Frickin' Groundhog Day
It's not just a movie, it's kinda my life this week. Guess who are outside my window AGAIN? It's the frickin' manhole-men. They're scraping and lifting crap and making lot of noise. I can see ass-cracks from the window. Not a pretty sight. I got home from work around 10.15pm (yes, another Groundhog Day event) and there they were. I kept hoping as I rounded Broadway that they would not be here. What are they DOing? I'm going to try to sleep with headphones tonight as the bastards woke me up at 2am and 4am.

Relative Re-cap
Today I got two interesting emails. One was from a Rahilly woman that I don't think I'm related to, but the other one was from the woman I was trying to find, the mother/grandmother of the guys I spoke to/got voicemail from. The first woman says she would like to tell me about her Rahilly family and I'd be happy to share the little info I know of the other Rahilly families that lived in Ireland in the same area my Rahilly relatives are from - maybe I could help her out a bit. And as for the woman I was looking for, she sounds so nice! She said I was welcome to ask her anything I like and that if I'm ever in Queensland, I should come over and meet the extended fam! How nice is that? Gotta love the Aussie hospitality. She is fairly confident that her husband was indeed my great grandmother's nephew. Very cool.

5 Minutes Late
So I am always running 5 minutes late. This is what I do. :) Tonight my plan was to leave work around 6.10 and go to Bondi Junction to pick up my plane tix and then go back to work to work. Well, all the ticket machines that accepted bills were out of order, so with the waiting in line and the slow train I was on, I didn't get to the travel agent until about 5 minutes after they'd closed. Doh! Oh well, will have to go on Saturday in between my other errands/appointments. Saturday should be interesting - I have to finish my homework for my Sunday writing class too - so much for doing it early - Procrastination Queen I Am! :-)

They're back!
What the hell is underneath the road outside my apartment that's so important that they need to make so much noise and work on it late at night? Is there gold under there or something? ;-) Tonight I'm going to try keeping a CD on repeat and see how that blocks things.

Web Savvy Relatives?
So I had my phone off at work today, but the father of the boy who rang me from Brisbane last night left a message. He was just confirming again that the woman I named in my letter was in fact his mother. He said he would fax the letter to her and that she would probably get back to me "via email because she's right into that stuff!" Hahahahaa! She's got to be in her 70s and she's right into the email. I love that! But he also mentioned the suburb she lives in up in Queensland and I think I sent a letter directly to her as well - in any case, all bases are covered there. This guy said his mum would have a lot more information for me. Very exciting!

Just got home from work, so I'm exhausted and googly-eyed. Can't believe that I'll be heading to Chicago/Springfield/Boston in less than two weeks! Crazy!

Contact!
So I heard back from one of the people I sent a letter to on the weekend, and yes, it is a long-lost Australian relative - yay! Around 9pm tonight I was at work and I received a phone call that I almost didn't answer as I didn't recognise the number. Luckily I answered - it was the grandson of this one relative I was looking for, so I was on the right track! We only spoke for a couple minutes since I was at work and he was ringing my mobile (which is expensive) so he said he'd have his dad get back to me as he would be totally into the whole family tree thing. So I'm very pleased and look forward to hearing from them and perhaps others, soon.

Me so tired
I got home from work tonight just before 11pm - sooooooo tired. I kept hoping the rain would stop so I could walk home umbrella-less, but that just didn't happen. Anyway, I did get a lot of work done, so I'm very glad about that. We are going to be crazy busy for the next several weeks and I have a lot to cram in my remaining two weeks at work (before going to visit the fam in the U.S.) - so many projects happening, one in particular being the lovely site for FBi Radio, on air from the 29th of August - woo-hoo!

Cranky Pants
I just hope I get more sleep than I did last night. I don't know who the hell they were or what the hell they were doing, but there were lots of men making lots of noise outside my building last night, just below my window. And they were making all this noise from 10pm until about 5am! GRRRR! They kept making all these scraping/hammering sounds and they were going down the manhole, doing lord knows what. I could even hear what was being said on their walkie talkies! Very important stuff like "Steve, do you need any coffee? Over!" and "Steve, what do you see down there?" and "Steve, white with 2 sugars? Over!" "Copy that." I just wanted to sleep, dammit. I kept thinking of Ghost Busters II and I was hoping they would get slimed ;-) They're equipment is back again tonight (nooooooo!) but there's no sign of the boys yet, so maybe it's too wet for them to come out and play tonight. (Fingers crossed!)

Cluck Cluck II!
I spoke with lil' Kristikeet on Saturday for a good hour - she's hanging in there like the little trooper that she is. The poor thing - to have a massive power outage AND a fire occur at the hospital you're in, the day you're having surgery - jaysus. I was like, "What else could possibly go wrong? Tornado? Locusts? Earthquake?" Thankfully our little Miss Kristen is at home now, recovering, slowly but surely. Take it easy, young lady! :-D

Writing the Novel
I had class today from 10am-4pm and I was actually on the list even though I hadn't received enrolment confirmation, so at least I wasn't a loser showing up for the class, which was, surprise, surprise, called "Writing the Novel." There were 9 of us, and I have to say, none of us were feeling that perky at 10am. I personally was not really functioning. I mean, my friends know never to ring me before 11am (at least!) on a Sunday. It just isn't right. Anyway, overall it was a good class, though we definitely could have been given more time for some of the assignments. We literally had 5 minutes to plan the genre, theme, and plot ideas for a novel that we were essentially making up on the spot and then we only had 5 minutes for creating character charts for characters we were also making up on the spot. What the???

I was going to use my current characters/novel-in-progress at the beginning, but it was actually easier to make new stuff up because I would have had too much to work with in 5 minutes using the old stuff. However, I will go back and apply the tricks and techniques we learned today to the stuff I have been working on these last couple years. I was relatively pleased with what I came up with during the class - nothing amazing, but not bad considering I didn't sleep well last night. And I did actually work on a piece for my never-ending novel-in-progress during one assignment (in which we had 10 whole minutes!) so that was good.

As I was leaving the building to head back toward my 'hood, this guy in my class came up behind me and said, "You know, I really think you will be the first in the class to finish your novel!" And I laughed and said, "God, I hope not! I'll probably be like 99 when I finally finish it, so you better hope I'm not the first one!" And then he said told me I was the most "natural writer" in the class, which is total bullshit as everyone in that class could write well and there was some really amazing stuff that came out during the free-writing exercise. I was very impressed.

After the class I went and got my new usual soy chai and wrote for another 2 hours at Broadway. Yay! I'm going for quantity not quality at the moment - just getting myself back into the habit of regular writing, ignoring whether I am "inspired" or not.

So Taxing
Big thanks to Rammstein for being so patient with my stupid tax deduction questions. You're the best. :-)

Chicago, Chicago
I finally booked my hotel in Chicago for my one glorious and hopefully restful night. I just want a nice comfy bed - I'm going to need somewhere soft, big, and horizontal to rest my weary head after 19+ hours of travelling.

V.isa, Please!
So I'm going to practice meditating while at the I.mmi.gration Office tomorrow. I need to finally get my working v.isa aff.ixed in my passport so I can actually get back into Oz in September. It normally takes a good two hours to get anything done there, but I'm going to get there before they open so hopefully the line won't be as bad and I won't get into work too late. I better bring my notebook - I'm sure there will be some inspiring characters down there!

I Calls 'Em Like I Sees 'Em
I am just so proud! Very honoured, indeed! :-D