Tuesday 25 November 2014

Consolidation

Today I received confirmation that all my superannuation funds have been rolled over and consolidated into one fund!  I have been in the workforce for 20 years now and have had 5 jobs and 5 different superannuation funds, so it was about time I did something about it. Now to add around $1million to it so I can retire with enough money... not long to do that!

This is a good week for getting some challenges done, another one coming up on Thursday...


Monday 24 November 2014

Learning to Draw

2 challenges in one day complete!  The second one today was suggested to me by my niece Lily - learn how to draw.  We took that challenge a step further and added an OR... attend a life drawing session, which is what I did tonight.

Stuart has been going to the Arthouse Hotel to do life drawing for a while and I have always been a little intrigued so along with Kath and Michelle, we all went after work.  

So... maybe I should have actually taken Lily's advice and learnt how to draw before going to a life drawing session!  The model was quite skinny which made it harder to draw and I most definitely was the worst drawer in the room at the start of the night (drawings at the top of the pic below).  But over the course of an hour and a bit, my drawing developed (mainly because I decided to stop trying to draw the model's face, feet and hands and also I started to add in a little shading to help cover bad bits!) and I was proud of a couple of my drawings at the end (the second pic below). 

Thanks for the intro to life drawing Stu... not sure that I'll go back, but it was a treat!


The swim

The idea for this challenge came from my friend Michelle... to swim the length of Coogee or Bronte.  For some reason I chose Bondi (I think mainly because my friends Fran and Karen live in Bondi and I thought it would be a good way to see them too!), not realising that of course it is a significantly longer beach!

So before work today Michelle, Kath and I decided to swim the length of Bondi - within a week where there have been 2 great whites over 2 metres long found in the nets at the beach (albeit 500metres from shore which was nowhere near as far out as we were going to go!) and a weekend of Northerly winds which bring blue bottle jellyfish to Sydney, we decided to still give it a go!  

Fran came and met us down at North Bondi before heading off to work and with a few words of advice we were on our way.  We didn't end up taking the Bondi Escalator (the rip at North Bondi that takes you out to the best spot to swim from), we went through the yellow and red swimming flags instead and plunged into the surf, picked our line and started swimming.  

Well... after less than 2 minutes I was exhausted!  Much like my first ride back on the bike, swimming in the open water is quite confronting and tiring. Waves coming from one side, goggles that don't work, seaweed disguised as who knows what, water up my nose, water being inhaled... wow!  I must say, freestyle makes a massive difference swimming in the waves, breaststroke gets you hardly anywhere.  But through all that it was actually fun!

After about 20 minutes, (unfortunately/fortunately??) Michelle got stung by a blue bottle so we (I) decided we should go in!  Shell would have kept going if I had wanted to but safety first... right Cath?!  We had actually swum about 3/4 of the way and I was happy with how far we had come.  Swimming back in to shore and catching the waves was also fun and a challenge, I know the theory but putting it into practice when I am out of practice was interesting - caught a really good last one into the beach to top off the experience nicely and then a good stroll, people watch and gossip back to the car along the beach. 

I headed over to Karen's place for a lovely cuppa tea, shower and breakky.  It was great hanging out with Karen and her beautiful girl Skye before going to work.

What a great way to start the day! 


Thursday 20 November 2014

Cooking for a cause

Yesterday I went with a group from work to visit Oz Harvest.  Oz Harvest have been around for about 10 years in Sydney and are in a few major cites.  They have vans that drive around during the day to 'rescue' food - their sources predominantly are supermarkets & restaurants.  They don't know what food they are going to get on a daily basis and sometimes they get some interesting surprises! 

With the Cooking for a Cause session, we made 4 different dishes and these will be collected at lunch today and taken out to various charities to serve to less fortunate people than us.  Our batch will go to the Newtown Mission which feeds the local homeless community and there are a lot of regulars there. 

You can see the 4 shots of progressive food - that is the dish I was responsible for - roast vegetable cous cous salad with meatballs and garlic yoghurt.  It was quite yummy if I say so myself!

It was a great experience and incredibly interesting, the people were lovely.  Highly recommended as a group activity for work or friends.  The Macquarie Foundation (the philanthropic arm of the company) is one of the founding contributors to Oz Harvest and helped to get it on it's feet in Australia.  My friend Nicole also had a golden spoon up on the wall as a very generous contributor.


Sunday 16 November 2014

The Reunion

To reunite Phoenix and McIntyre is #19 on the list... 

For Christmas 1990 my sister Jacqui and I got one kitten each, brothers, and their names were Phoenix (after River Phoenix the actor of course!) and McIntyre (after Joey McIntyre of NKOTB fame of course!) and they stayed in the family for a long time.  Phoenix died around his 17th birthday and McIntyre around 18 months later. 

After all this time, I haven't buried Phoenix's ashes as I kept forgetting take them back to Melbourne with me and upon discovering that Jacqui actually had only just recently buried McIntyre's ashes in her back yard at the end of last year, it went on the list.  With thanks to Julia and Todd for taking me down to Melbourne with them this weekend, I finally remembered to take the little box with me on the plane ride (I didn't declare them, but I think there is something in the airline rules about transporting bodies, even in form of ash.....).

Lily and Jasper were great helpers and very intrigued to find out what ashes actually look like. Anyway, without much fuss, Phoenix is now next to his brother McIntyre, reunited in Jac's backyard to rest in peace together!


Monday 27 October 2014

It's like riding a bike

So... after owning a bicycle for 2 years and only ever having ridden it around Centennial Park twice, I finally rode my bike to work (and back home) today!  Special thanks to Michelle for being my riding buddy making sure I got there and back safely.  It was fairly easy and is now officially the fastest way for me to get to and from work.  The up ramp to Anzac Bridge and strong headwinds on the way home were not so pleasant and quite challenging, and my calves and various other bits are not so happy with me... however I think I will do it again :) maybe once a week.

With 34 weeks to go, I still have 37 things still to do.  More progress has been made in starting some of them though: I now have a booking for a wine tasting class in early December; I bought my first issue of the Big Issue; I called Gran; I have taken a 'before' photo of my bedroom; I have swiped 'Right (Yes)' to 10 men on Tinder; and AMP are consolidating my super.  Small progress!




Sunday 12 October 2014

Ice Cream Breakfast

This week I have been slowly getting some things done in preparation for crossing them off the list: I bought some juggling balls ready to learn how to juggle; booked the restaurant Vue de Monde for February 2015 (plenty of time to save for that night out!); took Tess of the D'Urbervilles off the book shelf and moved it into the bedroom; downloaded Tinder onto my phone; signed up to the mygov website to 'find my super' (although it appears the super fund I want to transfer all my past funds to is not there in my listing, so now have another project to find it...); and got quotes to stretch the Vietnamese canvas. So I feel like I have had progress this week.

The one thing I did actually complete was to have a crazy breakfast with Lily and Jasper, where the nominated crazy breakfast was Ice Cream (as suggested by Julia)!  So while they were in Sydney this weekend and staying at my place, we thought what a great idea to do it now.  The ice cream was accompanied by healthy sugar and gluten free banana pancakes (which actually tasted quite good with the very sweet gelato!).  The kids loved it and we have another item off the list :-)



Monday 6 October 2014

The List



40. Attend a wine tasting course
BONUS: Visit a country I have never been to before

What is this all about?

This blog has come about because on the 23rd June 2015 I will be turning 40... So, I have created a list (with the help of family and friends) of 40 things to do before I turn the big 4-0.  The aim is to get all of them done.  

The list has a variety of things included: learning new skills; sport challenges; eating and cooking food activities; free, cheap and expensive activities; activities with optional participation from family and friends; activities giving back to the community; some fun, some embarrassing, some challenging, some boring, some essential etc etc etc.  

And, first cab off the rank is this blog... '#1 To create a blog', so I guess this will be like a diary of all the 40 activities for the next 8-odd months.