I can live without a dishwasher, oven, microwave, still don't have a dryer, but the last thing I'd ever let go of is a washing machine. It's a non-negotiable. life would be horrible without one
I'm grateful I found the motivation to go to the shops and grab a few things I've been needing for like 2 weeks. Even if that motivation was mostly because ice cream
I'm grateful for the roof over my family's heads and for kids that enjoy spending time together. I'm actually rather grateful we're not doing much this weekend as I need the rest. I'll be watching the wrestling tomorrow with the kids and that's about it. Physically I'm knackered, it's been a tough week.
Grateful for my oodie and my warm merino socks, and for this absolutely rich and delightful chocolate cake left over from morning tea at work. A lovely pick me up while painstakingly working through all my deductions...
I think I'll head to the border for the night so I can smash out another 6-8 hours of my audiobook (Pet Sematary read by Dexter's Michael C. Hall). I've been meaning to check out Yackandandah for a while so I can go by there as a detour on my way home tomorrow.
Plans: sorted. Well.. nearly. I need to see if I can find a room up there.
After jumping into the puffer jacket thread yesterday with a bold claim you need neither a big jacket nor a puffer....I succumbed today and am now one of the great Melbourne puffy community.
My fav little local store was having a sale so I got a proper down one for half price so just a bit over a hundred. I have to admit I am very toasty warm
I told the man if he insists on keeping The Beard during Winter, then atleast trim it away from the top lip because sitting here whilst enjoying my dinner, I have seen some disturbing things.
Going to throw something controversial out there. It bothers me that virtually all advertisments feature a mixed races couple. It bothers me how virtually all media nowadays is so ultra sensitive to be politically correct that any white person plus white person combo is 'blacklisted' (lol).
I have no issue with mixed race relationships at all. But I do have an issue that all media seems to have started to portray the 'typical' relationship as a mixed race one.
Lol, why does it matter? I mean, it's all capitalism anyway; media/ads are just doing it to grab a wider audience and make more money. People are more likely to buy from places that they feel represent them, and the companies profit.
I get it. It's the same with tradie ads featuring women. Good, but not the norm. Woolies ads have the men cooking the family dinner. Good, but not the norm.
The thing is no longer will we see stereotypes because the marketing team will cast that net wider than previous attempts. It's a good thing.
I feel the same about work training material. So much attention to including one of everybody that it may not represent reality. One group I work with the diversity is naturally true. The other very on paper.
Advertising has always been 'aspirational'. Back in the 70s and 80s, the Womens Weekly was notorious for advertisements where the goods being advertised were clearly aimed at the newly prosperous new home owners and newly arrived people. The people demonstrating the goods were all white, anglo and upperclass or a good imitation thereof. The goods were such that white anglo upperclass people would not have dreamed of having in their houses - even in their worst nightmares, as too too bogan.
Also, look at homewares ads on tv & youtube right now - the houses, even those with small kids and pets, are INCREDIBLY neat and clean and all the surfaces are blindingly white or pale grey and everyone is neatly and cleanly dressed. This is not a realistic scenario for a busy household. Aspirational.
@Force_majeure123@Seagoon_ representative media would include couples who are three percent Aboriginal, six percent chinese, half a percent italian, ten percent queer, sixty six percent working class etc. That would be representative. Pretty difficult to cast.
I slept with the balcony door open on my first night on the train to Mildura. It was nice, but that was in Creswick and it was a few c colder there than in Melbs. Woke up with freezing feet, even with socks and the blanket. The rest of me was happy though
Tax return lodged!! Of course my old employer's income statement isn't tax ready, they have ALWAYS been so slow at paying super, lodging tax details, etc. Meanwhile my current employers are on the ball - one is a huge org, the other a tiny firm, and they managed to get shit sorted. I didn't bother waiting for the old guys, the sums correlate to my bank deposits. Hopefully it's all in order, anticipating a decent chunk that I can put towards getting my car's head unit replaced with one that does android auto.
There's also small silver lining to my reduced employment over the last FY, should be getting $511 back as a tax offset. Overall, a huge relief vs my shockingly low tax refund last year of $250 or so
Happy to hear you managed to lodge yours in sooner rather than later.
Last year my employer forgot to push the income statements through and I had to call the finance department and ask what was going on and they forgot to action it and push it through to the ATO. 🤦♂️
They got it in on time this year so I just lodged mine in the other day. I’m glad that I’ll be getting back more than what I got last year by quite a bit but I think a lot of it came at the expense of travelling offsite and back constantly so I was able to claim back on that.
Now for the wait of it being assessed which hopefully won’t take too long and then win!
That's really poor of your employer, surely one of the finance/payroll department's biggest tasks is to ensure staff get their tax-related statements on time. I would've been so mad - thankfully it came through on time this year. I hear what you mean about the travel, I was looking through my past tax lodgments and one year I racked up thousands in claiming vehicle use for work travel, dunno whether it really worked out in the end with all the costs of maintenance and some expensive service items.
I'm keen to get something back before the end of this month if possible. It's time for me to restore my savings balance to where it was near the end of last year before I quit my job. I'll be due for a chat about my pay at my second job and going to negotiate as best I can...
It's either somewhere obvious that you could have sworn that you'd already checked, or it'll turned out to be in some inscrutable place, and you'll have no idea how it got there.
For some reason I have Handel's The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba in my head this morning and I just imagine... cats. Specifically, a glossy-maned cat of regal bearing sauntering into a room on an overhead ledge and looking down on us unworthy humans. I am a bit cat-starved. I have much more freedom to adopt a cat compared to past years, but wondering if it's a good time when I might need to cut back on work for a year to finish my studies...
edit: I shall ponder about this some more while I knuckle down and start doing my taxes. Did not save a copy of all my payslips from my old job which was dumb. Zero interest in contacting them again, so I will just work backwards to figure out how many hours of work (and therefore WFH I did).
Also didn't realise I could claim airfare and accom for my work-related conference last year as a deduction as well. Score!
This is sort of where I'm leaning towards tbh. It also means I can plan holidays around fostering periods without needing to find someone to catsit. Last I looked a few places required written approval from the landlord. I'm fairly sure mine will be okay as this apartment is all floorboards and very low maintenance. I need to get over my partly irrational fear that they'll use it as an excuse to increase the rent, though. I'm on a good wicket at the moment relative to the insane prices out there.
Logistics wise, unsure. But! A cat is the best study buddy. Mickey helped me heaps when I was at UniMelb, and prolly will again when I start TAFE. They just make it that much easier, even when sleeping on the laptop, pressing keys, or swatting all your pens. Good motivators but also good to remind you to take regular breaks, even if it's a moment to pat them. Idk, it depends on your situation of course, but my mental health is so much better with a furry familiar
Oh, the mental health boost would be 1000000000000000000000000% there. But I know that on top of regular food I need to have an emergency fund for vet visits, etc, and just wondering if it's a wise financial decision if I'll be cutting my earnings (reducing my work hours) to study, not long after a period of already eating into my savings from unemployment and then travel and a car.
I also am not home a lot of the time and wonder if that'll be good for the cat. At least having a WFH setup means that now even if I need to do a late day at work I can come home and finish off what's needed and still feed kitty on time.
I will see what study leave options I can utilise at work to balance it all out. The truth is, on a single income, it'll just take a rent hike to throw a lot of these plans in disarray. As much as I love cats I do not want to touch my savings again in order to afford having one...
I really do wish framing pictures wasn't so expensive. And Australia being Australia means that when you shop around prices seem to roughly the same everywhere.
Years ago I did a framing course at a shop - you learn how to do it yourself, then you can go in and use the equipment there and just pay for your materials. More recently I've just bought some cheap pictures/frames at the op shop and used those.
Was still 8C outside at noon so it makes sense that I have been struggling to stay warm today. There's a bit of sun now which is a relief. My poor toes need a hot water soak
throws chicken tenders in airfryer then slaps in a sammich slathered with cheese and kewpie mayo i did not spend 6 hours removing render by hand to cook my own dinner, absolute bullshit this is!
Someone smashed the glass to the advertising billboard thingy at the bus stop near the shops. Kind of surprised the rest of the glass isn't smashed too, they just went for the bit they kept the ads in. Surprisingly they didn't even steal the ad (just a poster Blu tacked to the inside by the looks of it), just smashed the glass. Missed opportunity imo
Also, this is the same stop I got abused at a few months ago, and one of like 3 places I've ever been truly scared for my safety while I've been out. Nice to see it hasn't changed one bit (I try to avoid it now)
Edit: just got back to my hotel and there 3 cop cars + a crime scene services van parked out front. About 6 cops got in the lift with me, but they got off the floor below mine. Can't eavesdrop, but they're opposite my room pretty much (there's an internal courtyard), so I can spy. In any case, looks like somebody's having a bad dsy
Hampton red rooster is an absolute fucking shitshow. I ordered three items and they couldn't get a single one right. Satisfryer was missing chicken, pineapple and drink (and chips were wrong size), popcorn chicken entirely absent (about which my cats are pissed ) and flayva was a bbq. Which i did not order.
I've found more and more fast food, the people making it just don't care. Even my local HSP place will put the cheese on top if I'm not in store to correct them during construction. These days I tend to only get hamburgers from maccas because they're $2ea and simple, the still get stuffed up - sauce on the side, pickles falling out - it's not hard, they're the most simple burger.
Why? They land all over the place. The pilots do an amazing job of steering them, but are still at the mercy of the winds as to where they can go and can't plan exactly where they will end up.
I feel guilty about spending money on self-care sort of things. My group training gym is kind of exxy, but from that, I have started to cook for myself and found a supportive community. I am likely starting piano lessons soon and I also wanna buy a guitar for fun? Then on top of wanting to travel and only having a small window to do so because of study, and everything necessary, it's like should I just not do the music lessons, even though they will give me a sense of achievement and something else to do other than doomscroll all day?
There's the saving for a house part as well. I'm very lucky to still live with my parents.
Eugénie Grandet by Balzac sheds a satirical light on the folly of hoarding your wealth. It's not a long read and probably well out of copyright. If money isn't for self care then what is it for?
Ferociously hungry out of nowhere. Already had some jackfruit and cauliflower and two frozen fish fillets and I might end up having two more fillets. I kinda wish I had some chips in the freezer for days like today but it's too cozy at home to bother going to the shops. Watching the first episode of The Gentlemen (tv series) but not really getting into it. Too much Guy Ritchie posturing vibes, lead actor is cardboard, and which idiot goes to a deal without a heavy? Eh, I'll try one more episode
Movie Review. Tora Tora Tora. Dramatisation of the lead up and attack of Pearl Harbour. Equal time given to each side. Both sides had admirable me, brave men. And even tho the US made mistakes they still won in the end.
Pearl Harbour, this did not suck. I like how this movie is about Pearl Harbour and all the American people who lived and worked there.