The Dame of Roma

Well hey dudes!

The ol’ Roma blog has been sadly neglected for the past couple of months while I’ve been HAVING A LIFE elsewhere in world.  Luckily, I’m now back in town and bored out of my mind again, so let’s have a recap on what’s been up.  Now as you all know I’m a big fan of the bullet point list so let’s see what we have here:

• I got more work done on my tattoo
• Spent Christmas Day at Mom Pom’s house
• Spent a wonderful, wonderful three weeks in New Zealand with Blair (blog, meet Blair.  I know I haven’t mentioned him before but it is L-O-V-E)
• Got a totally sweet new work vehicle
• Oh, and Roma had some MAJOR flooding on my damn birthday

Now for the photos!  Tumblr, if you crash while I’m uploading these I will get very angry.

I spent so long at the tattoo shop getting this done that now every time I hear heavy metal music it immediately brings to mind the sensation of getting tattooed.  Just the colour to go:

Blair and his nephew Josh in New Plymouth, NZ:

It’s quite pretty, New Zealand.  This is the Festival of Light in Pukekura Park, New Plymouth:

The “batch”/”bach” (that means holiday house):

Snapper and paua (it was gross) on the barbie at the bach:

NYE - the weather was absolute rubbish and we were all in bed by 12.15am:

The black sand really is bizarre:

This thing is awesome!  It’s an amphibian vehicle!

This is the boat we took from Wellington to Picton on the South Island:

Mount Egmont/Taranaki, which overlooks New Plymouth:

My new car!  If you see me rollin’, don’t be hatin’:

And then last weekend, one of the worst floods Roma has seen.  It exceeded the March 2010 flood which took a lot of people by surprise and one woman drowned.  It’s been really awful, but it was also great to see the town pull together to get through it.  My house was safe from flooding (thank goodness) but it must be so terrible for people who have lost everything for the third time in two years.  The army has come in to help with the clean up, and we’ve been visited by Anna Bligh and Julia Gillard.  Roma didn’t even cop it too badly.  The towns of Mitchell and St George were basically obliterated.

Anna, are you seeing this?!

The last batch of cupcakes I’ll bake in 2011!  I really went all out with this: chocolate fudge cake with raspberries, dark chocolate chips and chocolate icing

Don't have a personal trainer?

Hmmm.

freedom-calling:

wow, awesome haha

 Obviously this is what we should have done the other day before work!

(via the-bodhi-tree)

Today I was really excited because I finally found a yoga class in Roma that isn’t during working hours.  It’s run by a place called Mind Body Soul so I rang them to find out what kind of yoga it was.  I should have heard alarm bells when the girl who answered the phone didn’t know, and had no clue what I was talking about when I told her I used to do ashtanga.

I also should have been alarmed when I was talking to the instructor before the class.  Trying to establish what we would be doing, I asked if they do sun salutations.  She said “No -oh, well sometimes we do.  If I feel up to it.”  This is the instructor talking.  I don’t think I’ve ever done a yoga class which hasn’t begun with a few rounds of sun salutation.

Anyway it turns out it was hatha yoga, which is the yoga you do if you’re eighty years old, or maybe if YOU’RE IN A COMA.  We spent 20 minutes rolling our heads from side to side.  Then we did some stretches, then a forty-five minute guided chakra meditation.  And that was it.

The only thing about it that was kind of cool was this.  At the end of the class, the instructor was telling me that after a chakra cleansing meditation like we did, people sometimes get home and feel that they’re missing something or have left something behind. I was like this inwardly when she was talking:

But then as I was walking out the door, without even realising, I suddenly thought I’d left something back in the room, and turned back to get it.  But here’s the thing - I HADN’T LEFT ANYTHING BEHIND.

Whoa.  Like - whoa.

Farmer’s Union Iced Coffee in the bakery fridge at Quilpie

Yesterday I drove from Roma to Quilpie.  Today I drove from Quilpie to Thargomindah and back again.  Tomorrow I will drive from Quilpie to Roma.  Some things I have noticed during my LD (long distance, duh) wet weather driving:

• I will get bored enough to count the seconds between the wipers on the intermittent setting
• The crows know which side of the road to expect cars to be on.  If they are in the right hand lane, they don’t bother to fly away from the delicious roadkill feast.  If they’re on the left hand side, they casually stroll onto the verge until you’ve passed
• There are thousands and thousands of emus and they are all really stupid and will freeze as you approach, and then run all panicky down the highway in front of you for, oh, 10km before finally veering back into the bush by accident
• Cows do not get off the road just because a large 4WD is bearing down on them at 110kph

Events of note:

• I crossed the Bulloo River!  It was flowing!  First water crossing ever!  Owned it!
• I saw an emu sitting on the side of the road with two eagles standing next to it that were clearly eating it alive, gross!
• Farmer’s Union Iced Coffee for sale and very popular in the Quilpie bakery - “can’t keep it in stock” so the lady told me
• Okay well that’s all actually.

^ This was meant to be a photo of the massive road train I was stuck behind on the way back in to Quilpie, but I kind of like how it turned out all blurred like that.  And yes I take photos from the driver’s seat while driving.  WHAT OF IT.

Guess where I’m driving to tomorrow

Fred loves his little brother. Look at his hand

Mmmmmm nom nom nom nom.  I hate you Woolworth’s, but you are the place in Roma stocking the only iced coffee in the world worth drinking.  Once you try Farmer’s Union, you never go back.  Little bit of trivia for you: South Australia is the only place in the world where a milk drink outsells Coca Cola.  And not only that, but Farmer’s Union Iced Coffee sales are three times that of Coke in SA.  IN YO FACE, COKE!

Here is a story from 2008 where Coke tried to take a piece of Farmer’s Union’s market.

I love this bit:

“South Australians drink 45 million litres of flavoured milk every year and we have 82 per cent of the market,” he said. “We wish Coca Cola well.”

Oh, what’s that? You want me to drive the forklift?