Almost a white Christmas

Well, not for us ... but just a couple kilometers away by the crow's path, it hailed decent sized chunks! 

Anyways, I had told myself that I would write a bunch of stuff over the past couple weeks, but I, once again, have failed to do so.

Instead, I'm here to condense a couple things into one post.  As I'm sometimes overly long-winded when concise would've been much better, perhaps this is a good thing.

First: Snowball.  Ruthie and I are doing much better since the whole ordeal.  Still not awesome, as it isn't really a fun thing to have in your memory.  We continuously have our windows open, and every now and then I hear a noise that is very similar to the sound I hear when he fell out of the window and my heart skips a beat.  But other than that, we contributed to Snowball's emergency bills in hopes that would help some, and then relied on the kind words of friends, family, and even a random coworker to whom I'd only spoken two words to previously to get us through it mentally.  Aside from the empty feeling the apartment had after he was gone [amazing how quickly you can get used to having a fuzzball running around], the worst part was that it just kinda felt like child services had swept in and taken our kid from us.  Needless to say, we are not on good terms with the rescue.  For what it's worth, from stalking the rescue's facebook page, Snowball has recovered from surgery [at a bill of $4900], and is recovering at the home of one of the owners.  The poor guy has a long road of recovery in front of him, though.

Second: Motorcycle.  When Ruthie first called VicRoads, the local department of motor vehicles, she talked to a really nice guy and we had a great first impression.  We got the idea that maybe Australian bureaucracy wasn't nearly as bad as ours.  Turns out we were wrong.  Ruthie has now talked to at least four different people, and has received a different story every time.  We've gone from one end of the spectrum where we would only have to pay a nominal fee for an unregistered vehicle permit to the other end where we have to treat our vehicle as a permanent import, getting it officially registered.  So a week ago, we made an appointment with a local mechanic who does inspections.  He turned a blind ear to the pipes being too loud [thank goodness!] and only cited me for the bald back tire.  So now that I have my official Road Worthy Certificate, I can go through whatever hoop is next.  From what the mechanic was saying, I will have to take my motorcycle to VicRoads so they can physically see the VIN and engine serial [seriously, engine serial!?].  Ruthie was trying to get it so that we would have the motorcycle for this week between Christmas and NY, but there were too many hoops to clear before every thing shut down for the holiday.

Third: Vacation.  Speaking of everything shutting down for the holiday, I currently am off of work.  I left the afternoon of the 23rd and won't be going back until the 4th.  Courtesy of the Australian government, the entire facility is shut down, so I cannot actually do work if I wanted.  Fine by me.  Ruthie looked into getting us to travel some where, but since the entire country is off, prices are 500% higher and she looked too late so everything was booked.  Instead, we've just been lazy bums around the apartment for the past couple days.

Fourth: Christmas.  Christmas itself was super low key.  We got up Christmas morning and skyped to my parents' house where our families had gathered for dinner.  So with the luxury of technology, Ruthie at least go to see and say hi to her mom and brother and eventually-to-be sister-in-law.  While it poured rain outside, we stayed in, watched Scrooged, Christmas Story, and a couple episodes of Firefly.  Ruthie also decorated the flat a bit with the wreath and ornaments she brought from home.  She also managed to get us a tree.  But that's an interesting story.  First it's not like our Christmas trees back home.  That's fine, and we were totally expecting that.  What we weren't expecting was for the stump to be so incredibly soft that it wouldn't stand up in our base.  First we thought it was because the very bottom of the stump was crooked.  So we hacked and trimmed off the bottom.  And then we did it again.  So our tree turned out kinda small.  And then our tree fell over again.  So now it's decorated, with lights, and is propped up by the walls in the corner of the apartment.  It is truly, in Ruthie's words, a "Dr. Seuss reject".  But I still think it's kinda cute.

-EP