Tons of Photos!

Click on images to enlarge.



This is my favourite photo that I have taken so far. I am very proud of it!



This is an awesome macro shot of a succulent. I thought the colours and patterns were odd and wanted to capture it.



This is my favourite photo of us in the Knysna Elephant Park



This is a picture of a rainbow I captured over the weekend. Five minutes after this picture was taken the skies were clear and the rainbow was gone.




These are pictures of our old office. You'll notice that there are no windows and it looks dull and cluttered.




These are pictures of the office we are moving to. The colours are bright, there are more windows and it's more spacious. Of course the PCs are not in yet - I'll have to post more photos once we've moved.



@ Zanzibar in Knysna



Rudi and I @ Zanzibar in Knysna



Finally - my take for Project Blue. I thought it would be nice to have a picture of my engagement/wedding ring because of the blue stones. Project Blue is an initiative of Anna Carson. Jenty is also participating in Project Blue - I read both of their blogs every day. They are both very good at photography.

I hope you've had your fill of photos!

Extremes

I'm not sure why, but lately I've been suffering under extremes.

On Saturday when we were in Knysna I was having such a lovely time. It was as if I was in a dream - after which the day turned into a nightmare. Rudi and I fought and I was very upset. The Sunday we had such a wonderful experience with the Knysna elephants, but the day turned out to be crap because of the electricity issue.

Yesterday I was over the moon because I achieved something that I have been striving towards for a long time and my entire day was ruined by my supervisor. I was excited about going to see our new building, but decided not to go for fear of my supervisor's wrath (my supervisor will be referred to as Jubba from now on). Jubba is great with customers and he can be really understanding. He has shown me that side of him. He can also be a freaking nightmare. He has had so many women in my department in tears because of the way he handles most situations. He puts the fear of God in you and then expects you to smile and comply. I didn't go to see the new building because I was afraid he would be upset as there would be too many people out of the office at the same time. Later on our specialist abducted me and we went to go and see the new building. It's beautiful, I will download and post the pictures at some point.

Perhaps I need to deal with situation differently. Perhaps kharma spots me being happy and decides to throw some crap at me because for some reason I don't deserve to be enjoying myself or to be happy. Stupid kharma.

I had my hair done yesterday. I paid a fortune to have it done. I had an appointment for 17:30, but arrived a little earlier. I only walked out of the salon at 21:00. Are they kidding me?! I had two people blow drying my hair near the end as the salon had already closed at 20:00 and everyone was eager to go home! Rudi complimented me on my hair and meant it, which made it all worthwhile. The only other time I paid so much to have my hair done was for my wedding.

I'm really tired, but I'm working this weekend so I'll have to suck it up and keep going. *yawn*

Knysna Photos

Our trip to Knysna was delightful for the most part, except that Rudi and I argued most of Saturday...strangely enough right after I wrote my last happy post.

On Sunday when we woke up there was no electricity. We called the contact person for our accomodation and she informed us that the electricity would be off till 6PM. We decided to go out and about till then and went to see the Knysna Elephants. When we got back we discovered that all the stores and restaurants in Knysna were closed, even the KFC!

We drove around until we discovered that the waterfront had a generator and had something to eat there. After that we really had nothing to do so we went back to where we were staying to chill out. After 6PM the electricity still hadn't come on and by 8PM we decided to take a drive to see if we could find out what was happening (and to beat the boredom!). The entire town was blanketed in darkness. It was quite scary driving around. Finally we saw a light at a tiny store and went in to get some food and drink. The owner of the store told us the electricity went off for maintenance purposes at first, but would only be back up at 10PM due to unforseen complications.

Having wasted almost the entire day we were quite despondant. The electricity finally came on around 22:15. We were quite relieved as we wanted to charge our cell phones and my new camera's battery before the trip home.

The ride home wasn't too bad, we drove for about 5 and a half hours. It was lovely getting home to our friends and Amber :)

I've uploaded the photos to facebook (don't worry, you don't need to be registered to view them), you can see them here.

Finally Knysna

This was taken from the John Benn



This chrome statue is called 'Zephyr'

This was also taken while we were on our cruise


You can see the John Benn on the left with the wood finishes


We enjoyed a cocktail just before boarding

We're finally in Knysna. The drive that we took wasn't too bad. Rudi drove all the way through and we made pretty good time. Even though we kind of got lost at some point. I bought a new camera which I am really stoked about. While the battery was charging I used my grandfather's old camera that he loaned to us. We were going to see the Knysna Elephants today, but decided to rather wait until my camera was fully functional before doing so. We just got home and noticed the battery is charged, but it's a little late to go to the Elephants now.

The camera I bought is supposedly usually priced around R3 000, but it has been discontinued so it was on offer for R1 100. It's a 8.2MP camera that works with a lithium ion battery. As far as I've seen it's pretty cool! I also bought a 1GB memory card for our trip. My grandfather's old camera only has a 16MB memory card and was full halfway through the first day!

Earlier we went to the Knysna Waterfront and went on a one and a half hour cruise to the Knysna heads on a boat called the John Benn. You can see it in one of the pictures I'm posting.

Tomorrow we're going to head up out to the Elephants and we're going to go to Plettenberg Bay to see if we can spot some whales as it is whale season here and we should be lucky to see some.

It's so beautiful and peaceful here in Knysna. I think I want to come and retire here. Anybody would do well to do so!

I'm going to be off again. Lots to see and do here...oh dear, I think Rudi's gone off to find a pub...

While the images are uploading I think I'll fiddle with my new camera!

Week-End

This entire week has been such a waste of time! We have so many public holidays in this week that there are only two working days...for normal folks that is.

Monday - Public Holiday (I was off)
Tuesday - Work (half day then spa)
Wednesday - Work
Thursday - Public Holiday (I will be off)
Friday - Public Holiday (Working)
Saturday - Work (I will be working)
Sunday - Work (I will be working)

Because our company stipulated somewhere in their license agreement (15 years ago) that they will service the public 24/7/365 we're stuck working public holidays and weekends. I'm working Friday (alone), Saturday and Sunday (with one colleague's help). Balls.

Our anniversary was really nice. We spent the entire weekend at Boogaloo and Voldemort's house looking after their pets. Their pets are pretty high maintenance, one in particular. Their dog, Macy, has serious abandonment issues and requires attention 150% of the time. She also sleeps in the bed with them. Luckily Amber sleeps in bed with us so it is not something that freaks us out too much.

Rudi took me out to dinner on our anniversary. We ate at the Cattle Baron in Tableview. Rudi ordered champagne for us. He's never done that before. The food was really good and we enjoyed each other's company. We stayed at Boogaloo's house till Monday and headed home.

Yesterday I came in to work, but my team only worked till 12 so that we could venture off to our team reward at the spa.

There wasn't any food for us and we needed to wait quite long as they could only take 3 of us at a time for our full body exfoliation and hot stone massage. While we waited for the first group to come out we spent time in the sauna, steam room, jacuzzi and heated swimming pool. Swimming makes you hungry. There was a bowl of fruit, but fruit doesn't really satisfy my hunger for long periods of time. The massage was really good. I'm actually a little sore today, but that is to be expected.

I'm having a a lot of trouble motivating myself to work today. I'll be off tomorrow again, but it is my last day off for the next 8 days. I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

Now I am looking forward to our weekend away in Knysna. No disturbances, nobody wanting to drop by. I want to go and see the Knysna elephants and I'm sure Rudi will want to go and eat oysters by the ton (I can't stand the stuff...*shudder*).

I suppose if I don't finish my work now I'm going to regret it later.

Update:

OMG I feel like I've just seen a ghost! A lady that used to work with us who practically fell off the face of the earth just walked into our office. I haven't seen her in years! YEARS! We used to spend time together outside of work and got to know each other as friends, we weren't super close but we were friends. She then left the company and we never heard from her again. We spoke amongst ourselves (as little as one week ago) wondering aloud where she might be. Weird how that works.