Storm Trooper

I never thought that something as mundane as a household appliances would get me so excited but it has. This weekend we actually got a working vacuum cleaner! I was so happy to suck-up all the icky dust bunnies that have been hanging around the house. I noticed a sale on cleaners at The Warehouse and Gordon was kind enough to take me and we purchased one. We were going to go for a silver, cheaper one but all the boxes were open on them. Call me a picky consumer but something just doesn't feel right when all the boxes have been opened so we went with a black and white one instead. It still was a deal though for only 169 bucks and I am so happy with it. It has already proven its worth. Now we can get rid of the little shark stick vac that was no help at all with keeping the house clean. My floors definitely feel a whole lot cleaner. Gordon fondly calls our vacuum the storm trooper because of its coloring. He also calls our car Darth Vader because its black. The other appliance we got is a hand-held mixer for $25. We had to go to an electronics store called Dick Smith and there was a store opening right across from them. It was called Norman Ross and they were having opening day sales to bring people in. They had a hand-mixer there and Gordon got it for me because sometimes the hand-held immersion blender can't mix what I need mixed. It was a good day for deals on Saturday.


In the ongoing epic that is my ticket refund, I've finally had success. The first time we went into the Air New Zealand holiday store they were closed, until further notice on Saturdays. Then when I went in the second time they told me they couldn't refund or exchange my ticket because I didn't have in my permit that my outward passage ticket was waived. I had to wait until a couple of days until I could go back to immigration to get everything sorted. Finally, the immigration people were kind enough to give me a work visa that stated I didn't need to have an outward ticket right now. Succes! (Kind of) I went back to the store and got the paperwork started. It turns out that its going to take six weeks for them to process my refund. What a frustrating experience but at least I've made some headway. I also got to talk to immigration about residencey and all the paperwork required. It may take a couple of months to get the paperwork all done so I don't know if we're going to get to go home in a year. It may be more like 1 1/2-2 years. They said they may be able to speed along the paperwork but we'll see.


I've also been doing some Christmas shopping because of the sales going on. I've gotten all the kiddies taken care of so now its on to the grown-ups which may be a bit late if I don't get my dvd of pictures by december. Gordon and I also ordered our free prints of the wedding. We got a couple of big ones to hang around the house and then the rest will go into the scrapbook. I'm going to go with a classic scrapbook look with little embellishments. I was thinking of going with a picfolio album but decided that a traditional creative memories scrapbook was the way to go. I'm going to go with black pages so that it really highlights the pictures. I'm so excited to get them! It will be great and then when we're old and gray we can look at all of our pictures and all of our kids and grandkids can look at them too. Gordon's Christmas present shopping is done and I've told him what I would like for birthday and Christmas so my presents will be taken care of as well. It would be nice to be a suprise but Gordon likes to get me what I want and am happy with. Its a good thing that we aren't serious gift people.


I went to a scrapbook workshop this weekend as well. It was a small affair and I met some ladies, they were all about 15-20 years older than me. It was good to be able to scrapbook a little. I didn't have much to work with so what I'm doing right now is getting all my photos from the March NZ trip into a photo album, with embellishments, and putting all my wedding cards into an album. It hasn't been bad and I'm making progress being at home. Still no word on the science job I applied for, I'm hoping that I'll hear something next week since the job closes on the 15th. Whenever I meet someone the second or third question they ask is whether or not I'm working. I tell them that I've been trying to apply for jobs but no luck so far. I guess they are just curious.


Its been a good week and nothing exciting has happened so I'll keep this posting a bit short. Everyone enjoy their week!