Last night I didn't get home until 10pm so writing on my blog was kinda the last thing on my mind. Luckily for me my most excellent friend and fellow blogger Willow looked after my son for me and he had the most wonderful time exploring the magic of daggy dancing and playing with Willow's kids. There were a few kids shipped off to school this morning rather sleep-deprived so apologies Toowoomba teachers for this.
Everything is now done and dusted and I'm finally home and awake for the first time in days!
The best part of the last few days was getting to hold our conference at Gips, one of the most favoured restaurants and function centres in Toowoomba. Gips is located at Clifford House, which I've just googled and found it was built in 1860 and was intended as a residential club for squatters! It's historically listed and really quite beautiful. It was then owned by James Taylor who had a dog called Gip (hence the restaurant name)...you can still see the dog's headstone on the grounds (which I wish I'd known as I would have gone looking for it).
The House is set amongst these gorgeous gardens, which makes you feel like you're in another time and place, despite being literally just a couple of blocks from the city centre. So this is where I've 'lived' the past two days and it's been a pretty amazing experience. All previous conferences or seminars I've attended before have been in soulless and usually windowless conference centres, so to be able to look out arched windows onto lush gardens throughout the proceedings has been a novel and lovely experience.They've fed me several meals yesterday and today, all of which have been to die for! I can thoroughly understand why they've become the premier place in Toowoomba - to be able to serve up a choice of beef, lamb or Atlantic salmon for 60 people is a pretty awesome achievement and I could write about how delicious the salmon (which I got) was for days...seriously the best.
They even have a framed picture of the house back in the day with horses out the front which I couldn't resist snapping a picture of. In the interest of honesty and at the risk of ridicule, I must admit the picture was hanging in the bathroom! And yes I washed my hands first.
I've also discovered an excellent way of keeping warm, courtesy of one of the other girls....the nanna blanket. Apparently she keeps this under her desk and puts it over her legs during winter which I think is the most excellent idea. I always get cold from about 2pm onwards and on goes the jacket, the scarf, and sometimes the gloves. The ridicule line has already been crossed so I'm thinking the addition of my own nanna blanket surely can't make it worse. Plus this girl is way younger than me so if she can get away with it, then surely I can too, right? Stay tuned for the earmuff addition, although I might put that one on the backburner until they get to know me better. Or when I've passed my probation period.
Following on from the weekend, I've now watched all of The Bachelorette to date and am crushing on Arie big time. Hopefully he doesn't turn out to be a dick as he is coming across like a really cool guy and Emily is completely enamoured of him too right about now. I also like the dude who owns the water company who seems completely cool and I saw the preview where they get their first kiss in on a bridge in London...awwww. Emily doesn't seem as focused as previous bachelorettes at ensuring that she come across well, she seems pretty natural and funny and doesn't mind saying what's what at any one time.
Due to our Brisbane visitors I didn't get as much reading in as I anticipated and am still only about halfway through Deadlocked. I've decided to try to take my time as I always read books too fast just so I can find out what happens. Luckily the author seems to have picked up her game and I haven't been disappointed by the storyline yet, although we'll see how it ends...the main issue I have is as the books have gone on I've started to dislike Sookie, the main character, and just don't get her reactions to things which pisses me off sometimes. Yes I know it's just a book but I get really involved with the series that I love and hate it when the characters you come to know and love do things that you just don't really understand why they'd do it. I'm a sap, I'll admit it.
So one of the facets at the conference that really interested me was talking about the spread of personalities and styles across the company which they'd measured before and really made me think about my own style. Some of the things they mentioned I just went, OMG that's soooo me, down to having to read books too fast to find out the ending. There's a certain type that 'needs to know' and I think I fall directly into that category. Hopefully in the future I might get to do the personality profiling that they've had done as I always love to find out what my strengths are (and as the dude facilitating the conference made us write down - your strengths are also your weaknesses). I love this shit as it makes me understand who I'm working with better and how to relate to them on a level that might actually get results. Like I said...I NEED to know!
So we're absolutely shattered at the moment. Elijah is writing a biography for school and has chosen my dad as the topic. As we knew we'd be so late home yesterday, we woke up super early this morning to print out dad's information so E could take it to school and start writing around the details. Two long days have exhausted both of us and we were pretty snippy with each other this morning. I ended up yelling at him which I haven't done for the longest time, and it was all quite sad. I felt so bad beginning the day that way so plan to spend some time snuggling up with him to make sure he's OK as he took it really, really personally.
It's game two of State of Origin tonight and one of my colleagues has invited me to her place to watch however E is just about asleep on the couch already and it's only 6:30pm! Thinking we probably need to work off a bit of ye olde sleep debt. And the only reason I care about the result of the game is to lord it over any NSW counterparts, although I must say there is a dearth of New South Welshman in fair Toowoomba! My previous boss in Brisbane was a NSW boy so it was always fun to cellophane his office or car in Qld colours. Having said that, as we've taken out the title for about a million years in a row now, at the end it seemed a bit like kicking a man while he was down.
Hope you're all having a wonderful week! I'm off to snuggle with my boy in front of the heater as I think the weather plummeted drastically about 5 minutes ago! Brrr!!!
xx
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