Category: Daily Life

We’ve been invited to Lee-Ann’s 40th birthday today, it is a “Rubik’s cube” themed party. The idea is you come to the party dressed in the different colours of the Rubik’s cube (red, blue, green, orange, yellow, white), and swap items with other party goers until you are dressed in one colour.

H has to work but helped me acquire all my different Rubik’s colours on a day off, picking up assorted coloured items from a couple of opportunity shops. I’ll be wearing a blue dress (my base colour) and a multi-coloured assortment of items such as hat, scarf, jacket, socks, and other accessories.

Just about to head off with my car to get a couple of new parts fitted, then to find a nice gift for Lee before getting ready for the party at midday.

Phew! it has been a long, busy week. Quite exhausting, we had a charity golf day on Thursday and I have been putting in some long hours trying to get up to speed in my new job. Gayle finishes up next Thursday, and I will also be looking after her role until she is replaced. It looks like we will be getting another admin assistant to help out for a little while. As Ros joked, the assistant (me) is getting an assistant!

I have been trying, almost succeeding, in getting an hour of study in every night when I get home from work. A couple of evenings I have just staggered in and pretty much gone straight to bed. I’ve been continuing my volunteer work at the pound also, and stupid me persuaded the overworked coordinator to let me help her with the dog adoption paperwork. So I’ve a box load of stuff waiting for me to go through it some time this weekend. So stupid because I am already overworked at the moment. I just can’t resist trying to be helpful.

Big news at work today – Gayle has been offered a job in payroll processing by Queensland Health, and handed in her resignation. She leaves in two weeks.

I was all geared up to cover for her next month anyway, while she was away on annual leave. I just might be doing it a bit longer than I expected! Don’t know what is going to happen about her position yet, I just know that I don’t want it.

Maybe there will be a restructure. I have a horrible feeling that the resignations may not stop with Gayle.

It must be the most expensive paperback in history – Think Big and Kick Ass inspired Ipswich entrepreneur Malcolm Quinn to sink more than $1m into pursuading the book’s author, Donald Trump to visit Australia for a series of “Think like a billionaire” speaking tours (TodayTonight June 30, 2008 Trump down under).

The trip is now off due to poor ticket sales, with less than a quarter of the tickets sold. Quinn’s friends attribute this to the current economic downturn, others say lack of experience and inadequate planning. Reports say that Trump has pocketed the $1m+ downpayment (Brisbane Times Oct 3, 2008 Trump blasts ‘inexperienced’ QLD promoter) and there are indications he will pursue the remainder of his $2m contract. With the failure of Quinn’s business it is an expensive lesson indeed, and creates a long line of creditors who were caught up in the event, including ticket holders, sponsor Sarina Russo, and event contractors.

There was a lot of talk about this at work over the last couple of days, as Quinn’s Concept Store was our marketing firm and heavily involved in a couple of our present fundraisers. The effect on us of this turn of events is quite minimal. To give credit to Malcolm Quinn, he has honoured his obligations to us by ensuring the work on his side has continued. So far the local community is standing behind Malcolm, with very little noise in the local press and the Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale coming out in defence of his friend.

A foolish venture perhaps, but a terrible disaster for Malcolm Quinn and his family nonetheless.

This is my friend Melissa’s beautiful German Shepherd puppy Bridget.. photo was taken a couple of months ago though, I’m about due for a new one!

Although I’ve only gone into work three days this week, I feel like I’ve worked double that, it has been that busy. I guess I could have been even more flat out if Ron had been feeling well enough to do some more handover with me, but he has had the flu. So I had Wednesday off, and it looks like I’m having tomorrow off too.

Monday, Tuesday and today I worked with Gayle. She’s had a hell of a week, with the worry about her mum. It looks like Enid is going to be OK, but the hospital want to discharge her, and social workers are saying she needs to go into a nursing home. So Gayle and her family have been filling out a mountain of paperwork and trying to find a place somewhere. It all seems very stressful and the hospital isn’t any support, they told Gayle that her mum was “taking up resources”. I don’t think Gayle has even had time to process the fact that her mum can’t look after herself anymore.

Most of my time this week has been taken up with setting up the record keeping for the big art union raffle we’re running. I’m having to use my own initiative with this and hope to goodness I am doing it right. It is quite complicated because we have to know what tickets have been sold each week for the weekly draw, and we have ticket books out to about 40 or 50 sellers. It would be so much easier if there was only one draw.

Anyway, tomorrow I am running around with the pound puppies again in the morning, then I plan to knuckle down and read a whole lot of reference material I printed out to help prepare me for Ron’s job. Monday will be my first stab at processing the payroll, hopefully Ron will be recovered enough to come in and show me how it’s done. I hope he’ll be able to show me a lot more of the job next week, I am starting to get paranoid about it. I have a meeting scheduled with the Treasurer and Auditor the following week and it would be nice to know a little bit more about what I am supposed to be doing.

The sad loss of author Douglas Adams a few years ago meant that we never learnt the fate of Arthur Dent and his amiable alien companion Ford Prefect, who uncovered the amazing truth behind learning the mysteries of life, the universe and everything in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Did Arthur and Ford remain on pre-historic Earth with the useless Golgafrinchams or were they taken on to further adventures by a passing spaceship?

Some very exciting news is Hitchhiker’s publisher Penguin has commissioned Irish author Eoin Colfer to pen the next installment of the story. Eoin is a great fan of Douglas Adams so there is some expectation he will write in the style and spirit of the original author.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to grow bigger – Sept 18, 2008