Temperature is in the low 19s the past weeks and along comes with this is the moist and musty odors in some areas in our household.  These usually come about when we use heaters against the already cold concrete walls or glass windows.  We have special cleaning agents and we allot dedicated time to clean this often as the moist becomes stains, which gets tougher if left for days.  The door knobs, kick plates and metal racks located along the porch require a bit more cleaning, too during the cold season.  So, who loves Winter?

It does feel like Winter these days and we’re just in the middle of Autumn!  We have been layering our clothing day in and day out the past weeks.  It seems as though we are headed for a harsh cold season.

This early, we are using our heaters and flannelette sheets already and I recently bought door draft scenters to help keep the cold from entering our doors.  How I wish we have laminate floors rather than ceramic as the latter retains the cold temperature longer.

My daughter is making more and more friends at school.  She frequently talks about three girls and two boys lately and she looks for them whenever she goes to school.  I’m sure those kids will be in her list of invitees on her 5th birthday.

Her party will be different this time around since we had only had girls during her 4th birthday party last year.  It will be a bit of a challenge to think of games, design supplies and invites.  If personal creations keychains are cheap, they will surely make good favors and will also match the theme.  Anyway, her birthday is still months away and I have a good lead time to think of the details.

I was watching the local news tonight and saw a young mom who has transformed from being a simple-looking housewife into a more self-conscious woman.  She has reached a point where she gets cheap lipoquick to make herself feel good.  It goes without saying that she spends a lot of money on “self-improvements”.  I don’t know if I should feel happy or sad for her.  I may be neglecting myself due to lack of personal time but I still find happiness with who I am and with how I look.

My sister will hand down her old office laptop to me this year. They have two laptop computers up for disposal but I chose to get the one with the higher specifications of course. The reformatting and installation of OS will be taken care of and that is a welcome bonus. My only problem now is sourcing the Office and Adobe software that I need. That will eat up a big chunk of my “hobby” budget for sure.

I now have the photos and videos from my son’s first birthday celebration last year.  The printed photos are all good and I am planning to use my reliable scanner software to make soft copies for upload to my online album.  The video quality was equally good but I’d be happier if the videographer put in all the baby photos I submitted to him before.

The Australian dollar is getting stronger against the US dollar and it is one of the possible reasons why many shops here are going on sale lately.  Most clothes and shoes stores are offering up to 70% discount just to let go of their stocks.  But this dollar surge impacts my grocery bills, too which are higher than ever before.  The prices of food staples have become noticeable that I am now more conscious with wastage.   I think I’ll grow hormonal acne just feeling the ‘pinch’ of having a strong currency.

In our more than three years living here in Sydney, we only experienced a power outage twice.  One is a fault related to moving apartments (account transfers) and the second was because of bad weather.  Since we have young kids, it was much tougher not to have power especially when it also runs the water heater.  We didn’t have Honda RV generators or the likes to support our household.  Thankfully, it wasn’t Winter when the outage happened in both occasions.

I once worked for a company in the tobacco business. As most of my work stints in the past, that one was also short-lived. Being in a room full of men smoking cigars and cigarettes everyday is too much of a health risk. Top that with periodic ‘taste’ testing of leaves that come from different countries and the ones that passed the test will form the flavor of the cigarettes for production. I will never forget how its aroma just looms around the entire office floor each time they did the test. Blech. It is such a huge business but an industry I won’t dare involve myself in again for the rest of my healthy life.

If I were an outgoing person, who has a knack for marketing and sales, I would probably be involved in the real estate business. I have heard of news about men and women in their mid-30’s making really good money out of real estate. Many of them probably even sell car or estate insurance since it is along the lines of their business. And what I think I’d do is to create some sort of an estatecarinsure.com blog or website to help market the business and services. We all know that the Internet is a powerful tool to disseminate information.