I’ll be blogging about this a little later on. It deserves its own post.

Allyson’s friend Natasha (whose face you might have seen at Woolworths, as the face of Unit Pricing – or maybe you saw her as a cheerleader for the St George Dragons) was the first non-family guest to our new abode, and she complimented us. There’s not really a story in it though, unfortunately.

I took Mum and Dad to Murphy’s Bar and Grill in Figtree for dinner a couple of weeks ago. It has delicious food, but it’s EXPENSIVE. Like, cheapest meal being $23 expensive. Cheapest dessert was $9.50, cheapest starter was two slices of garlic bread for $3.50. Not worth it. Don’t bother going there. Go to Hog’s Breath Cafe instead. They’re like $8 less per meal and they have basically the same food. In other news…. I bought something today maybe I shouldn’t have. *cough*wacomcintiq*cough*

You know what that means? I can check several things off my list!

However, I have been forced to leave Contours gym, meaning there are a couple of goals I will need to change, as they are no longer viable. I’ll blog more about that a little later.

Sadly, I’m using mobile broadband to post this, as we are waiting for our phone and internet to be connected. It’s going to be hard. This stick is S L O W as all hell much of the time. Still, at least I had the foresight to buy the prepaid stick a few weeks ago.

Anyway, see you later. I’m off to organise my bedroom.

Back then, the business was fresh and exciting. I didn’t know I was in over my head at that stage. I received a phone call from a startup company that wished me to create a website for them. It would be a website based on placing working holidaymakers from Australia in jobs in London.

Sounded fine, I thought. I went and saw them and discussed it. They were pretty nice people. They said they would pay me a little to start off ($250 I think it was) and that I would make a percentage of the profits. They complimented the Illawarra Directory, and said that they wanted their website to look similar to that. I was pleased, and went home feeling good about the project. So good that I made a design that day, because they wanted something for the next day – I did consider that somewhat demanding of them, considering I had other clients to work on as well, but I brushed it off and did it anyway. It was a good design. I was proud of it.

The next day they called me and asked me to come around again. They were close by, only in Shellharbour Village, so I obliged.
This time I wasn’t alone. There was another graphic designer there. She was really friendly, and I can only hope that she cut her own ties with this ridiculous company like I did.

Here’s where things began to go downhill.

They didn’t like my design. Apparently, they had decided that they wanted a “grungey” design instead of the sleek design I had given them, modelled off the Illawarra Directory. Okay, I thought, that’s fine. No dramas. I’ll use that design in some other way.

One of the ladies decided that she wanted Photoshop. She actually had me take her laptop home and install Photoshop onto it, and return it to her. Once I got back, the woman decided I needed to stick around for a while and help her use Photoshop. She’d never touched it before, but she wanted to participate in the website design for some bizarre reason.

Finally, I made an excuse that I was meeting another client that afternoon and had to leave.

The next business day, I received another phone call from the Photoshop n00b. She needed me to tell her how to do something. I think it was something to do with erasing a background from a photo. I did my best to explain to her how I achieved that, and then continued to work on another client once the phone call ended. The phone started to ring again. I answered, and the idiot had some other question that I answered, and hung up.

Then, she called again. I pressed “busy” on my phone. Then I switched off my phone.

When the day had ended I turned it back on, and I had two voicemail messages from her.

One of them was something along the lines of “Hi Natalie, I really need your help with Photoshop. I thought it would be easy to do things, but I’m having so much trouble. Can you call me ASAP?”

Yeah, she thought Photoshop was easy. Never mind that I learnt to use it through both trial and error and through my DIGITAL MEDIA CERTIFICATE IV course.

I sent her an email.

As you can see, I really thought it out. I even went to the trouble of seeking out tutorials for her.

Her response? (Red text is my comments)

I simply replied “Good luck finding someone.”

They’d need it. Anyone that would do that for them would have to be someone completely unemployed and desperate for work.

I hope those girls’ business fails miserably. They don’t deserve anybody’s money if they think that’s a good way to treat well-meaning but naive people.

Mangerton is such an ugly word. With other suburbs in Wollongong having names such as Fairy Meadow and Figtree, Mangerton is a pretty unappealing name for a place to live. But, really it’s a lovely area.

Which is just as well, since we’re moving there on the 12th of February.

Yes, we were offered the Mangerton house. And the Figtree place, too. But, they wanted us in there too soon.  We were pleased as punch today, after two harrowing inspections that turned out to be a waste of time, to be called by the real estate agent and told our application was accepted.

We are going to have a dishwasher. Is that not incredible?

It is to me… I detest washing the dishes, at least during summer where I am drenched with sweat by the end.

On the date we sign the lease, I will be able to tick off #69 on my 101 things list.

Best of all, we’re going to have more space… and a dining room. And we get to take a month to pack up rather than a week.

Also on Skippy’s blog was a reference to 101 things in 1001 days, a long-term goals project focusing on doing a set list of things in the ensuing 1001 days precisely. For me, the end date is going to be Friday, 5 October 2012 (calculated using this tool). That’s shortly before the Mayan apocalypse, right?

Anyway, I have finished my list and here it is! I’ll be ticking them off as I go. Currently uncompleted goals are bold.

1. Get a full-time job that I don’t hate
2. Read the Hitchhiker’s Guide series
3. Make one new local offline friend
4. Quit Woolworths (in conjunction with #1)
5. If I can’t buy a house yet, at least save up $10,000+
6. Get down to 85kg or lighter, and keep it that way
7. Get the matching tattoos my sister and I have been planning since we were in England
8. Actually edit a NaNoWriMo novel
9. Try to get novel published
10. Hold the “plank” exercise for 60 seconds or more
11. Go to the gym twice in one day
12. Go to the gym every day from Monday-Saturday (it’s closed Sundays) for at least one week
13. See a psychiatrist about my anxiety
14. Have my gonadectomy
15. Release the first issue of Ather & Earth
16. Visit New Zealand
17. Go on a road trip
18. Go to the beach and go in the water (you’d think this would be an easy one, considering I live right by a beach… but I just never go)
19. Get up early enough to watch the sun rise over the lake
20. Pay off my Barter Card balance and close my account
21. Learn to use a Javascript library
22. Own a smart phone, preferably a Google one
23. Visit the Blue Mountains
24. Find out if I’m allergic to any food
25. Have a shift at Woolworths where I do not want to scream in frustration
26. Go one day without coffee
27. Go two days without using a computer or video game of any kind
28. Go one month where I work on Ather & Earth every single day.
29. Go a month without buying anything made of chocolate or chocolate flavoured or containing chocolate
30. Settle into a smooth weekly routine
31. Drink 2 litres of water in one day
32. Earn over $40k in one year
33. Radically change my hair
34. Spend a night out without having a panic attack
35. Cook a gourmet meal on my own
36. Connect my computer to my TV to become a Media Centre
37. Buy better wheels for my rollerskates
38. Quit playing Bejeweled
39. Visit 24 hour K-Mart between 1am and 4am, just ’cause
40. Visit Jamberoo Action Park
41. Buy a DSLR camera
42. Move to a bigger house
43. Be complimented on my home by a visitor
44. Drink a large Boost Juice
45. Catch and eat a fish
46. Get a perfect score on Rhythm Kung Fu (Advanced) in Wii Fit Plus
47. Refrain from eating anything sugary on Christmas Day
48. Buy that Beatles collection on the USB flash drive in the green apple
49. Make delicious cocktails at home
50. Roast green coffee beans in a popcorn maker
51. Watch all Tom Baker Doctor Who episodes
52. Buy a block of chocolate and eat it over the space of a week rather than all at once
53. Win something. Anything.
54. Finish at least the first draft of at least two novels
55. Get my car’s headlights fixed
56. Build a new shoe rack
57. Learn how to use the washer-dryer properly
58. Go one month without seeing an insect or arachnid in the house
59. Go on a waterslide
60. Get a kitten
61. Meet three people in person that I met online
62. Clean up my Gmail and keep up with all the emails instead of just looking at them all, sighing, and closing the tab
63. Visit Uluru
64. Get revenge on someone
65. Bake fresh bread
66. Go to bed at 9:30pm
67. Spend a full day exclusively in bed except for using the bathroom
68. Make a really horribly designed website for fun
69. Live in the Greater Wollongong area
70. Eat a taco
71. Brew stout beer
72. Make tiramisu
73. Find a cake wreck and submit it to Cake Wrecks
74. Make steak and stout pot pies
75. Consider myself a responsible adult
76. See Melbourne when it’s sunny
77. Finish Final Fantasy V
78. Feel financially secure
79. Skate backwards for three laps at the skating rink
80. Make scouse
81. Make Irish soda bread
82. Make soda bread ice cream
83. Go to Bowral
84. Borrow a book from the local library
85. Make real buttermilk pancakes topped with sliced strawberries and pure maple syrup
86. See the New Years fireworks in Sydney Harbour
87. Have a picnic on the grass
88. Wander the Haywards Bay home display village
89. Take my parents out to dinner
90. Learn how to take care of my car properly
91. Make a sand sculpture
92. Visit Caringbah Shopping Village for the first time since 2007
93. Eat at Outback Steakhouse
94. Buy a deck of Uno cards
95. Visit the Southern Gateway Centre
96. Walk on the Sea Cliff Bridge
97. Stay awake for 35 hours straight, and see if I start hallucinating
98. Get some new bedroom décor
99. Make an animated short
100. Eat at the Nan Tien Temple
101. Go hang-gliding

Given that today is the 7th of January, the week is nearly up so I’m getting in right away!

You might also have notice I still have not updated some of the pages on this site… I really need to get that done but first, I have to finish off some client websites. I was told off by one client for taking time off during the holidays. Heaven forbid I get a break in my work schedule.

Yeah, you might be able to tell I am having a lot of troubles with my business. I didn’t realise people could be as fussy as they are, and I never realised just how hard it could be to communicate. But that’s not the worst part. I am just not cut out to work for myself. I haven’t got enough of a work ethic to pull it off. I can work for a boss, but I am a terrible boss of myself. Does that make sense to anyone else?