Last weekend and today we went to the native plant nursery at Belair National Park. We had printed a list of what plants were indigenous to our area (from the Urban Forest site), and went looking for some of them in the nursery. We brought home 5 plants last week (3 indigenous) and eight today (5 indigenous). Indigenous plants are a really great idea, because they should survive without any care once extablised, as they've evolved with that soil type, pH, amount of rainfall, etc. Also, they're great for supporting native birds and other wildlife. I'm feeling pretty proud of myself (and N) at the moment :)

Plants so far (will edit to add the rest of the scientific names that I don't have tags for right now)
Indigenous are starred*

Grasses / Sedge
Anigozanthos flavidus red form (Kangaroo paw)
*Lomandra multiflora ssp. dura (Many flowered mat-rush, hard mat-rush)
*Muehlenbeckia gunnii (Coastal lignum)

Bushes / Shrubs
Adentanthos sericeus (Silver streak, Woolly bush)
*Banksia marginata (Silver banksia)
Banksia
Grevillea superb
*Melaleuca lanceolata syn M. pubescens (Moonah, Black tea tree)
Melaleuca nesophila - same as the plant I had years ago from the Christmas pageant called "Little"

Trees
*Allocasuarina verticillata dryland form (Drooping sheok)
*Eucalyptus porosa (Mallee box)
*Pittosporum angustifolium Syn. P. phylliraeoides (Weeping pittosporum, native apricot)
*Acacia pycnantha (Golden wattle)

Well, we went to the RSPCA and picked up one of the two cats that had caught our eye online :D

I called them first, and I was really suprised that they said we could take a cat home today if we wanted to, considering that Kim had to wait overnight before collecting his dog.

The RSPCA had called her Sharna. I don't know if we'll keep the name or not. We'll take some more pics soon, but here is the RSPCA pic of her:



She's so gorgeous :)

N also really liked one of the older (and more fluffy) girls, but this girl just completely won me over, and N liked her too :)

Went to Lobethal lastnight. It was the busiest I can ever remember seeing it. It took us about an hour to drive the last couple of kms into the town. It was crazy. Once we were there, at almost 10pm, we walked the main street (didn't see as much as usual, and it was freezing). Then we drove around for a while. N's tooth/neck was hurting a bit, and we both got frustrated by the slowness of the cars on the designated trails, but once we drove off the trails we saw a bit more. Even though it wasn't the best trip, I'm really glad we went. We also got some hot doughnuts ($1 each :S), but skipped on the spring rolls, which were $2.50 each :S 

We've been thinking about getting another cat so that Shelly has a companion during the day when we are out. We don't necessarily want to have a cat or cats forever though, so we were thinking about getting an older cat (about 5-7 years old) as Shelly is about 7 now.

We've been looking at cats on the RSPCA website (I didn't know they'd actually have photos of the pets avalaible for adoption, but they do - very nice, especially considering it's quite a drive to the shelter). Two cats have caught our eye - a blue and white 7 year old, and a really nice looking white 8 month old. The 8 month old isn't really what we were looking for (she's young, and I said I wanted to avoid white cat hair) but she's just stunning. We'll go there to look at both of them (and others) in a little while. It's really exciting.

Also, yesterday I got a Footspa for $15 from K-mart. It has bubbles and massage. It's a little on the noisey side for something that's supposed to be relaxing, but it feels really  good, and $15 is about the same price as a take-out tea (we've been doing that too much lately too).

Bought new flavours of Lindt chocolate for N&R, Pam and Andrew, and Kim. There's coffee, orange, cinnamon and something else.

Also looked at some coffee machines. It's one of those things that we definately don't need, and don't even really want, but I do like the thought of a cappucino, and we'll probably end up buying one eventually. Or a milk frother anyway.

We've been back from Berri since Tues, but still hadn't collected Shelly. We called N & R tonight, but they didn't answer, so we figured they'd gone out, and that we'd go over and get Shelly anyway. When we got there we discovered that they were having a street party. The Christmas lights looked great. Merle and Harold were there, so we chatted to them and N's Mum for a while. Searching for Shelly was pretty fruitless, considering all the noise. We'll go there tomorrow after I go to uni.

Speaking of which, I went in and cancelled my rural placement in Whyalla today. I might still do a country GP placement, but I don't want to do it first, and not in Whyalla. It's too far away, and one far away place in a year (Alice Springs) is enough for me :)

N got his biology result today - distinction :) He's now officially finished his degree! Woo! We had KFC (N's choice) to celebrate. N made them give us a free potato and gravy cos last time we'd gotten take out, they gave us a potato and gravy with no potato. The girl had to check with the manager. It was all kind of embarrasing :S

I've been playing a riddle/game online today. Someone linked it from a forum. It's quite good, but it's not easy. I'm stuck on level 5 at the moment. My suggestion is to read the rules/hints before you start.


There are some more games I quite like here:
http://www.zanorg.com/prodperso/jeuxchiants/index.htm

This one is my favourite from that lot - click the UK flag in the bottom left corner for English.

At first, this journal was all public, but I didn't tell anyone about it. Then, I told wrazn about it, but made the old entries private. Now I've decided I'm officially being silly and need to get over myself, write what ever I want, and if people don't like it (or find it boring more likely) then they don't have to read it :) So I've made every entry public.

I'm going to join some communities too. I want more to read on this friends page. I've been looking for some layout communities too, but nothing worth joining so far.

 I got sick of my old theme so I've been trying to choose a new one. There aren't many I like... I don't even really like this one. The colours are a bit girly, but at least it's something different.

Edit - The most annoying thing is that when I'm logged in, there's no "edit" button on each entry.

Hmmm, I've never been tagged before... probably because I haven't really been using this journal very much, and haven't joined many groups. Still, I obviously found my way onto monkau's friends list.

The 1st player of this game starts with the topic "6 weird habits/things about yourself" and 6 people who get tagged need to write a blog about their 6 weird habits/things as well as state this rule clearly.

tagged by:
monkau

tagging:

Whoever wants to reply... I don't even know who is on the friends list of this journal.

**

1. Because I can't think of anything to say, I'll use monkau as inspiration and say that at the moment we keep and breed quite a few mice (although our mouse numbers are definately not in the same ball park as hers ;) ). We have a LJ for our mice too (pics and some basic record keeping) but I don't really want to reveal my full level of mouse-obsession by linking to it here. 

2. I tend to go through phases, and get completely obsessed with them, especially with pets. Eg, we used to keep and breed tropical fish, and got up to a total of about 7 tanks ranging from a few small 20L tanks to two 4ft tanks (although one of the 4ft's was just used for storing plants and growing baby fish). Right now we have;just one 4ft tank. So we're now completely normal fish-wise. 

We also spent a lot of time learning about budgies (including budgie colour genetics) when we first got one as a pet from my Mum (who's bred them on and off in her aviary for almost my whole life). We've stuck to two budgies, although we did end up building them a cage and another thing with perches for when they're outside their cage. We built those things over a a few days total though - so that's not too obsessional considering it was almost a year ago now.

3. I spend way too much time online, joining forums and generally obsessing over whatever I'm currently obsessed with :)

4. I'm pretty smart, but I don't study enough to have any degree of confidence about anything, which is particularly bad considering what I'm studying. I have no idea how I passed my last exams.

5. I'd love to be able to play a musical instrument, sing, and speak another language. Of all of those things, singing is probably the most un-achievable - just ask anyone who's ever listened ;) I'm thinking about learning to play the guitar. My Dad used to teach guitar and is a fantastic player. He started teaching me once years ago, but he and I aren't really compatible teacher-student-wise. So if I was going to learn again, I'd try and do it myself and just ask him for help when I needed it. Of languages I'd like to learn - Dutch interests me because my Mums parents were from Holland, and a lot of her family still lives there. Also, French seems like a fairly easy language to learn from when my sister was studying it, and it's a lot more widely spoken than Dutch, so that appeals too. I learnt Chinese and Japanese in highschool, but I don't remember any of them, and I really have no desire to learn those languages.

6. The reason I don't write much in this journal is because once I get started, I start rambling, and am almost completely incapable of censoring myself. And god knows who reads these things.

I heard a German song on the radio last night that I probably haven't heard in ten years or more. I've literally only ever heard this song a few times, but I've always liked it, despite having no idea what it was about until today. Every time I've heard it in the past, I've thought that I should try to find a copy of it, but last night was the first time I'd heard it since I've had internet access :)

Although the title wasn't announced last night, I vaguely remembered that it had something to do with balloons from hearing the title the last time I heard the song. Today we found it after a few google searches.

99 Luftballons

The lyrics, in the original German, the English version (re-released by the same artist), and a direct German translation, are here:
http://www.inthe80s.com/redger3.shtml

I like it even more now that I know what it's about.

And the (very 80s) video clip is from YouTube:




It feels great to have finally found this song, and to know what it's about. It's amazing the things you can find on the internet in five minutes when something reminds you to look.