Mission Australia, possibly not helped by a late night on Thurs where K and I met up after work, ended up going out for dinner then chatting till the wee small hours over one or three glasses of wine - we've not seen much of each other lately so it was good to have some 'quality time' but obviously not for my liver...

Good training though for Fri eve where I had my leaving drinks in the Orbit Bar, which is on level 47 of the Australia Square tower, and which rotates, doing a 360 degree tour of Sydney in 2 hours. The cocktails were good, the views were great, the service was terrible, so we headed off after a couple of drinks and ended up on a bit of a pub crawl of Sydney without having any food - surprisingly I felt ok this morning and we've spent a relaxed day catching up on the papers, eating lots of food and generally chilling out. Bliss.

Photos are of the famous "Sydney sprawl" captured on descent into Sydney airport from recent flight, and of the view from halfway across the Harbour Bridge at night. I finally remembered to take my camera and tripod with me when I walked over it this week! This is what I see on my regular running route - I'm a lucky girl!

Bugging

This week has been a bit of a non-entity, mainly because I’ve been trying to get over a bug. Not a coughing and sneezing bug, but a sucking-all-the-life-force-out-of-me bug. Most annoying.

Anyway, in among the illness, I did manage a work trip to Canberra (kind of dull and also freezing!) so I’ve now only got Tasmania and the Northern Territory to visit and then I’ll have been to every state in Oz – not bad!

Felt quite a bit better by last night, which was good as K and I were invited round to some friends for pizza and Canada Day celebrations (J is Canadian). A lovely evening involving lots of good chat, excellent food and a few beers. It ended somewhat annoyingly with us being locked out of our flat after a breakdown in communication saw us both leave our keys inside (each thinking the other had theirs – oh yes, the comedy!). 40 minutes waiting for a locksmith and $190 later we got inside…grrr!

Today’s picture was taken on a late afternoon stroll yesterday, with the sun setting over Sydney Harbour. The man in the picture was doing stretches as he walked which was slightly bizarre!